Parks Victoria replaces successful Point Nepean tour company without explanation
A tourism business that employed five people has been mysteriously ousted from a historic site, with a rival company yet to conduct a tour despite being awarded the licence more than three months ago.
Parks Victoria has a effectively shut down a business employing five people to run educational tours of a key historic landmark, less than a year after it was a finalist in the Victorian Tourism Awards.
Eerie Tours had been conducting night time “ghost tours” of the Melbourne Quarantine Station at Point Nepean for two years, when they were instructed by Parks Victoria in June to apply for a licence to continue operating on the site.
The company was notified in August that its application had not been successful, and conducted its last tour in September, but CEO Nathaniel Buchanan is still yet to receive any explanation for the decision from the state government’s National Parks agency, or Tourism Minister Steve Dimopoulos, despite seeking one for four months.
With no commercial tours having been conducted at the site since the Eerie tours ceased in September, Mr Buchanan had initially concluded Parks Victoria had given preference to local volunteer organisation the Nepean Historical Society.
But on Friday, the state government confirmed in response to questions from The Australian that a rival company, Lantern Ghost Tours, had been handed the contract, despite having left the site unused since Eerie Tours were forced to cease operations.
Mr Buchanan said the response provided to The Australian was the first he knew of Lantern Ghost Tours receiving the contract.
“For four months we’ve been waiting for any kind of explanation or response. It’s just ridiculous,” he said.
“It was our idea, our concept, our hard work that got tours operating on the site in the first place, that brought attention to the sight, and we were having a good and successful impact, and we’ve been outbid by someone who has never run a tour on the site before.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
Mr Buchanan said he suspected Parks Victoria may have awarded the contract to Lantern Ghost Tours because they were proposing to conduct tours during the day.
“But we were told specifically by Parks Victoria that we were able to apply for night,” he said.
“We made it clear that we didn’t want to take away the opportunity from someone who had daytime ambitions, and Parks Victoria told us to proceed on that basis.”
The Melbourne Quarantine Station was established on the Mornington Peninsula in 1852 and operated as a quarantine facility until 1980, most notably during the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic.
Thousands died on the site of illnesses including smallpox, bubonic plague, typhoid and Spanish flu.
Mr Buchanan, a former history teacher, said the scripts for tours were written by a team of professional historians, including Federation University associate professor David Waldron.
“We believe ghost tours are a valuable and engaging method of informing the public about the tragic history of a location in an entertaining yet educational manner,” he said.
The company – Australia’s largest supernatural tour company – also runs ghost tours of the Aradale Asylum in Ararat, as well as in Ballarat.
The Melbourne Quarantine Station tours previously ran for 90 minutes, five days a week, year round, at a cost of $45 per person.
Eerie Tours employed five people at the Port Nepean site, and the business was a finalist in the cultural tourism category at the 2024 Victorian Tourism Awards, having won Bronze in 2023.
Parks Victoria’s advertisement for the licence listed criteria including the “historical relevance and accuracy” of the tour offering, and the capacity to “support and enhance natural and cultural heritage messaging” concerning the traditional owners of the site.
Mr Buchanan addressed both criteria in his application, noting that “while we do not currently engage with traditional owners as the history of the quarantine station itself is a colonial concept, we do begin our tours with an acknowledgement of country”, and stating that the company is “open to discussing collaboration with any relevant party”.
Lantern Ghost Tours did not respond to a request for comment.
A Victorian government spokesman said: “LGT Enterprises will operate at Point Nepean as the new historical tour operator.
“Visitors will soon be able to experience three unique tours each day, year-round, with multiple timeslots including special twilight sessions.”
Parks Victoria then-CEO Matthew Jackson was forced to resign last year, amid controversy over the agency’s ban on key rock-climbing routes at world-famous Mount Arapiles, ostensibly for Indigenous cultural heritage reasons.
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