I’ve been to Uluru twice in the past few years and had an absolutely epic time. Here’s how I managed to somehow, miraculously do that without ever feeling the need to climb it. So if you’re losing your shit about no longer being able to climb Uluru, here’s a few things you might want to keep in mind to help you deal with such a great loss.
1. The vast majority of people (ie more than 80%!) who go to Uluru go to see it, not stand on top of it. Paradoxically, you can’t actually see Uluru very well when you’re standing on top of the damn thing. It’s a bit like going to the movies, the front row is no good. A bit further back is better.
2. The view of Uluru is actually a thousand times better than the view of around it. To be brutally honest, the area isn’t popular because of what’s around Uluru because that’s not very much. It’s still beautiful, but it’s a fairly desolate area. Visiting is popular because from around it, you can see Uluru. So you still get to do the very best bit: See it, from around it.
You’ll see way more of Uluru from walking around it than you will from on top of it anyway.
3. The absolute best Uluru experience, is watching it at sunrise or sunset when it changes colour. From far enough away as to be able to take in the whole thing. It’s pretty bloody big, bigger than most people realise, so you need to be a decent distance away to see it in all its glory. There’s a reason the most popular, iconic images of Uluru are from these further away vantage points – because they’re hands down the best views plain and simple.
4. If seeing it an sunrise of sunset simply isn’t enough for you, go see it at the next sunrise or sunset. No two are the same, they’re all different, and they’re all amazing. Rain or shine the changing colours of Uluru as the sun comes up or goes down is incredible. (Hint: get to the viewing areas a bit early as they can get a little crowded. Another hint: take a folding chair and a cool drink, sit back, relax and watch one of nature’s great colour shows.)
Every single sunrise and sunset is different. And amazing.
5. You can literally just drive up to these vantage points to see it at sunrise or sunset, zero effort required. No huffing, no puffing, no sweating, no hurting yourself and needing to be rescued, no having a heart attack and dying. So the best way to see it also happens to the be the easiest. Winning.
6. Even if you don’t give rat’s arse about indigenous culture or traditions, you get to go to sleep at night, after seeing a wonderful sunset, knowing that even though they’re not you’re rules, you didn’t break anyone else’s either. We call that ‘respect’ and it’s actually a really good thing. Yay you! High fives all round.
7. You can still do the base walk which is an epic way to see, and experience Uluru. You get to see it from a distance, up close, and from all the different angles. The top is only one perspective and you get every single other perspective walking around it. Note: It’s bigger than you think and the walk is about 10kms around. So if it’s a physical challenge you’re looking for, the base walk can still be that. (And if you’re hell bent on knowing what the top of it looks like – hint: it looks like the top of a rock – there’s always a helicopter tour. If that costs too much for you, google “what does the top of Uluru look like” for free. #YoureWelcome)
Can’t be arsed walking around it? Take a bike. Or one of those weird Segway things.
8. If you can’t be arsed walked around it, you probably wouldn’t have loved climbing it anyway. And while you can’t ride a bike or one of those weird Segway things up it, you can ride them around it. So if you’re respectful, curious, but a bit lazy, you’re all set.
9. If you really want to feel like you’re on something, go to nearby Kata Tjuta. You’d be mad to go all the way to Uluru and not go to Kata Tjuta as well anyway, and the Valley of the Winds hike is all kinds of amazing. You also get to climb up and down stuff so if that’s your jam, you’re all set. This hike gives you multiple experiences along the way, including some great views, and in many ways, might even be better than climbing Uluru. Just saying.
Hiking the Valley of the Winds walk at Kata Tjuta is brilliant!
10. There’s a viewing platform on the way to Kata Tjuta that also gives you a view of the surrounding land. It’s not as high as being on top of Uluru, of course, but the views are still really beautiful. It’ll take you about three minutes to climb up to the viewing platform, and you can do it without being disrespectful to the people who were here before us. Give yourself a pat on the back for that one while you take in the view.
11. If hiking and climbing in and around Kata Tjuta still leaves you wanting more, head on out to Kings Canyon. It’s a bit of a drive, but the Rim Walk there is, in my humble opinion, the best hike and experience of them all. The rock formations are crazy amazing and the views are beyond spectacular. And trust me, you’ll work up a sweat climbing that trail! But it’s oh so worth it. (If you’re staying the night, be sure to check out Kings Creek Station.)
The views from King’s Canyon are pretty bloody epic. Go there and do that instead.
If that all conquering feeling of completing a hike and getting to the top of something that isn’t Uluru still isn’t enough for you, then here’s a few more things to consider:
12. Not being able to go up Uluru isn’t that unusual – there’s lots of places in Australia you can’t go or climb. Your next door neighbour’s backyard, for example. The gym you’re not a member of. The high roller room at the local casino. The VIP front seats of that concert you didn’t pay for. The Krispy Kreme product testing room. The list goes on. So don’t feel too ripped off, there’s already plenty of places “all Australians” can’t go for all sorts of reasons. You may well be tempted to say but “it’s just a rock”. Yes, and your house is built on “just some dirt”.
13. You’ve literally had 18 months since they announced they’d be closing down the climb, so surely it’s fair to say, if you really wanted to do it, you could have fucking done it by now.
14. Are you so disorganised that 18 months is still not enough? You’ve had your entire adult life to climb it. How much fucking longer did you actually want? Literally take your current age, minus 18, and that’s how many years you’ve had to go climb it. So come. On.
The base walk at sunrise.
15. Imagine when white people first came here, they gave a fuck about indigenous rights in the first place and never even started climbing it. Well this is just like that. We didn’t climb it for almost all of those 60,000 years. There was a mini window of opportunity where people did climb it because they either didn’t know better or plain old didn’t give a fuck, and now we’re going back to not climbing it. Rather than seeing this as something different, a new limitation, just see it as how things should always have been. Easy.
16. Even if you’re going to mount some vague, bullshit argument about how concerned you are about all those indigenous people who’ll somehow mysteriously lose their jobs because of the ban and how much less tourism they’ll have in the area, let’s do the math, shall we? The ban was only ever introduced when people climbing represented less than 20% of visitors. The year prior to the ban being introduced climbers were down to 16% of visitors. Worst case scenario is 16% less people come. But let’s be honest. Plenty of those people, at least half is my guess, will still come to see Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Kings Canyon and maybe ride a camel. Because all of those things are still awesome. So we’re looking at maybe 5-8% less visitors. Maybe. Hopefully that’s enough to help put your mind at easy so you can sleep easy tonight not pretending to worry about the welfare of the indigenous people employed in the area.
17. Let’s also all stop pretending this is some great invasion of our civil liberties to go literally wherever the fuck we want. We’ve never been able to do that. This is about how we respect white rules and white ownership models, but not indigenous rules and their custodianship model, plain and simple. You might be kidding yourself that you have some other mightier than thou reason, but when you boil it down to basics, that’s what’s going on here, isn’t it?
The view from the rim of King’s Canyon.
18. Indigenous people have been here for 60,000 years. Even if you want to embarrass yourself by bringing up the fact indigenous people may have come from elsewhere before that, as if that matters, I think we can all agree 60,000 years super trumps the few hundred the rest of us have been here. So surely their wishes count for something? Or at least should? They had their entire country taken away from them. We all live and work on stolen land. You may not have personally stolen it, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t stolen. You know how if you go down to Cash Converters and buy a bike, and then find out it was stolen it doesn’t actually matter than you didn’t personally steal it because it actually belongs to someone else? Yeah, that.
19. The land got stolen, and the grand total of what you’re being asked to do, your grand sacrifice to show some respect, is to not climb Uluru. You don’t have to hand over the keys to your house. Just not climb Uluru. You can still go there. You can still go up to it and touch it, walk around it, fly over it, hike, ride or stupid Segway around it. You just can’t climb it. That’s the grand total of the sacrifice you’re being asked to make. No one will be stealing your block of land out from underneath you, introducing diseases that will wipe out a large proportion of your friends and family, steal your kids or use you as a slave. You just can’t climb Uluru.
The base walk at Uluru is different at different times of the day. But it can get hot out there, so I’d suggest going early.
20. While I don’t have the statistics, my guess is more Australians have probbaly been to Bali than Uluru. And when you go somewhere like Bali, most of us accept that we play by rules that may be a little different to our own. To go inside a temple, for example, you may be required to wear certain clothing, and we do that, not because they’re our beliefs, but out of respect for someone else’s. Well, this is like that. We could do the whole invasion argument thing again, or we could just skip to the part where the Australian Government returned ownership of Uluru to the local Pitjantjatjara people back in 1983. Even if they did then make them lease it back to the government for 99 years and broke their promise to stop climbing way back then, but still, their land, their rules.
21. Finally, let’s remember that in life, none of us can do absolutely everything. We all have limited time on the planet, and often limited time or funds for our holidays. For most of us, we can easily fill our days in the Red Centre with truly amazing experiences. Uluru. Kata Tjuta. Kings Canyon. The MacDonnell Ranges. The list goes on. You could sit around having a whinge about the one thing you can’t do and focus on how brutally unfair that is, or you could just shut the fuck up and get on with planning the trip of a lifetime to a unique part of the world, and fill your time there with experiences you’ll never forget, with the added bonus of having respected a culture other than your own by doing literally nothing.
Trust me, if you go to the Red Centre, or go again if you’ve already been, I promise you’ll have an amazing time without feeling ripped off for not being able to climb Uluru. Who knows, you might even feel good about yourself for being the kind of human who can deal with making a tiny sacrifice in order to show respect to others.
Be awesome to each other.
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