EP 35 - The Great Aussie Lockout feat. Tony Crooke

Track closures, locked gates and restricted access to public land have become one of the biggest talking points in the Australian 4WD community.

In this episode of the Off Grid Down Under podcast, we sit down with Tony Crooke from GME and the Outer Side podcast to discuss why more off-road tracks are being shut down across Australia — and what it means for the future of touring and recreation in Australia.

We talk about:
 • Why tracks are being closed
 • The impact on the 4WD community and regional tourism
 • Tony’s NSW Parliament submission
 • The petition calling for greater transparency in National Parks management
 • Whether governments are listening to the off-road community
 • How responsible recreation can help protect access

This is a passionate and important conversation about the future of public land access in Australia.

🎙 Guest: Tony Crooke – GME / Outer Side Podcast

If you care about the future of 4WDing, camping and touring in Australia, this is an episode you need to hear.

#4wdaustralia #nationalparks #offroad #4x4 #trackclosures #campingaustralia #touringaustralia #offgriddownunder

Escape with Confidence

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What we are being told and the reality of why we're being restricted, in my opinion, are two different things.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

You submitted a document to the New South Wales Parliament. It's 27,000 signatures or something.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

I very quickly ascertained that the only way to play this game is long and painful and through the political channels.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

You can bring this right back to travelling and caravanning. 400 people want to go to one campground because that's all that's left. It doesn't really work.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

One of the towns I go to is up in Imbull. What you see from people coming into that town is so diverse. All that income that goes across those two towns will vanish if they keep um stopping or not maintaining those areas.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

I guess what are you hearing from everyday travelers? Do they feel like things are getting done? Do they feel like the governments or the organizations are actually listening? Absolutely not. No hi everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Off-Grid Down Under Podcast. I'm your host, Sam, and uh sitting here with some guests with me today, Vaughan Heineley, Director of MDC Campus and Caravans. Morning, Sam. Thank you for having me back. And Banksy from Beach to Bush. Morning, Sam. How are you? I'm good, thank you. And a couple of weeks ago we were joined by Tony Crook from GME, but today we welcome Tony Crook from The Outer Side.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Yeah, I've got a different shirt on today, so I'm wearing a different shirt and a different personality.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

There we go, cool. I like it. I like it. We're going to mix things up a bit. Tony, thanks for joining us. The reason we brought you on here is The Outer Side is a podcast that you've started, what, maybe 12 months ago, 18 months ago? 18 months, yeah. 18 months. And um a big part of what you have been discussing on your channel has been um, I guess the podcast on YouTube and uh various other platforms. But one of the big discussion points that you've had is around, I guess we're calling it the Great Australian lockout. Bit of a campaign that I look Ruthie was being involved in, John Ruth from a few years ago and people, a stalwart in the off-road community. But um he was very much involved with that sort of in his time in the media, and uh I think still does some work in that space now. But you're almost unofficially taking over the reins as the uh the figurehead in the industry for that. But um, it's ultimately about public land access and restrictions that we're seeing put in place more and more, and I guess what has been happening in that space to who's advocating for it, who's standing up and saying, hey, we want to be able to still access these places, and what are governments and organizations doing to maintain access to some of the most beautiful public lands that I guess we see on the planet, let alone just Australia. Um, you know, through Vaughan's travels, mine and Banksy's and yours, you know, we all use these spaces and can probably all attest to how beautiful they are. And we are seeing gates getting locked up, we're seeing parks getting closed down a bit, um, for various perhaps reasons, but that's why we wanted to bring you on, I guess. Thanks for having me again. Get a bit of an insight into your experience and what's actually been happening. So tell us a bit about the outer side and um yeah, what what your role is in in that podcast and what its purpose is.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

It's always nice when you get invited back. It means that um you didn't go too rogue the first time. So thanks, thanks for that. Uh all right. So I in my day job am the marketing manager at GME and I've been at that business for about 10 years. Uh and I've always been a fiso. So my life as a kid, I was the quintessential jetty rat. So if there was water, I was fishing, whether I was catching anything or not, is beside the point. I just I gravitated towards fishing, uh, and I've always done that. I was never a four-wheel drive head, I was a streetcar guy.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

So I'm hard to believe, just call it.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

I know, because now it's like my whole personality. Yeah, uh, I've always been an automotive guy though. I love streetcars, VL turbos, skylines, V8 Commodores, Mr. Walking Shaw, basically. Uh no, more Japor stuff. So I liked Commodores, but I like Commodores with Nissan turbo engines in them. I did have a couple of V8s, I had some VK Commodores and 5.7 litre V8s, all that sort of jazz, but fast was what I was into. And I thought four-wheel drives were slow and boring, and I needless to say, have changed my tune, but I thought going slow and driving up rocks was the dumbest thing in the world. I then bought a four-wheel drive, but I bought a four-wheel drive to tow a boat, not to go four-wheel driving. And then a mate of mine said, Oh, you've got a 4B now, and he had a 60, and another mate had a 79. He said, Why don't you come wheeling with us? One day it was all it took, and it was on the Noons Plateau. Uh now, this is a very long weave, but I'll come back to the point here. So the Noons Plateau or zigzag railway up at the back of uh the Blue Mountains near Lithgow was where I cut my teeth for wheel drive.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

That's where I cut my teeth as well.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

100%, man. And it was that first day, and I remember it vividly in my black D22 Navara with torsion bars and leaf springs and no lockers and 31.5 inch tires and all the fun stuff. And basically, we just drove into the biggest, dirtiest bog holes we could all day. I did that too. Ruined everything, and now you might have been there. Uh and now I will drive as far as possible as I can to avoid driving into those bog holes. So that was kind of my entry to fall drive. Um, that happened the year I started at GME. So when I started at GME, I had a Forby, but I didn't really wheel it, and I was, as I said, just focused on fishing. The other constant in my life from when I was a kid was camping. I loved camping through cubs, scouts, cadets at school. And I was the kid that in suburban Sydney would set up a tent in the backyard and just go sleep in a tent for a week because I didn't want to be in the house. So the outdoors camping and fishing was my life, and then four-wheel drives was like opening my mind to be the possibilities of going further, going for longer, and then of course the very slippery slope of accessories. Yeah. So these things all kind of happened at the same time. And then a few years ago, I started thinking about doing something as a bit of a side project. I love video, I love media. Uh previously worked at Sony Electronics marketing video cameras, so I've got a background in video production, and I was trying to think of what I might like to do, and I love conversations, so the logical thing for me to do was to create a podcast. And I also have a huge network of people that I've been lucky enough to meet through the industry and the work that I do. So about 18 months ago, I released the first episode. Uh, I'm up to episode 78. Uh, so I do one a week. Um, and it's not just a four will drive podcast. I've got hunters on there, fishos, all sorts of different people. And I'll also point out, I am not a political person. I don't like politics, I don't want to be involved in politics, I don't want to be a politician. Uh, so all of the public land access stuff kind of happened by accident. I did a podcast quite some time ago now with a gentleman by the name of Ben Carsella. Uh, he runs adrenaline off-road down in Sydney, so they're a four-wheel drive accessory outfitter. Uh, he also does uh Cape York tours and Simpson Desert tours. He's, I believe, one of the only people that has a license to run side-by-side tours in the Simpson Desert.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

So he does that. He obviously sells accessories into the four-wheel drive market, and then he does driver training. So he not only enjoys being in the outdoors and four-wheel driving for his own personal interest, but also because he's running a business off the back of it. I reached out to Ben and said, Hey, I think you're interesting. Can I get you on my podcast? And I had no idea where the conversation was going to go. And Ben fired right up, and it was still one of my favourite conversations I've had on the podcast. Uh, and he was talking about the restriction of access, land being handed from State Forest to National Park, land being handed from Crown Lands to National Park, the subsequent lockouts, restrictions, can't have a chainsaw in your car, all those sorts of things. And honestly, I was just I was so enthralled with what he was telling me because it was we have these conversations around campfires, right? Oh, it sucks that track got locked up that we used to wheel or whatever. But it's often just a lot of passion and a lot of anger and a lot of emotion without data. And Ben gave me a different perspective on it because he had the data, he was working with parks, he was talking about running tours in particular areas, and then being told that he wasn't allowed to talk about Aboriginal history in those areas because he wasn't indigenous himself, and all these kinds of bureaucratic issues. And the drive home from his workshop, I was just sitting there thinking, who's doing anything about this? And it was really that pivotal moment for me that I thought, well, I've got a platform here. There's a few people that watch the show and that listen to what we talk about, so why don't we just make this a more formal conversation in the fall drive and outdoors community rather than just the echo chamber of whinging with like-minded people around a campfire, which trust me is it's fun, like you can do that. But really, I thought, well, someone's got to take a bit of a stand here, and and like it or not, it is a political issue, and the only way to address a political issue is through political channels. So that's what I did.

SPEAKER_03 9:31

Great. Well, look, we're very thankful that you are, and I guess that's something that we've really uh I've seen, and I thought, look, we need to bring that to the MDC audience because we have so many people that travel throughout Australia, and this is not just New South Wales or Victoria, it is national. And uh it applies to anyone who wants to get off grid in a caravan and things like that. So we need to make sure that everyone's aware that things are being done, but more importantly, if there is something that other people can do, we want to be able to give them the avenue to that. Can you explain a little bit about um who this affects? Because it's not just four-wheel drivers. Uh, you've you've expressed, and I think it's quite impressive, the list of public land users. When you actually list them out, it's impressive.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

So who does it? Phenomenal. Uh anybody who enjoys spending time outdoors in on public land, and that is a huge user group. So four-wheel drivers, and I'm not talking about hardcore rock bouncing, rock crawling, crazy stuff, but just people who like driving on dirt roads through national parks. Yeah. It affects them. The dirt bike community, Enduro riders, adventure bike riders, trials riders, you name it, mountain bikers, horse riders, prospectors, fossigas, aporists, people that uh bees cultivate cultivate? I don't know. Manage bees. Manage bees. I think they I think they require management because occasionally they just swarm and leave. So yeah, they need to be managed.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Well they may they take the hives out to certain areas to then go and pollinate or pollinate from different plant species that are in that area.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Correct. And that's something that state forests, particularly in New South Wales, will allow. So people can lease areas to then run their apary operations. National parks invariably do not. Uh, rock climbers, hikers, bird watchers, I mean I could go on.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Hunters, but they're yeah, they're another thing then, fishermen, like whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

And that's where I suppose the specifics around what type of public land and the designation matter significantly.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

I'm a recreational game license holder in New South Wales, which means I pay a fee to the government to be able to hunt on state forest land. You absolutely cannot do that in a national park. You can't even have a firearm in your vehicle in a national park in New South Wales. So the differences in public land are significant, but ultimately it's in the name, but it's public land, and as uh taxpayers, my opinion is that we should have access to that land.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

Agree. Um it's it's not very public if we're not getting access to it. Correct. Uh Vaughan and Banksy, Vaughan, have you experienced much, have you seen in your times, in your travels, I know you spend a lot of time on Fraser, but all around the place, have you seen or experienced kind of places where had plans or couldn't access parts?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Uh sometimes when we do our filming trips, we've got a sort of like a southeast corner thing that we do. And um part of that was Glasshouse Mountains. And we had been up there um a few times, and then the last time we tried it was closed off. I'd thought it was actually because there was logging operations, but having talked to yourself earlier, Tony, is something else has changed up there?

SPEAKER_03 12:42

Yeah, it's again, it's there's forests up there, there's also Queensland plantations that own certain things, but then the roads within there are not owned by Queensland plantations, from my understanding. They're public roads, there's a lot of yeah, ambiguity in those areas as well. Banksy, what about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah, some of the places I used to go to when I was younger have had access tracks closed off, but um I found out later on that they were due to just liability components of it. But um the tracks could have easily been a bit of maintenance put onto them, um, and that would have allowed access to stay. Uh changing from national park to state park, well, state park back to national, so I do a lot of work through the back of Mount Me or through there, and um can't keep up. What's is it national park now or the state park? Um, because one you're allowed to have dogs transverse through that area, but then the other is you can't. So I've I've had to change one of my tracks from from that. And then um when you do uh like up on the beach there, uh like I I agree on the rules of torts coming in, um, so allowing you to access that campgrounds up there, but having no fires, it it sort of takes away um part of the atmosphere of when you go camping, something that you've always grown up with. I I get it with where people have done the wrong thing and it causes a big fire, so I understand there's a risk mitigation side of it, yeah. Yeah, and then the politics gets involved in it, and then it's stopped off.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

It's too hard, basket, yeah. And look, from my point of view, I love just love exploring. Nothing I enjoy more. I used to sit in the back of the car before we had Game Boys and iPads and things like that when I was young, and I just followed the map of where we were travelling. We used to travel Australia a lot, and I've just naturally always enjoyed looking at maps. And I pick up a map now and I go, All right, I'll drive out into the bush and I'm gonna go look at this track and this track, only to find that it's not marked on HEMA as a locked gate, it's just locked gate. So my HEMA is more updated with what gates are locked and what parts can I and not get into. And that covers Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland. And it's disappointing. You sit there and look and go, wow, there's more crosses on this map now than there are anything, and I can't get into there, which they used to be tracks and access points that would go to rivers that would go to what were other campgrounds. Yalwell's a great example down in uh New South Wales where my grandparents were co-owners of Coolindale, which was like the huge campground down there, and I remember driving around down there and the big old troopies, like 1978 troopies, and bouncing around over all the rocks down there, but you it's all locked off now. You just can't get down there. It's some of the most beautiful landscape and country that that we've got to offer. Tony, what are the reasons you're hearing from or hearing back from parks or the people that you've been speaking to about why some of these places are being closed or what's happening?

SPEAKER_02 15:34

This is where the politics enters the fray. What we are being told as recreational users of public land in Australia are the reasons we're being restricted and the reality of why we're being restricted, in my opinion, are two different things. So when you talk to a land manager, so for example, a National Parks and Wildlife Service representative, uh, the environment minister, people in the upper and lower house of politics. Can I just clarify, is this New South Wales or is this national? Yeah, it's national. Yeah. Uh obviously I'm from New South Wales, and that is where I'm most familiar with the political process because I've been immersed in it for the last 18 months. But it is a national issue. The the reasons that we're told are protecting biodiversity, four-wheel drivers leaving rubbish, four-wheel drivers destroying tracks, and I put that in inverted commas as destroying tracks. They're the reasons that we're told we're not allowed to enter areas that we previously did enter. Now, anybody that's spent any time in the bush, and you mentioned Yowl, and Yowl is a perfect example of land that is not managed. I was down there about 14 months ago, and there were tipper truckloads of asbestos dumped down the middle of a fire trail. And I don't mean one or two, I mean like 30 of them. That's not a four-wheel driver.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

No.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

But large-scale building waste is being dumped by unscrupulous operators who are charging people tip fees and then dumping it in the bush. Do four-wheel drivers leave rubbish in the bush? Yes. But you can't argue that they do not because you go down some really remote and rugged tracks that you cannot get to in a tipper truck or a commercial or a passenger vehicle, and you see V-cans and Monster Cans and beer cans.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

That's disappointing.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

We we absolutely are part of the problem, but I I believe it's being used as a scapegoat and as an excuse. I think there are much bigger issues at play. Uh and unfortunately, like everything in life, it comes down to money and what that land can be used for or how it can be leveraged to generate income for the government.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Yeah, I think the the environmental impact is a pretty low bar, and I think it's uh I I don't believe a lot to do with that myself. I mean, we look at there was a story recently towards the end of last year around the uh the fans, the actual fan blades from the solar wind farms just being stashed up in North Queensland, buried in the forest. Yeah, which leads to then how are they discovered? And it becomes a local photographer who was flying his drone around and started finding these things and just having a bit of intrigue himself. Um and that then sort of triggers my thought on you know the drone use in national parks. And that is a question that I personally, in my head, with a bit of a cynical hat on, I think that's actually more probably around uh what eyes do people want to have in those spaces because a lot of national parks and say forests aren't just trees and bushland and fire roads, there's more going on in there. There may be sand mines, there may be tin mines, there may be things like that that have been used obviously for the public the natural resources that are in there. My feeling is they don't want drones up there because they don't want people seeing what's going on behind the thick, dense trees over the hill.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Yeah, and probably the other thing that's worth pointing out is I mentioned that track damage is something that we're constantly told is a reason. Now, the vast majority of dirt roads in state forests, national parks, crown lands are fire access trails. That is predominantly what they are designed for, and it is what they are maintained for. Maintained? Are they in theory? Are they? In theory, the ones close to metro centres are maintained much better than the ones further away, let's say.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

So I don't know if there's many fire roads that I've seen maintained. But yeah, I see where you I know what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Yeah, so uh we get constantly told, and when I say we, we as four wall drivers, me, because I put myself out there and I participate in fairly popular YouTube channels where we go and we drive hard tracks. Yeah, you drive around with Shauna and those guys from 24-7, and Yeah, and we push the limits and we drive through big, disgusting bog holes that I would normally drive around if I wasn't filming and all that sort of stuff. And I've had people come up to me at shows and on social media and say, Oh, you're part of the problem because you're destroying tracks. And my response to that is: Have you seen Cape York after a wet season? The tracks disappear or completely change. Even in my backyard, I live on the New South Wales Central Coast, and I'm 30 minutes away from the Wadigan State Forest, so I'm in a good spot for someone who likes a bit of wheeling.

SPEAKER_04 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

The tracks up there change so significantly after a large-scale weather event. We get a couple of hundred mil of rain, and a whole the track will completely change over a week. Whilst a four-wheel drive will have an impact on erosion and it will have an impact on a track, the amount of damage that a four-wheel drive does compared to natural weather events, in my opinion, is negligible. So, again, I think that the destruction of tracks is something that is put out there and really as used as a scapegoat to prevent access when it maybe isn't the biggest issue.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

Look, I was involved in the mountain biking community years ago, and we're hearing the same thing around mountain bikes, but then horses can walk through, and you look at 20 horse prints go through, they're digging up a lot more dirt than a couple of little 20 mil mountain bike tyres are. Or a sand mine. Or a sand mine in issue of Straty in particular. So what I guess what are you hearing from everyday travellers? And I guess four-wheel drive clubs or other people, do they feel like things are getting done? Do they feel like the governments or the organizations are actually listening? Absolutely not. No.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Uh, is the short answer. So, off the back of my conversation with Ben Cassella, uh, I started thinking about this, and I'm not someone that will go and make a move really quickly without trying to understand more of the picture and get some different inputs. So, one of the first conversations I had following that podcast with Ben was with uh a couple of gentlemen from the New South Wales ACT Fall Drive Association. So, Craig Thomas, who was the president of that organization for near on 15 years, he only recently retired. Uh, and Shane McClymot, who's the Treasurer of the association. And I sat down with those two guys and a good mate of mine, Nick Finch, who runs Solve Off Road down in Sydney, and we just talked about what was going on. And specifically, we were talking about the Noons Plateau. So as I said at the start, there was a reason I mentioned that. Under Dominic Perriter, the previous Premier of New South Wales, the whole of the Noons state forest area, that whole plateau, and there was a lot of different land management going on within that. Some of it was parks, some of it was state conservation area, some of it was crowned land, some of it was state forest. There's a big mine down the bottom, too, isn't there? The entire area is undermined. So that whole plateau is on top of coal mines, and they've been there for a very long time. That particular area of land, uh, the New South Wales state government at the time, which was a Liberal government, I might point out, because there's a lot of people that think I'm just a Labour basher, but no, I think that they're all as bad as each other, declared that they were going to hand that entire area over to National Parks and Wildlife. Great. We love the outdoors, national parks are protect to protect the outdoors. That should be a good thing and we should be supportive of it. As with everything when we talk public land, one of the legislative requirements before land is transitioned from one management group to another is public consultation, which is a very nice political term for we will listen to what you have to say, ignore it, and do whatever we planned to do originally. And in that particular instance, you and I spoke about it earlier in the show where we talked about cutting our teeth up at noons, and for the vast majority of Sydney residents, when you get a Forby, that is the most accessible area, and that is where people would go. Not even beginning to consider how many dirt bikes used that area because on a weekend it was like a dirt bike festival every weekend up there. The real kicker with that one was it was declared that it was going to be a national park, and then at the 11th hour they said, actually, we're going to call it a state conservation area instead. Now, for most people, they go, oh, whatever, conservation is good, that's great. But when you look into the legislation, a state conservation area can be mined, a national park cannot. So there was a commercial impact. If they were to declare it a national park, how do they then rationalise having coal mines underneath it? They then proceeded to shut a series of four-wheel drive tracks, one of which was pipeline, a really famous track up there. And whilst we talk about fire trails being used for maintenance vehicle access, no one was accessing anything via pipeline. It was a track to nowhere, and it was used for people who wanted to go and test their vehicles. It was a gnarly track. You couldn't get up there in a stock jewel cab. That was one of the first ones to go, and they said it's for public safety. So they put big concrete blocks, top and bottom, done. And then one of the initial, I guess, promises to the community was we're going to make this an outdoor recreational haven. It's going to be amazing. We're going to have a 50-kilometer four-wheel drive loop track and we're going to have all of these opportunities. And then the vehicle management plan was released from Parks, which basically said, we don't want any vehicles in here at all. And so none of it was done. They closed pipeline and at the same time they opened a sand mine in the middle of this lump of public land. So as a user, it's really hard to rationalise that it's there for conservation and protecting biodiversity and for sand mining.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Yeah. Biodiversity where there's no fires permitted and things like that. Which Banksy, you were talking a little bit about uh you know Straty. You've been to Straty a lot and I guess ear on the ground. There's a lot happening over there. Do you want to just talk us about the management of that area or the management of the island over there?

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah, so that was um handed back uh 2018, I think. They started doing their own thing over there.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

Um who's they, sorry, just to clarify.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Um or back to the Indigenous um so national parks now, it's pretty much indigenous run from there. National parks, their guys are all out. Um they've now gone and done a cultural centre there, and part of all this cultural centre and all the things they're doing in there. Um the campgrounds have had a little upgrades, um, and then I've just read today on a little course that I'm doing is that they're opening up some tracks up in there. Right. And that is so that more people can see parts of the island. So most people go along through Dunwich, out to Amity, go down St. Elder's Beach, come around, go through town, come back out on Amity, go down, or they come back up and do the crossover back to Dunwich. Um so now they're going to open up some tracks down there up to different lookouts. Um so that'll be a good thing. Um because um there's places where we go to where they have closed off and and stopped that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03 26:55

So I think it's a good thing. You're seeing in some improvement, obviously seeing improvements over there after it's been handed back to the traditional owners. Yes, on that in that case, yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Um and all I wanted to do is the only thing I really want is it that it's all the same playing field because I don't understand why between the islands they're all different cost centres, different prices for camping, um different management for camping, right? Can't have fires, you can't have fires, um, can have dogs, but can't have dogs. Um so it's just a big thing that just want to have it so it's even. So if I travel from here down to New South Wales or people from New South Wales come here, it's not so many different rules for even places you go to.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

So what have you seen from a traditional owner's point of view? Because you're talking, you've done trip up to excuse me, trip trip up to Cape York recently, and you said you did a lot of travelling around traditional TO lands up there. What's what's the beh what I guess what's the traditional owner's attitude towards usage?

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Uh it was fantastic. And I think there's a general perception, I'm I'm generalizing here, within the four-wheel drive community that and when I say four-wheel drive, four-wheel drive travel bit, caravan, wheeling, you know. Camping. Yeah. That traditional owned land is bad. That TOs will take ownership of land and prevent everyone from accessing it. Now, there are some examples of that happening. Things like Uluru was handed to traditional owners, and you can no longer climb on it for cultural sensitivity purposes. Okay. It is what it is. Whether you agree or disagree, that's their that's their prerogative. But what I found in Cape York last year in particular was that the TOs that we were working with, and we were filming and basically allowed to run rogue on their land, they were really open-minded. They were happy for us to hunt feral animals, they were happy for us to fish the rivers, they were happy for us to do whatever within reason, uh, what they wanted what we wanted to do. The trade-off was they said, oh, there's a track that goes out to the coast here that we haven't driven for a couple of years. Do you reckon you could clear it up for us? And we went, yeah, yeah, yeah, this will be a cool adventure. And then we just basically destroyed our cars for eight days straight and chopped about 18,000 trees down to reopen this track. I speak about it like I'm complaining. It was the best adventure ever. I think that TO land in the future is really going to be our best option as remote travellers. The New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service have published on their website their intent to hand all of National Park's estate in New South Wales over to TOs by 2030. That's 10% of the total land mass of New South Wales. So it is a not insignificant portion of land.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

That's significant, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 29:41

And what they're talking about at the moment is a lease back arrangement. So they will hand the public land over to these TOs, and then national parks will lease it back from them on a long-term lease arrangement so that they continue to offer recreational and community access to that land. Do you know what the management of that looks like at the moment? Has that been outlined? Depends on the Aboriginal Land Council and depends on the plan of management for that particular area. Right. So very much case by case. 100%. So we've got some really good examples that are live at the moment. Mount Warning is a is a prime example, and one the rock climbing and hiking community is really up in arms about because it's one of those bucket list destinations for that community. And it was handed over to TOs and they said, uh, actually, unless you're a man from a certain tribe, you can't access this area anymore. And there's a whole community uh called Save Our Summits, which are advocating for fair and equitable access to places like Mount Warning. So, as you said at the start, it's definitely not just a four-wheel drive related issue, it's everyone that enjoys outdoor recreation.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

My understanding is um I know I think Ben Fordham on 2GB, they campaigned against the reopening of Mount Warning. Is did that actually happen? Did that finalize? Do you think that some part of it has happened, hadn't it? They released a statement a couple of weeks ago saying Maybe it was a hiking trail up there rather than the actual climbing parts, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 31:06

Yeah, and it was originally closed because of safety concerns, then it was handed to TO, then it became a cultural issue. So it's it's complex like everything. Uh they released a statement, I want to say they, uh parks and the government released a statement only a couple of weeks ago saying great news, we're still thinking about it. But we're going to extend the temporary closure out to 2027.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Wow. Earlier this year, you actually you submitted a document to the New South Wales Parliament um about recreational access and closures. Obviously, a big e-petition that you had commissioned essentially or started around that. Um 27,000 signatures or something, something significant. Um what did that look like and I guess what has come out of that?

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Great question. Uh I I mentioned earlier, I very quickly ascertained that the only way to play this game is long and painful and through the political channels, which I didn't want to do any of those things, but I figured no one else is going to do it, so why not have a crack? And when I say no one else is going to do it, I don't mean that disrespectfully. Ruthie, you mentioned with his Unlock Australia movement, got really significant traction back in the day. I recently went and presented on this topic to the Land Rover Club of Newcastle, and the president came up after I spoke and handed me two documents from 1979 that were put together by the Four-Wheel Drive Association back then talking about recreational land access for four-wheel drive vehicles. This is not a new issue, but it's getting worse, and the rate of restriction is increasing and accelerating. So I did a lot of reading and I tried to understand how this all works. And ultimately, what I got to was the way to get anywhere in terms of a conversation at a parliamentary level is via an e-petition. So any person in the community can raise an e-petition on any topic, depending on what the topic is and what the issue is, whether it's best placed in the lower house or the upper house of parliament. And from my reading, it indicated that the public land access issue was best attacked in the upper house issue, uh at the upper house level, because that's state rather than local area MPs. That's my rudimentary understanding of the political structure in New South Wales. So, anyway, you need a member of parliament to support or to sponsor the e-petition. I reached out to John Ruddick from the Libertarian Party because he'd previously sponsored another petition that was raised by a group of hunters in Australia in New South Wales around hunting access to national parks. He got about 6,000 signatures. The response from the environment minister was like, no, no, this isn't an issue, it's all fine. See you later. Now I'm a hunter. And so that and I signed that petition and it kind of made me a little bit frustrated. And I thought, hmm, we've got a pretty good social media community around four-wheel drive access. Oh, sorry, around four-wheel drives in Australia. Surely we can activate this community. So that's what we did. Uh I put a video out on Boxing Day in 2024 and said, basically, if you're sick of gates being locked and no real reason why they're being locked, why don't you just sign this petition and we'll see how we go? So we got 27,000 signatures. Uh, it was raised as a matter of public importance in the upper house of parliament. Uh, and we called for an inquiry into national parks management. The environment minister in New South Wales, Penny Sharp, wrote a response, which she had to do because we got over 5,000 signatures, and her response was, no, you've got heaps of access. We are spending lots of money on infrastructure to improve national parks, be quiet, and we don't support an inquiry. We raised it as an MPI in parliament. Uh, the petition was discussed, there was for and against. Uh, the nationals were in support, the independents were in support, Labour, the Greens, and Animal Justice Party and the Cannabis Party were against it, saying, actually, we need more restrictions and we need more land locked up. So that was it. And then Mark Banasiak, who represents the Shooters Fishers Farmers Party, separately moved a motion to establish an inquiry into public land access more broadly and land and marine in New South Wales. And the environment minister said we support the calls for this inquiry. So I'm sitting back going, come on, man, this is like what's going on? Do you want it or do you not want it? But of course, they want it on their terms. Suffice to say, though, the inquiry got up. So it was voted up. Uh, and subsequent to that, I've been quite close with Mark Banasiak, I've had him on my podcast to chat about how politics works. And I've remained close with him in terms of the progress because he's chairing this committee. I was called as a witness uh to a parliamentary inquiry uh around this issue, and it gave me an opportunity to say my piece directly to the politicians, which was pretty satisfying. Uh, and then it gave the opportunity for members of parliament, the ones that chose to turn up on the hearing day, half of which didn't, no representatives from Labour, and it's they're the ones that we're trying to work with. Uh, they had the opportunity to question me. So that was kind of fun. I got into a bit of a stink with the Greens member. Um, she tried to tell me that she's the same as us because she owns a 79 series, and I responded by saying, You are nothing like us. Yeah. Um and anyway, we had a bit of debate there, but we had representatives from the Fall Drive Association, from Fall Drive Clubs, and obviously from myself as just like an independent noisemaker. But that same day, they had multiple hearings. They had the Pig Doggers Association in there, they had Forestry Workers Association, they had hikers, they had horse riders, they had Aprists, they had all different cross-section of different user groups with different interest levels, and we all had that opportunity to say our piece. Now, that's all great. What's going to happen? Who knows? The million-dollar question. Uh really, I think what we all need to remember and what I need to keep reminding myself is that this is a long game. This, as I said, has been going since the 70s. It's happening internationally. This is not just an Australian issue, but ultimately, as public land users and outdoor recreation enthusiasts, we all need to do our part in making noise and making the politicians remember that they are public representatives, they are public servants, and they should be operating in the public interest, not for other reasons.

SPEAKER_03 37:38

I agree, and if they're serious about if they're looking at from an economical advantage and things like that, you can bring this right back to traveling, caravanning. Like we Australians want to go out, they want a caravan, they want to travel, and they want that flexibility. Yeah, our entire business has been built on off-road camper trailers and caravans, and if there's nowhere to take them off-road to go camping and you can't access the places that you want to, or 400 people want to go to one campground because that's all that's left, it doesn't really work, in my opinion, and people won't do it. People can't go to caravan parks in Christmas because they're always booked out.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

So one of the towns I go to is up in Imbull. So we stay there every Christmas at Imble Retreat caravan park there. What you see from people coming into that town is so diverse. So you have the road tour bikes, you've got people on horseback, you've got people doing four-wheel driving. Um, they all go into the back of that forestry there or drive around. And I can guarantee across that day, they're either getting fuel, eating at the pub, bakery, having dinner, staying at the park, um, then they go to the shops, buy stuff, come around, and then they might, where that track comes out at Kenilworth, they go do the bakery there, come back. So all that income that goes across those two towns, which then helps everyone, will vanish if they keep um stopping or not maintaining those areas for us to news.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

You look at towns like Medina down in Tasmania and um what's the other one? Uh just uh just outside Lanceston anyway. But these were old mining towns that were all but abandoned. They were ghost towns. They've been turned into two global destinations for mountain bike tourism and they've turned into enormous economical little hubs. Derby. Derby, that's it, yes. Medina and Derby. Derby's probably the better example. The Dorset Hotel in Derby is a good time. Yes, a little fire pit out the back there. We'll go check that out. Um, but no, two little mining towns that were all but gone off the map are now booming mountain bike tourism places and they've got designated tracks for everyone to ride on, there's shuttle bus services. There's a whole it's essentially a ski tourism. It's the same concept. Same with Threadbow and those uh snow resorts where they turn the summer into a you know hiking and mountain biking haven. It's opportunities for those small towns if they're serious about maintaining those regional centres, they I think they need to be looking at the natural resources that are around there, keeping that open and usable, otherwise those towns will you know go quiet. And that's the sad thing.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

There's a significant economic impact, of course, to to the remote regional towns. That's uh undeniable. And when I've asked for that data from the government, they're like, Oh, we don't consider that. We don't know how to measure it. It's like, okay, cool, so just ignore it. You could look at the window of time before and after. Yeah. The other side of it is obviously industry. So MDC, GME sells a lot of products into the off-road and outdoor recreation community. Uh, the the four-wheel drive accessory industry, the caravan industry in Australia is worth billions of dollars. But let's strip it all the way back. What is the benefit of people accessing natural environments, improvements in mental health, improvements in physical health? That's what it's about. Family time, quality of life, family time. Educating your kids on that's why we live in Australia. Yeah, 100%. And giving our kids the opportunity to experience the same things that we experienced when we were kids. And I think that really is what drives me with this whole issue. Why am I doing all this? Because I have an 18-month-old daughter and I want her to have the same opportunities that I had. Yeah. It's that simple.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

That's the thing. It's the reason I take my kids camping, and the reason Vaughan takes daughter camping and you take yours out, and yeah, it's why we're all here, I think, just to share share that experience.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Yeah, we have a um yearly chip over Easter where we go up Orchard Beach, Fraser Island. Yeah, nice. Um, with the family, and you know, if something like that got turned off, you know, that would be really distressing to our family and hundreds of thousands of other campers.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

They want to do uh age restriction. What that's crazy. Your days will be numbered, banks are. Is that an old age or old? We can't go if you're over fifty, sorry. I think it's no kids over under twelve or something like that, I saw.

SPEAKER_03 42:00

Meanwhile, the dingos are getting um the rumour I'm hearing is they're getting farmed off out the back of um Yarriman Way and they're getting hunted. And there's no restrictions on it. So they're worried about protecting the dingos, but they're overpopulated, so they're moving some of them out onto the mainland and just letting them be hunted. Go figure. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

This is this is probably a really good point. Why do we need the government to tell us how old our child has to be to take them to an island? And this whole thing comes back to what about the personal responsibility that we all have and the preparedness and the experience and the education and the research that we do before we go to these areas? We should be focusing on educating people on how to interact or not interact with wildlife and how to be respectful of a natural environment instead of saying, no, you can't come here. And that's really what's at the base of all this is the government telling us what we can and can't do for whatever the reason may be.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

People only change their behaviour when there's consequence, right? So does this come down to better regulation of the use of those areas, or is it that essentially we want less closures? Because at the end of the day, if people aren't using it right or incidences keep happening because of poor behaviour, something's got to probably happen in some respects. But does that look like fines, which is then a continual management, they've got to have people on the ground, or are they better off closing it up and just going, well, don't go in there at all? And I think this is the argument that we end up having. I'm all for keep it open, right? But at the end of the day, if people become a risk to themselves, somebody is potentially liable, and that's the world we kind of live in. I don't know what the answer is.

SPEAKER_02 43:44

It's I don't know all of the answers by any means, and I don't claim to be an expert in this. I'm just passionate about it. And there are lots of people that are passionate about this issue or these series of issues. Uh, I've been very lucky to interact with lots of them. Over the last 18 months because I made a fair bit of noise and unintentionally parachuted myself into the middle of a hornet's nest. But look, I think personal responsibility and education is the answer. I'm not going to do the great man David Attenborough the disservice of misquoting him, but in essence, there's a David Attenborough quote, and it basically says people won't protect things that they don't care about, and they won't care about things that they can't see. And it's true. Now, a lot of the decisions being made, particularly when you talk about the Greens and Labour, are by inner-city politicians who don't spend any time in remote and regional areas. Those of us that do know the realities of the benefits of traditional fire management and controlling introduced pest species and all that sort of stuff. But unfortunately, a lot of the people that are making these decisions and the bureaucrats seem to be very black and white and don't take into consideration all the different shades of grey that could apply.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

A fire is a bad thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Fires are great things in Australia when they're managed appropriately.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

But the view is that fires are bad, so we better not use those. Yeah, we better not have them.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Hunting's a prime example. The vast majority of the community don't hunt. Now, I have my views on whether or not we should be close to our food or not, but I understand that not everybody wants to take a firearm and take an animal's life in order to feed their family. Personally, I'd rather my meat be organic, free-range, and unmodified, but that's just me. National parks say guns are bad, no hunting occurs in national parks. At the same time, they're dropping 1080 baits, like they're going out of fashion, and paying commercial shooters in helicopters to shoot brumbies, deer, and anything else that moves from a helicopter. When the data doesn't support the overpopulation, and leaving, well, the data changes frequently when we talk Brumbies, but I'm really careful about Brumbies because I had a conversation about eating them on my podcast and the horse people came for me in a big way. All I was saying was if we're going to shoot them, we might as well eat them. That was my point. But again, you know, when we're 1080 baiting animals, which is a horrific death for any animal, and it's worth pointing out that Australia and New Zealand are the only two countries in the world that still use 1080. It's banned everywhere else because of how horrific the effects of that particular poison are on an animal. But then when we're shooting thousands of deer from a helicopter and leaving them to rot, which subsequently feeds feral pigs and wild dogs and cats and all of the things that we're trying to control. Why is that a better environmental outcome than responsible and ethical hunting and people going and utilizing a feral animal as a food source? So these are the sorts of conversations that I would love to see being had at a more broad level and more publicly. And it's very hard to convince your neighbour who's scared of guns that guns are a good thing in the right hands. So it is a very, very complex issue, but I think the answer long term is we need to talk about it more. Yeah. That's all. And and have decisions being made. I know this is a completely wild thought, but maybe have some more data when we're making these broad decisions.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

But responsibility, right? Like and if you take us out of places like Vaughn tradition, there up at Fraser, that's good for the family. Brings memories, and then hopefully then that child then as they grow older, um, want to experience that same sort of thing with their children or with their friends, and all that is that stress level is down, you're out and about, you're you're on the country.

SPEAKER_03 47:46

Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

So if you take it away, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

It just yeah, it causes frustration and yeah, people aren't relaxed. So what can we all do? I guess tones of yeah, what can we do as members of the community to I guess help and support this? Or where can people go to support or share their voice in terms of supporting the cause?

SPEAKER_02 48:09

There's a lot of people doing a lot of really good work in this space in support of recreational access to public land. The one thing that I would say and encourage people to do is just to be really aware of what's going on. If there is a public consultation put out for a particular area of public land, there's one active right, uh let me get this right. No, it's just closed for the Great Koala National Park in uh northern New South Wales. There are opportunities for public submission. The more that we can get people to take the 10 minutes to fill out one of those submissions, politicians will only act if their seat is at risk. And I don't care what anybody says, I'm sure they all go into it with the right intentions, but what happens is they want to protect their seat. Correct. We need them to, when I say them, we need all politicians to be reminded constantly that they actually work for the community and for the people, and that when they're talking about restricting our way of life, and it is a way of life for so many of us, that we have our voices heard. When we put the petition out, we had people, I had people messaging me directly saying, You're wasting your time. I'm like, your attitude sucks. Sorry, but should we just do nothing? Should we continue to complain about it around the campfire? Because that will do nothing. So what I would encourage people to do is pay attention to what's going on in terms of public land changes in their local area, and this is happening around the country. Uh, get close with your local associations, your local four-wheel drive clubs, and not you don't have to go to meetings, but if it's a local Facebook group for the Newcastle Four by Four Club or whatever it may be, get amongst that and get aware about what's going on. And I think the most important thing is be an advocate for our way of life. So when you're at the barbecue on the weekend and you're with people who maybe don't do the same stuff that we do, and towing a caravan across Australia sounds like their worst nightmare, share with them why it's so good. The benefits, how good it is for your kids, what your kids learnt when you went on that remote trip and that the beautiful nature that you experienced and the wildlife, and start to, I guess, really sell the dream of what we do to people who aren't participating in it, because if we can start to change their mindset, then all of a sudden there's a lot more voices in support. They become advocates themselves. 100%.

SPEAKER_03 50:32

Yeah. Absolutely. Banksy, any sort of insights from your point of view from uh yeah, as members of the community? Yeah, what you what are you teaching best practice in that space?

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Oh, so when we do our tours, always try to do some sort of um national park access go through or around a national park, but just being um respectful of the area. So I'm big into big bags of recycles, so I keep all the cans, big canvas bags to store the rubbish as we travel, so I leave it as I found it. Um when I do my father-son trip every year for Briarby Island there, that's uh big opportunity. You know, that's numbers of 80 people go to that, and every year there's always someone new that comes along, um, just showing them what's out there, um, what facilities that we have in those parks, and then just make sure that we leave it and we always do the big walk through at the end, and it's better than what it was when we got there.

SPEAKER_03 51:29

Yeah, I do that with my girls as well. First thing we do is go around and pick up a whole bunch of rubbish that was there when we turn up, makes it clean for us, but it also then teaches them to pick up after themselves and they don't end up leaving rubbish around camp.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

And to cover ourselves now, too. I I know it's not a nice thing, but I always now take photos. Um, because fires at Bribey Island where you can use firewood that's from um from the front ground picking it up. Uh rangers are really big into that, uh, big into what's inside the fire pit. Now we can come along and we take up 14 sites. There could be bottles left in the bottom of that, and I don't want to be held responsible for that. So we clean them up.

SPEAKER_03 52:08

Before.

SPEAKER_01 52:09

Yeah, and then as a group, because it's such a big group, 78 people, we only use the one fire pit. So that way then I can show them that's what I've got. We bring our own industrial wheelie bins as well, so that's what we don't all have an MPS truck mate. No, no, but yeah, it's just as long as we can keep doing that and keep showing people what you're saying. Um, people talk to me all the time about uh your your lifestyle, getting out there, and then when I come to like an open day here on the weekend, seeing people that uh just got their first van and their ideas of what can we do? And I go, Oh mate, there's little places just outside of Brisbane you can go stay at, it's a free camp or it's behind a pub, but then from there you can go through here and just get out there and explore. And and I hate that explore thing not to happen. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

Vaughan, any last words?

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Look, being a business owner for more than 20 years, and when we started um a long time ago, we had a lot of young kids sort of come through the business. And one thing that sort of resonates with me, um, we had these young fellows, David and Wayne Drew, who were some of our best team members, and their younger brother um came to work for us as well. But he was all he was the brightest of the family, and some of these young kids just do crazy things in vehicles, and his two older brothers were rev heads, and so he sort of took on from that, and he was 17 years old, rolled a Ford Escort brain damage, you know, not good from then on for the rest of his life, being a young fella, and maybe some education in schools around motor vehicles and the use of them. And I know the government's using that excuse, people tearing up tracks. But you remember the play, um, the young kid that on Fraser put his vehicle on its roof?

SPEAKER_03 53:55

Or just Harrison, not the Harrison Payne one, that was up at Bribey. Harrison Payne, where he had a he was in the car with a mate, um, and the mate unfortunately rolled the car and Harrison was killed as a result of that. So he wasn't actually driving, but it was his friend driving the car.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Yeah, not that one particularly, but I think there was one on social media where you know the the young kids were probably on the cans doing donuts, uh, mudlow rocks around there, and it ended up on his lid and you know ripped his number plate off and took off from the island, you know. Like maybe education.

SPEAKER_02 54:26

That was only a couple of months ago, that one.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

Yeah, we've all done silly things when we're young kids, but how can we educate them to not put themselves in danger or their mates in danger? Because it's always fun going camping when you're a young fella, right? Um yeah, education around that, and then that sort of takes away maybe one excuse.

SPEAKER_03 54:44

Yeah, I think it's lead by example, and I think as a community we do try and do that pretty well, but at the end of the day, you're gonna get bad eggs and people that don't want to do that or they're gonna do their own thing. And but yeah, most we can do, I think, is lead by example and you know show people what the right thing to do is. So well, look, Tony, again, thank you, mate. Very interesting. Really appreciate all the effort that you are putting into it. I think I speak on behalf of certainly the caravanning community, the travellers and the four-wheel drive community when we say thank you for everything that you are doing, because I'm sure it is tiring with a young kid as well at a full-time job, and doing this on the side is no mean feat. So, well done. Keep up the good fight. And appreciate that. If there's anything we can do to help support, please let us know. Um, and we'll certainly provide links to the outer side and to you and the cause and uh share that with our audience too. No, I appreciate you having me on again. Thanks. Thanks for joining us, and thanks, Banksy, for coming on again. And thanks, Vaughn, for joining us today. Thank you, Sam. Thanks everybody for watching. If you do like what you see, please like, please subscribe, and we'll see you on the next episode.