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Uluru: dancing - and stripping - on solid rock

By Ross Barnett - posted Friday, 2 July 2010


The bureaucrats at Parks Australia must be breathing easier this week. Just when the spotlight should have turned on them over the grotesque waste of $21 million of taxpayer money on a viewing area at the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park that is in the wrong spot to catch the sunrise, a young French woman saw fit to release to the media photographs and video footage of herself on top of the Rock as she “performed” a semi-strip down to a white bikini and cowboy boots.

On June 27th, less than a week after The Australian revealed that early morning visitors to this Talinguru Nyakunytjaku viewing area were increasingly finding themselves staring at shadows on the south-east flank of Uluru, 25-year old Alizee Sery told the Sunday Territorian that she did her impromptu performance as a “tribute” to Aboriginal culture and to fulfil a lifelong dream.

“After such a hard climb, when you reach the top, the view and the magic of the place gives you an amazing feeling of peace and freedom,” she told reporter Daniel Bourchier.

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“You want to sing, dance - and strip.”

Personally I have never felt the urge to disrobe after getting to the top of a mountain (or a rocky hill in the case of Uluru) and Sery’s demeanour in a taped interview with Bourchier suggested that she had arranged the whole exercise as a publicity stunt. But soon enough - as the Sunday Territorian predicted - the moral outrage over her “feat” began to fly thick and fast.

David Ross, the director of the Central Land Council, called Sery’s actions stupid and said that they were indicative of the attitude of the many people who ignored the traditional owners' request not to climb the Rock. He told ABC Radio that the Uluru climb should be closed and asked Prime Minister Julia Gillard to deport Sery. The call fell on deaf ears.

Alison Hunt, a traditional owner and member of the management board at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, was angry and disgusted as well.

"We try our best to share our land with many walks of life and coming here and doing that is just disrespect - it's not acceptable at all," she said.

The Northern Territory News - the Territorian’s sister publication - ran a Reader Comments section on its website and by Wednesday evening almost 380 comments had been logged. Similar comment overload was happening on other online message boards.

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Many of the respondents berated Sery. “Outraged” from NSW (8.46 pm on Sunday) wondered how anyone could be that insensitive and suggested that “all nations on Earth should ban her from visiting them”.

Lynette Jones of Swan View, WA (7.37pm on Sunday) was equally offended and said that Sery should not be allowed back into the country once she had left. “She is disrespectful of the indigenous Aboriginal culture and all Australians,” she wrote.

But not all Australians were inclined to agree with Lynette.

Patrick of Alice Springs (8.00 pm on Wednesday) pointed out that thousands of people had been naked on the steps of the Sydney Opera House just a few months earlier. (This event was organised by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and stage-managed and photographed by the American artist, Spencer Tunick. Like Uluru, the Opera House is also a World Heritage Site.) The entire hullabaloo over one French girl in a bikini, he suggested, was a “lot of fuss for nothing”.

Of course this is not the first time that there has been a raging controversy over the Climb at Uluru. Twelve months ago when the new draft management plan for the national park was released - with its suggestion of an eventual closure of the Uluru climb - there was a near stand-off between the views of Environment Minister Peter Garrett and then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

In a radio interview from Italy at the time, Rudd said that “it would be very sad if we got to a stage though where Australians and frankly our guests from abroad weren't able to enjoy that experience ... to climb it [Uluru]”.

Po-faced Garrett on the other hand said that he had refused to climb Uluru despite many opportunities because he respected the wishes of the traditional owners. “I think you can take in all the fantastic beauty and cultural significance of the site without climbing it,” he told ABC Radio.

But are we hearing the real voice of the traditional owners in regard to the climbing issue? While Alison Hunt and David Ross (not a traditional owner from Uluru, it should be added) were adamant in their opposition to people climbing the Rock, some traditional owners have not been so forthright.

Back in January 1999, Eileen Hoosan - a traditional owner of Uluru and public officer of the Yankunytjatjara Kuta Association - told the Sunday Territorian that there had never even been a meeting of traditional owners about the issue of climbing the Rock.

“It’s not an issue with traditional people, climbing that Rock. But it is an issue with the Board of Management, it seems,” Ms Hoosan said.

And Australian filmmaker James Ricketson recalls being at Uluru just prior to the 1985 Handback when he was shooting a documentary for the Australian Film and Television School. In early 2004 while I was a researching a story for 4x4 Australia magazine, Ricketson told me that he had extensive consultation with Anangu (the traditional owners) and that they were very clear about what could and couldn’t be filmed - but added that there was no issue then about people climbing.

“We were accompanied by two elders - a man and a woman - whenever we went out filming,” he said.

“They stayed at the base of the Rock but they had no spiritual objections to us going up to the top. And that footage is in the film.”

One other issue that is completely ignored in the moral handwringing over the Uluru climb is that climbing, or strolling to the top of large hills or low mountains, is a very “traditional” activity in a national park. Indeed, every day thousands of Australians and plenty of foreign tourists will be out scaling peaks in the Kosciuszko National Park, the Grampians National Park in Victoria, in the World Heritage-listed Tasmanian wilderness and in Western Australia’s Stirling Range National Park - and no one (yet) is applying moral pressure against those people for choosing to climb.

What is also ignored by the proponents of a ban on climbing at Uluru is that Anangu spirituality is already being substantially respected in the national park, as none of the 36 domes of Kata Tjuta can now be climbed. Yet before the 1985 Handback, several of these were quite accessible.

Closing down the Uluru climb would also remove the one opportunity that visitors have to look out over the park landscape from up high without having to pay for an expensive and noisy aeroplane or helicopter sightseeing tour. And no visitor to this majestic Central Australian landscape would really want to have more aeroplanes or helicopters buzzing about in the desert air.

Of course in the highly controlled drip-feed of information that is provided by Parks Australia, none of this ever gets a mention. And with the Alizee Sery “controversy” still rolling along, the powers that be in this Canberra-based bureaucracy are probably rubbing their hands in glee.

As the Northern Territory News noted in its editorial on Wednesday, June 30th:

Parks Australia has long wanted to close the Uluru climb. Traditional owners ask visitors not to climb The Rock, but most still do. Tour operators say that most of their customers go to Uluru solely or mainly for that purpose. Parks Australia is trying to ease the pain of closure with a two or three-year lead-up before imposing an absolute ban. But Ms Sery's striptease may lead to the deadline being brought forward considerably.

And of course, any repeated news coverage about the Climb keeps mention of the Talinguru Nyakunytjaku fiasco out of the media as well.

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About the Author

Ross Barnett is a Sydney-based travel writer and photographer.

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