First impressions of Ayers Rock

Edwin Berry's drawing is of one end of Uluru (Ayers Rock), rather than the whole Rock and is the first by a white man of the most iconic natural feature of the Australian landscape. Matching Gosse's description of it as having a most peculiar appearance Berry gave it a most unusual shape, with the caves in the upper face well defined. Berry was second-in-command on the expedition and also produced the map for the expedition as well as a number of others including for JW Lewis's 1874 expedition to Lake Eyre and a town plan map for Palmerston (NT) in 1870. He was later Chief Draftsman in the Land Titles Office in Adelaide

William Christie Gosse led the South Australian Government funded expedition west from Alice Springs in 1873. Its purpose was to explore a possible route to Western Australia. With five men, three Afghan cameleers and an Aboriginal boy the expedition explored west until repelled by sand hills and spinifex. Gosse discovered and named Ayers Rock on 19 July 1873 and in addition the Musgrave Ranges and Mount Woodroffe, the highest point in South Australia (1435 metres), and mapped some 60,000 miles of new country.

Gosse recorded: '... what was my astonishment to find it was one immense rock rising abruptly from the plain; the holes I had noticed were caused by the water in some places forming immense caves ...'

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