• Premium safari-style accommodation and nocturnal wildlife experiences at Alice Springs Desert Park.
• Boutique heritage accommodation, leveraging the Barkly’s mining, military, and dark sky and astronomy offerings, based at the iconic Tennant Creek Telegraph Station.

The Minister for Parks and Wildlife, Marie-Clare Boothby, said the Territory’s parks were iconic public assets with enormous untapped tourism potential.

She said the Government was ‘absolutely committed to upgrading and unlocking Territory parks’.

“While NT parks already attract over three million visits a year, we know there’s more potential,” she said. “We want to turn those day trips into overnight trips, and create one-of-a-kind experiences for visitors to see more, stay longer, and spend more in our regions.”

And Ms Boothby said she thought allowing private operations was best way to achieve that goal.

“We’re inviting investors and operators to put their ideas forward,” she said. “Let’s unlock the opportunities in our parks and our regions, and show the world that the Territory is the best place to live, work, visit, and invest.”

However, the plans have certainly not met with universal approval.

Gold Coast-based ecotourism professor, Sonya Underdahl, told the ABC that growing private investment in Australian national parks had led to ‘a large concern within the academic journals of a land grab’.

“This is basically the enablement and support to allow public land, public money and public marketing to build a premium market that only one private operator inside the park is positioned to capture,” she said. “Instead of upgrading the communities and the facilities which are nearby, what they’re doing is they’re putting it in a park, and unfortunately they’re creating a monopoly by one private operator.”

Many grey nomads have watched with some concern as private operators have slowly become more of a presence in national parks, with plenty of them expressing concern that it would change the nature of the whole ‘wilderness’ experience.

Last September, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) began inviting  Expressions of Interest submissions from qualified businesses to provide supported camping services in some of the state’s national parks and reserves.

It said camping support services could include tent or caravan hire and/or setup, equipment and bedding hire, as well as optional food and other related offerings.

The idea was pretty much universally condemned by grey nomad correspondents.

Peter was one of them.

“Campgrounds are getting overcrowded as it is without businesses making money, reducing spots available, and introducing people with no experience,” he said. “It’s a big no from me.”

And another writer warned it was ‘the start of the commercialisation of nature’.

“Weren’t national parks designed to be areas of human minimal impact?” he asked, “If you are a human who cannot go it alone with preplanning, organisation and bring in and out your own equipment/supplies, then no this is not a good idea for the natural environment or for other ‘real’ campers.”

• Have you noticed more private ventures in the national parks you have visited recently? Do you think this is a bad trend? Comment below.

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