Sammy Wilson (Tjama Uluru)

Anangu, Custodian of Uluru.

- THOMAS MAYO

WHEN I FLEW to Uluru for the First Nations National Constitutional Convention in 2017, I was on a journey with hundreds of other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We were coming together to discuss the Australian Constitution, so I spent the flight reading it.

Almost two years later, I travelled to Uluru again. This time, I was alone. My journey to the centre of Australia was to meet one man for the final interview for my book Finding the Heart of the Nation published by Hardie Grant), a man named Sammy Wilson. He is Uluru.

On the short flight between Alice Springs and Uluru, I leant my head against the window to gaze on the country below. I looked down at the patterns of spinifex covering ancient dunes. The dunes looked small, so far down below, like ripples on a beach. Intermittently, rocky outcrops and sparse desert flora dotted the landscape, and I realised I was looking at a living Anangu painting. What I was seeing from high above in the small plane was Anangu law songlines, Creation stories Tjukurrpa. It struck me that, as with my flight in 2017, I was passing my time looking at sections of a nation’s constitution. This time though, I thought, I am looking at the original and continuing constitution one that has existed, according to the common law, since time immemorial.