Right to Climb

AYERS ROCK DAY 2026  Celebrating the anniversary of the first Climb 20 July 1873.  153 years since the enlightenment arrived, 2460 days since the stone age returned. Climbing legends #2 Series of posts celebrating climbers of Ayers Rock. #2 William Christie Gosse - first documented climb Gosse's sketch of Uluru showing SW corner near Multijuju waterhole, drawn from about -25.35376, 131.03281. For recent photo showing similar view click here . You can read WC Gosse's account of his explorations in central Australia via the Gutenberg Project ( HERE ). In 1872 Gosse was charged with finding a route from central Australia to Western Australia. He came across the rock he named "Ayers", after the SA governor Sir Henry Ayers, on the 19th of July 1873 and was the first European to scale the summit. You can read more about William Gosse at the ANU's dictionary of Australian Biography .  Here's Gosse's diary entry for the 20th of July 1873 documenting his climb to t...

Time travellers guide to forbidden places of awe and wonder At the invitation of the Victorian Branch of the English Speaking Union   and as part of National Heritage month I gave a presentation " Time travellers guide to forbidden places of awe and wonder in Australia"  at the ESU Victorian offices on May 2, 2025. The talk provided a historical, mythbusting perspective to recent closures of bushwalking and climbing sites in Australia, including the Grampians, Mount Arapiles, Ayers Rock and Mount Warning. The closure of public access to landscapes of awe and wonder in Australia has been wracked with controversy. Summit access at Ayers Rock and Mount Warning has been banned without due acknowledgement of the wonderful history of climbing at both locations. This approach is also apparent in the bans on rock climbing at the Grampians and Mount Arapiles in western Victoria. In line with the heritage month theme of "unearthed" history the presentation provided evidence f...

Mark your calenders!

In a radio interview with Jason Olbourne on TNT radio I missed the opportunity to talk about the Last Log Book of Ayers Rock. In July 2018 when I climbed the Rock with my daughters I left a blank 192 exercise book in a tupperware container at the summit memorial. This was covered in a series of posts in February 2019 (see  LAST LOG BOOK Part 1 ). The book was returned by Parks Australia using the self-addressed envelope I left with it. The first names were ours written at 4pm on the 17th of July 2018. The last date was the 21st of August, 2018. Over that time more than 2400 people had signed the book from 33 countries. The majority of comments were made by families like ours, visiting the summit to gain an experience of the natural world, bask in those glorious world heritage listed views and create memories to last a lifetime. The oldest climber was an 83 year old woman, the youngest not yet born. The contents make a mockery of claims by Parks Australia that few want to Climb. In...

1957 - members of the Petticoat Safari climb Ayers Rock - more enlightened times! Below is a longer version of an essay I wrote that appears in the March 2024 issue of Quadrant Magazine . If you are interested in helping save what was once one of the best family bushwalks in eastern Australia, sign the Reopen Mt Warning Parliamentary petition via the following LINK .  Locked out of the sunburnt country Marc Hendrickx  I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror – The wide brown land for me! -- Dorothea Mackellar Australia’s cultural identity has forever been closely connected with the Australian Landscape. The natural world around us has helped forge our unique Australian spirit from which emerges our sense of humour, creed of mateship, altruism, ingenuity, self-reliance, courage, and resilience in the face of hardship. Despite the fact...

  Reopen Mt Warning Australia Day celebration Gerald Parker Park, Uki 1.30pm (NSW time) 26 January 2024.  See event page...  https://fb.me/e/gyPPeKaSM Happy Australia Day for the 26th of January! I'm a proud Australian. I'm proud of what this Country has achieved and represents, and of the Western values of Liberal Democracy that underpin that success. There are dark forces out there that want to see this country fail. Sadly some of these people are the very politicians and bureaucrats we put our faith in the run the country for everyone and not just for large corporations, or a few selfish entitled minorities who see themselves as perpetual victims rather than active citizens. We need to ask ourselves what we can give this great nation rather than what we can take from it. We are all Australians regardless of race, religion or how long we have been here. We need to reinvigorate a sense of national pride as we face an uncertain future in troubling times, or we face e...

Some renewed media interest in access bans at National Parks and Climbing areas following reports that climbers at the Grampians are facing covert surveillance by Park Officials leading to Stasi like behavouir from the Orwellian "Victoria’s First Peoples — State Relations Unit". The potential fines for being in the wrong place are up to $346,000, but with very poor signage how would you know? This mirrors the behavior of NPWS Park Officials chasing down walkers at Mt Warning and issuing notices to attend meetings or provide information that may incriminate them.  Four protesters who climbed on Australia Day with permission of Ngarakwal women are in legal limbo as NPWS delay taking any action on information they were forced to provide. Given these are summary offences it's likely the statute of limitation has run out and NPWS have missed their opportunity to issue fines. Wait and see. Sad to see the public sector playing lawfare with citizens' lives.  Mike Tomkins ( AC...

 Climb closure kills Ayers Rock tourism  ABC report a massive slump in visitor numbers to Ayers Rock...but forgot to mention the elephant in the room: banning people from completing the world-famous Climb has destroyed the appeal of visiting the Rock. If you can't climb why would you bother going there? As Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park heads into its hot summer season and annual quieter tourism period, year-to-date visitor numbers are 164,678, compared with more than 300,000 in 2017. The national park saw a massive spike in visitors prior to  the closure of the Uluru climb , Parks Australia documents show, with 406,821 tourists travelling to the region in 2019. The ultimate statement of denial .... Parks Australia said the subdued numbers are due to "cost and availability of flights, international exchange rates, increased competition as Australians return to overseas travel and the slow return of international visitors". Here's a hint about what to do, to bring the...

This week (Thursday 20 July) marks 150 years since the first documented account of the climbing of Australia's famous Ayers Rock. While climbing the Rock likely dates back into the waning stages of the Pleistocene when humans first arrived in the red centre some 25,000 years ago (long before the arrival of the current Anangu owners who include the Dingo in their creation myths), the first person to make a record of the climb was explorer and surveyor  William Christie Gosse (1842-1881) . He climbed with Afghan Cameleer Kamran on the 20th of July 1873, during an expedition to explore a route from central Australia to Perth.  Since Gosse's ascent nearly 7 million people - families, couples, soloists and royalty from the four corners of the globe have emulated his achievement and stood at the summit, experiencing the thrill of the climb and joy, awe and wonder of the remarkable views of the nearby Olgas, Mt Conner, Lake Amadeus and distant ranges.  To mark the occasion a sma...

Andrew Bolt reported on the recent more formal call to close Mt Tibrogargan by an activist Aboriginal group on his show last night and invited me on to comment . The text below expands on some of the discussion.  The proposed closure of Tibrogargan and nearby Mt Beerwah, like Ayers Rock and Mount Warning and so many other special places now closed to the public based on racial grounds, has more to do with politics than culture. If it was about culture then what respect was given to the old men at Uluru, who grew up around the rock and were either indifferent to the Ayers Rock climb or like Tiger Tjalkalyirri actually encouraged visitors to climb . At Mt Warning the culture of the Aboriginal Group with the closest affinity to the Mountain, the Ngarakbal people who support public access, has been ignored for over 20 years by woke NPWS bureaucrats more interested in the views of groups with more distant connections to the mountain who want to ban access and make life easier for NPWS –...

Australian Cultural Heritage gathering dust in Parks Australia garage. A recent photo from a reader of a trio at the cairn in 1975 provided a trigger to check with Parks Australia on their plans for the Ayers Rock Summit Cairn - a wonderful piece of Australian Cultural Heritage. The cairn was installed in 1970 by NT Park Rangers, lead by Derek Rolf in 1970. It was visited by well over 6 million visitors until Parks Australia destroyed it and clumsily reassembled it and left it n a shed in 2019. The important Geodetic survey marker that was installed beneath the cairn was also destroyed by Parks Australia when the cairn was removed. This would normally result in a large fine but we are not aware if one was issued.  Australian cultural heritage, clumsily re-assembled (inside out) and collecting dust in a PA garage. (photo Nov, 2019) There were some bizarre plans to display the cairn and fragments of the chain at the base of the rock but these have not come to fruition.  I checke...