Just over a year since Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia launched Wintjiri Wiru – the world’s first permanent drone show created in collaboration with Aṉangu artists and Elders – the company has again deepened its creative offering at Uluṟu.
Sunrise Journeys premiered this week (30 July), blending the kind of experience that light festivals offer – aka projections onto the built or natural environment – with the sort of embedded cultural learning experience that is now shaping tourism.
Where Sunrise Journeys differs from your city-based light show, is that it takes the tradition of Central Desert painting – where stories are draw into the red sands with a stick, and then transposed onto canvas – and essentially returns those stories back to Country, drawn with light onto the desert floor.
This is the real win of this experience. It is simple storytelling that has existed for thousands of years and, in that, if feels genuine.
The project has been developed in partnership with Aṉangu artists Selina Kulitja (Maruku Arts), Denise Brady (Kaltukatjara Art) and Valerie Brumby (Walkatjara Art). Their painting, Ngura Nganampa Wiru Mulapa (Our Country is truly beautiful), is used like a blueprint for mapping out a choreographed piece of light theatre.
Using six 30-watt lasers, seven 12-kilowatt projectors and 30 bright field lights, visual experience creator Mandylights manipulates these tools across a “canvas” the size of three football fields (200 metres by 300 metres), trying to stay true to the painting’s colours and energy.
Where this new experience is clever is that it activates the same viewing platform that was created for the evening event Wintjiri Wiru, using sustainable thinking to optimise the existing infrastructure and technology.
And the story? It is essentially about the cycles of weather, from the coming of the rains, to the flourishing of new vegetation, and the burning of the land in a cycle of renewal. Birds further animate the story.
The performance becomes immersive with the addition of a soundscape by Aṉangu musician and composer Jeremy Whiskey (Indulkana community) and the artists’ voices.
Mandylights is no stranger to working on Country, having delivered several past editions of the Indigenous light festival Parrtjima. The studio also, most recently, was the creator of the Dark Spectrum installation for Sydney’s Vivid 2024, knowing well the buzz and contemporary demands for immersive experiences.
This is where these immersive events get tricky, however; as they have become more de rigueur, viewers have been nurtured to expect a feat of wizardry and spectacle. We demand more, and more.
The only criticism of Sunrise Journeys is that it feels very elementary, but we are told this story is delivered at the Tjitji level (children’s understanding) of delivering Tjukurpa (beliefs and morals). For some, this simplicity may result in a flatness, while for others, it is what elevates the experience into authentic wonder.
Out here on Country, the magic is nature itself. And the thing to remember is that we are on slow time here. As artist Denise Brady explains to ArtsHub, the very bush food that is pictured in their painting is a tangible reality. ‘I could walk out there and find that bush tucker below these lights,’ she says.
Read: Drone experience to be permanent cultural offering at Uluru
The Sunrise Journeys experience starts at the Ayres Rock Resort, where viewers are transported by bus to the viewing platform, greeted with a mug of spiced native chai tea and cosied into the brisk morning with rugs provided. They are given time to just soak it in.
The anchoring point to this experience is Uluṟu itself, and the way it gradually comes into focus as the morning light slowly fills the sky. And then there is the original artwork hanging in the Gallery of Central Australia where visitors can further make that connection.
The storytelling experience is completed with brekkie, and takes about two hours. Overall, we give it a thumbs-up.
Sunrise Journeys
Uluṟu, Northern Territory
1 August – 31 March 2025
Producer: Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia (operators of Ayers Rock Resort, Uluṟu)
Aṉangu artists: Selina Kulitja (Maruku Arts), Denise Brady (Kaltukatjara Art), and Valerie Brumby (Walkatjara Art)
Aṉangu musician and composer: Jeremy Whiskey
Visual experience creator: Mandylights
Ticketed: $125 adults / $75 children
The writer travelled to Uluṟu as a guest of Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia.
