YULARA – Hundreds of tourists clambered up Australia’s Uluru on Friday, the day before a permanent ban on climbing the sacred rock takes effect, following a decades-long fight by indigenous people to close the trek.
Nearly 400,000 visitors flocked to the Australian landmark in the year to end-June, government data showed.
The Anangu people, the traditional owners of Uluru, have called for the climb to be closed since 1985, when the park was returned to the indigenous control.
The closure was announced two years ago when fewer than 20 percent of the visitors were making the climb.(Reuters)
