Rush to ascend Uluru before ban
1000 a day climbing sacred peak in ‘calculated insult’
An estimated 1000 people a day are climbing Uluru, the world-famous rock at the heart of Australia, as tourists rush for a last chance to ascend the landmark before a ban comes into force.
Uluru is sacred to the Anangu nation, the traditional owners of the Unesco-listed site, who have spent years encouraging people not to climb it out of respect.
Australia will restrict access to the rock from October 26.
Mike Misso, manager of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, said the past two weeks had been the busiest in more than a decade, with “near to 1000” people making the climb every day. On two days last week, the number exceeded 1000.
According to the park, 300,000 people visited Uluru in 2015, of whom 16.2 per cent climbed the rock — roughly 135 a day.
Dr Tim Dymond, an Australian historian, said climbing Uluru despite the wishes of the traditional owners was “a calculated insult” to Aboriginal people.
“Some people were hearing about this [ban] for the first time, they were hearing about it on social media . . . and thinking, ‘I am going to show them’,” Dymond said.
Senator Pauline Hanson, leader of the hard-right One Nation party, declared her intention to climb Uluru after she heard about the ban, only to get stuck and require assistance to get down.
Dymond said the Uluru ban was being exploited as a “grievance mobilised for political goals”.
“For organisations like One Nation . . . this is one more way that ‘ordinary Australians’ are having something taken away from them. There is absolutely an assumption it was theirs in the first place,” he said.
Laura McBride, a member of the indigenous Wailwan nation from New South Wales, described the Uluru climbers as “a mass of morally and ethically-bankrupt people”.
The surge in the number of people scaling the rock occurred at the same time as an Australian school holiday.
Paul Dutton, a Barkindji nation man from New South Wales, said the climbers’ disregard for the wishes of the Anangu people made him sick.
“What’s white redneck Australia going to do when the Uluru climb is closed: stand at bottom looking lost and forlorn? Do they know how magnificent Anangu country is? Have they looked at where they are; the bush, the sacred land they walk on, and seen how that’s so special?” he said.
Jessica Mauboy, the Australian singer and Kuku Yalanji nation woman, said no one needed to climb Uluru to appreciate it.
“When you consider the power of this rock and its history . . . why doesn’t it make sense to people? It haunts me that this is even an argument. Touch the rock from its base and you will feel everything you need to feel,” she said.
Uluru is 348m high, taller than the Eiffel Tower and the Shard. Its surface is hot and slippery, and it is often windy at the top. At least 35 people have died since climbers started scaling it in the 1950s.