Climbing to be outlawed on sacred Uluru

VISITORS will be banned from climbing Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, from 2019 after the local Aboriginal traditional owners declared that their sacred site in central Australia is “not Disneyland”.

It follows decades of pleas by local owners to avoid climbing the rock and several notorious instances of mischief at the summit, including an incident in 2010 in which a 25-year-old Frenchborn exotic dancer stripped in a “tribute to indigenous culture”.

The ban was imposed by the Ulurukata Tjuta National Park board, which includes eight traditional owners and three representatives of the National Parks agency.

Sammy Wilson, a board member and an Anangu traditional owner, said: “After much discussion, we’ve decided it’s time. It is an extremely important place, not a playground or theme park like Disneyland.

“If I travel to another country and there is a sacred site, an area of restricted access, I don’t enter or climb it, I respect it. It is the same here for Anangu. Closing the climb is a cause for celebration.”

Signs at the base of the sandstone monolith ask people not to climb the rock out of sensitivity to the Aboriginal people, but this has not stopped many visitors making the ascent.

The board said at least 36 people have died while attempting the climb since records began in the Fifties. The last recorded death was in 2010.

Critics of a ban have long warned that it would affect tourism numbers.

However, data commissioned by the local parks authority found that only 16 per cent of visitors now climb Uluru, down from 74 per cent in the Nineties.

The ban will begin on Oct 26 2019 to mark the anniversary of the return of Uluru to the traditional owners in 1985.