Luxury Lodges = Wilderness Lost
Public parks, Not private play grounds
“Areas like Mt Stirling are attractive because they are undeveloped. Wilderness is of incalculable intrinsic value, even if not all of us realise it yet. This is the message we have a duty to espouse no matter how unpalatable it may be to some initially. … Wilderness is not a commodity that can be packaged, marketed and sold without the loss of wilderness itself …” Chris Baxter, editor of Wild from 1981 to 2001, writing about proposals to develop Victoria’s Mt Stirling in Wild Issue #54, 1994.
If you haven’t read Part One, please do so. It’s available at wild.com.au/conservation/luxury-lodges-means-wilderness-lost. Understanding much of the following content, as well as knowing the scale of the problem, is dependent on reading the first instalment.
In Part One of this piece, we looked at lodge and other accommodation developments—both private and public, and past, present, and future—proposed within national parks around the country. We looked at Tasmania’s Southwest, where developments are proposed along the South Coast Track (SCT), the Walls of Jerusalem, Frenchmans Cap, Tyndall Range, and Lake Malbena. More lodges are being proposed along the Overland Track, and at Lake Rodway near Cradle Mountain, too. Queensland has already seen private development on the Scenic Rim Trail (SRT); more is proposed on Hinchinbrook Island’s Thorsborne Trail, and the Cooloola Great Walk is apparently up for grabs, too. Egregiously-sited private lodges have been proposed for Flinders Chase NP on SA’s Kangaroo Island. NSW is closing bushwalkers’ traditional campsites along its proposed—and likely to proceed—development of the Light to Light Track in the state’s southeast. Victoria is forging ahead with mini-villages in the Alpine National Park’s high country. And in the interim since writing Part One of this piece, the NT has called for expressions of interest to commercially develop the Watarrka Trail at Kings Canyon.
These clouds have long been on the horizon. I spoke at length with John Chapman, author of many Australian walking guidebooks and long-term Wild contributor, and he pointed me to something he wrote back in the ‘90s: “Where once the threat came from those who opposed parks like mining and logging, some industries now support parks but want the right to develop their business inside a park. [This] can mean that they effectively end up controlling some of the park thus alienating other users.”
“There’s an acoustic component to the whole idea of wilderness.”
Unfortunately, under the guise of these lodges, that’s exactly what’s come to pass. So let’s look at the implications, commencing with the loss of wilderness. Actually, let’s take one more step back: What does ‘wilderness’ even mean? Here’s a simple, workable definition from Martin Hawes, Grant Dixon, and Chris Bell, stated in their book Refining the Definition of Wilderness: “Wilderness is land that is natural, remote and primitive.” But does this mean land utterly devoid of human modification? Such places are exceedingly rare. Most ‘wildernesses’ have, in fact, had humans living in them and modifying them for thousands or tens of thousands of years. It becomes valid, then, to ask to what extent modification impacts wilderness? Even walking has an effect. Footprints are left. Plants are crushed. It’s all a gradation, with no easy answer. Nonetheless, there’d be widespread agreement in the outdoorsy/green community—although perhaps the broader community might disagree—that building infrastructure impinges upon wilderness. It’s for this reason all Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Plans of Management prior to 2016 specifically banned huts within the Southwest NP.
There are, for starters, the lodges’ visual impacts. We’re not talking simple ‘huts’
