Friday, Apr 14, 2006 at 08:37
What strange times we exist in.
As adventure tourism, outback travel, appreciation of indiginous culture (including purchase of their artwork) and other associated travel interests becoming increasingly significant for the financial viabilty of many of our remote locations conversely we are slowly but surely being choked out.
During the last couple of years I have noticed a significant improvement in the attitude of the outback traveller, the "Sorbent flowers" much less conspicuous and the empty tinnies and "stumpies" being either buried or taken out. I think responsible tour operators and forums such as this play a significant role here plus the likes of the "keep Australia clean" campaigns.
Sadly, none of this seems to extend to our "traditional landholders" who appear totally incapable of maintaining even minimum standards of hygiene and domestic cleanliness around their settlements. Yet they want to make it as difficult as possible for us to access "their" lands which to all intent and pupose are simply open space and not used as any viable income producing asset. Any claim that we interfere with the "cultural significance" is rather stretching it. The town that we live in has its
population of indiginous people of whom some certainly more than interfere with "our" cultural significance. But one cant do anything about that.
It will never happen through any of our apologist governments, but if quite simply all those handouts and funding was removed, and any land seen as having no effort made on it to derive a viable income was forfeited back to the crown (under no circumstances sold) a change would happen. But pigs would be flying then, too.
happy travelling. kesh
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