[WATCH] Australia: Uluru climb to be banned from October 2019

Climbing Uluru in Australia’s red centre is coming to an end, announced traditional owners and national park managers.

The historic decision came on Wednesday, after a management board meeting of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park voted unanimously to ban the contentious practice as of October 2019.

They asked visitors to understand the new rule, a long-held request of traditional owners who said they had previously felt “intimidated” into allowing the culturally inappropriate practice to continue.

While Anangu (Indigenous people in central Australia) outnumber national parks board members, it’s understood that they have always sought unanimity on closing the climb.

The chair of the board, traditional owner Sammy Wilson, made an speech to the board before the vote, describing the pressure he and other Indigenous people felt over the issue.

“Over the years Anangu have felt a sense of intimidation, as if someone is holding a gun to our heads to keep it open. Please don’t hold us to ransom,” he said.

“This decision is for both Anangu and non-Anangu together to feel proud about; to realise, of course it’s the right thing to close the ‘playground’.”

Anangu have long requested that visitors do not climb the rock, both because it is a deeply sacred site and because of the cultural responsibility they feel over the high number of injuries and deaths.

“Whitefellas see the land in economic terms, where Anangu see it as tjukurpa[cultural law]. If the tjukurpa is gone, so is everything. We want to hold on to our culture – if we don’t it could disappear completely in another 50 or 100 years,” Wilson said.

There have also been complaints of tourists urinating at the top, potentially contaminating water sources – both practical and cultural – at the base.

“Some people, in tourism and government for example, might have been saying we need to keep it open, but it’s not their law that lies in this land,” Wilson said.

“It is an extremely important place, not a playground or theme park like Disneyland … We welcome tourists here. We are not stopping tourism, just this activity.”

Climbing of the central Australian rock began in the 1930s but a chain link fence wasn’t installed until 1966, after two deaths. There was no consultation with traditional owners about the chain. There have been at least 36 known fatalities since the 1950s, and 74 rescues which required medical attention between 2002 and 2009 alone.

Climbing will cease on October 26, 2019, exactly 34 years after the government officially returned the site to its traditional owners.