Australia to ban climbing Uluru from 2019

Australian officials are set to ban tourists from climbing Uluru (Ayers Rock).

The Northern Territory landmark is a sacred site for Aboriginal Australians, but it has been a tourist attraction for decades.

The board of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park voted unanimously to end the option for tourists to climb the rock from October 2019.

Visitors hoping to get close to the stunning monolith will instead be able to walk around it.

Locals have been asking tourists for years not to climb the rock due to indigenous sensitivities, and while the majority of visitors refrain from doing so, there is always a percentage that do.