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Crag & Route Beta

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Topic Date User

Ravine, Olive Crags - Locked Gate 25-Feb-2009 At 6:57:54 PM JamesMc

Message

On 25/02/2009 Eduardo Slabofvic wrote:

>Then along comes climber T who attempts to liaise between climbers and
>parks officials over access
>issues, which is important as climber X didn’t do it to begin with. Climber
>T also cops flack for her efforts
>(assuming climber T is a woman) because a whole bunch of climbers expect
>to be able to go where ever
>they want and do what ever they want when ever they feel like doing it.

>

Sorry if my post was interpreted as sending flack toward anyone called T. I am questioning the whole arrangement we have in Victoria where the VCC employs an Access officer to lobby with Parks Vic to support climbing access to Victorian Crags. I was on the VCC committee when we hired the first Access Officer, and it certainly seemed like a good idea to me at the time.

Since then, successive Access Officers have maintained good relations with PV staff, and have arranged lots of working bees to stabilise tracks, define camp sites, pull weeds etc. My feeling is that VCC volunteers have been exploited by Parks Vic to do PV work.

Meanwhile our access rights are being slowly eroded.

Did I say rights? Yes I did. Victoria's charter of human rights and responsibilities contains the following right...

"Freedom of movement
People have the right to enter and leave Victoria, to move freely within it and to freely
choose their place of residence."

The Charter of Human Rights and Responisbilities

It doesn't say "move freely where the ground slopes at less than X degrees".

I'm certainly not saying Access Officers have not done their jobs well enough. I'm saying the softly softly approach has failed, and perhaps a more robust approach is needed. FOI the complaints from neighbours about climbers at The Ravine, lobby the minister, cut a new track to The Ravine.......

Of course, I could be totally wrong. If we didn't have an access officer then climbing might have been prohibited in Victoria by now.

JamesMc