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VCC and ACAV, together on the sand??? 21-Sep-2019 At 4:38:20 PM onsight

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On 21-Sep-2019 dave_s wrote:
>On 19-Sep-2019 Crepuscular wrote:
>>As far as I recall, when all the access stuff blew up in the media and
>climbers were being portrayed as environmental vandals the VCC president
>was completely MIA.
>
>On 20-Sep-2019 dalai wrote:
>>where was the VCC president when the bans blindsided the climbing community?
>
>The notion that the VCC was absent during these incidents is absolute
>fiction. Here's what actually happened.
>
>04/04/19: Parks add the infamous "hole in rock art" photo to their website.
>05/04/19: CliffCare sends a letter to parks stating that the image "appears
>to be incorrect and biased information supplied by either Head Office or
>the Grampians office" and demanding they remove it.
>26/04/19: The Age publishes an article in which Simon Talbot accuses the
>current generation of climbers of no longer being conservationists, and
>instead drilling boulders to set speed records. In response, I personally
>wrote to the journalist and demanded that he correct all the inaccuracies
>in his article, while Paula contacted Simon Talbot and demanded that he
>pull his head in. In response, he pledged to no longer comment in the media
>on the topic, and he appears to have stuck to that.

Dave, I think your reply here goes to prove how ineffective the VCC were in responding, it is not a record to be boasting about. Firstly, you quote 4th April as the first date the VCC responded to Park Victoria's media smear campaign but in fact Simon Talbot well and truly kicked it off over six weeks earlier, on the 18th of February. I think "absent" is an entirely apt description. If more of a fuss had being made earlier then maybe things like Parks taking the ABC TV to the Grampians and showing them graffiti for them to attribute to climbers, wouldn't have happened. Secondly, it was obvious to many of us that a smear campaign was going on, the "bolt-in-rock-art" photo was significant because it was the first clear rebuttal we had to a pretty serious false allegation. Sure write a letter a letter and demand it's removed, along with every other piece of BS they had on their web site, but just writing a letter and helping Parks cover this up is entirely the wrong response. Thirdly, thanks for that but you're not the only one who wrote to that The Age journalist.