October 26 is a special date for the Anangu people.
For the traditional owners of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and its surrounding land, where Australia’s most iconic and sacred rock Uluru stands, the date marks when the Australian government returned the ownership of the land back to them in 1985.
It’s also the date settled on in 2019 to permanently ban the climbing of Uluru.
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Although the date is still three months away, the imminent closure has sparked an avalanche of tourists determined to make their way up the sandstone rock before the opportunity is closed to them forever.
Last Wednesday, a photo shared on Twitter showed a huge crush of people scurrying up the sandstone monolith. The Anangu call climbers “minga mob” or ants, as from afar they look just like a fleet of crawling ants, their sheer numbers overwhelming anything they climb.
“There’s cars parked either side of the road for about 1km leading up to the car park at the base,” the tweet read.
To many, the viral photo proved exactly why climbing Uluru must be banned. It’s not just the climbers; atop the rock lies human waste and litter, its surrounds congested with people illegally camping on the side of the road and trespassing on sacred bush land.
But not to Pauline Hanson.
Today, the One Nation leader weighed in on the Uluru climbing ban, and in a view that will surprise precisely no one, she said she is not a fan. In fact, she finds the ban a “ridiculous” move.
Appearing on the Today show this morning, Hanson said she believed the ban shouldn’t be enforced as “we’ve been climbing the Ayers Rock, or Uluru, for many years”.
“The fact is, it’s money-making. It’s giving jobs to the Indigenous community, you’ve got over 4-500,000 tourists a year that want to go there and climb the rock,” she said.
“It’s no different to saying we’re going to close down Bondi Beach because there are some people there that have drowned. How ridiculous is that! This is an iconic site for all Australians.”
Oh Pauline, it should go without saying but here we are saying it – Uluru is not the same as… Bondi Beach. Or any beach for that matter.
She added: “I can’t see the cultural sensitivity when people have been climbing the rock all these years and all of a sudden they want to shut it down? I don’t get it, I really don’t get it.”
Of course, Pauline Hanson doesn’t get it. She’s never really tried to get it.
Yes, people have been climbing Uluru for decades. Even though the traditional owners have been asking visitors not to climb the rock since they were officially handed the land back in 1985. Even though a sign has stood at the base of Uluru for just as long asking people to respect the wishes of the traditional owners and not climb their sacred Uluru.
“The climb is not prohibited but we ask you to respect our law and culture by not climbing Uluru. We have a responsibility to teach and safeguard visitors to our land. The climb can be dangerous. Too many people have died while attempting to climb Uluru,” the sign reads.
We know that at least 37 people have died while climbing Uluru, a statistic that is devastating to the Anangu people who feel a personal duty of care for any visitor who is injured or dies visiting their land.
As we approach the 34th anniversary of the return of Uluru, we do well to listen not to voices like Pauline Hanson but the traditional owners of the land in which Uluru has sat for millennia.
Top Comments
Uluru is not like Bondi Beach Pauline, To the Aboriginal people it's more like St Mary's Cathedral, How would you feel as a Christian if people were defecating and urinating and throwing dirty nappies all over the altar of your Church?. Show some respect to the beliefs of others and respect their holy sites as you'd expect them to respect yours, You are the very worst of Australian society, an uncultured, uneducated, racist.
You seem to view Aboriginal people as a collective group and Uluru is the pinnacle of everything Aboriginal. It matters not if you are Kulin in Victoria or in Perth Nyoongar communities thousands of kilometres away.
It's all the same right?
it matters not if you are catholic or protestant, you can still be Christian, and it matters not what tribe you are from, you still hold the land sacred.
I see what you are getting at -but there is a difference between religion and spirituality. Each region in Australia has their own sacred land and their own traditions. It's an ongoing discusssion .
It seems likely you are viewing this from a Western Abrahamic lens and applying the religious view expecting it to be the same for everyone.
It's the same as saying Christianity/Catholics/Protestants/Jews and Islam/Sunni/Shia/Sufis is all the same since they all ultimately worship the same God
Friend visited Uluru and surrounds recently. Didn't climb the rock. Probably because she had younger children in her group. She did comment that she didn't see one Indigenous person working at the hotel she stayed at. The camel operator was Dutch and other tour guides were from overseas. i think there was one Indigenous gentlemen acting as an additional guide on only one tour and they did a few. She said the only other Indigenous people she saw were sitting in a park. Hopefully there are more learning skills and talking about the land and their culture and they were just not there when she was. I really hope so. To me that would be a big part of taking the tour.