Sacred Indigenous sites and landmarks are everyone’s to share

Great opinion piece in the Courier Mail today by Mike O'Connor...

An organisation called Right to Climb operates under the banner “Our Mountains Belong To All Of Us.” It’s right but it’s not just our mountains. Our islands also belong to all of us.

Sacred Indigenous sites and landmarks are everyone’s to share

Surely it is of greater benefit to enlighten visitors about sacred Indigenous landmarks rather than pressure governments to lock them up, writes Mike O’Connor. That does not seem to be a welcome to country.

It is named, auspiciously, Mount Warning and is set to become the latest landmark to be declared off-limits to non-Indigenous people.

The extinct volcano, sitting across the NSW border in the Tweed Valley, attracts tens of thousands of people every year who climb its peak to enjoy the sunrise and a view that stretches to the Pacific Ocean.

Freedom of Information documents obtained from the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service show it has drawn up hitherto secret plans to close the walking track to the mountain, named by Captain Cook in 1770, from November next year.

In Queensland, Indigenous elders have made it clear that they would like to see Mount Tibrogargan and Mount Beerwah in the Glasshouse Mountains and nearby Mount Coolum declared off-limits.

There are also calls for St Mary Peak in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges and Mount Yengo in the NSW Hunter Valley to be closed to climbers while large sections of the Grampians National Park in Victoria are also being closed.

On North Stradbroke Island, campers are being banned by the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation (QYAC) while the state government is planning to give control of Moreton Island, the world’s second largest sand island, to the same corporation.

The article ends...

An organisation called Right to Climb operates under the banner “Our Mountains Belong To All Of Us.” It’s right but it’s not just our mountains. Our islands also belong to all of us.

We wholeheartedly endorse this statement!

Read the whole article at the Courier Mail - link above.

Courier Mail 9 March 2021

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