The Australian edition of the DAILY MAIL reported yesterday that a group of three backpackers climbed Mt Warning and when they got back down they found their car had been vandalised. The Daily Mail story did not dig that deeply into the background and so I sent them the following letter.... Dear Editor, I read with interest your story about backpackers having their car vandalised after climbing Mt Warning in northern News South Wales, Australia. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9824239/Backpackers-car-windows-SMASHED-hiking-sacred-Indigenous-mountain.html You might be interested to know that there is much more to this story if you take a few moments to chase down some facts that NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service officers would rather remain hidden. The official story in regard to Aboriginal beliefs is that the Bundjalung prefer you not to climb and claim the mountain is a sacred men's area. However, (and it's a big however!) the Bundjalung claims have no basis ...
Our mountains belong to all of us. The Right to Climb them and bask in their views that inspire awe and wonder is as old as the human genome. This long-established cultural tradition is under threat by a small group of bureaucrats determined to impose their way on the rest of the world. It is right to Climb because we have the Right to climb. If you don’t exercise your rights you lose them. Don't let petty nanny state bureaucrats take them away.