Mt Warning closure - 4 years of lies and misinformation

 Mt Warning closure - 4 years of lies and misinformation

March 30 (Easter Saturday) marks the 4-year anniversary of the "temporary" closure of the Mt Warning summit track. Some thoughts and rambled musings below. 

I spoke with Ben Fordham about the anniversary on the Ben Fordham Breakfast show on 2GB. Ben's response a classic: "If you want to climb, just climb it!" Link to that interview HERE.

4 year anniversary of bureaucratic madness

We know the exact date of the closure thanks to bushwalker: Tertia Starr Maynard, who posted a photo of a note left on her windscreen by NPWS rangers to the reopen Facebook page. It was dated and read “NPWS advises Wollumbin National Park is closing from today due to covid19. Gate is not locked but please close behind you as you exit. Thanks NPWS.”

Photo by T Maynard - the last walkers out. 

In the 4 years since, after other parks were reopened, Mt Warning remained closed and the reason for the temporary closure morphed to include safety. NPWS viewed the chain as a safety issue and secretly removed it in August 2020. I was corresponding with NPWS about the chain in December 2020 and they never let on that they had already removed it. I only found it had been removed when I climbed up in January 2021 to find it stacked in a pile at the base of the rock scramble. I’m an engineering geologist with some experience in this and none of the posts or footings showed evidence they were in a state of near failure as suggested. There are some issues with the design of the posts, but in my view there was plenty of life left in the system and the safety risks were grossly exaggerated. You can read more about the chain in my book. 

In February 2021 through a FOI request we found NPWS had listed the park for permanent closure and they nominated a Final closure event on the 24^th of November 2022. Later in 2021 the reason for the temporary closure shifted to Indigenous issues and suddenly it was going to be up to a secretive group known as the Wollumbin Consultative Group that excluded other Aboriginal Groups with closer ties to the mountain to determine whether the public could walk to the summit again on this 100 year old track. In October 2022 James Griffin the then Minister signed off on the worst Park Management plan in history and the summit was seemingly closed for good. 

Hopes were rekindled as we heard in late 2022 from the children of the Late Marlene Boyd. Marlene famously contested claims on the mountain by the Wollumbin Consultative Group and supported public visits to the summit stating in 2007: "How can the public experience the spiritual significance of this land if they do not climb the summit and witness creation." 

On AustraliaDay 2023 a group from Reopen Mt Warning staged the first of what is becoming an annual protest event. A few more from Save our Summits joined them this year. We have had rallies of 100s of people in Murwillumbah and this year in UKI in support of reopening the mountain. The leadership of the Ngarakwal Group under Sturt Boyd and Jen Gale has been extraordinary and they are to be thanked and commended for their efforts in getting the Mountain reopened to the public. 

Re-open Mt Warning Uki January 26, 2024 (photo Steven Gibbs)

HARM DONE

The immense harm caused by NPWS, its paid heritage consultants, academics and the Wollumbin Consultative Group in locking out the public from this National natural treasure has been not been considered by government ministers tasked with the responsibility of looking after the park on behalf of all Australians. 

Harm done includes a lot of intangible items difficult to quantify related to physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. The benefits of experiencing nature are well documented, and removing opportunities for the public to appreciate it, in my view represents a crime against all humanity. 

Our very sense of identity as Australians is formed by our connection to the land around us and visiting the best parts of our landscape has been a long-established Australian cultural tradition. Families have long been a big part of Mt Warning's visitation. Parents climbing with their children as they climbed with their parents, to share in the immense natural beauty of the walk and summit views. The exhilaration and joy of the climbing experience installing a love and appreciation of nature and lifelong confidence in our youth who are now too immersed in their smart phones and video games. The damage done in the access ban cannot be quantified, but will leave its mark for generations to come if it is not overturned.  

The economic costs are mounting. The average spend to visit national parks in NSW is over well $50 per visitor, including travel, accommodation and meals. Given over 500,000 have missed out at Mt Warning over the last four years the total loss to the local economy is now around $25 million. This assumes all those 500,000 are day trippers. Considering a split 30/70 for overnight and day visits and an average overnight spend of $300 the total cost to the community may be in the range of $54 million! A SMH article in 2019 indicated NSW government estimates for average visitor spending in NSW national Parks to be $21.35 billion from 60 million visitors. That's $355 dollars per visitor - so the estimate above may well be on the conservative side. 

How many local jobs have been lost? How many businesses have closed or lost income due to this irrational decision?

PARLIAMENTARY PETITION - (Sign HERE)

scan to sign our petition

When I checked this morning it was sitting on 6900 signatures.

This is a great effort for a park 10 hours drive from Sydney close to the QLD border. Most visitors to the park are from QLD and we have had a lot of feedback from QLD and other interstate residents expressing their frustration and anger they can’t sign the petition because they are not NSW residents as required. If the petition was open to all Australians we would be well over our target of 10000. NSW will have to do the heavy lifting here for the rest of the country. The mountain is a National asset and it’s a shame all Australians can’t have a say.

We want to get to at least 10000 signatures as this will provide our petition sponsor the Hon John Ruddick Libertarian Party MLC the opportunity to debate the issue in the NSW upper house.

At this stage we have enough to ensure a response from the Minister, but as we found in 2021 when we petitioned the lower house, that response was just a departmental form letter with very little information.

The petition has been promoted online through the Reopen Mt Warning and Save our summits facebook pages and I encourage readers to sign the petition and join these groups to lend your support if you have not done so. Make sure everyone in your household signs!. The combined membership of those groups is now over 8000.  I want to thank Andrew Flanagan, Peter Ronan and Steven Gibbs and the rest of the Reopen Mt Warning and Save Our Summits leadership and members for their work online and special thanks to Madonna Simpson and Deborah Schofield for days of letterboxing in northern NSW.

CURRENT GOVERNMENT INTEREST

It is heartening to see the new Minister Penny Sharpe is taking personal responsibility for considering the future of this natural wonder, speaking recently with a number of stakeholders including those wanting to reopen the mountain for everyone. Previous Liberal government ministers Matt Kean and James Griffin ignored the public and lacked the backbone to take on the misinformation being fed to them by a woke bureaucracy. 

There are plenty of options to reopen the mountain in a sustainable way that will preserve the incredible summit experience for future generations. We wait and see if truth and common sense will win the day. 

BOOK PLUG

If readers want to find out more of the wonderful history of the park and recent efforts to overturn this senseless decision please look for my book A guide to climbing Mt Warning available from Connor Court.