Andrew Bolt: moral grandstanding banning some races from loveliest parts of our land

Many Australians used to climb Mt Warning a year, but NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service says that’s now banned by citing superstitions as fact.

Mount Warning is a mountain in the Tweed Range in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales.

I’m a polite man. I’d never mock the strange beliefs of the traditional owners of Mt Warning, where the morning sun first touches Australia.

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s polite when those superstitions now stop Australians from climbing one of the most striking mountains in NSW, a huge volcanic plug on the edge of the beautiful Tweed Valley.

What’s more, I consider it an insult when the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service treats those superstitions as truths that all Australians must respect.

More than 100,000 Australians used to climb Mr Warning a year, but the NPWS says that’s now banned, as was climbing Uluru. Tourism signs and railings will be destroyed on the orders of mostly unnamed traditional owners.

Walking on this sacred land is “culturally unsafe”, the NPWS states in a new report.

The summit is “where ancestors may speak with Aboriginal people, and plants and animals have spiritual connections”, and there’s danger for outsiders.

“The sanctity … may also manifest physically (for example, make people sick), for example if women access areas that are restricted to men, women are in physical danger, and likewise for men.”

Wait. Is the NPWS seriously saying even wombats have “spiritual connections” to the mountain, and tourists, especially women, could get sick or worse if they walk parts of it that are taboo?

Has it surveyed tourists to see if women indeed throw up when walking over some sacred ground? Did men mysteriously die?

Answer: no. In fact, I wonder how many NPWS staff or even traditional owners seriously believe they would.

I note, for instance, the owners still let firefighters, weed controllers, rangers and scientists on the mountain.

So why is NPWS not only treating these strange superstitions as fact, but as a reason to stop other Australians from enjoying this remarkable landscape? Is this just moral grandstanding and bullying?

That suspicion is deepened by the fact that the late Marlene Boyd, a Ngarakwal elder, said she inherited the dreaming from her mother and climbing the mountain was not taboo.

“I do not oppose the public climbing of Mt Warning,” she told the Daily News in 2007.

“How can the public experience the spiritual significance of this land if they do not climb the summit and witness creation?”

But to parks bureaucrats, the most bizarre and contested taboos are an excuse to create a new apartheid, in which some races are banned from the loveliest parts of our land.