Just interested in what people’s opinions are on this – whether out of respect for other’s spiritual claims and sensibilities you would decline to climb Uluru, or if personal beliefs are just that – personal – and should not affect your choice to visit and climb such an iconic rock.
Thanks for any opinions and thoughts you might have on this issue.
My Australian friend - she’s one of the Stolen Generation - had a cake made in the shape of Uluru for her wedding.
Anyway the knife comes out and all of a sudden she’s all: “What have I done?” We ate the cake but she won’t be ordering another one.
My sister and I visited in around 2004 during a road trip from Darwin to Melbourne. It was a wonderful experience, and we never considered climbing Uluru. Why would we? Its traditional owners asked us not to, we complied.
Been there in May on a rather cool day, still didn’t climb. They do a great job of talking to your conscience, and if you’re traveling the country you’ll come across better places to climb/lookout anyway.
I climbed it many years ago before it was too controversial (or at least before the traditional owners did a good job of publicizing their wishes that people not climb it). I wouldn’t climb it today now that I have a better understanding of the situation.
As as kk fusion alluded to, the climb was disappointing IMO. It’s a huge rock in the middle of flat desert and it’s impressive because it seems so out of place, but the climb is monotonous and at the top you have a view of a bunch of flat desert. It was near the bottom of the list of my favorite experiences in Australia.
I didn’t climb, after reading over and over that the aboriginals don’t like it. I admit however, that my cultural sensitivity was made easier by the fact that, by all accounts, the climb ain’t all that hot and the views aren’t all that great anyway. The rock really looks better from the ground, and from a bit of a distance.
I went there in 2007. I was given the whole “respect our beliefs and don’t climb it” routine, but that didn’t put me off (it was actually closed due to high winds though).
It’s a lump of rock in the desert. It was there maybe 300 million years before the “traditional owners” claimed it. If my climbing it would offend anyone, to paraphrase Stephen Fry, “So what?”.
Not quite the same thing, but here in San Diego County, there’s a lovely mountain called “Silverdome,” which just begs to be climbed…but it’s within the boundaries of the Kumeyaay Indian reservation, and they hold the mountain to be sacred. They have the solid legal right to prohibit climbers.
I have to confess, if they didn’t…if it were on public land…then, while I might climb it respectfully (as a wise climber does all mountains) I would climb it.
Until Australia bans climbing the outcrop by law, then, while I would show as much respect as possible, but I would not hold myself back. A thing is either illegal or legal.
(Given what’s been said above, I think Australia probably should pass such a law.)
I think the possibility of walking back down the thing, legs a bit wobbly, only to be immediately chased into the scorching outback by outraged Aboriginals, would deter me.
If they merely “point the bone,” I’m cool. But I wouldn’t want to be introduced, intimately, to the other kind of boomerang, the kind that don’t return!
I was there in 1985 with my school, and we had no idea there was anything untoward about climbing the rock, so we got the full tour round and then up.
I got about 10 metres and turned back, due to
a) I’m scared of heights at the best of times, and
b) The preceding tour round the base of the rock included a nice view of a set of plaques to all those who died climbing it - mostly middle-aged heart attacks, but including one eleven-year-old boy goofing off to hard.
If I ever went back for a visit, I think the chances of my making an attempt now are somewhere between zero and none at all. If they’ve taken the guide-rope away, you’d have to threaten me with a gun.
I visited in 2001. I was on a escorted tour from Alice Springs and we were all advised about the wishes of the traditional owners. Of the 12 in our group, only 2 people chose to climb it, and I wasn’t one of them. I took the walk around the base instead and it had been a choice of either climb or walk but we didn’t have time for both. From comments above, it sounds like I made the right decision as I saw much more interesting things than the several hundred square km of desert you can see from the top.
So, I didn’t and I wouldn’t now either.
I have family who have done the climb and enjoyed it. I’ve seen photos from all angles and I can imagine the climbing part being somewhere between scary and beautiful. All the same I would probably not go out of my way to be there. Not a fear of heights thing, nor a result of apathy. A little part of me looks upon that magnificient big rock as tragic, and the other part of me can get its adrenaline rush elsewhere.
If I ever get there I’ll do the walk around but not the climb. I’ve climbed plenty of other hills in the arid zone, I don’t see the attraction of one more 
I’d rather visit the nearby Olgas.
It was closed due to high winds while I was there, so I never had the choice. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been given the choice, but I will say that the way the displays around the visitor center were presented rubbed me in exactly the wrong way, and while I was leaning against climbing it out of respect before I got there, by the time I left I was half-tempted to climb it out of sheer perverseness. (There were, for example, loads of warnings against removing rocks on pain of Dire Bad Luck, and in general a lot of uncritically-presented ideas that I wouldn’t hesitate to call silly and superstitious if they came from my own culture, and I felt uncomfortable with the implication that I was supposed to buy into them.)
Really good points, thanks.
In generally I like to respect people’s cultures when traveling, but it seems that when locals try too hard to formally define extra-legal rules of conduct and “rub it in” with an emotional plea, that leads me to want to flout the rules and show that they aren’t the bosses of me. In other words it a reasonableness thing - if you’ll be reasonable, I can too. If you’re going to be a dick, I can too.
I’ve wanted to intentionally flout the modesty “guidelines” of Kiryas Joel, NY on the principle of the thing. It’s not that modesty and polite language are bad per se, but people should be motivated to behave that way out of a genuine desire to live that way - not because they are threatened with social censure or vague spiritual consequences.
Here’s a thought: if they went out of their way to make sure you call it Uluru, would you start calling it Ayers Rock? (I like to joke, “Nobody climbs Uluru, because the kind of people who do are the kind of people who still call it Ayers Rock.” For those of us in North America, replace Uluru with Denali and Ayers Rock with Mount McKinley, although I don’t think anybody minds people climbing Denali.)
Yeah, this is what I was thinking. A bunch of stone age wanderers traipsing across a wasteland 10,000 years ago happen across a bigass rock and decide it’s magical…probably because it’s the only feature they’ve seen for miles.
Pardon me if I don’t respect their superstition.
I had never realized it was called anything other than “Ayers Rock” until I clicked on this thread.
I climbed it in 2002. It was a once in a lifetime experience and in as much as I realize it upset the aborigines’ cultural sensitivities, damned if I wasn’t going to do it. At the time they said they were going to close it completely in 3 years, so I figured it was now or never. It was spectacular and a great experience. Just don’t grab for your hat when it inevitably blows off.
In years past people used to camp right around the rock and deface it with graffiti, so I figured at least people are now treating it with increased respect. When I travel, I always assume that you might not be able to do something in the future. When I was in Greece in 1980, you could climb around the Acropolis, now I think it’s behind a barrier.