A massive new national park has been created in Queensland’s Cape York region.
The Wuthathi (Captain Billy Landing) National Park was formed following the handback of land deeds earlier this month to the Wuthathi People.
The handback includes around 4,300 hectares of Aboriginal freehold land and around 10,560 hectares of the newly dedicated national park. It covers a huge coastal area of Shelburne Bay south of Captain Billy Landing, as well as some inshore islands.
The new national park features beach access and camping areas at Captain Billy Landing, rainforest, cloud forest, woodlands, heathland and natural springs.
Cape York is a magnet for adventurous travellers. PIC: National Parks Service
National Parks says the Queensland Government has returned more than 4.23 million hectares of land to Cape York Traditional Owners since 2007.
Regional director, Rachel Small, said the Queensland Government was committed to growing our protected area and this handback will take us another step toward meeting our ambitious target of 1.8 million hectares during this term of government.
“The handback recognises the Wuthathi people commitment to jointly manage the Wuthathi (Captain Billy Landing) National Park (Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal Land) with my department,” she said. “This historic transfer expands Wuthathi’s opportunity to capitalise on the unique visitor experience offered by the Captain Billy Landing locality, which has been visited by thousands of people on their travels through Cape York Peninsula.”
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Watch the rorting of visitors begin. The beginning of the end for a visit to the Cape
Either rorting visitors or locking them out.
Been motor homing for more than 20 years. And our country is changing dramatically. For the worse. Yes more of our parks going private. Will cost more and names will eventually be change so we cannot pronounce them. How do you pronounce Wuthathi for example. Ayres Rock where we went a few years ago was very expensive, restricted to what you can do and see and we had trouble navigating in the park as we could not understand the road signs. They were written in a foreign language. And i will never use the new names. And will never go again. So many parks i will never go to again. Very disappointing and all our governments fault..
Ayers Rock ll … here we come!
The taxpayers are being shut out again…
Have been there and camped there. There already, over the yrs, been restrictions on camping. The old camping areas that where on the headland under the trees, where stoped from being used where the access track was bulldozed. So you now camp on a windswept exposed unattactive flat area right on the shoreline. Also the northern beach drive, that you used to be able to do, was effectively stoped when the northern track off the beach was bulldozed. We met the locals on the track in when we where coming out. They said that they had no plans to stop access to the camping area. Lets hope they adhere to that.