Curse of the Rocks
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http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1091138.htm
Tourists return rocks stolen from Uluru
The World Today - Tuesday, 20 April , 2004 12:46:00
Reporter: Anne Barker
TANYA NOLAN: If you've ever climbed Uluru or Ayers Rock, you may've been tempted to pilfer a piece as a souvenir.
Park staff have no idea how many tourists steal rocks or stones from Uluru, but they're constantly amazed at the hundreds, if not thousands of tourists who send rocks back out of remorse.
All over the world foreign tourists are sending back rocks in the post, some weighing in at 15 kilograms, and sometimes with letters apologising for their theft.
As Anne Barker reports, there are now so many rocks piling up at park headquarters, traditional owners are considering a formal returning ceremony to take the rocks back to where they came from.
ANNE BARKER: Every week staff at Uluru National Park receive oddly shaped packages in the mail from all over the world, all of them containing the familiar red rock of Uluru.
Some pieces weigh just a few grams, while the biggest so far is a 15-kilogram chunk of stone, and all were taken by tourists who were later wracked by guilt.
Graeme Calma chairs the Mutitjulu Community Council, which represents Uluru's traditional owners.
GRAEME CALMA: Usually the people, when they send the stones back, they'll send a um, a little letter apologising to the people and sometimes they'll say where they took the stones from, which area, but we have a lot… a lot of stones that we don't know where to return to which part of the rock.
ANNE BARKER: Tourists who climb the rock have been snaffling these little souvenirs for decades, as a reminder of their visit to one of the world's great cultural icons. But as knowledge of Uluru's cultural significance spreads, so too does the message that taking rocks from a sacred place is wrong.
Graeme Calma says many tourists return the rocks in the belief they're cursed and bring bad luck to whoever steals them.
GRAEME CALMA: People have had car accidents, there was one particular person lost his… one of his family members, he had accident, lost his job, it just went on and on and on, so… yeah.
ANNE BARKER: Why do they blame the rocks for that?
GRAEME CALMA: I'm not too sure. A lot of the times people who do have bad luck will tell their friends and their friends and things like that, so in some of the letters they will explain and say I was told by a friend, and you know.
ANNE BARKER: But ironically the local Anangu people say there is no cultural tradition that says stolen stones will bring bad luck, and nobody quite knows how the myth developed.
Neal Adamson is a quarantine officer with the unusual job of checking every rock that arrives in the mail, to see if it's contaminated with foreign matter. He like others has tried to find out where the story originated.
NEAL ADAMSON: There's several other stories that are similar throughout the world with different areas, and we think it's probably just the fact that people know it is a sacred site to the Aboriginal people of Australia, and the story has just manifested itself, I suppose, over the years from different cultures, and it's seen now to be bad luck.
ANNE BARKER: Back at park headquarters these miniature Ulurus are slowly piling up, creating a whole new landmark of their own. It's left park staff, including manager Tony English, perplexed about what to do with them.
For the moment they're stored in a secure place, but eventually traditional owners are planning a formal returning ceremony, to take the rocks back to where they belong.
TONY ENGLISH: The collection will be managed in an appropriate way in the next, you know, few months, I would imagine, after a fair bit of discussion with the Board of Management.
Obviously, all the material is of cultural significance, so any management of it is going to involve, you know, that sort of dimension, I would imagine, of cultural interest and concern.
TANYA NOLAN: It deepens the mystery of the rock really, doesn't it?
Tony English is the manager of Uluru National Park, speaking there to Anne Barker.
(Thanks to JeremyT!)
Tourists return rocks stolen from Uluru
The World Today - Tuesday, 20 April , 2004 12:46:00
Reporter: Anne Barker
TANYA NOLAN: If you've ever climbed Uluru or Ayers Rock, you may've been tempted to pilfer a piece as a souvenir.
Park staff have no idea how many tourists steal rocks or stones from Uluru, but they're constantly amazed at the hundreds, if not thousands of tourists who send rocks back out of remorse.
All over the world foreign tourists are sending back rocks in the post, some weighing in at 15 kilograms, and sometimes with letters apologising for their theft.
As Anne Barker reports, there are now so many rocks piling up at park headquarters, traditional owners are considering a formal returning ceremony to take the rocks back to where they came from.
ANNE BARKER: Every week staff at Uluru National Park receive oddly shaped packages in the mail from all over the world, all of them containing the familiar red rock of Uluru.
Some pieces weigh just a few grams, while the biggest so far is a 15-kilogram chunk of stone, and all were taken by tourists who were later wracked by guilt.
Graeme Calma chairs the Mutitjulu Community Council, which represents Uluru's traditional owners.
GRAEME CALMA: Usually the people, when they send the stones back, they'll send a um, a little letter apologising to the people and sometimes they'll say where they took the stones from, which area, but we have a lot… a lot of stones that we don't know where to return to which part of the rock.
ANNE BARKER: Tourists who climb the rock have been snaffling these little souvenirs for decades, as a reminder of their visit to one of the world's great cultural icons. But as knowledge of Uluru's cultural significance spreads, so too does the message that taking rocks from a sacred place is wrong.
Graeme Calma says many tourists return the rocks in the belief they're cursed and bring bad luck to whoever steals them.
GRAEME CALMA: People have had car accidents, there was one particular person lost his… one of his family members, he had accident, lost his job, it just went on and on and on, so… yeah.
ANNE BARKER: Why do they blame the rocks for that?
GRAEME CALMA: I'm not too sure. A lot of the times people who do have bad luck will tell their friends and their friends and things like that, so in some of the letters they will explain and say I was told by a friend, and you know.
ANNE BARKER: But ironically the local Anangu people say there is no cultural tradition that says stolen stones will bring bad luck, and nobody quite knows how the myth developed.
Neal Adamson is a quarantine officer with the unusual job of checking every rock that arrives in the mail, to see if it's contaminated with foreign matter. He like others has tried to find out where the story originated.
NEAL ADAMSON: There's several other stories that are similar throughout the world with different areas, and we think it's probably just the fact that people know it is a sacred site to the Aboriginal people of Australia, and the story has just manifested itself, I suppose, over the years from different cultures, and it's seen now to be bad luck.
ANNE BARKER: Back at park headquarters these miniature Ulurus are slowly piling up, creating a whole new landmark of their own. It's left park staff, including manager Tony English, perplexed about what to do with them.
For the moment they're stored in a secure place, but eventually traditional owners are planning a formal returning ceremony, to take the rocks back to where they belong.
TONY ENGLISH: The collection will be managed in an appropriate way in the next, you know, few months, I would imagine, after a fair bit of discussion with the Board of Management.
Obviously, all the material is of cultural significance, so any management of it is going to involve, you know, that sort of dimension, I would imagine, of cultural interest and concern.
TANYA NOLAN: It deepens the mystery of the rock really, doesn't it?
Tony English is the manager of Uluru National Park, speaking there to Anne Barker.
(Thanks to JeremyT!)
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