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“The Rock’s got its hat on,” says helicopter pilot Mark Slade as we clatter through the air far above Ayers Rock. It’s a rare, rainy, winter’s day and for me Uluru has never looked so unlike itself.

Instead of seeing it from ground level, washed in Namatjira colours - an ever-shifting spectrum of pink-ochre-magenta hues - I’m looking down on Uluru’s ridged skull. It is wreathed in ragged cloud and rivers pour off its edges to fray 350 metres down towards the desert floor.

We head across the land. The impression is of flying above the prototype of all dot paintings - a canvas of red sand ridges and ochre salt pans patterned with the green crowns of desert oaks and the spirit trails of gullies.

Uluru remains visually, if not socially, magnetic. The largest monolith in the world, it sits like a giant paperweight, pinning Australia to Planet Earth. Almost 10 km around and 600 million years old, this berg of arkose sandstone draws visitors from everywhere. For some, a vital part of this secular pilgrimage is to scale the rock.

"Climb to the top and you've got the best possible view of nothing," opines one of its traditional Anangau Aboriginal owners, who would prefer that visitors wouldn’t climb. Nevertheless, up to 200,000 people do so annually, some encountering an epiphany-like vision of Australia that stretches in silence, seemingly from coast to coast.

Since travelling to Ayers Rock Resort (21 km from Uluru) entails a considerable journey, what else is there to do? Chose from a menu of distractions - camel rides at dawn, bicycle excursions, star-gazing sessions, and much more. If you find the comforts of the Resort (particularly the five-star Sails in the Desert Hotel) difficult to leave, don’t worry. It’s just a short stroll to the dunes for the unique Sounds of Silence dinner where, beneath the giant night sky, you’ll be seated in a five-million-star restaurant.

I tried the Uluru Experience's Rock Base Tour, a terrific three-hour morning circuit of the Rock. Lead by an anthropologist, we visited waterholes, caves and fading Aboriginal paintings, and heard stories of the mythical beings which shaped the rock - Mala (the wallaby) Liru (the poisonous male snake) and Kuniya (the female python). Wedge-tailed eagles pinioned above the fantastic forms and metaphors of the Rock. At one point it is a great Leviathan beached there since the world was all water. Elsewhere, a surreal shape seems like a Dali-esque clock, a timepiece melted before time began.

On the fascinating “Liru Walk” Aboriginal women guides tell us the Liru “dreaming” story, and explain how birds, honey, small animals and seeds and contribute to the tribe's bush tucker supply. The women, as gatherers of the majority of food, are enormously skilled at this “shopping” in the desert.

Should you wonder why every second tourist town in Australia has a Harley-Davidson motorcycle tour, look no further than Ayers Rock. It’s here that some 10 years ago a smart young fellow called Glen Alexander pioneered the idea. This oldest and most spectacular tour still runs - so plonk an intercom-wired helmet on your head, pull up a pillion seat and spend the next hour breezily circuiting the Rock while your driver tells its tale.

The Olgas - or Kata Tjuta ("many heads") - are 53 km from Ayers Rock Resort. Equally magical, and for some travellers even more spellbinding than Uluru, this maze of 36 massive basalt-granite domes shouldn’t be missed. Take a one-hour walk to Olga Gorge or a longer one to the beautiful Valley of the Winds. And who was "Olga"? Explorer Ernest Giles named the largest dome, Mount Olga, after - who else but? - an obscure Russian duchess.

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