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Climbing Tales #10 Ayers Rock – Uluru = Amazing!

Climbing Tales 
This series celebrates Uluru climbing experiences posted online.
We made it to the top.

Wonderful post from the Lewis Family about their visit to Ayers Rock and the Olgas. 
It was truly an amazing experience!  We stayed up here and just breathed it all in! 

Why?
I have wanted to climb the rock for as long as I can remember since I was very young. I think it is something most Australians aspire to do at least once in their life and I was very excited about being here and ticking another item off my bucket list! It’s not that I don’t respect the Indigenous Culture but I was born in this great country and I am Australian too and I believe the rock belongs to all of us!

Parks Australia push a false message.
The Ranger showed up for the 8am Mala guided walk and the climb still wasn’t opened so we decided to do the tour with the throngs of other people there who were waiting to climb the rock as well! The walk was fairly easy and she did explain a little bit about the Mala (also called the Rufous Hare wallaby) an almost extinct wallaby, which won’t be found in the park anywhere except in the ranger’s breeding program/enclosures. At the end of the talk there was a huge push to sell NOT climbing the rock. I gotta say there would have been 40-50 people just in our group and all of them wanted to climb the rock as that is why they were here. Out of all of us I don’t think she deterred one single person and she really tried! We all ventured back to the parking area near the climb which was still closed so we headed off to the cafe for a quick bite to eat. 

The Climb is OPEN!
As we went past the National Park Office, we stopped and asked if the climb was open or likely to be opened today and they said it had been open since 1000am! Bugger, we should have checked again before we went to the Olgas – never mind! I was so excited that it was open so we headed back towards the Rock and parked up.  There were people climbing up and down and they looked like ants because the rock is so damn big! 

Read the rest via the link above to find out how they went.

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