Climbers to be banned from summiting Uluru

There has long been debate whether the largest monolith in the world is Uluru (formerly Ayer's Rock) in the Northern Territory of Australia, or Mount Augustus in Western Australia.

Regardless of this, Uluru is the better known of the two, and is an important sacred site to the traditional owners of the land on which the big pebble sits. It seems to me that the Federal Government's decision, made by Environment minister and former Midnight Oil lead singer, Peter Garrett, is a good one. It is hard to justify tourists climbing the rock, if the Indigenous people who revere it are offended by such actions. I'm sure that Catholics would not want tourists tramping to the roof of St Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican.

Categories: australia, religion, civil-rights, tourism