This was published 4 years ago
The end of Uluru's long, quiet conflict which baffled both sides
By Tony Wright and Alex Ellinghausen
Neither distance nor time feel familiar at Uluru.
The dune-strewn desert seems endless, animal tracks patterned in red dust.
The great bulk of Uluru is one of the few points of reference, growing colossal as you draw near.
Up close, the rock overwhelms.
Its sandstone absorbs the sun, glowing in the morning and the evening, kneeling elephantine beneath the crushing heat of the day.
Name a colour at the fiery end of the spectrum and there is an hour you will find it on Uluru, until it sweeps through purple to the night, slumbering beneath an astonishing canopy of stars until the dawn.
How long have people lived around Uluru? Twenty thousand years? Sixty thousand years? Call it an age beyond age. Ageless. Like the rock.
The locals, the Anangu - a word which simply means people - are of the Pitjantjatjara language group.
For many on the desert, like elder Reggie Uluru, English is a foreign language, or used as a third, fourth or even fifth language.
The creation stories of the Anangu link to the rock and its folds and caves and pock marks.
When outsiders, which is to say, tourists, began climbing the rock in the middle of last century, they chose a long steep ridge as the most logical path.
But in the creation stories of the Anangu, that ridge was the route taken by their ancestors, the Mala (rufous hare-wallaby). It is thus given sacred status.
And so began a long quiet conflict, baffling to both the Anangu and visitors.
Why would anyone climb the rock when they were told it was sacred, the Anangu wondered?
Why not climb Uluru if it was not forbidden by park authorities and a long chain anchored by steel posts had been sunk into the rock to ensure it was climbable, visitors argued?
The approach of the Anangu slowly sank in.
The proportion of visitors tackling the climb dropped from a high of 80 per cent decades ago to far less than 20 per cent in recent years. Hikaru Ide, from Japan, came to pay no more than respect to Uluru, declining to climb on the basis of his Shinto beliefs.
Some outsiders saw the idea of banning climbing as an affront: the rock, they insisted, was a symbol for all Australians, and should not be the preserve of one group.
The Anangu, however, were not simply the ancient and continuing custodians of Uluru. They were handed the title deeds 34 years ago. They owned it under Australian law.
And so, at 4pm on Friday, October 25, the long stand-off ended. A sign announced the climb was closed permanently. Elders came to see the long-awaited closure, and to hear that the chain would be removed.
The Anangu celebrated with song and dance at a Sunday night concert, and many travelled as far as 1500km across the central Australian desert to take part.
The Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir sang sacred songs.
Young Indigenous people danced. Members of the crowd danced their own steps to the music of Peter Garrett and Shane Howard.
In the morning, tourists swept past the rock taking ancient paths lovelier than the climb.
Photographer Alex Ellinghausen brought his cameras.
In a place where time and distance seem almost meaningless, Ellinghausen's photographs helped make sense of it all.