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SYDNEY, Sunday (AFP)

Beset by serious misfortune or simple remorse, tourists who stole rocks from one of Australia's most sacred Aboriginal sites are sending them back in droves in hopes of salvation.

Thousands of packages containing rocks or soil from Uluru have been mailed back over the years by foreign and Australian tourists alike, according to the manager of Uluru Kata-Tjuta national park, Brooke Watson.

"It's just a weird phenomenon," Watson told the Australian Associated Press. "They come from all over and they just keep coming every day."

A giant red monolith jutting up from the central Australian desert, Uluru is one of the most sacred sites for Australia's indigenous Aborigines and is the country's best known natural monument.

Watson said most of those returning pieces of the rock complain of suffering misfortune they believe is linked to their crime.

"Everyone seems to say that they have had bad luck," Watson said.

"We stack them up in boxes and every now and then we try and return them to (Uluru) so that people's bad luck is dissolved," he said.

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