The Sacred Mountain That Isn’t

The Australian edition of the Daily Mail reported yesterday that three backpackers climbed Mt Warning to witness a typically spectacular sunrise only to find every window of their car smashed upon returning to carpark at the mountain’s base. The Mail did not dig all that deeply into the story, satisfying readers’ curiosity as to the motive for the vandalism with some quotes from one of the young travellers, an unnamed Scotsman who related finding an explanation on the internet.

“After some research online we leant that there is an ongoing dispute between land owners, indigenous people and local councils about whether it should be permanently closed or not,” he said.

Well there is a bit more than that to what is the ongoing seizure of a peak that should belong to all Australians. And the irony of it is that the noisiest claimants have the least right to assert their control of the site. Let me explain. 

The official story is that the Bundjalung prefer you not climb, portraying…