Australia's world-famous Uluru to be off limits to climbers

A board of eight traditional owners and four government officials voted unanimously to close the rock to climbers. Photo / AP

Australia's world-famous Uluru will be closed to climbers from 2019, its management board said yesterday, ending a decades-long campaign by Aborigines to protect their sacred monolith in the Northern Territory.

A board of eight traditional owners and four government officials voted unanimously to close the rock to climbers.

"The climb is a men's sacred area, the men have closed it," chairman Sammy Wilson added in a statement. "It has cultural significance that includes certain restrictions."

The Unesco World Heritage-listed 348m rock, known for its shifting red-ochre colours and formerly known as Ayers Rock, is a top tourist drawcard, attracting about 300,000 visitors each year, despite its remote desert location near Alice Springs.

The traditional owners of Uluru, the Anangu people, have called for the climb to be closed since 1985, when the park was placed in indigenous hands.

The rock's board said in a report in 2010 that it would close the attraction to climbers if the proportion of visitors who tried to climb it dropped below 20 per cent.

Members took the matter to a vote yesterday after data showed the number of climbers had fallen below that threshold, from about three-quarters throughout the 1990s to just 16.2 per cent between 2011 and 2015. The ban will take effect on October 26, 2019, exactly 34 years after Uluru was handed back to its traditional owners.

Australians are still the most common visitors to climb the rock, followed by the Japanese, according to Parks Australia.

The climb is closed about 77 per cent of the time because of dangerous weather or cultural reasons.

There have been 36 confirmed deaths at Uluru since records were first kept in the 1950s, with the most recent in 2010.