Natural Wonders Off Limits to (Some) Australians

There is news of a surf club in the small town of Yamba in northern New South Wales being extorted, is that the right word? “Yamba Surf Club forced to pay $2000 to Yaegl Traditional Owners to access beach”. Apparently, there was a $500 “fee for service” for each of four events over the 2024 lifesaving season, including an event that encourages young children to learn how to save drowning people from the ocean. Obviously, a $2000 fee for a club that relies on donations and sponsorship to survive, understandably, this upset a few of its members. Noting that in 2017, the Yaegl people became the first Indigenous people in NSW to be granted native title over the ocean.

One upset Surf Club member was quoted as saying: “A lot of members are outraged by it. It’s pretty un-Australian to charge anyone to use the beach, let alone volunteer surf lifesavers wanting to compete and raise funds for their club. This isn’t the thin edge of the wedge, it’s the thick end. Stopping people from climbing Uluru and Mt Warning is one thing, but charging them to use the beach is taking it to another level.”

One of the lifesavers said, “The Club’s only fundraising events are the ocean swim, a trivia night and crab race, with sponsors helping prop up the club. I’m not sure they’d be too happy about seeing their sponsorship dollars go to an Aboriginal corporation.”

Of course, there’s always two sides to every story, so I’ll try to be as fair as possible here. The General Manager of the Yaegl Traditional Owners Corporation, Billy Walker, said there had been a misunderstanding. He said, “Everything that we’ve tried to do, there’s a stuff-up and it’s not our fault. It’s a confusing process. We get a lot of negative s**t from people who don’t understand the Welcome to Country. We don’t do it as a living, we do it as a cultural activity with a fee for service that brings in income just like any other organisation. We don’t shut anything down or anything off. As a corporation, we’ve got to change our attitude towards who we charge a fee for service. If it’s a government agency that does it, we do charge because it’s a legitimate act. But we’re not going to charge the surf life saving club. As far as I’m concerned, they can still do their activities and we will not be charging them a fee for service, because the right people didn’t come to us in the first place. It should have been the state or local government.”

As one of the surf club members mentioned, we all know that Uluru, Ayers Rock, can no longer be climbed. Apparently, hundreds of thousands of tourists used to scale the rock every year. But that was put to a stop almost exactly five years ago when a ban was brought in. The reason given by Australian Traveller is that, “Uluru isn’t yours to climb”.

Almost exactly two years ago, Mount Warning, Wollumbin, was closed off from the public. And if you don’t think they’re serious, just a couple of months ago, an Australian hiker was fined $300 for daring to walk up an Australian mountain. Earlier this year, we reached peak lunacy after there were reports of the NSW Government forking out $7000 a week of your taxpayer money to hire security guards to protect the mountain from evil humans. Well, only certain humans. Apparently if you are of the right ancestry and are male, then you are free to access the mountain. Although, at the time, this caused a bit of a stir among Indigenous women who pushed back against the plan labelling it “discriminatory”.

And just when you thought we couldn’t go much further with all this, Mount Arapiles in western Victoria, considered by abseiling enthusiasts to be the country’s premier abseiling location, is also facing a ban! “Fury as Parks Victoria bans rock climbing after secret surveys”, with the ABC reporting that the traditional owners welcome the ban, in order to “protect culturally significant sites”. Not to mention the call to close down public access to the beautiful Glasshouse Mountains.

Can anybody please tell me where we’re heading with all of this? What is the goal? Are we going to close off all forms of recreational activities that occur in the natural environment in Australia? Will Australians ultimately be banned from everywhere? What are we supposed to do?

Wouldn’t a better solution be that all Australian sites should be accessible to all Australian people, no matter what your ethnicity or gender? Or am I now considered the extremist?

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn