National 5:53 pm AEST June 8 2000 Barefooted champ overcomes wind for flame AAP -- A shivering, barefooted Nova Peris-Kneebone jogged through a bitterly cold desert morning today to begin the longest Olympic torch relay in history. With the 60-million-year-old profile of Uluru looming in the background, Peris-Kneebone, 29, and her daughter Jessica, 10, carried the first Olympic torch to be lit on Australian soil in four decades. From a car park bristling with technology, mother and daughter set off through the red dust toward the massive sandstone monolith that symbolises the heart of Aboriginal Australia. The hockey player turned sprinter - the first Aboriginal Australian to win an Olympic gold medal - had her problems, though, as her torch performed a couple of its now notorious blow-outs. During the ceremony with the traditional owners, the flame blew out when Governor-General Sir William Deane attempted to light the torch from a miner's lantern. A security runner had to light a back-up torch in a convoy vehicle before it was then handed along a line of 10 Anangu members, the traditional owners of the rock. It had barely made it to Anangu elder Millie Okai, who handed it to Peris-Kneebone, when the flame again flickered and died in the blustery breeze. And when Peris-Kneebone turned to face the cameras of a massive international media contingent, it went out again. But with the torch re-lit and fresh instructions issued on how to protect the flame from the wind, Peris-Kneebone was away. She was the first of 11,000 torchbearers who will carry the flame around the continent for the next 100 days before it arrives at Stadium Australia on September 15 for the Olympic opening ceremony. Peris-Kneebone passed the flame on to Aboriginal entertainer and actor Ernie Dingo, who was followed by some 80 runners including former tennis champion Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, AFL player Nicky Winmar and former ATSIC commissioner Lowitja O'Donoghue. Goolagong-Cawley shared her leg of the relay with a team of Aboriginal children who had travelled 1,600km from a remote West Australian community to be at Uluru. After beginning her run, Goolagong-Cawley was surrounded Pied Piper-like by the barefoot children, who all got a turn with the torch. Some seemed reluctant to give it back, and in the end, they held the torch for longer than her. Before the run began Anangu elder Kunmanara Uluru was the first to receive the torch from Sir William. In the Pitjantjatjara language, the Anangu people called the arrival of the Olympic flame "waru tjango para ungkularintankunytja": the relaying of the fire stick. According to Anangu tradition the flame had to be welcomed to the sacred area of Uluru, a ceremony led by Kunamanara Uluru and his brothers Andrew and Cassidy. The Uluru brothers are sons of Paddy Uluru, the traditional owner of Uluru and have the major responsibility for the area from which they take their name. Today they were joined by other elders, Judy Trigger, Pixie Brown and Rita Jingo as their homeland became the focus of the nation. As the traditional ceremonies got underway, only a few metres away an incongruous array of satellite dishes, spotlights, generators and makeshift television studios beamed the flame's arrival in Australia around the world. While they transmitted pictures of the usual reds and ochres of the desert landscape, they also showed a comparatively lush countryside. Heavy rains over the past six months have left much of central Australia awash and around Uluru it had the effect of producing patches of brilliant green among the normally dry acacia and spinifex. For Peris-Kneebone, the significance of being the first torchbearer in Australia and for the honour to be performed at Uluru, was almost overwhelming. "I'm very cold and I've still got my nerves, that's why I'm shaking," Peris-Kneebone said. Peris-Kneebone said she had discarded her shoes today out of respect for her people. She said she had not been too concerned when her flame went out, as it did for New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark in Wellington on Tuesday and for a number of torchbearers through the Pacific. "The people here told me to keep the point of the torch into the wind and it was fine after that," she said. The arrival of the flame in Australia came after it had spent almost five weeks in Greece and touring Pacific nations. The flame arrived at Uluru at 8.41am (AEST) after a seven-hour flight from Auckland, where it had been given a traditional Maori send-off late yesterday. It was carried off the plane by SOCOG board member Anna Booth onto a strip of red carpet and handed to Sir William, who witnessed the lighting of the torch at Olympia on May 10 and who will open the Games. Olympics Minister Michael Knight was also there to meet the plane but Australia's most senior Olympic official Kevan Gosper was not. About 100 locals and tourists witnessed the plane's arrival and got a close-up look of the gold lantern carrying the flame. Sir William broke with protocol and with the lantern held high, walked with Knight to the crowd and then along the fence where on-onlookers cheered. The lantern was then handed to security personnel who drove the short distance to the edge of the Kata-Tjuta National Park where the handover ceremony took place. Later the flame was flown to Alice Springs where Northern Territory MP Peter Toyne began the second Australian segment of the relay. 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