Sydney Mining Club talk: Sleep Walking to Closure! Sundown for the Climb

The 242nd Sydney Mining Club presents

Sydney Mining Club Luncheon
On 4 April 2019 at the Ivy Ballroom from 12:30 pm

Sleep Walking to Closure! Sundown for the Climb
Marc Hendrickx, Geologist and author

In a fascinating curtain raiser for OMH, geologist and author Marc Hendrickx will give us the low-down on a looming event in October.

Geologists and Australians will face a disastrous loss of one particular and splendid freedom in October this year, our right to climb Uluru, and the reasons for it look decidedly dodgy.

Since the conditional handover of ‘The Rock’, the Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park, to its traditional Anangu owners in 1985, “the Climb”, that great Australian outback institution and flight of human spirit, undertaken by about 7 million Australian and international tourists has been closed 80% of the time for ‘safety’ reasons – the slightest breeze.

In October 2019, the Climb will be officially banned for ‘cultural’ and ‘safety’ reasons, but these evaporate with scrutiny. Canberra has its fingers all over it. Sadly, since the early 2000s climbers have been made to feel guilty about simply enjoying the natural world, our natural world, and central tradition in modern Australian culture.

The author is geologist Marc Hendrickx will be selling his book ‘A Guide to Climbing Ayers Rock’ – and yes that is still one of its official names. Marc worked for the Northern Territory Geological Survey in the late 1990s and has completed the Climb a number times. Identity politics, a new and distorted ‘Sorry’, a further constriction by Red Tape, or the crimping of a business as rich as Sydney’s Bridge Climb? Hendrickx’ narrative will surprise you.

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