https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-grand-rock-of-the-desert-is-finally-left-in-...The grand rock of the desert is finally left in peace
"When I was a little girl," said Minja Jean Uluru-Reid, "I would come here with Mum and Dad to this place and there was nothing and nobody. No one climbing. It is my home. My memory.
"Now there will be no one climbing again. I am happy."
"This place", described by a wide sweep of the hand, is Uluru. Uluru-Reid, an elder of the traditional owners, had come to see the end of long decades of outsiders climbing a rock she and her people are forbidden from climbing by ancient law.
She had come with other elders – Barbara Nipper, Johnny Dingo and Reg Uluru among others – to witness a sign being hoisted at 4pm on Friday declaring the Uluru climb closed permanently.
From today, all that is left is a long white scar on a ridge of the vast red monolith to remind visitors of one of the more curious and contested periods of both recent and ancient Australian history.
The scar is the steep track taken by tens of thousands of Australians and foreigners intent since the middle of last century on adding the conquest of Uluru to their list of travel exploits.
The climb beneath the gruelling central Australian sun has always been arduous and dangerous, but conquest of ageless Uluru has been finally been put out of reach. The track to its summit, 345 metres above the weathered desert floor, is a puny thing compared with its immense bulk.
To the Anangu, the Pitjantjatjara people who are the custodians of Uluru, that track represents something beyond age itself: it is a creation trail taken by their ancestors, the Mala men, the rufous hare-wallaby.
It is for this Dreaming, the track is sacred to the Anangu, who have been asking for decades that outsiders stop climbing it, while park management allowed it to continue.
Media photographers have been told not to photograph climbers up high on the track, despite thousands of other photographs circulating on social media. The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald has chosen to abide by the wishes of the custodians.
All those who have climbed Uluru in recent years have been required to file straight past a sign beside the gate to the track that pleads "Please don’t climb".
"We, the Anangu traditional owners, have this to say," the sign begins. "Uluru is sacred in our culture. It is a place of great knowledge. Under our traditional law climbing is not permitted." It goes on to say that "too many people have died or been hurt causing great sadness".
"We worry about you and about your family."
There have been promises reaching back to Bob Hawke’s assurance in 1983 that the climb would end.
It has taken till October 2019 for those old broken promises to be met.
Sunday night, the Anangu will gather not far from the great rock and hold a special ceremony to celebrate.
The last day of climbing, Friday, threatened to be a bust as a line of expectant climbers snaked 200 metres across the dust at the base of the rock an hour before the sun rose.
At 7am, with a chilled desert wind judged at 20 knots – and thus, about 40 knots up high – rangers hoisted a sign declaring the "climb [is] closed due to strong winds at summit".
Forum
Pages: 
