Caravanners race to climb Uluru

COMMENT

There’s something big going on in the Red Centre this winter and it’s not just the attraction of endless skies and stars, red earth and Uluru. There’s a traffic jam of tourists pumping through the region, the likes of which have never been seen.

When I visited the region in early July (2018), Ayers Rock Resort, in Yulara (the resort town servicing the Uluru-Kata-Tjuta National Park) reached 100 per cent capacity on some nights and the Ayers Rock Campground overflow area booked out for the first time. Dozens of campers like me were sent to free-camp east of the resort town.

According to Parks Australia, “Visitation to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park has continued to steadily increase over the past six years”. A total of 330,000 visited in 2017-18, which is about 30,000 up on 2010 figures.

The manager at the Yulara Shell told me at the time that it’s “gone wild” in the last few weeks. The servo’s June figures, he told me, were up 40 per cent on the previous year.

No official could explain the spike: one suggested the popularity of the Field Of Lights, a spectacular display of thousands of colourful solar lights planted in a field near Uluru. The display opened in April, 2016 and runs until December 2020.

A race to the Rock?

So I chatted to some fellow tourists and locals, and most replies were the same: “It’s because they’re closing the climb at the Rock.”

The Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park board announced in November 2017 that the Rock would be closed to climbers from October 26, 2019. We all know the primary reason why: Uluru is a sacred rock for the Anangu people, the traditional owners of the land.

Uluru is also a global UNESCO Heritage site and the Park (Uluru-Kata-Tjuta) is World Heritage listed.

Why would you let people trample all over such an icon?

Mind you, the number of people actually climbing the rock is relatively small anyway. Counters installed at the climb since 2010 show that less than 20 per cent of visitors huff their way up the rock.

The climb is no walk in the park, either. Got a weak ticker? One way to find out. The 37th person to die while climbing Uluru was recorded in mid-2018 – and like many, heart attack was the cause.

There’s a good chance you’ll miss out on doing the climb regardless. If you turn up on a day where the winds are up, rain is likely or cultural ceremonies are taking place, the National Park shuts it down. Too bad if that’s the time you’ve booked to be there, and unless you’ve taken a lot of time off work it’s not like you can come back next week to try again.

The rock hasn’t exactly become a no-go zone either: there are plenty of walks around the base of Uluru as well as painting workshops, bush yarns and bush food experiences held at the nearby visitor’s centre. You can do plenty in the Red Centre without laying one laced boot on the rock.

Rocks in their heads

Some Aussies appear to view the climb as their birth right, but I bet most of them won’t actually make the effort to do the climb before it's shut off. Again, there are so many other parts of this country you can visit unfettered, so does it really matter?

And what about Kata-Tjuta (The Olgas)? There used to be 12 walks through Kata-Tjuta, now there are only two. No-one seems to be complaining about that.

For overseas tourists and locals alike there are plenty of other things in the world – even in Australia, for that matter – that they can clamber over. For example, you could climb Australia’s biggest lump of rock, WA’s Mt Augustus (about 1000km north of Perth) which is 1.5 times bigger than Uluru.

It's possible the Uluru rock-climb closure 'deadline' isn’t the reason why the Red Centre is so much busier in recent years. But if the area gets 20 per cent fewer visitors next peak season – because the rock crawlers have taken a hike – I for one won’t be sorry.