AUSTRALIAN CAIRN
“ … The cairn now has more than a million rocks and stones …”
Stone cairns are common to many cultures and many of their origins are lost to history. Realising this, The Boss decided to construct such a cairn in Central Australia, at Alice Springs, in fact. Working during his spare days, weeks and months, he laboriously wheelbarrowed literally thousands of rocks and stones to the work site, carefully balancing one on the other in a circular fashion.
“It has been a very interesting exercise,” he observed recently. “The cairn now has more than a million rocks and stones, all collected on or around the Ilparpa Ranges. If anyone enquired about what I was doing, I told them I was working on a modern sculpture …”
Twice during the initial stages of construction, the cairn collapsed and needed to be re-built stone by stone.
“I read somewhere that an American tribe had such a cairn that was gradually formed by travellers or visitors passing by and throwing a single stone onto a pile with a prayer to the spirits of the land, humbly seeking safe passage,” The Boss said.
So he has now decided that all visitors to the Australian cairn site should also add a stone, accompanied by a wish (or prayer, if desired) of goodwill towards the ancient earth and its people, that our thoughts and actions will always be protective and creative towards the landscape, its wildlife and other inhabitants …
