Service NSW Grant Scam Extortion – an update since we’re back on deck
To all NSW grant recipients of the 2021 COVID-19 Micro Business Grant: We at Nature Trail have had to sidetrack...
Read MoreWelcome to ‘Mountains Drums‘.
This is Nature Trail’s field blog expressing views and insights about the goings on out in the Blue Mountains great outdoors from our local experiences over decades.
This blog is written mostly by one of our regular Mountains hikers, Flex, plus also our Tour Director Steve’s contribution articles from time to time, as he’s see fit to raise.
We also invite our guests to submit their own article to this blog. Just email us at:
steve[at]naturetrail.com.au
The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area covers over a million hectares of native vegetation and is arguably a bushwalker’s paradise of choice.
Yet over more than twenty five years of hiking the Blue Mountains, we continue to observe and read about those accessing the Blue Mountains great outdoors and those managing this World Heritage failing to learn from the wisdom of others before them – the requisite knowledge, skills, experience, preparation and attitude to appreciate and not harm or being harmed.
At Nature Trail we relish the great outdoors and value the Blue Mountains and its magnificent and expansive world heritage region.
But while we embrace the outdoors experience, fun and adventure, we are critical of those who foolishly risk life and limb and who recklessly encourage others to do likewise.
Whilst the Blue Mountains may still be of world heritage value, we do not see world’s best practice nor leadership evolving in outdoor recreation nor in custodial management.
Hardly a week passes without reports of helicopter rescues of injured hikers, canyoners and rockclimbers, of lost hikers, benighted hikers, missing hikers and of deaths by those setting out ignorant or just poorly prepared.
We constantly read reports by locals of the threats of invasive tourism, ugly mass tourism, the dominance of a tourism oligopoly, of poor track conditions and neglected signage, of the underfunded and understaffed National Parks and Wildlife Service.
We observe the disconnect between government authorities delegated with custodial responsibility for protecting and managing the natural values of The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, and with tourism providers and consumers.
More recently we’ve observed multiple landslips left neglected for months and years, that then shut down many hiking tracks (as well as critical road and rail access). Government repeatedly allows wildfires to burn, in 2019 left to incinerate 80% of the world heritage area and other ‘National Parks’ so-called throughout New South Wales. Governmental abandonment of its national quarantine responsibilities allowed an imported China Virus Pandemic shut down Blue Mountains tourism and visitation completely for two years (2020-2021).
Each tragic instance/incident is reported in isolation, but as if some freak event, then it’s soon forgotten by the media. No lessons are learned by authorities responsible, no improvements are applied to safety standards or education to visitors/users. So inevitably, similar tragic instances/incidents repeat time and time again.
One purpose of this Mountains Drums blog serves is to share local knowledge and goings on about the Blue Mountains region’s great outdoors to all. Also, it is to highlight management problems, many chronic; and to question why the governmental custodians and managers of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, fail to listen, learn and deliver world best practice leadership.
Our hiking blogger Flex does not hold back. This ‘Mountains Drums‘ blog is intended to be a wake up call to the Blue Mountains community to lift its game and to actively challenge government responsible.
To all NSW grant recipients of the 2021 COVID-19 Micro Business Grant: We at Nature Trail have had to sidetrack...
Read MoreNearly two years after NSW Liberal-coalition Government's 2021 COVID-19 Micro Business Grant (the Grant) offered and paid to thousands of...
Read MoreBased on recent feedback received from a number of grant recipient business owners contacting us uncertain with what to do...
Read MoreThis news is to all those grant recipients starting to have received debt collection invoices since July 2024, generated by...
Read MoreDuring 2023, as Service NSW CEO Greg Wells was driving his ring-in debt collection scheme within his secret internal 'Business...
Read MoreAnother NSW small business owner victim has come forward to share their experience of the awful financially threatening intimidation by...
Read MoreWith the author's permission, below we reproduce the following letter of complaint by a NSW small business owner (one of...
Read MoreService NSW Business Bureau under Executive Director Cassandra Gibbens and Service NSW CEO Greg Wells continue to behave unconscionably towards...
Read MoreNow here's some recent good news for small business owners still being hounded senseless by dodgy Service NSW's concocted fake...
Read MoreStatement of Outcomes sought by Approved Grant Applicants (victims) of Service NSW 'audit' (scam) Dated : 21st July 2024 *...
Read More
[This webpage last updated 3rd October 2022]