The campsite under the rock was removed. From then on, visitors would stay outside the boundaries of the national park.

That campsite had been made famous, or notorious, by the Lindy Chamberlain case, where a dingo was eventually proved to have taken the child of a camping visitor. That case became a Hollywood film, bringing more visitors and an even greater sense of sorrow to the Anangu. Despite the chain link fence drilled into the windy ridge, climbers fell to their deaths: 37 of them in all, before the ban on climbing came in.

I was there shortly before the ban came into force. There were still a few people scaling the rock. From below, it looked like an unbearable act of intrusion, like watching base jumpers on the Taj Mahal or abseilers on Canterbury Cathedral.

So, justice was done and Uluru was restored. Henceforth, only strictly controlled guided tours, like the one I am on this morning, would visit the rock. You are discouraged from even touching it, except in a couple of sanctioned areas. You are even told not to photograph certain aspects of the rock, where ancient tributes to the departed are marked.

For very good reasons, Uluru became the land of don’ts, a place of prohibition. How to find a new, positive story to attract a new generation of visitors?

The answer was as bold as it was fitting. Uluru would tell the Anangu story, their oldest story of all, how it and the Earth itself came to be. And it would do it in the ancient songs and poetry combined with the most up-to-date light and sound technology around. Wintjiri Wiru, as the show is called, joins Bruce Munro’s Field of Light installation which sprawls across the desert sands.

I’d heard that a big name in concerts and shows was involved. That media architect, as he’s known, is Bruce Ramus, who has designed spectacular events for bands like U2 and Queen, as well as the Grammys and Oscars shows. Now he was being asked to help the Anangu people tell their origin myth in the skies.

“We undertook years of technical, environmental and cultural research,” Ramus tells me. “And that enabled us to develop the designs that became the show.”

In fact, it would take six years of working in the searing heat and coping with the clouds of ravenous Australian flies which plague the region in summer. But more than that, it took patience and a lot of listening as a council of Anangu elders worked with the team to make the story come to life.