A closer look

After decades of treating a deeply sacred Indigenous monolith like a jungle gym, tourists finally got slapped with a reality check. The Anangu people had been begging visitors for years not to climb Uluru, mostly because it's culturally insensitive, but also because people kept having heart attacks or falling off the sheer edges. Instead of listening, backpackers left trash, urinated on the rock, and played golf from the summit. Australia finally closed the climb for good in 2019.