The Uluru rock curse

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• Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory, Australia · A visitors' belief at an Anangu place

  The Uluru rock curse

  Sorry rocks

  Told, never investigated

  

  Visitors who took rocks or sand from Uluru post them back to the park, often with letters of apology, and some say the souvenir brought them bad luck. The social researcher Jasmine Foxlee named them "sorry rocks" in 2004, and found that almost 15 per cent of the people asking forgiveness wrote of bad luck. The park receives dozens of parcels a year, some returned after as long as forty years.

  Uluru is Anangu country. By the Canberra Times' account, Anangu law does not recognise a specific curse for taking rocks, but disrespecting the land has consequences, and returned rocks are not put back where they came from because returning them to the wrong place would itself be disrespectful. The bad-luck story is the visitors' own; an Anangu elder quoted there said visitors "should take it home in their hearts".

  Earliest written source: Tim the Yowie Man, "Canberra man falls victim to the Uluru curse", The Canberra Times, 15 May 2018, reporting Jasmine Foxlee's 2004 research (not opened)

  The Canberra Times, 15 May 2018 (archived)

  Tradition · not evidence