Of course, you might say. Who wants to stand in a hot forest the whole day, looking at trees?
Who wouldn't want to zip back after a couple of hours to grab that cocktail, jump in that pool, lounge on that sun deck or take that massage next to that passing wombat?
But note this. This ad campaign is the first in which Tourism Australia has featured not just our best bits of nature, but the luxury resorts right next to them, including spectacular ones at Kangaroo Island and Tasmania's Great Oyster Bay.
Not only that, the Blue Mountains resort is the one at Wolgan Valley that green groups fought and green tape almost strangled. A hotel in a national park? Sacrilege!
Which makes Tourism Australia's latest ad campaign, launched in Shanghai, not just a celebration of Australia, but one more sign of the decline of the anti-human green movement.
The Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa, which Test captain Michael Clarke booked out last month for his wedding, is the perfect example.
Emirates announced in 2005 it wanted to build this $125 million extravaganza, yet had to work for two more years just to get its plans through all the green tape, including approvals from the then Howard government, the local shire, the NSW Land and Environment Court and the NSW Labor government.
It's a familiar story for any big developer. For years now, it's seemed a sin to green preachers to have man's footprint anywhere near nature.
This absurd fear of human contamination has closed a uranium mine in Kakadu, banned oil exploration around the Barrier Reef, halted coal mines in Queensland, delayed housing developments in even the most barren scrub and now threatens a planned $30 billion gas hub project on James Price Point an empty scrap of the vast Kimberley.
Even a humble $50 million expansion of the Yaringa Boat Harbour on the Mornington Peninsula was held up for a year by green bureaucrats fretting over an orange-bellied parrot no one had actually seen there for a quarter of a century.
This anti-human paranoia has also led to attacks on tourism itself. Tourists are told not to climb Ayers Rock; recreational fishing has been severely restricted; horse riding in many national parks is limited or even banned; and where is the five-star resort on the Barrier Reef itself that tourists would cross the world to see?
It's like banning laughter in church. Victoria's magnificent Wilsons Prom is under such prudish management that you can't stay anywhere inside bar a camping site or some spartan eco-cabin.
The Wolgan Valley resort could have gone the same puritanical way. What an effort and expense Emirates had to go to just to get an official "yes" to a project that Tourism Australia now touts as one of our biggest tourism magnets.
It had to swap 114 hectares of bushland it had bought next to the park for 39ha of the park itself, with green groups screaming every inch of the way. It had to plant thousands of trees, modify its designs and agree to all kinds of restrictions. Even now, just four helicopter trips a week are allowed to ferry in guests.
Now come the Tourism Australia ads to explode the fallacy and extremism that tends to drive such anti-development campaigns.
No, man is not necessarily a pollution on the landscape. No, there's not much point in having great scenery if you make it too tough for people to see or enjoy.
These ads no longer trade on our beauty spots being remote and unsullied by human hands. After all, there's not a single national park that isn't improved by a good road to go see it.
So we see the beauty of the Great Oyster Bay through the windows of the Saffire Freycinet luxury lodge.
We look out over Kangaroo Island's beach from the great windows of the Southern Ocean Lodge. Uluru is seen from well laid dining tables at dusk, and a chopper is parked on top of a waterfall in the El Questro Wilderness Park, because who wants to hike in the heat?
In fact, the sole Victorian entry in the 12 destinations showcased is nothing designed by nature not the Great Ocean Road or the penguins of Phillip Island but Crown casino.
And Sydney closes the ads with our greatest calling card the man-made Sydney Opera House, on the edge of the God-made harbour.
It's the perfect balance.
No comments:
Post a Comment