Long time passing

Head raised in query

Where have all the traditional owners gone?

We had thought that this new town, Yulara, set up to cater to the hoards of tourists who flock here, might have been run by local indigenous folk. But, no, that sure is not what’s happening.Yulara, a tiny resort town, is practically an all-white enclave. It lies just outside the National Park, where the two big rocks are situated – yet inside Aboriginal lands.

Vast nearly uninhabited landscape

We had thought, before arriving, that the notion of Uluru being ‘given back’ to its traditional owners meant they would have some control over it, some obvious ownership of it: perhaps welcome and introduce people to it.  We were wrong. We had thought to see a real aboriginal presence at Uluru. Or, at least, in the vicinity. Again, we were wrong.

For the first three days, we saw one, only, non-white person shopping at the supermarket. Yesterday, at the Cultural Centre, we saw a few more: artists,  we think, taking a rest break in the back room, playing with a photo application on a computer.  Leaving today, we saw four others, drawing money from an ATM in the shopping precinct. Not a huge presence. Less than a dozen local folk in four days.  Where are they, then?

Tourist facilities 
.

Yulara seems to be the only obvious town within cooee. It consists of several hotels of varying star levels, a massive campground, a small supermarket, shopping centre, and a village, accommodating a couple of thousand folk who work in and around Yulara, tending tourists, day in and day out. These worker-dwellers are almost exclusively young backpackers, or career hospitality workers, enroute to other postings in other places. They seemed to outnumber even the tourists, at least when we were there, and at off-times, we surmise, could keep the town operating just by the sheer fact of their presence

It was originally built by the Northern Territory government, but was sold and is now owned by a property trust group who use Voyagers, the Ayers Rock Resort group, as the operational managers of the sites in town.  Keeping it functional for tourists. Even so, the whole complex has been on the open market, now, for two years, so they have taken the cream they needed off the top, and it is about to be off-loaded again. Just when it is needing an injection of millions spent renovating it, so any interested purchasers really need beware!

So. Are any traditional owners even on the board of directors of this property trust? Is there any reason for them to be? Or is the entire town simply a profit-making entity, with its prime commitment to shareholders of the trust, as opposed to affinity with, or commitment to, any traditional owners of this place.

What about authenticity? What do overseas visitors think when they come to a heavily sacred site and see no traditional custodians on or about their special place. Or are property trust managers not paid to think of such things?

Flowers sightings are rare

We didn’t see a single worker at any one of the properties who even looked remotely like an indigenous person. And when we asked if there were any, staff were equally flummoxed. Some had been told, when hired, that indigenous folk were on the payroll, tho’ they had not seen any, they admitted.  Some had even been asked, on their appointment, if they would like to contribute a portion of their income to indigenous welfare. None of them seemed to understand what this meant exactly, so none we had spoken to, had ticked that option box yet. 

Maybe there are indigenous workers at Yulara, but it really was quite a shock in four days to see not a single one. Not even an aboriginal presence at the gates into the National Park which is actually disconcerting given the 'rap' for the place.

Knowing now that Parks Australia seems to control the National Park, and the property trust seems to control Yulara, we can’t help wondering what, exactly, the indigenous folk of the region have actually gained from their ownership of Ulura?

Some things, though, we do understand. A warden at the gate to Uluru told us that they do receive a contribution of a quarter of each entry fee into the park. The ticket price, these days, is $25 per person, and as there are approximately 400,000 entrants to the park a year, that would make a contribution to the local folk of approximately two and a half million a year, I guess.

So where does that go exactly? To whom? And where are these folk?  What exactly does it pay for?

And what happens to the many other millions each year from just the park entry fee alone? It can’t all go on the road, surely. Such a little itty bitty thing that’s not all that old to start with: built at the time Yulara was built. Or maintenance: the area seems to be all in the hands of nature now, dependent on wind and the weather.

And, too, whatever happens to all the many tens of millions that come in to the Yalara resort complex itself, each year?

Yalara, we see from the tourist guff, was named for ‘howling’ or  ‘dingo’ -- and deep in the night you hear the dingos, eerily howling at the moon, in their packs.

On the prowl, no doubt, for their pound of flesh.

Camel sightings are rare

oooOOOooo