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General Climbing Discussion

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Mt Arapiles development 23-Mar-2007 At 5:05:06 PM harold

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“elite mountaineering”? who has ever heard of this as a term to describe rock climbing? This just shows what a complete waste of space these PV morons are and the complete lack of respect they have for parks users. The fact that they talk about ‘elite mountaineering courses’ shows exactly that they don’t give a rats ass about what visitors go to Araps for. All they care about is how squeeze more money out of areas under their control. As soon as numbers get high enough in any park the first thing they do is put up boom gates and start charging all sorts of fees. $10 to climb at buffalo in the summer. $20 to walk out to Cape Otway. $20 for a bush campsite if your on the ‘Great Ocean Walk’. Any where else you would expect a bed and a shower for 20 bucks! There was even a boom gate at the Youies for a while which is surely a chosspile to most people. Then there is the $15 to camp at the Gramps for 6 people even though you might be on your own and then your supposed to pay at Halls Gap which might be an hours drive away

Even though the likelihood of development is very low due to water supply constraints I think everyone should write to Parks Victoria to let them know why people from around the world go to Arapilies and that any inappropriate development will be met with extreme resistance from climbers everywhere. I am sick of this attitude that parks are a resource for commercial development to mass market as some sort of theme park for bus loads of tourons. We really don’t want to see the sort of excessive track work and lookouts that has gone on at the Warambungles etc. Next thing you know central gully with have steel hand rails all the way. Lets keep commercial development in the towns where it belongs and out of our bush land.