ULURU KATA-TJUTA NATIONAL PARK BOARD AND PARKS AUSTRALIA are up for a Bent Spoon award from Australian Skeptics for the ban on Climbing Ayers Rock. The nomination reads.... Uluru (Ayers Rock) was probably first climbed by the first humans to arrive in central Australia about 30,000 years ago. This first group of humans left their mark on Uluru and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) in the form of petroglyphs that remain a mystery to both the current custodians and anthropologists. Based on the inclusion of the dingo in their creation myths the current custodians the Anangu people arrived at the Rock only about 4000 years ago. They also climbed it as demonstrated by their myth of the Hare Wallaby Men who dragged the “Ndaltawalta Pole” (a large flake of arkose on the northwest corner of the Rock) across the summit leaving the deep grooves that we now know are due to differential erosion. In the 1970s the traditional owners had no problem with tourists climbing the rock. Paddy Uluru who was re
Our mountains belong to all of us. The Right to Climb them and bask in their views that inspire awe and wonder is as old as the human genome. This long-established cultural tradition is under threat by a small group of bureaucrats determined to impose their way on the rest of the world. It is right to Climb because we have the Right to climb. If you don’t exercise your rights you lose them. Don't let petty nanny state bureaucrats take them away.