Council entices visitors to dangerous lookout
Visitors to Blue Mountains Council’s Echo Point Tourist Information Centre in Katoomba are being handed a flyer for Lincoln’s Rock. This is the notorious Flat Rock (renamed) situated on the escarpment edge of Kings Tableland overlooking the Jamison Valley.
This is an unprotected rock ledge site. It is zoned Council Community Land at 33 Little Switzerland Drive Wentworth Falls covering 73 square metres of rocky heathland atop a 235m cliff edge. Council has facilitated a narrow path easement from the street to the rock ledge.
It is dangerous because there is no safety fencing or barriers to protect people from the cliff edge. Here it is, and here is a commercial tour group with the irresponsible tour guide leading on and participating in a cliff edge drone selfie.
Commercial tour operators from Sydney regularly feature this as a Blue Mountains must see attraction
There is no dedicated parking or facilities at this location which is juxtaposed to residents on the edge of escarpment heath bushland. The only Council infrastructure at the site are bollards and wire fence back toward the road access approach, probably in response to irresponsible tourist bus drivers seeking to park their bus on the cliff edge for the convenience of their passengers so that no-one need get off the bus.
The plateau area also is susceptible to deadly forked lightning strikes during times of thunderstorm activity.
A local tour operator recently blasted the Blue Mountains Echo Point tourist office for handing out flyers to visit what it claims is ‘a dangerous, unprotected rock ledge’.
It is located within walking distance from 31 Little Switzerland Drive at Wentworth Falls.
‘The flyer is on the counter but I don’t think it is a responsible thing to do, Steve Ridd, owner of Katoomba-based Nature Trail, told Daily Mail Australia.
Yet this is Council’s flyer handed out free to visitors.
This flyer provided at Blue Mountains Echo Point tourist office which helps visitors find Lincoln Rock lookout.
Such promotion of a dangerous lookout to the general public would seem irresponsible and reckless. The majority of visitors to Lincoln Rock are not qualified and experienced rock-climbers, rather young people engaged in selfie hedonism at extreme risk to their safety. This place has a history of people falling off.
And Council has even promoted this lookout on Google Maps thus:
Such promotion of a dangerous lookout to the general public would seem irresponsible and reckless. The Council condoned flyer may also expose Council and the Information Centre staff to culpable liability, should a visitor using the flyer suffer injuries or worse at the highly risky unprotected Lincoln Rock.
The majority of visitors to Lincoln Rock are not qualified and experience rockclimbers, rather younger people engaging in selfie hedonism at extreme risk to their own personal safety.
There are plenty of fenced lookouts atop the Jamison Escarpment that provide spectacular views in safety for the general public. Most are very close to Echo Point for visitors to the Echo Point Visitors Centre. Indeed there is a giant lookout at Echo Point itself that has had millions spent on it to cater for mass tourism.
In 2003 Council undertook a $6 million overhaul to Echo Point, then had many more lookouts upgraded (Spooners Lookout, Prince of Wales Lookout, Reids Plateau lookouts, Duke and Duchess of York Lookout, Jamison Lookout Wentworth Falls Lookout and many similarly properly fenced others). In October 2020, Council completed a second upgrade to Echo Point costing millions for an amphitheatre that hardly anyone will use.
This is a safe fenced lookout, one of dozens overlooking the Jamison Valley
So who’s dumb idea was it to encourage visitors to travel by road more than ten kilometers away from the Echo Point Information Centre to a very dangerous lookout with a sad record of trips and injurious falls?
It is only annoying local residents and generating work for Police Rescue.
In 2020 an Edith Cowan University researcher asked 325 visitors to the Blue Mountains why they ventured off main tracks and found that selfies were a major reason. “They rationalised their own behaviour by following others,’ Dr Edmund Goh said..”If others can do it, everything should be alright. There is also an element of FOMO (fear of missing out).”
INSTAGRAM: Daredevil selfie hunters flock to jaw-dropping unfenced clifftop exposure
The so-called ‘lookout’ is every bit as dangerous as the now banned Wedding Cake Rock in Sydney’s Royal National Park. Yet visitors continue to ignore warnings and risk their lives as they climb out on to the rock surface. Thousands of selfie types and social media influencers are drawn to such exposure every year.
Photo-shopped or what?