Bushwalk Australia preaches to the converted
On 24th February, I registered with the bushwalking forum, Bushwalk Australia, and proceeded to scribe and submit my first post concerning the tragic deaths of two on a Wollongambe canyoning trip in the Blue Mountains National Park on 2nd January 2021 by some bushwalking club, as follows:
“Dear All,
Well, where is Blue Mountains Best Practice for Canyoning?
Blue Mountains deserves to lead Australia in such safety initiatives to learn from such tragedies, to mitigate risks and to set an example.
So when was the recce done pre-trip and if so why was this hazard not pre-identified and the risk assessed and mitigated, else the trip cancelled due to the syphon presenting an unmitigable and so unacceptable risk?
Outdoor recreation of course has inherent hazards and risks, but when a lilo trip is promoted as being “a lazy day floating and swimming” and then such a pre-existing hazard causes two deaths, then the organisation has a serious risk management problem.
Trip vigilance per se does not cut it. A novice participant in liloing cannot be expected to have the expert knowledge, risk awareness or skills of a qualified canyoner who holds years of experience and with due diligence of recent familiarity with the specific canyon route.
I have read the thread on this tragic topic. Outdoor fun is a noble ideal worth preserving wildness for wildness sake. Independent adventurers take risks and that is their right, but organised trips (club or commercial) presume expertise, trust and an expectation of a higher standard of duty of care by participants who sign up.
Life is precious, which is my main contention here, not excusing the loss of it by ‘circumstances’.
Flex”
Bushwalk Australia editor’s response:
Hi Flex
Today you made a first post on the bushwalk.com forum. We are keen to hear from a wide range of people in the bushwalking community.
After discussion with other moderators, I have decided to not publish your post because I don’t believe it is helping the conversation around a sensitive issue.
We know that some of our community members were on this trip and we know that some of the assumptions you have made about the case are not true or fair. As you know people in a position like this are not able to talk about the events until a formal investigation takes place. So by raising the suggestions of guilt without them able to explain the facts puts our whole community at risk.
We are keen for people to reflect and discuss this in a way without assuming blame or assuming that particular actions where or where not taken. We know there will be a coroners inquiry and we will discuss it more when we have all the facts and findings at hand. We know that this and other recent accidents have shaken many in the bushwalking community.
Some of the questions you raise are good questions that need to be explored. But when we are exploring these questions in a public community with the people involved, who can not speak about it, we need to do so with a significant degree of dignity, empathy and grace. I am not sure you would speak like this if you knew that the leader and people on the trip were able to hear you.
We are not sticking our head in the sand over this event and expect that we will learn a lot from it. You can see an article that one of our members wrote and published in our last magazine. http://emag.bushwalk.com/BWA202102.pdf
This was written with a lot of care and with a lot of consultation.
You are still very welcome to be part of the bushwalk.com community but encourage you to start in a way that helps build up the community and not making assumptions about people.
Matt 🙂
Mmm, so my first post was censored and deleted by the website owner Matt.
That was a nice welcome, not. Some people just refuse to accept criticism, even when it is constructive and dares to challenges the industry status quo. Some people are passively beholden to appeasing a dominating clique culture it may seem. May we mention the righteous bushwalking club fraternity in south eastern Australia – NSW, Victorian and Tasmania?
That emag link above he refers to, points to an article in online magazine Bushwalk Australia, Volume 45, February 2021, pp 44-46 written by Stephen L. entitled ‘Wollangambe Canyon Deaths’.
Well, the article may have been written with a lot of care and with a lot of consultation, but one questions how:
“In Buddhism belief Jennifer (one of the victims) will be reborn, so it’s comforting to think that she has not left us completely” ?
Stephen comments:
“On the forum, people have been great at avoiding speculation and blame. We don’t have all the information and never want to be in a position to cast judgement in such a horrific situation. Respectful, informed discussion while the event is still fresh in the memory is good. Facts rather than speculation are best. There will be a coronial enquiry.
Party members, family, friends and the bushwalking club have requested privacy.
We can and should always reflect on tragedies like this – to learn and become safer at our own pursuits. Tragic events like this make me take pause, thinking about when I got out of sticky situations due to luck more than good planning. It is always a good time to think about what we can do to make our trips safer.”
Yes, noble ideals.
So back to my article:
The issues raised are as follows:
- Where is Blue Mountains Best Practice for Canyoning?
- Blue Mountains deserves to learn from such tragedies, to mitigate risks and to set an example.
- When was the recce done pre-trip and if so why was this hazard not pre-identified and the risk assessed and mitigated, else the trip cancelled due to the syphon presenting an unmitigable and so unacceptable risk? (questions for the police and coroner)
- FACT: The UBMBC website promoted this trip “a lazy day floating and swimming”
- FACT: The UBMBC has now three deaths in three months – has it not therefore a serious risk management problem?
- A novice participant in liloing cannot be expected to have the expert knowledge, risk awareness or skills of a qualified canyoner who holds years of experience and with due diligence of recent familiarity with the specific canyon route.
- Organised trips (club or commercial) presume expertise, trust and an expectation of a higher standard of duty of care by participants who sign up.
- Life is precious, loss of life cannot be excused by ‘circumstances’ (i.e. bad luck).
My response to Matt:
As explained, this sad Wollangambe canyoning tragedy is not about me presuming fault or contributing blame or about me or me trying to promote my fledgling commercial tour business.
Rather it is a wake-up call to challenge the rules and the culture head on.
The families of the deceased do not have the state of mind nor the knowledge so I have just stepped in to rattle the cultural cage of the “she’ll be right mentality”.
Clearly outdoor safety protocols and governance are just not good enough in Club land and yet it is 2021? No one should die on a lilo trip promoted akin to Grade 1.
But outdoor deaths, injuries and near missed continue and in my view it’s because as an ‘industry or craft’ we are not collectively learning but content to assign wilderness risk and activity with participant acceptance.
This is my preceding analysis article FYI:
https://naturetrail.com.au/blog-post/culpably-reckless-canyoning-in-the-rain/
Yes the issue of this Wollangambe Canyon double death is sensitive, as it should be. Imagine is these two young women were our sisters? That is my starting point, not preserving any sense of some superior right by a club to go canyoning without due diligence. Outdoor bushwalking standards need to be improved. Safe canyoning demands a completely separate skill set and degree of practical training to bushwalking.
I appreciate your frank explanation about your connection with those on this fateful canyon trip. As explained, the coroner’s report may never be made public. It is a censorship tactic to shut down questioning. Send me a link to one that has been!
I look forward to contributing to of the bushwalk.com community without fear of favour.
Thank you for your link to http://emag.bushwalk.com/BWA202102.pdf
My quick feedback to this article:
“The club involved is also undertaking its own immediate review following the incident … they are not waiting for the formal investigation to look at the incident themselves. If there’s improvements to be made, then doing that quickly rather than waiting for a long, formal investigation, is clearly the better outcome.”
My feedback: Good, invite the public and go public.
“There will be a coronial enquiry.”
My feedback: Show me a coronial report that was made public for such an event? It is a furphy to deflect criticism until the event is forgotten.
“Tragic events like this make me take pause, thinking about when I got out of sticky situations due to luck more than good planning. It is always a good time to think about what we can do to make our trips safer.”
My feedback: Luck is a crap excuse. Motherhood statements of making trips safer with not follow up debriefings and risk re-evaluation with experts and rescue authorities – are hollow ‘get-me-out-of-jail’ excuses.
I am encouraged that you take a view of not sticking heads in sand and to learn a lot from it. But how? You may need to challenge preconceived ideas and entrenched bushwalking culture.
I am intending to continue publishing correspondence on the Nature Trail website to this effect. How can public openness and transparency analysing outdoor recreation tragedies not be a good thing?
Matt’s reply to me:
“Luck is a crap excuse.” — agree totally — that is the point we were making. When people get away with near misses due to luck there is an opportunity to learn and think about better ways of being safe — but usually, people don’t. Often falsely attributing what was luck to their own good skill. This to me is a big issue.
I strongly disagree with your take on coroners inquiries. The full reports are often not public so that families and people involved feel free to speak, similar to all other court hearings. The full details are not intended (nor should be) available for general reading or mass search. Some are made public (where there has been a lot of public interest) and all are available on request or summarised. I am not sure that the findings are often well targeted – this is mostly due to the lack of good expert witnesses. Almost all are conducted in open court sessions – they are far from a “furphy to deflect criticism until the event is forgotten”. I have attached recent bushwalking related deaths that were made public (linked from the coroners home page for months).
All Coroners reports are de-identified and stored in a national DB here. https://www.ncis.org.au/
I regularly review and download all summaries from this site — I have attached one such summary. These summaries are helpful and a good way of getting this information out there. There is room for improvement in the Coroners process — but these are a worthwhile process and far from designed to deflect criticism.
You asked “I am encouraged that you take a view of not sticking heads in sand and to learn a lot from it. But how? You may need to challenge preconceived ideas and entrenched bushwalking culture.”
Well, we will all tackle these in our own ways. My personal approach is to constantly push the peak body for bushwalking clubs to move towards and evidenced-based competency-based leadership assessment system for clubs. As I think this is unlikely, I am pushing on developing my own for the club I am responsible for. It has been two years in the making and hope to launch this year. Once launched then we demonstrate the value of best practice and encourage other clubs to join us. We hit a point at some stage where either clubs can no longer ignore how much better it is or where land managers enforce a system. If land managers enforce a system then we are in a good position to promote a community built and supported system – which can be improved over time. There is no single fix – this is about changing culture. As with work health and safety generally — if it was easy then there would be no serious injuries in the workplace. How much harder is this to do in a club setting in remote areas. It is a hearts and minds game just as much as it is a technical skills game..
I see two simple and different approaches – we can either stand around and tell people what they are doing wrong and what they should do, or we can build tools to make it easier for them to change behaviours in a positive way.
Your final question was “How can public openness and transparency analysing outdoor recreation tragedies not be a good thing?”
My answer is – when it is done in a way that does not bring people along with you and may trigger them to dig in harder to dangerous practices. Now, we can say that is their fault that they ignore the truth – and that is kind of true – but we still do not achieve what we set out to do. The goal here is to change behaviour to make these pursuits safer — to do that — we need to work with the people who can influence the behaviour in clubs. We need clear achievable changes that set up a framework for constant review and improvement. Part of that may well include a public hazards map – but there needs to be a cultural change within clubs to be open to such things and move away from the ‘but we have always done it this way…’ kind of thinking.
A simple example of this is the fact that the ‘whirlpool’ was known to some canyoners for about 12 months. During that time thousands of people blindly went past it, not aware and seemingly not effected. And for some reason this particular trip found tragedy. This is similar to above where people were lucky for so long – that it gets (falsely) chalked up as either ‘not that bad’ or ‘okay for the skilled’. But what was it about this particular trip that meant it ended in hardship? — well we don’t know yet, we can speculate but until there is a proper investigation including interviews of people who were there and experts in the field – we are just guessing.
The risk is that we implement the wrong learning – potentially making things more dangerous. I am a fan of an evidence-based approach, and when we can’t do the studies then we need a clear and stated rationale. EG would wearing a life jacket make things safer in this situation? What do these look like from the surface in different situations? Can you always see them when they are dangerous? — all these can be researched on site. But sadly I doubt they will be.
There are some clear risky unintended consequences with the hazard map idea — My view is that we need to improve the culture of learning then this idea of a hazard map will be much more broadly accepted and helpful. But there is no way NPWS will ever have the resources to respond to every community raised hazard on their land in any meaningful way – if they were required to then I am suspect every reported significant risk would lead to a closure except for the most popular routes.
Here I let Matt have the last word on this topic, since I have said my piece. At least we champion his right to free speech.
