6
When Jane Calder sat down to write The Grampians: A Noble Range, which was eventually published in 1987, she had in mind the wishes of the Victorian National Parks Association. The idea was that the book ‘would support the Association’s case that the Grampians required a higher degree of protection, especially as regards its conservation values, than was possible under its then status as a state forest – in other words the Grampians should be accorded the status of full national park. Anything less was simply not appropriate for a such a special and well loved area of Victoria.’1 Its eventual declaration as a national park was part of a longer process of integrating the landscape into a series of much larger national and international ideas and processes, but the story is, nonetheless, as much to do with local contexts and issues.
Australia’s national parks in global context
The nineteenth century was when romantic concern for nature entered the minds of artists and writers. The movement was particularly strong in North America, including in Henry David Thoreau’s still-influential Walden, which was published in 1854 and lamented the rise of industrial life and the destruction of the environment. The American naturalist George Perkins Marsh published his Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as modified by Human Action in 1864. Based on travels in Europe, Africa and Asia, Marsh described to readers the irrevocable human damage to the world he had witnessed and warned against the further damage that could be inflicted by technological innovation and industrial progress. The strength of nature and ‘wilderness’ in the American imagination was reflected in the actions of its government. In 1870, the Montana judge Cornelius Hedges argued that a scenic area of the Rocky Mountains should be ‘set apart as a great national park … never to be changed, but to be kept sacred always’. In 1872, the United States Congress set aside this area of land as the Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first.
Shortly after Yellowstone, an early wave of national parks spread across British settler societies – described by some authors as ‘a gift of the new world to the old’.2 On the other hand, some have argued that the creation of national parks in settler colonial societies such as Australia might be understood as the natural extension of the dispossession of Indigenous land.3 National parks were established in Australia (Sydney, 1879), Canada (Banff, 1885), and New Zealand (Tongariro, 1887). South Africa also began establishing game reserves in the late nineteenth century, but Kruger National Park was first to carry the name in 1926. When the Great White Fleet visited Sydney from the United States in 1908, an American journalist, Franklin Matthews, observed:
We, by whom I mean the Americans now in Sydney, are delighted to learn that you have vast national parks within Australia close to your principal cities … Our national parks are too far away from our great centres of population. The Yellowstone is almost inaccessible to the man of moderate means unless he lives near; Yosemite has been inaccessible until recently to all who have not the means to enable them to travel on mere sight-seeing errands.4
The difference between national parks in Australia and the United States noted by Matthews is key to understanding how the local context shaped an otherwise American precedent. Sydney’s Royal National Park was established before the federation of the Australian colonies. Its national character was not derived by jurisdiction or the level of government responsible for its care and maintenance and, unlike the American national parks, it was not taken as evidence of God’s work in nature and the nation’s manifest destiny. Rather, the ‘national’ in Australia’s first national parks came from the sense that they were for the people; their location and intent were far more accessible and democratic, perhaps a reflection of the egalitarian democratic tradition that many Australians in the late nineteenth century believed their society embodied.
Yet the dominant strands that weave through the broader history of environmental protection were still present in public discourse. One newspaper columnist in Victoria wrote in the early twentieth century of ‘a wise and patriotic movement that had for its object the reservation, in various parts of the state, of lakes and watercourses as “game sanctuaries.” As the name implies, these spots are to be sacred from the depredations of the sportsman, and they are designed to be the unmolested breeding homes of those birds, principally ducks and other waterfowl, who suffer the most at the hands of the gunner.’5 Such protected areas were understood by now to be distinct from the younger concept of a national park:
Side by side with this movement, however, there is another of perhaps equal importance. It is the reservation of suitable areas, in three or four distinctive districts, as national parks. The first of these parks has just been created at Wilson’s Promontory, where a highly suitable area has been set apart for this splendid purpose … there is no doubt that in time this great park will become worthy of its name. Following the model of the famous Yellowstone-park in the United States … an earnest endeavour will be made to stock it with native birds and animals, which exist, of course, in their wild state. As the years go by, and our rapidly increasing settlement leads to the thinning out, and even the extermination, of many of our birds and animals, this park will have a unique value; and it will then be one of our most valued national possessions.6
In the century from the establishment of the Wilsons Promontory and Mount Buffalo national parks in 1898, over 100 national parks and other protected areas were established in Victoria alone. The declaration of the Grampians National Park, perhaps surprisingly, came late in the piece.
Early advocates
It was not until 1984 that the Grampians National Park was formed over the lands and ranges of Gariwerd under the National Parks (Amendment) Act, and at the time it became the largest national park in Victoria. Suggestions that parts of Gariwerd might become a national park had emerged much earlier. The story of those intervening decades has as much to do with local concerns and debates between conservation and economic utility as it does with the complicated and messy path Victoria took towards establishing a centralised national parks system. Those who opposed a national park did so for reasons that seemed to make sense at the time: for many locals, it appeared that the Forests Commission, which controlled the 216 000 ha of the Grampians State Forest, and the Lands Department, which was responsible for Crown Land and grazing areas, were doing their job well. It even appeared that a national park might leave Gariwerd in a worse state. Until well into the twentieth century, there were no legislative mechanisms that directed funding or resources towards national parks, many of which were in a poor condition by the 1950s, whereas the Forests Commission had ample resources and experience in controlling bushfires and managing fire risks. Despite this, it was the very idea of a national park for Gariwerd – and a better resourced national parks system – that motivated Victorian naturalists, conservationists and environmentalists throughout the twentieth century.
In 1908, one writer made a trip through Victoria Valley between the Serra and Victoria Ranges. ‘As I drove down this wonderful and beautiful valley it occurred to me that, in a surprisingly large number of respects, it offered a splendid opportunity for the formation of a second national park.’ Reflecting on the friction between nature conservation and agricultural progress at the time, the writer continues: ‘With the keen demand for land that exists now, and is likely to continue, it would not be advisable to suggest the locking up of any land that is suitable for settlement. But that part of the valley which is admirably situated for a national park is almost, if not quite, valueless for settlement.’7
After a large proportion of the area had become a State Forest in 1907, sanctuary was declared over most of the Grampians by 1914. From the late 1930s, public calls for the creation of a park increased in frequency and prominence until, in 1951, a State Development Committee on National Parks recommended the creation of a Grampians national park. Some 30 years later, in 1981, the Land Conservation Council put forward its first plans for a park, and finally, in 1984, the area was officially proclaimed and protected as the Grampians National Park.8
The reasons for the eventual, but late, emergence of the Grampians National Park were hinted at when the correspondent for the Argus newspaper suggested in 1908 that ‘this great area of virgin forest, which, flanked on either side by the towering, rugged mountains, possesses a wild and entrancing beauty peculiarly its own, could at one and the same time be made into a great national timber reserve and a fine park.’9 Only one year earlier, on the other hand, proposals had been made for closer settlement and the subdivision of parts of Gariwerd. ‘Included in the large areas locked up against settlement as state forests in Victoria is what is known as the Grampians State Forest. This comprises an area of from 200,000 to 300,000 acres … and much of it, particularly on the south side in the Victoria Valley, affords excellent scope for settlement,’ reported The Argus in Melbourne. ‘Since the early eighties the settlers who have pushed to the north of the Victoria Valley have been unsuccessfully endeavouring to have the area thrown open,’ it said.10 This tension, between utilising and protecting the natural resources of Gariwerd, has been but one of many influences on the history of this landscape.
Another Melbourne writer pushed for a Gariwerd national park a few years later in 1912. ‘Every year sees an increasing number of tourists visiting the valley, and the neighbouring ranges; and it is the unanimous opinion of the visitors that this section should be permanently reserved and made into a national park,’ began the anonymous article in The Argus. Reflecting the belief that national parks were for the people, the writer noted that ‘We have one national park now, on Wilson’s Promontory, but it is too inaccessible for most of the country. Also, it has little of the magnificent scenery that is a feature of the Grampians.’ The first argument put forward in favour of establishing a national park had to do with the relative utility of the region. ‘The land is extremely poor, and is covered with scrub and large trees. It is also all about 20 miles or more distant from a railway; and the ranges make it almost impossible to run a line through the country,’ observed the writer, who also noted that ‘the forest reserve is let, in huge areas, to neighbouring sheep farmers, at a trifling rental, and is so poor that only strong wethers can safely be turned on it.’ Timber industries and forestry need not cease operations, while apiculture could be continued ‘without interfering with the value of the district as a national park; and the bee farmers themselves, so far as I have met them, favour the idea.’ But, there was ‘another most important aspect of the question’: the conservation of wildlife. ‘In every country which is being settled the wild animals and birds inevitably become scarcer, until ultimately many species become extinct … This same extermination will take place in Victoria.’ The second argument in favour of a national park in 1912 was, therefore, that it might serve to protect a variety of Australian species:
the Victoria Valley and the ranges around it form an ideal sanctuary for both birds and animals … At the present time the valley is a zoologists paradise. Such rather uncommon animals as the echidna, or native porcupine, are fairly common. Birds are in abundance. The great funereal cockatoo flaps lazily across your path all through the valley. Hundreds of gorgeous crimson lories scream from tree to tree. The white-shouldered caterpillar-eater, the red-capped robin, the home wren, the Gang-Gang cockatoo are always to be seen … To botanists also the valley is a field of joy and wonder. It has a marvellous wealth of wild flowers, and its heath is a show in itself.
Thus, the writer implored, ‘will not the authorities, before it is too late, set it aside as a recreation ground for the teeming millions of Victoria yet unborn. It can be done now with the stroke of the pen.’ Presciently, it concluded, ‘if it be left undone now, it will not be long before there will be vested interests to consider, and that will be the end of it.’11 Less than a month later, in July 1912, the nearby Stawell council made an application ‘to have the Grampians declared a national park in similarity to the area at Wilson’s Promontory’, and requested that the local Horsham government join Stawell to meet with the Minister for Lands. The motivation, noted one report, was ‘to protect the fast-diminishing game of the country.’12 Nothing came from these early proposals.
In the meantime, the cause for national parks had progressed elsewhere in the state. Desire for the preservation of ‘unspoilt’ areas and the protection of plants and animals led to the creation of numerous parks and reserves in Victoria during the early twentieth century. In 1905, a permanent reservation of 30 400 ha was established at Wilson’s Promontory. Three years later, the 11 048 ha Mount Buffalo National Park was created. Parks and temporary reservations were soon established at Tarra Valley, Wyperfeld National Park, Mallacoota Inlet, and Wingan Inlet. In 1908 in Melbourne, a Vigilance Committee – which would become the Town Planning and National Parks Association – was appointed and tasked with the oversight of national parks that already existed in the state. They would also advocate, along with groups such as the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, for more reservations to protect the state’s native flora and fauna and encourage tourism. Managed under the Lands Act, these were areas deemed unsuitable for other purposes, such as agriculture or mining; the National Parks Association had the aim of ‘reserving large samples of land of little commercial value as national parks’. Under the Lands Act, committees of management consisting of mostly unpaid volunteers were established at the local level to manage new parks; they had no funds, and no money was allocated to the Lands Department to assist with the maintenance of parks. Local managers, somewhat paradoxically, turned to forestry and grazing to raise funds for their task. Despite this, parks continued to spread in the 1920s, including the Alfred and Lind national parks in 1925, Sperm Whale Head National Park in 1927, and Kinglake in 1928.
In late 1937, the president of the Field Naturalists Club branch in Ararat, George Gossip, with the assistance of a local politician, Alex McDonald, put forward another proposal to the Ararat Shire Council for Gariwerd to be reserved as a national park. Gossip said that ‘there is no question that this great area with three distinct ranges … and with its unique rock formations and wonderful wild flower gardens should be preserved.’ Apart from ‘the interests of naturalists and tourists,’ he said, ‘there is the consideration that these mountains are the water catchment that serves a very large part of Victoria and it is only while preserved in their natural condition that they will continue to supply water.’ Gossip noted that the clearance ‘of even small areas during the tobacco boom played havoc with creeks. One favourite fishing spot of mine … is now silted up and dry.’13
At a meeting of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria shortly after the council’s proposal, one member, A. S. Kenyon, suggested it ‘will be one of the finest reservations in the world’. A Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, gave over space to the president of the Club, Alec Chisholm, to argue for the ‘national advantages’ of the proposal, which would create a ‘park reserved to the people for all time’. Chisholm described Gossip’s proposal as a ‘noble objective surely, and one which does honour to its sponsors, the president and members of the Ararat Shire Council. Councillors in general were not always as farsighted and nationally minded as this.’ In addition to the natural values Gossip had highlighted, Chisholm drew attention to the Indigenous heritage of the ranges. ‘The Grampians have suffered considerably at the hands of the vandals who delight in carving their names on ancient rocks or trees. There are some splendid relics of aboriginal art in caves of the Grampians and in many instances these have been defaced by fatuous scribbling or by the carving of inconsequential names on or near the drawings … The proclamation of the area as a National Park should go far towards checking destruction and desecration of the kind.’ The national park would be ‘one of the finest reservations in Australia,’ he said, arguing that ‘the historic range is unique in its beauty and in its natural history appeal by reason of which its preservation for posterity becomes a national obligation. The residents of Ararat Shire and the towns in the area will honour themselves and the State in achieving this objective.’14
Nevertheless, The Horsham Times attempted to dampen enthusiasm for the national park. ‘As practically the whole of the Grampians Ranges is proclaimed as State forest,’ it said, ‘it is unlikely any action will be taken to constitute the territory as a national park.’ The newspaper suggested that, for all intents and purposes, ‘its reservation as State forest establishes it as a national park. There is right of public access, and supervision is exercised by permanently employed forest officers, whereas responsibility for national parks rests ordinarily with a ranger, controlled by a committee of management, which carries out an annual inspection.’ Evidently unconvinced by the proposal, the Times informed readers that ‘The Lands Department has no power to declare national parks in forest areas. National park land may not be alienated,’ but land was needed in Gariwerd, it argued, for ‘the construction of hotels, boarding houses and shops, and for the production of vegetables and other commodities for tourists.’15
By May 1938, the Stawell Borough Council and Stawell Shire Council stood in opposition on the matter of a national park. The latter did not support the proposal, but a councillor of the former said ‘all that was going to happen was this: The Grampians would be left as they are with the exception of two small bits in the vicinity of the Borough huts. Neither the Stawell Shire nor Borough Councils would be affected.’ Nevertheless, The Horsham Times reported many locals wondering ‘Why lock up the Grampians as far as settlement is concerned?’ Members of the Victorian branch of the Australian Forests League wrote to The Age to declare their support, on the other hand: ‘The fate of the Grampians forest is a matter too important to be decided in parochial interests or even in the interests of the municipality alone,’ the letter argued. ‘Visitors from the British Isles, America, New Zealand, Tasmania and other countries know of the existence of the town of Stawell only though the grandeur of the scenery nearby, and the variety and beauty of the flora of the Grampians wonderland.’ In response to the argument that a national park ‘would prevent settlement in Hall’s Gap and would result in less rates’, the Forests League said that this ‘mercenary plea’ was unconvincing. ‘In the years to come Stawell will benefit more from the visit of tourists than … by the rates on small areas filched from the forest reserve.’ Ultimately, although the Forests League supported the national park, there were conditions: ‘Provided the forestry control of the whole of the present permanent forest is safeguarded the league is in favour of the proposed proclamation.’16
Again these calls for a national park went unheeded, with opponents successfully arguing that the state forest reserve acted as a de facto national park, and that the Forests Commission would be better resourced with staff and funding to manage the area. During this time, the Council for the Preservation of National Monuments had been formed at a meeting of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria in 1936 ‘with the object of securing legislation for the preservation of national monuments including flora and fauna, places of scenic or historic value, and those of zoological worth’.17 In 1940, signalling growing concern for health of the state’s land and water supplies, the Soil Conservation Board was established.18 Between 1941 and 1943, the Bulga National Park was established, and the former Dandenong Police Paddocks became the Dandenong National Park. By 1944, an early movement to restore and protect the state’s environment – the Save The Forests campaign – had emerged. These developments signalled a growing sentiment in Victoria in favour of national parks.
Towards a National Parks Authority
In 1948, the Field Naturalists Club and the National Parks Association tasked a committee with investigating the state of Victoria’s national parks. Its report contained ‘astonishing and often depressing information’, and in subsequent months a series of conferences were held at which it was agreed that a permanent National Parks Authority should be formed that would be responsible for all Victorian national parks and would have the power to create new parks. While the government of the day made moves to establish such a body, via the Tourist and National Parks Development Bill, their removal at the 1952 election brought a halt to the plan.
In the meantime, the Minister of Agriculture, G. C. Moss, had, in 1951, asked the State Development Committee to explore the possibility of a national park for Gariwerd ‘as a means of preventing any more land in the area going into private interests’. A meeting in Horsham heard that, ‘as a national park, there would be no interference with the catchment area, and the land would be put under the one control … [a national park] would mean the development of access roads and the ultimate opening up of the Grampians.’19 In absence of a national parks authority, the State Development Committee could do little more than investigate the merits of the proposal; previously, in 1950, the Lands Department had simply argued ‘that it did not see any necessity for the reservation of part of the Grampians as a native sanctuary’ because, evidently, the ‘present system of management was satisfactory’.20 The committee would eventually recommend ‘the creation of [a national parks authority] and endorsed a proposal that the Grampians should be included in any scheme for the extension’ of the national parks system. Its report suggested that the boundaries of the national park ‘should include the Siera [sic] Ranges as an Eastern Boundary, with the Southern extremity in the vicinity of Mount Sturgeon, with Mount William as an easterly outpost and Mount Difficult as a northern point. To the west the Victoria Range, with Mount Thackeray, might form the western boundary … Reservation as a National Park need not necessarily restrict the timber industry which is soundly controlled by the Forest Commission.’21
As noted, the 1952 state election intervened, and the legislation that might have established a national parks authority was never passed. In any case, there was a great deal of local opposition. When the National Parks Development Bill was introduced, protests were heard at a meeting in Horsham. It was claimed that ‘the Stawell timber industry, which employed about 200 men, would suffer under the restrictions of a national park.’ D. C. D’Alton said the people of Halls Gap were ‘vitally interested … We do not want a national park at the old terms.’ Others expressed concern over the risk of bushfires: ‘With the withdrawal of the timber industry the Forestry Commission would no longer occupy the area. This would mean that another fire authority would have to be created … the people living in the Grampians were afraid the new authority might not prove to be as highly organised as the fire fighting units of the Forestry Commission.’22
Frustrated with the lack of progress towards a central national parks body, the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) was formed at the end of 1953 with the objective of the ‘preservation of national parks and the fostering of public interest in them … The association would serve as a link between the public and the administration in matters concerning national parks, and, when necessary, advise the appropriate authorities’.23 Elsewhere, demands for a national park at Gariwerd continued. At a meeting in Stawell, the Grampians Tourist Association called on the state government in April 1954 to ‘proclaim the Grampians mountains as a national park’ with the condition that ‘private rights were safeguarded’.24 The honorary secretary of the new VNPA, J. Ros Garnet, agreed, and wrote in June 1954 that ‘It is perhaps 40 years since the suggestion was first made that the Grampians should be declared a National Park. During the intervening years the people of Victoria have become increasingly aware that here, in the Grampians, is something remarkably spectacular – massifs of sandstones carved into grotesque shapes and effigies, faulted and eroded to startling chasms and precipices yet, in season, clothed in a harlequin mantle of wildflowers of a kind rarely seen elsewhere in such variety and profusion.’ Garnet continued to make the case for a national park in the pages of The Horsham Times:
Springtime in the Grampians is a memory of sheer delight to countless thousands who have visited the area. People from overseas as well as tourists, naturalists, bushwalkers, hikers and sightseers from all parts of our own country have visited the ranges and yet, it comes as a surprise to them to learn that they are not reserved as a National Park – and the reason why? Just this. The Grampians are something more than a tourist resort … they have dominated the economic development of the surrounding country. Gold, building stone, apples, tobacco and timber have each contributed their share to the wealth of the district.
Garnet also noted that Gariwerd was ‘a water catchment for a vast tract of country and, on these streams depends the livelihood of thousands of our people.’ The State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, the Public Works Department, the Lands Department and the Forests Commission ‘all share in the control of the region, each concerning itself only with its own particular responsibilities. Unfortunately, none is charged with the task of wildlife management, and, to only a limited extent, its preservation.’25 To centralise management of Gariwerd as a national park, a state national parks body first had to exist. As Garnet said, ‘A National Parks Authority is a must if our nature reserves are to serve properly their intended purpose. It is a must if the Grampians is to be a national park.’26
The VNPA’s president, Crosbie Morrison, made clear in the lead-up to the 1955 state election that the creation of such an authority was their immediate goal. Morrison protested that ‘Twice now, with different administrations, a National Parks Bill has reached the stage of being printed, only to be killed by a political crisis. Third time could be lucky – and that could be a tip for candidates.’ Despite the popularity of parks and reserves with the Victorian public, he said, they were poorly resourced and underfunded: ‘Victoria has no legislation to govern national parks as a whole, and no provision for financing them.’ The parks that did not attract significant parking and camping fees to fund maintenance and upkeep ‘are in a sorry plight … This lunatic condition cannot be set right without an efficient National Parks Authority for the whole State, with funds at its disposal for conservation as well as for tourist services. What will the next Parliament do, and how quickly?’27
The leader of the Liberal Party, Henry Bolte, promised to introduce legislation for a National Parks Authority, and when the Liberal–Country Party coalition won the election, the commitment was honoured and a National Parks Bill was introduced by May 1956. Both Labor and the Country Party attacked the Bill, particularly with its focus on the protection of flora and fauna. Tom Mitchell, the Country Party member for Benambra, said that national parks of Victoria ‘should not be allowed to fall into the hands of hoodoos … a good hardheaded businessman and not a bug hunter is needed to control our national parks. They are national assets and should be maintained in order that they may produce money.’28 Labor claimed that the proposed National Parks Advisory Council would become a ‘subsidiary to a collection of idealists and faddists’.29 Ceding to these criticisms, the government amended the Bill to ensure the National Parks Authority would be constituted by the heads of other departments and agencies. The Victorian National Parks Act came into effect in October 1956.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Victoria’s national parks system expanded, and with it calls for a Gariwerd national park. By 1971, under the National Parks Authority, the number of national parks increased from 13 to 23. The number of visitors to Victoria’s national parks rose from around 189 000 in 1957–58 to over half a million in 1970–71. Funding for works and services increased dramatically, revealing a growing appreciation for national parks in political and government ranks. In 1957, there were just four full-time park rangers employed in the state, and two part-time rangers; by 1971, there were 23 full-time and six part-time park rangers. Employment of administrative and research staff grew also, including experts in forestry, agricultural scientists and engineers. The National Parks Authority was replaced with the National Parks Service in 1971. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Forests Commission – which controlled Gariwerd – had come to be seen as almost a rival organisation. It too controlled large expanses of the outdoors that were used for recreation, and in the case of Gariwerd, its presence was generally welcome. Noting the competing demands of tourism, industry and conservation, among other interests, in 1971 the Land Conservation Council was established ‘to cope with the conflicting demands of different interest groups through consensus and discussion rather than through autocratic decree’.30 From its establishment until 1985, the Land Conservation Council undertook studies of all non-urban public land in Victoria across 17 study areas, developed a land classifications system, and made some 4000 recommendations for land management. Most of them were accepted, including its recommendation in 1982 for a Grampians National Park.
The Grampians National Park, 1984
When the Land Conservation Council released its final recommendations for the south-west of Victoria, it recognised and supported a variety of existing and intended land uses. Conservation was prioritised over extractive and exploitative activities such as grazing and timber harvesting. As the National Parks Act had laid out, national parks were supposed to be ‘controlled and managed in a manner that will preserve and protect the park in its natural condition for the use, enjoyment and education of the public.’ The Council recommended that a 166 000 ha area containing the main ranges of Gariwerd should be made a national park, and that the western Black Range, which ‘complements the important natural and archaeological features of the Grampians’, be a state park. The remainder of the land in the area, some 33 600 ha, would remain as state forest, as it ‘contains commercial quality durable-species forests’.
While the Gariwerd proposals were the centrepiece of the final report, the Council also recommended the creation of additional state and regional parks, such as at Mount Arapiles, Mount Napier and Mount Eccles, as well as wildlife, flora, streamside, lake, scenic and historic reserves. Of Gariwerd, the Council noted that the mountains formed ‘a distinctive and notable landscape’ and that the ‘large area of forested land, the combination of unusual geological features, rugged topography, and scenic grandeur, and the rich variety of native flora and wildlife habitat give this land mass national conservation significance … the ranges attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from Victoria and interstate each year.’ The Council acknowledged that ‘a large number of people rely on the water supplied from the Grampians for domestic, stock, and irrigation purposes’, and that a small ‘but locally important timber industry is supplied from the native forests and softwood plantations.’ The ranges were ‘used extensively by the beekeeping industry, and the woodlands to the west provide grazing for stock. Building stone is extracted from the Heatherlie quarry, and several gravel pits throughout the Grampians supply roadmaking material.’
Ultimately, the Council argued that ‘The Grampians therefore have many uses and values and the Land Conservation Council considers that these uses should continue to be provided for, while still protecting and recognising the conservation significance of the area.’ It recommended that the 166 000 ha area of land over the ranges be used to: ‘(a) provide opportunities for recreation and education associated with the enjoyment and understanding of natural environments, (b) conserve and protect natural ecosystems, (c) supply water and protect catchments’, and ‘(d) protect sites of geological, archaeological, and historical significance’. Dispersed camping would be allowed outside domestic water supply catchments, and horse-riding would be permitted too. The existing road network should be maintained, it said, with a particular emphasis on roads providing access to popular tourism sites in the mountains.
An initial suggestion was that timber harvesting would continue to be permitted in significant areas within the ranges and that a review should be conducted of the practice 15 years after the area’s inclusion as a national park. Instead, an amendment made the final recommendation that timber harvesting in areas of mixed forest would cease within three years, while the remainder of harvest in durable timbers would end after 10 years. Furthermore, the Council suggested that logging should be controlled by the Forests Commission, but that it ‘should ensure the protection of important scenic, recreational, and conservation values that may be identified within or adjacent to these zones’. The protection of the water catchment was paramount: ‘All of these [timber-production] zones are situated within proclaimed water supply catchments and contain areas of land that are highly susceptible to soil degradation and loss, capable of endangering water supply values. Appropriate prescriptions will be developed and applied in the planning and management of timber-harvesting operations within these zones to ensure that the quality, quantity, and regularity of water supply are adequately protected.’ The proposed state forest of 33 600 ha focused primarily on the Woohlpooer–Black Range region in the west, where extensive areas of river red gum and gum–box eucalypt would continue to be licensed for grazing. The productivity of two smaller softwood plantations, one north of Halls Gap and a larger at Billywing, could be increased, but the Council did not otherwise recommend the increase of softwood plantations due to ‘conflicts with other land uses and values’. Within the state forest, the remnant woodlands extending west from Victoria Range to the Black Range, noted the Council, ‘greatly increase the area and diversity of habitats available for the conservation of fauna, provide habitat for some 100 species of vertebrate animals, and are valuable honey producing areas’, and should be protected.
Of other existing industries, apiculture could continue unchanged. At the time of the Council’s recommendations, there were also some 24 grazing licences held within the boundaries of the proposed national park, but mostly for grazing on public land adjoining the park. According to the recommendations, grazing should ‘be permitted only on such areas and at such times as the managing authorities consider necessary for management purposes’. Grazing was phased out by 1987. Building stone from the Heatherlie quarry could continue to be extracted and surrounding historic relics of the industry should be protected; gravel extraction could continue in some places, with the approval of the National Parks Service.31
In the end, the state government agreed with the Land Conservation Council’s recommendations. The Grampians National Park was declared on 1 July 1984 and became the largest national park in Victoria. Although the decision was welcomed by members of the VNPA and other conservation groups, the national park continued to cause concern within local communities. Many of their worries had been voiced already throughout the preceding decades. Many believed, still, that the National Parks Service would be unable to manage the land, and in particular the bushfire risks, as well as the Forests Commission had – in fact, both bodies now existed within the same department, the Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands, and staff from the Forests Commission had been moved to the National Parks Service. Some were concerned that the national park would mean, for them, high charges and diminished access, while the loss of grazing land and timber also caused opposition and protest. In the early days of the national park, new entrance signs were vandalised and park rangers were accosted, such was the animosity with which the new national park was met by some in the local communities.
In the wake of the national park decision, the National Parks Service sought to quell community fears about the transfer from the Forests Commission. It produced an inventory of park resources and uses with considerable public consultation and input, and made use of over 300 public submissions to its Draft Management Plan in the preparation of its 1985 final Plan of Management. A Local Advisory Committee was formed with the participation of local representatives from tourism, fishing, education, bushwalking, natural history groups and business.32 Between 1998 and 2003, the management plan had evolved to its current form, aiming to emphasise different park values and uses:
Grampians National Park (167 219 ha) is the fourth largest national park in Victoria. It protects a diverse range of ecosystems, outstanding geological formations, spectacular landscapes and a rich Indigenous and post-settlement cultural heritage. Importantly, approximately 74% of the park is designated as a Special Water Supply Catchment Area. Almost one third of the State’s indigenous flora is found in the park, which is renowned for its spectacular spring wildflower displays. The park is of major importance for 167 species of threatened flora and fauna, of which 24 are endemic to the park. The park is of major importance for the Heath Mouse.
Gariwerd’s Indigenous history and heritage was recognised, too: ‘The park contains highly significant Aboriginal cultural sites, including the largest concentration of rock art sites in the State. … Traditional names for rock art sites open to the public have been adopted and are in current use. Dual names have been adopted for some other features in the park.’33 This suggests that the matter was settled – that Gariwerd’s Indigenous pasts had been incorporated into its present status as a national park. From the declaration of the Grampians National Park onward, the reality was rather different.
Endnotes
1.Calder J (1987) The Grampians: A Noble Range. Victorian National Parks Association, Melbourne.
2.Harper M, White R (2012) How national were the first national parks? Comparative perspectives from the British settler societies. In Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historical Perspective. (Eds B Gissibl, S Höhler and P Kupper) pp. 50–67. Berghahn Books, New York.
3.Banivanua-Mar T (2009) Carving wilderness: Queensland’s national parks and the unsettling of emptied lands, 1890–1901. In Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity. (Eds P Edmonds and T Banivanua-Mar) pp. 73–94. Palgrave, London.
4.Matthews F (1908) in Harper and White (2012), p. 53.
5.‘National parks’ (1908) The Argus, 8 August, p. 6.
6.‘National parks’ (1908).
7.‘National parks’ (1908).
8.Calder (1987).
9.‘National parks’ (1908).
10.‘Closer settlement’ (1907) The Argus, 25 January, p. 8.
11.‘A national park’ (1912) The Argus, 29 June, p. 9.
12.‘National park proposed’ (1912) The Horsham Times, 23 July, p. 5.
13.‘The Grampians as a national park’ (1937) The Argus, 1 December, p. 12.
14.‘The Grampians as a national park’ (1937).
15.‘National park unlikely at Grampians’ (1937) The Horsham Times, 3 December, p. 4.
16.‘Grampians as national park’ (1938) The Horsham Times, 17 May, p. 8.
17.‘Council of preservation formed’ (1936) The Age, 13 August, p. 12.
18.‘Soil erosion problem’ (1940) The Age, 14 November, p. 8.
19.‘Move for park in Grampians’ (1951) The Horsham Times, 25 May, p. 1.
20.‘Councillor says he will act on national park’ (1951) The Horsham Times, 17 July, p. 1.
21.‘Spectacular Grampians an ideal national park’ (1954) The Horsham Times, 9 June, p. 2.
22.‘National park plan’ (1953) The Horsham Times, 2 December, p. 1.
23.‘National parks body formed’ (1952) The Age, 27 November, p. 3.
24.‘Tourist body says make Grampians a national park’ (1954) The Horsham Times, 28 April, p. 1.
25.‘Spectacular Grampians an ideal national park’ (1954) The Horsham Times, 9 June, p. 2.
26.‘Spectacular Grampians an ideal national park’ (1954).
27.‘What is YOUR election policy?’ (1955) The Argus, 29 April, p. 6.
28.Victorian Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 12 September 1956, p. 3976.
29.Victorian Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 28 August 1956, p. 3754.
30.Anderson E (2000) Victoria’s National Parks: A Centenary History. Parks Victoria and State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, pp. 125–126.
31.Land Conservation Council (1982) South-western area district 2: Final recommendations. Victorian Environmental Assessment Council: Previous Investigations Reports. Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Melbourne, <http://www.veac.vic.gov.au/investigation/south-western-area-district-2-lcc-/reports>.
32.Calder (1987).
33.Parks Victoria (2003) Management Plan for Grampians National Park. Department of Sustainability and Environment, Melbourne, p. v.