Luxury Lodges = Wilderness Lost
“We all come from wilderness. That’s why we love nature. It’s why we delight in flowers and seeing wildlife because it’s part of our genetic structure. Now we live mainly in cities, where wilderness has been 90% or totally destroyed. It’s arguably the fastest disappearing natural resource on the planet. That’s why it’s such a premium. As it’s become less available, it’s become more valuable for exploiters.”
Bob Brown, in a personal conversation with Wild.
“A couple of rich bastards want to come into our parks and ruin everything.”
Geoff Dixon—ex-Qantas CEO and co-founder of the Australian Walking Company, and one of the rich bastards who wants to come into our parks and ruin everything—quoted in the Financial Review.
Earlier this year, wanting to take my young son on a longer walk of four or five days, I recalled reading about the 65km Green Gully Track in NSW’s Oxley Wild Rivers NP. It sounded pleasant. The National Parks and Wildlife Service’s (NPWS) website extolled the track’s virtues—a unique journey into the Apsley-Macleay gorges, one of Australia’s largest gorge systems. It mentioned fern-lined gullies, high elevation forests, and wildlife. It also mentioned there were historic huts to stay in. Since staying in them cost $6001—and remember, I’m the editor of Wild; I hardly earn a corporate salary—I figured we‘d just camp.
But when I searched to see what campsites were on the route, I couldn’t find any. And that’s when I learnt we couldn’t just camp. Despite this being a national park—a public park—if you don’t pay or can’t pay the $600 (because you’re a student, unemployed, or simply not flush with funds), well, you’re out of luck. You can’t do the walk. It seemed so outrageous that, at first, I wondered if I’d read it incorrectly, so I rang the relevant NPWS District Office. I wasn’t mistaken. No pay, no walk. The ranger sheepishly said something about this being “the business model.” I was incensed.
Now I could argue that if my taxpayer dollars are funding this park, I should have the right to access it. But that’s not really the point; the unemployed, students and the poor should have equal rights to access this track, whether they pay a dollar in tax or not. This is public land.
“[It’s] a dodgy process that’s fundamentally about transferring public land for basically peanuts to some-one to make a buck from.”
A few days after this, I happened to be speaking with Bob Brown, bitching about this state of affairs. It wasn’t just the Green Gully Track; I was also angry about proposals on NSW’s South Coast to shut down hitherto long-used campsites so private huts could be built. I was aware, too, of the furore over Tasmania’s Lake Malbena, where it’s proposed helicopters will ferry the well-heeled out to Hall’s Island. I had heard—though knew few of the actual details—of the outcry over lodges proposed in Kangaroo Island’s Flinders Chase National Park. And I have long been troubled by Tasmania’s Three Cape’s Track, where luxury lodges were built in wilderness, with campsites long used by local bushwalkers shut down as part of the deal.
All this I knew. It turned out, however, I
