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Showing posts from September, 2018

Bent Spoon Nomination for Climbing Ban

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...

Cultural Vandals rip out the Heart of OZ

The Hon. Melissa Price MP Minister for the Environment and Energy Parliament House CANBERRA ACT 2600. Dear Minister Cultural Vandals rip out the Heart of OZ I have been informed that the Board of the Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park in collaboration with Parks Australia intend to effectively destroy four internationally significant cultural monuments at Ayers Rock once they ban visitors climbing it in October 2019. These include: the summit monument,  five metal plates placed in memory of people who have died climbing the rock,  the chain,  and of course banning The Climb itself.  It seems all trace of non-Anangu history and culture is to be wiped from the Rock, and the Federal Government are standing by and letting it happen.  The bronze directional plaque and summit monument  celebrate the work of the Division of National Mapping and the Reserves Board of the Northern Territory. The bronze plaque was cast in Melbourne and erected in Decembe...