18 SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 2013

Going Placesmanawatustandard.co.nz

Tourism has long hadan uneasy relationshipwith the wondrous anddeeply sacred land ofUluru, but as NaomiArnold discovers, it isgradually finding asteadier footing.

Tourist signs: The marks left bythousands of climbers are clearly visible.

Going up: Tourists climb the steep flanks of Uluru.The practice is slowly dying out as indigenous

people’s objections are taken more seriously – and,in some cases, visitors to the rock claim to have

been cursed after ignoring cultural sensitivities.Photo: REUTERS

CULTURE

Gone is the time when peoplefound the best way toappreciate cave paintings wasto pick up a bucket of waterfrom the treasuredwaterholes and throw itagainst the white, yellow, andred ochre paintings so theycould see them more brightly;and when those washed awayforever, discovering moreunderneath that they couldsee by throwing anotherbucket.

On fire: Uluru, the mighty rock at the heart ofAustralia, glows a vivid red at sunset.

Photo: REUTERS

CLASHThere’s a long, pale stripe upthe flank of Uluru, a neat scarfrom millions of feet grindingaway the red surface.The Anangu, the rock’s tra-ditional owners, hate tourist

traffic on what amounts to their church;but that the rock climb still exists at allis a perfect illustration of the powerfulcurrents swirling around this ancientand most fascinating of lands. Come toUluru to see just a big red rock and youmiss the point entirely.

Even outside its homeland, Uluru isknown as one of the chakras of the world,a seat of energy and powerful spiritu-ality. Climbing it is not just frowned-upon but dangerous; 36 people have diedtrying since 1958. Yet tourists continue towalk the precipitous tightrope walk,helped along by a handrail cemented intothe surface.

Known as Ayers Rock for most of itsEuropean history, Uluru was returned tothe care and ownership of the Anangu in1985, on the condition that the climb, asacred path of spiritual significance onlytaken by few Aboriginal men on specialoccasions, remained open to tourists.

The trespass elicits occasional outrage;people who have made it to the top andboasted about it include French stripperAlizee Sery, who filmed a striptease ontop of Uluru and then said it was meantas a tribute. The arduous climb, the view,and magic of the place made you want to‘‘sing, dance and strip’’, she told repor-ters.

‘‘What we need to remember is thattraditionally, the Aboriginal people wereliving naked,’’ she said. ‘‘So strippingdown was a return to what it was like.’’

Another infamous climber is Aust-ralian footballer Sam Newman, who tooka one-iron up there and hit a golf ball offthe rock toward the jumbled mass ofneighbouring Kata Tjuta. ‘‘I wasn’t de-meaning it. I was enjoying its beauty andwhat it represents,’’ he explained to themedia.

‘‘And I can enjoy its beauty and what itrepresents any way I like without beingtold by people.’’

Online comments from tourists in-clude: ‘‘They were happy to take my en-try fee, so now they’ll just have to put upwith me climbing their oh so sacredrock’’; ‘‘I am a conscientious person andnormally respect such requests, but I justcouldn’t stay off it after driving 3000dusty km to get to it. Besides that every-one else was climbing it too’’; ‘‘Our tourguide said it’s not really a sacrilege. TheAborigines are just worried that theremight be accidents’’; and ‘‘Why don’tthey just close it to climbers? Instead

they really lay the guilt trip upon you.That sucks, so I climbed it.’’

On a recent trip to the area, I foundtraditional Aboriginal life intersectinguntidily with the reality of modern tour-ism.

How to wrap up a culture and presentit to guests, when much of the knowledgeare prized stories told only to a few? Howto impress on guests the reasons not tophotograph sacred sites when they can’tbe told why?

How to tell 40,000-year-old stories totourists when the direct descendants ofthose who first told them, the traditionalowners and joint managers of the parkwith Parks Australia, are living metresaway in Mutitjulu Community. Mostly in

poverty by the visiting tourists’standards, they live in a town named af-ter a now-polluted waterhole at the rock’sbase. It has long had a reputation of be-ing one of Australia’s most dysfunctionalAboriginal communities and was one ofthose targeted in a massive programmelaunched by the Howard government in2007 to tackle the numerous problems af-flicting the people.

There is still disagreement aboutwhether the intervention was the rightthing to do.

Now their art is sold at the CulturalCentre near Uluru, while their sacredsites are sealed off and traipsed by hun-dreds each day.

They have watched people walking,sweating, and literally defecating all overthe rock. So many now, in fact, that thehuman waste, washing off with the in-frequent rain together with camera bat-teries and goodness knows what else, haspoisoned surrounding waterholes untilthere’s no life left in them.

The question of whether we should bethere or not is long gone, evaporated intothe dusty red air when the first six tour-ists bumped over a rutted track fromAlice Springs and set up tent besideUluru. Gone is the time when peoplefound the best way to appreciate cavepaintings was to pick up a bucket ofwater from the treasured waterholes andthrow it against the white, yellow, andred ochre paintings so they could seethem more brightly; and when thosewashed away forever, discovering moreunderneath that they could see by throw-ing another bucket.

But the runaway train of tourismseems better managed these days. Thestaff we encountered were good: knowl-edgeable, diplomatic, respectful, experi-enced and well aware of the numerouspolitical potholes, managing to treadcarefully across the tricky subjects whileacknowledging and paying respect toboth sides.

The urge to climb the rock has taken avery long time to die out, but it’s now onthe verge of being banned, with numbersdropping in the past two years.

In 1990, almost three-quarters ofvisitors climbed Uluru; today it’s closerto a fifth. Parks Australia plans to closethe climb permanently once numbers fallbelow 20 per cent.

An A$21m viewing platform and 1600mof walking tracks can take up to 3000visitors, and operators promote walkingthe 9.4 kilometre track around the bot-tom instead of climbing it.

A curious phenomenon is that hun-dreds of tourists have returned rocks,soil and sand taken as souvenirs, with asizeable chunk of them convinced theyhave undergone some sort of curse. The‘‘Sorry Book’’, on display at the CulturalCentre, has a collection of letters, apolo-gising or blaming deaths, break-ups,financial hardship, strokes, surgeries,lost jobs and even traffic tickets and thedeath of their pets, on taking a piece ofUluru home or taking pictures of sacredsites.

One blames a string of ‘‘unusual andunfortunate happenings and events . . .which have not ceased to appear eversince’’ climbing the rock. He even sentback the pair of shoes he used to climb it.‘‘I would have liked the shoes to remainas close as possible to Uluru, simplyburied in the red sands that surround it,’’he writes. ‘‘Feel free to use my story as adeterrent and warning.’’

The government-owned organisationthat manages Ayers Rock Resort recentlyestablished a National Indigenous Train-ing Academy, aiming to employ 100indigenous trainees at the resort eachyear and working towards more thanhalf indigenous employment by 2018.

Profits go back into the resort andsupporting indigenous training and em-ployment across Australia, and the resortmatches guest donations to its MutitjuluFoundation up to a maximum of $200,000each year.

The geological and white history iseasy to package and deliver to tourists;the Outback bush yarn is familiar to all.The indigenous stories are less easilydelivered. Like the spindly desert oaksthat manage to survive in this harsh en-vironment, tourism operators here areputting down a taproot into the ground,hoping to have a maturing indigenousworkforce in years to come.

The desert oak takes 400 years to ma-ture; white men have only been in Aust-ralia for little over 200. Let’s hope thefruits aren’t too far away.❚ Naomi Arnold travelled to Uluru as aguest of Tourism Australia.