Yulara, Northern Territory
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Yulara () is an isolated town in Australia's Northern Territory with approximately 3,000 inhabitants. More than three quarters of the residents of Yulara are from either overseas or another Australian state. The name is derived from a local Aboriginal word for howling and dingos (citation needed).
It is 18 km by road from world heritage site Uluru and 55 km from Kata Tjuta. It is located in the Northern Territory electorate of MacDonnell and the federal electorate of Lingiari.
It is home to the busiest tourist resort in Australia, Ayers Rock Resort.
In early 1970, the pressure of unstructured and unmonitered tourism was having detrimental effects on the environment surrounding Uluru-Kata Tjuta and the Northern Territory government agreed in 1973 to relocate accommodation facilities to a new site. Yulara was created in 1984 as an infrastructure hub to support tourism to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
It originally had numerous competing hotels, however this was not financially viable. The Northern Territory government leased the incredibly valuable land to Voyages for one dollar per square kilometer. Voyages owns and manages all aspects of Yulara, with the exception of the post office, which is owned by Australia Post. All residents of the town lease their housing from the resort corporation, Voyages. All residents are under constant twenty-four hour security surveillance as directed by Voyages. Violation with Voyages company policy can commonly result in a notice of forty-eight hours to permanently leave the township.
The nearby Connellan Airport makes it possible to reach the area in a few hours from Sydney, Melbourne or Cairns, compared to five hours by car from Alice Springs, the nearest major town, 428 kilometres northeast.
On 18 August 1983, the Inland Hotel near Uluru was severely damaged when truck driver Douglas Crabbe rammed his 25-ton Mack truck into the hotel after being refused service, killing 5 patrons.[1]
[edit] External links
- Satellite image from Google Maps
