One of the world’s biggest light shows dazzles in the desert

Uluru’s spectacular new drone show is a world first for Indigenous tourism.

The night sky at Uluru has never lacked dazzle. The Milky Way is a long white brushstroke across the sky, shooting stars streak through the darkness, and satellites loop overhead, but these celestial lights might just have met their match in one of the world’s largest and most impressive drone shows.

Launched in May after three years of planning and $10 million of investment, Wintjiri Wiru uses 1200 lightweight drones, along with laser and light projections, to tell a part of the Anangu chapter of the Mala ancestral story between Kaltukatjara (Docker River) and Uluru – a story also featuring in the ancient art along the base of Uluru.

The enormous figure of devil dog Kurpany.Credit: Getty Images

The tale is a battle waged in light, with hundreds of drones at one point flaring into the enormous figure of the devil dog Kurpany attacking the Mala people as lasers strobe across the mulga bush and spinifex. It’s one of the world’s oldest stories, from one of the world’s oldest continuing cultures, being told in the newest of ways.

Outside of Universal Studios in Hollywood, Wintjiri Wiru (which means “beautiful view out to the horizon” in the local Pitjantjatjara language) is the world’s only permanent drone show, and has been developed in partnership between Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia and the Anangu. Ten senior Anangu from the Mutitjulu and Kaltukatjara communities served on a working group for the project.

“We want visitors to come here, and we know that times can change and visitor numbers might drop, and so we’re really keen to do things like this, that can encourage people to come again,” says Sammy Wilson, a member of the Anangu Consultation Group.

Wintjiri Wiru lights up the desert sky twice a night (a three-hour dinner show followed by a 90-minute after dark show) with visitors shuttled by bus from Yulara to Wintjiri Wiru’s purpose-built viewing platform, where I find myself as the hot red sun sinks towards the knuckle-like figures of Kata Tjuta.

Set into a natural hollow in a dune, the tiered timber platform is an amphitheatre arranged before Uluru, which briefly blazes with sunset light then slowly darkens into a silhouette. It’s typically dramatic desert light, but it’s about to be replaced by an even more dramatic desert light show.

People watch Wintjiri Wiru light up the night sky above Uluru.

Illuminated artwork by Anangu artist Christine Brumby is cut into the platform’s steel panels, and the six tiers are lined with blankets to help visitors quell the desert chill.

The dinner menu – a collaboration between celebrated Bundjalung chef Mark Olive and Ayers Rock Resort chefs – is a deep dive into native ingredients. There are canapes such as gin-infused cucumber sprinkled with green ants, and cauliflower mousse tartlets with bush tomato pearls and wattle seeds, followed by individual dinner hampers filled with antipasti like smoked emu with saltbush chilli crust and a Waldorf salad featuring native celery, quandong and wattle seeds.

Just as the Anangu stories are about landscape, Wintjiri Wiru uses the landscape to tell the Mala story. With the first stars beating the drones into the sky by minutes, the show begins with laser images of Mala – the rufous hare-wallaby – projected onto the desert oaks and mulga scrub.

Cleverly hidden within the scrub, out of sight from the viewing area, is the drone launch platform, where 216 air-conditioned boxes each store and release six drones. With the Southern Cross peering down, and Uluru crouching on the horizon like another spectator, the first drones take flight, rising above the laser-lit trees.

Operated by three pilots, the drones, which are among the lightest in the world at just 310 grams each, fly in two fleets. Four hundred drones begin the story, returning to earth as lasers flow across the arid landscape, seeming to turn the earth almost liquid.

The dinner menu is a deep dive into native ingredients.

Soon, another 800 drones rise back into the sky, lighting it up like a glow-worm grotto to create the most striking image of the evening: the head of the murderous Kurpany seemingly peering down onto Uluru.

The technology and design of the show are the creations of Canadian-born, Melbourne-based light artist Bruce Ramus, who has previously directed the lighting design for the likes of the Academy Awards and Super Bowl halftime shows.

“The ideas came from country, they came from the land,” Ramus says. “It really was our job to be open to that, to be open to the unknown. The idea wasn’t about technology. It was about responding to the scale of this place, the beauty and the depth of the storytelling that was on offer.”

All told, the drones are in the sky for about nine minutes, with the Mala story narrated in Pitjantjatjara and English, interspersed with inma (song) sung by senior Anangu. It’s a powerful and elaborate cultural storytelling experience that continues, and elevates, Uluru’s recent tradition of light-driven tourism.

“Tourists have been coming to this country for a long time, but it’s taken us a long time to develop something such as this,” says Rene Kulitja, a member of the Anangu Consultation Group.

“When we saw the result of this, we were quite overcome. We felt immensely proud and happy. We’ve had no experience in anything involving these kinds of technologies and lights. Seeing it bring things to life for us was amazing, as was the fact that it came from our tjukurpa – our story – and our understanding of the world.

“One thing that would be really great to come out of it is for people to want to see more of our country beyond just here, out to other parts of the country.”

Drones light up the sky like a glow-worm grotto.

As the story concludes in the black sky above Uluru, the lights of the drones fade to white and seem to merge seamlessly back into the sky, becoming almost indistinguishable from the stars. Silence settles across the desert, and a shooting star dashes through the haze of the Milky Way.

The show is over, but nature’s own nightly light show has only just begun.

THE DETAILS

Fly
Qantas flies direct to Uluru from Sydney and Melbourne. See qantas.com

Stay
Ayers Rock Resort operates four hotels at Yulara. Rooms at Desert Gardens Hotel start at $300 a night for two nights. See ayersrockresort.com.au

Light up
Wintjiri Wiru’s three-hour sunset dinner show costs $385, with the 90-minute after dark show costing $190. See ayersrockresort.com.au/wintjiri-wiru

FIVE MORE NOCTURNAL ULURU EXPERIENCES

Field of Light Uluru
The 50,000 lights of Bruce Munro’s desert installation roll into their eighth year. Stroll through the Field after dark, or at sunrise.

Tali Wiru
Indulge in a four-course, fine-dining dinner infused with native ingredients in sight of Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

Sounds of Silence
Dining under the stars – a three-course buffet among the desert oaks and sand dunes, with the interpretation of a “star talker” to decrypt the night sky.

Astro tour
Cut straight to the stargazing with a 75-minute telescope tour of the galaxies, beginning two hours after sunset to maximise the darkness.

Desert awakenings
Beat the sun out of bed with a pre-dawn, star-filled tour, concluding with egg and bacon rolls and a walk along Uluru’s base once the sun has risen.

Note: As custodians of the land, Anangu hold the Mala story from Kaltukatjara to Uluru. To share their story, RAMUS designed and produced an artistic platform using drones, light and sound to create an immersive storytelling experience.

Andrew Bain travelled courtesy of Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia.