This article was in 2010, 25 years after hand back.
Watch the visitor numbers plummet. They just signed their own extinction papers.
They should have made the climb exclusive, charged a few hundred dollars a pop with a mandatory indigenous guide.
The hard place in the shadow of the rock
There were huge celebrations when Ayers Rock was handed over to its traditional owners 25 years ago. But despite owning Uluru, Aborigines nearby live in misery
Twenty-five years ago yesterday, thousands of people descended on a patch of red dirt in the Australian desert to witness a momentous event: the handing over of the title deeds to Ayers Rock, the sandstone monolith that towers over the pancake-flat landscape of central Australia, to its traditional owners.
It was a high point in the Aboriginal struggle for land rights, and a time of enormous optimism. A new era of self-determination and economic independence appeared to be dawning for the Anangu people, who had lived in the area for 22,000 years.
But as locals gathered at the rock, now called Uluru, for the anniversary celebrations, the mood was subdued. While "handback" has brought some benefits, including a small share of the income generated by one of Australia's most popular tourist attractions, the Anangu still live in poverty and squalor – many of them in a township situated at the base of Uluru but invisible to well-heeled visitors.
Home to a shifting population of several hundred, Mutitjulu has a reputation as one of Australia's most dysfunctional remote communities. Claims of rampant child abuse at Mutitjulu – never proven – triggered the government's "intervention" into the Northern Territory in 2007, designed to stamp out violence and raise health and living standards in the indigenous desert settlements.
The intervention, launched at Mutitjulu by John Howard's conservative government, has continued, in a watered-down form, under Labor's Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. But the place is no better off, according to Vincent Forrester, a local elder, who says the only new infrastructure is a police station and two police houses.
Mr Forrester calls Mutitjulu "the forgotten community... out of sight and out of mind". As elders performed traditional dances yesterday in the shadow of Uluru and boys showed off their spear-throwing skills, he recited a litany of despair: people living 30 to a house, girls sniffing petrol in a quest for oblivion, children leaving school without numeracy and literacy skills, men hanging themselves.
"I live in a Third World community that has yet to really benefit from being so close to a national icon," said Mr Forrester, chairman of the Mutitjulu Community Aboriginal Corporation.
Mutitjulu evolved from the old motels and camping ground that achieved notoriety as a result of the Lindy Chamberlain case. (Mrs Chamberlain's daughter, Azaria, was snatched from the family's tent by a dingo in 1980; she was convicted, and later cleared, of the baby's murder.) Much has changed since then, and tourists now stay 12 miles away, at the Ayers Rock Resort.
What has not changed – despite signs entreating visitors not to climb the rock – is the spectacle of tourists swarming over a place that, for Aboriginal owners, is imbued with deep cultural and spiritual significance. "We've not been able to get them to understand and respect our wishes," says Reggie Uluru, whose family adopted the name by which the area was traditionally known.
The handback of land – which included the neighbouring Olgas, another massive ochre outcrop, now called Kata Tjuta – was bitterly opposed by many Australians. Callers swamped talkback radio, and the Northern Territory government waged a A$200,000 (then £98,000) campaign against it. At the ceremony in 1985, a low-flying plane trailed a banner stating "Ayers Rock for all Australians".
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/the-hard-place-in-the-shado...
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