Mount Warning: Ayers Rock Redux

In October 2018 Parks Australia banned public access to the summit of Ayers Rock/Uluru on the basis of spurious safety and environmental reasons and contested cultural claims. They ignored the views of Aboriginal elders who had been born at the Rock, who had acted as climbing guides and encouraged people to climb and had made it clear by their words and actions that the famous climb was not a significant cultural issue, in favour of a mob whose roots lie elsewhere. The real reasons for the ban had to do with Parks Australia’s Canberra-based bureaucracy being unable to adequately manage the very low risk of being sued by walkers injuring themselves or dying while making the world-famous climb. I fought against the ban with facts, figures and logic but sadly for the hundreds of thousands of Australian and international visitors, myth and superstition won out against logic and reason, and the ban went ahead. To add insult Parks Australia destroyed the summit monument and removed memorial plaques to the dead, in breach of the 1987 World Heritage listing.

In the course of battling the bureaucrats of state and federal parks authorities it became clear that Ayers Rock was only one of a large number of exhilarating walks in public parks that face being banned in Australia over the next few years. Walks in the Glass House Mountains in Queensland, the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, Stirling Range in Western Australia and elsewhere also face being banned for a host of reasons that do not make sense. In attempting to justify a ban on world-famous climbing areas in the Grampians in Victoria, Parks Victoria blamed rock climbers for installing bolts near Aboriginal hand prints, but it turned out that the rusty anchors had been placed by previous park officials as part of a cage to protect the art work from damage. Despite decades of use by rock climbers in the Grampians there has been no damage to sites of indigenous significance, or other appreciable damage to the natural environment by the rock-climbing community.

We now see similar nefarious tactics being employed by the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service in its treatment of the Mount Warning Summit trail. If reason does not prevail, this historic bush walk will probably become illegal in May after the NPWS reviews the current “temporary” closure, which affects not only the summit walk but in fact the entire park.

Mount Warning is one of the biggest ancient shield volcanoes in the southern hemisphere. It was active 23 million years ago when its eruptions covered much of northern New South Wales with lava. The eroded volcanic landscape with its stunning scenery has attracted tourists since access became possible in the mid-1800s. The summit is visited by over 100,000 walkers annually. Many walk up to catch the sunrise—the summit is the first place to catch the sun’s rays each day in eastern Australia. The views over the caldera complex, Gondwana subtropical forests and to the coast are outstanding.

The walking track to the summit of Mount Warning was established in 1909, and in 1929 over 200 people, including many children, stood at the summit to open the Mount Warning National Park. The trail and associated infrastructure have not been well maintained by the NPWS over recent years and the NPWS is now using exaggerated claims about safety, minor environmental issues and contested cultural claims as excuses to close the summit track and the park. As with the unjustified reasons used to ban public access at Ayers Rock and the Grampians, these excuses do not stack up and the NPWS’s real agenda seems to be more about trying to protect its delicate bureaucrats and rangers and its budget than any real concerns for the public.

The safety claims at Mount Warning are exaggerated. The NPWS claims the summit chain is unsafe but the chain is not actually required for the walk; anyway, it could be repaired or upgraded for a small cost that could be funded by charging a small fee for access, or removed altogether. Jumping the barrier in January to inspect the walk for myself, I found that the NPWS had actually ripped out the chain, pre-empting the results of the May review and implying that the NPWS has already made up its mind about the future of this world-class attraction. When I was there the summit lookouts were in working order, but the timber was in need of sanding and paint after twenty years of exposure and neglect. The environmental problems to do with rubbish and toileting are minor and manageable. On my walk the only rubbish I found, a drink bottle on the rock scramble to the summit, was likely left by NPWS officials when they removed the chain. Again, cost recovery through a fee could be used to provide better facilities and better information. NPWS claims of “extreme” risks to walkers from landslide and rock falls are grossly exaggerated, and I have requested the cited report through FOI. Overall safety and environmental issues on the summit trail are on par with similar walks in the state and if the NPWS closes this one then just about every other trail in the state must also be up for closure.

False claims about safety and environment are one thing but NPWS claims about Aboriginal culture in the park take the misrepresentations to a whole new level. Since 2006 there has been a sign at the base of the walk that reads:

Wollumbin (Mount Warning) has been a sacred place of significance to the people of Bundjalung since time immemorial. Wollumbin, along with other significant sites in its surrounds, provides a traditional place of cultural law, initiation and spiritual education. Under Bundjalung law, only specifically chosen people are allowed on this mountain. Climbing to the summit is against the wishes of Bundjalung Elders. Visitors are asked to respect the cultural and historical significance of Wollumbin at all times.
Gurri tribes of the Bundjalung Nation.

These claims, including the very name applied to the mountain and the notion of the Bundjalung Nation, are contested and it seems there is another story that the NPWS has not properly acknowledged and has long kept secret from the public. It would take an ICAC inquiry to sort fact from fiction.

There is indisputable evidence for different indigenous stories and attitudes about the mountain, revealed by other Aboriginal groups, that has been completely ignored by the NPWS. How it could post the Bundjalung statement and promote it so strongly while aware of these counter-claims and smacks of wilful indifference and partiality.

It seems that according to the Ngarakwal/Nganduwal people, Mount Warning was called Wulambiny Momoli, and was actually an increase site where hunting was forbidden so that brush turkeys might replenish their numbers. We saw a few on our walk. The Ngarakwal/Nganduwal applied the name Wollumbin to a summit to the north-east of Mount Warning, owned by the McKenzie family since the 1800s. The current owner, James McKenzie, has been fighting for many years to get the name reassigned to its rightful place.

Marlene Boyd was an elder of the Ngarakwal people, and inherited the Bootheram (dreaming) of her people from her mother Millie Boyd, who was the gulgan or keeper of Mount Warning. In a 2007 interview with the local newspaper the Daily News just before she died, Marlene Boyd stated:

Mount Warning is not the Fighting Chief as the Bundjalung claim. The real mountain gazetted as Mt Wollumbin is in Eungella and belongs to the McKenzie family. We are the Wollumbin tribe who are traditionally the Ngarakwal/Nganduwal Aboriginal Moiety—we are the original custodians of Mount Warning. We are not Bundjalung.

She accused “self-proclaimed Bundjalung elder” John Roberts, organiser of the Wollumbin Festival, of telling lies about Mount Warning: “He has no right to come into my ancestral Ngarakwal lands and tell such lies about the cultural lore of the mountain.” Marlene Boyd had no problem with people climbing the mountain: “I do not oppose the public climbing of Mount Warning—how can the public experience the spiritual significance of this land if they do not climb the summit and witness creation!”

Germaine Greer’s book White Beech (2013) explores her purchase of a property in the rainforest in Queensland across the border from Mount Warning. The book raises many questions about Aboriginal cultural knowledge about Mount Warning and further highlights misrepresentations and missing details by the NPWS in its official literature and on signage in the park. In a chapter in which she seeks to trace the Aboriginal name for her acreage, Greer writes about the Ngarakwal/Githabul and Bundjalung claims about Mount Warning:

On August 31 2009 Ngarakwal/Githabul activists made a submission to the Tweed Shire Council protesting against the perpetuation of the Bundjalung myth, the misuse of information from Indigenous elders and the lie of the dual identity of Mount Warning. According to Githabul elder Harry Boyd, Mount Warning is not Wollumbin the cloud-catcher and has nothing to do with any warrior king. The whole caldera is Wulambiny Momoli or “scrub turkey nest”, a “djurebil” or increase site where hunting is forbidden so that brush-turkeys may replenish their numbers. He and his supporters denounced the “Bundjalung nation” as a white fiction. “There is no Bundjalung nation, tribe, people, language, culture, clan, nor horde, no Bundjalung anything.”

It was my turn to visit Ann in Melbourne, where I gave her a progress report.

“The Ngarakwal, Tindale’s Arakwal, now say that the real Bundjalung are the Clarence River people; they also say that the Tweed Bundjalung are well aware that they are descendants of Islanders, and not Aboriginal at all.”

“Is that true?” asked Ann.

“Who would know? These days you daren’t even ask the question. Most people would say it’s immaterial. Islanders lived with Aboriginal people and married into the clans, so they are entitled to self-identify. Besides the Torres Strait Islands are Australian.”

Claims by the Boyds on behalf of the Ngarakwal/Nganduwal people are supported by Wijabul elder Fletcher Roberts, who put out a press statement in January 2000:

They have had walking tracks up the mountain for decades, but no one has tried to stop people from climbing it before.

This claim is a modern day invention.

This claim is being perpetuated by someone who is overstepping his cultural responsibilities and he will have to face the consequences of Aboriginal lore for what he is doing.

The white community needs to wise up to the Aboriginal sectors that try to use their lack of understanding of Aboriginal culture for their own purposes.

The white community needs to make sure it identifies the true elders of an area.

Fletcher closes his succinct statement:

It is not unusual for clans to have disputes over boundaries and this still happens today as it did in the past … but for people from Mullabugilmah [near Grafton] to claim that they have some jurisdiction over Mt Warning is too far a stretch of the imagination. If they still believe in the culture they should stick to their own areas.

Quadrant readers will be aware of the overlapping and conflicting Aboriginal cultural claims that apply to many natural features in the country. The issue here is that New South Wales NPWS has unfairly given one version its official stamp and completely ignored other groups whose ties and claims to Mount Warning appear much stronger. It is little wonder that it is the version that best suits the long-term desire to see the summit walk closed that it has promoted.

In its November 2020 information update about the park, NPWS gives weight to a visitor survey that found: 

There is a high level of community acceptance of the significance of Wollumbin Summit and the message not to climb. Of the 858 domestic participants in a recent visitor research survey (DPIE 2019), 49 per cent stated they would not climb Wollumbin summit upon receiving the request not to climb, most of the remaining participants were unsure or needed more information, and only nine per cent still wanted to climb Wollumbin. 

One wonders what those survey results would be if those asked were also provided with Marlene Boyd’s inspirational words, which should be posted at the start of the walk: “I do not oppose the public climbing of Mount Warning—how can the public experience the spiritual significance of this land if they do not climb the summit and witness creation!”

The public have a right to be able to enjoy all our national parks and their well-established trails without having to pander or bow our heads to the irrational beliefs of a few and the overbearing bureaucrats who are incapable of completing a basic risk assessment. 

The case to ban the summit walk and close the park is built on a foundation of lies that stack as high as its spectacular summit. Please let the New South Wales Environment Minister know your feelings before the NPWS decides to close the climb in May. His email: [email protected]

Marc Hendrickx is a geologist and the convenor of the website Right to Climb (http://righttoclimb.blogspot.com). He wrote “Climb the Rock Now While You Still Can” in the June 2019 issue.