No more Uluru climbing
Board: It’s not a theme park and sacred to Australia’s aborigines
SYDNEY: Climbing the world’s largest monolith Uluru has been banned amid concerns it was becoming a “theme park”, undermining the giant red rock’s deep cultural significance.
Scrambling up the symbol of the Outback, also known as Ayers Rock, is seen by many tourists as a mustdo on their visit to Australia.
But they do so against the wishes of the traditional Aboriginal owners, the Anangu, to whom the site is sacred.
At a meeting of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board, made up of traditional owners and National Park representatives, a unanimous decision was made yesterday to ban the activity.
The last day of climbing will be Oct 26, 2019, chosen because it is the anniversary of the date in 1985 when the land and the formation once called Ayers Rock were hand- ed back to the traditional owners.
Park authorities have long looked to close the climb permanently. It is currently left up to visitors to decide whether to tackle the sandstone monolith, which soars 348m.
About 300,000 people visit each year and, while there are no official figures on how many climb, their numbers are reported to have declined significantly.
Tackling Uluru’s sandstone slopes is not an easy exercise, where sum
45° mer temperatures often hit C. There have been 36 confirmed fatalities at Uluru since records were first kept in the 1950s, with the most recent in 2010.