Laura Holmes has been a tour guide at Uluru for the past 18 months and has seen first hand the visitor numbers swell as the closure grows nearer."We are looking forward to it dying back down, especially because of why its closing, out of respect," she said.
Dealing predominantly with younger travellers on backpacking holidays, she said many visitors who planned to climb changed their mind once she explained to them why it was discouraged."After talking through the history of the area, you come into the three main reasons not to climb," she said. "Cultural— its disrespectful to. Environmental. And the safety of it — 37 deaths up on the rock. We had a death last year and an injury just last week.
"A lot of people want to climb based on what people say over the years, but once they understand the area, they make, what is in my opinion, the right decision, not to climb."In 2010, the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park board of management said in its 10-year management plan that it would"work towards closure" once fewer than 20 per cent of visitors were making the climb and that there were enough alternative visitor experiences to fill the gap.
They're either not worried or they too have succumbed to the virtue signalling epidemic.