Paving paradise? Freycinet’s giant car park plan comes under fire

Published: April 23, 2022

A battle royale is building over ambitious plans for the redevelopment of visitor infrastructure near Tasmania’s stunning – but increasingly busy – Freycinet National Park.

There is no dispute that the growing popularity of the park has put real pressure on infrastructure, but a government plan to build extensive new facilities is not going down well with everyone.

The Parks and Wildlife Service says the number of visitors to Freycinet National Park has increased from about 200,000 per year in the late 2000s to more than 300,000 by 2018.

Visitation increased 9% every year for five years before the pandemic and the growth is expected to continue, albeit at a slower rate.

Back in 2019, a 20-year master plan was unveiled with the intention of protecting the environmental attributes of the ecologically sensitive region ‘while ensuring it can continue to play an important part on the tourism industry’.

The centrepiece is to be the Freycinet Visitor Gateway which it is proposed will be built on a large site at the Coles Bay Public Reserve. It will come complete with information services, tourist operator ticketing, ‘small scale’ shops, as well as car parks and accommodation areas.

A spokesperson told the ABC that the government had deliberately identified a site to limit any further infrastructure within the national park.

Freycinet national park

An artist’s impression of the new car park area outside the national park. PIC: Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service / ABC)

“Unless further measures are taken to remove vehicles from the national park, future projections will exceed the carrying capacity of the park,” the spokesperson said. “The measures to create a new gateway outside of the national park for large vehicles and a bus transport are practical and responsible ways to reduce congestion and manage visitor numbers sustainably.”

However, opponents say the Gateway plans will establish facilities that allow for a doubling of visitor numbers in a park already widely acknowledged as being overloaded, and managed by an agency that is underfunded.

Sophie Underwood, Convenor from the Freycinet Action Network, said sections of Freycinet National Park were already struggling to handle the high number of visitors and building ‘a larger car park’ would only encourage more to come.

She wants the government to scrap the gateway and introduce some kind of registration system to limit the number of visitors.

“Doubling visitor numbers to over 620,000 each year is demonstrably unsustainable and building a car park that would pave one of Tasmania’s most important botanical sites is an extremely disappointing strategy,” she said. “We need better park and visitor management, not another massive car park that will just facilitate the problem and expand the impacts.”

Freycinet

An artist’s impression of the interior of the proposed visitor centre. PIC: Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service / ABC)

Jamie Kirkpatrick, Distinguished Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania warned that people do not visit national parks to see car parks.

“They visit them to experience nature and to feel that there is somewhere nature is allowed to survive,” he said. “It is a total abrogation of responsibility by the State Government and the Parks Service to even consider siting national park developments in a place scientifically well-known for its threatened species.”

The Government has said the detailed designs for the visitor gateway will be informed by assessments of ‘the natural, heritage and Aboriginal cultural values’ of the site, and will undergo an environmental impact assessment and public consultation process.

It will also fund a feasibility study into a new wastewater system to handle the boom in visitors.

  • Do you think this is a commonsense approach for coping with the expected growth in visitor numbers … or is it a sad case of paving paradise? Comment below.

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Travelling around Australia is an adventure with dirt under your feet, not a car park that looks like a city shopping centre car park, so sad

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