Bailey Seamer had been walking for weeks. On her back, she carried everything she needed to survive in the wild.
She was heading north across the Victorian-New South Wales border, and as she got closer, she saw the mountains of Nadgee wilderness loom through the fog. "Kind of reminded me of Jurassic Park," Bailey says.
She headed down the lonely beach that stretches across the state border and turned into the forest.
Immediately, she found it hard to find a track among the bushfire regrowth and storm-battered trees. Bailey is a seasoned hiker but she'd never been in such a hostile environment.
"It was like just this total body experience of climbing and sort of rushing and pulling and being hurt consistently cause you're falling over all the time," Bailey says.
"There were times when I'd have to just roll over trees cause there was nowhere to climb."
Bailey set up camp for the night, then struggled on the following day. By mid afternoon, she was utterly exhausted.
As she bent down to fill her water pack from a creek, she slipped and hit her head.
Everything after that moment is fuzzy.
'My brain stopped working'
"I just remember being so cold. My whole body was just freezing, like somebody plunged me in an ice bath," Bailey says.
Bailey emerged soaked. The trees around her looked like they were swaying. It was raining, her head hurt, and she started vomiting.
She made it to a nearby campsite, pitched her tent and stripped off her clothes. Her hands were turning purple.
Rain pelted down, saturating all the nearby firewood, and making her sleeping bag even soggier. After vomiting again, she decided it was time to call for help. She hit her emergency beacon and lay down in her tent.
"I just got to a point where I was so cold, my brain stopped working to the best of its function and I was just exhausted. And I just went, 'I don't care'," Bailey says.
Bailey waited. And waited. And waited some more.
Almost four hours later, she heard the sound of a chainsaw. Police and NSW Parks and Wildlife staff had finally found her.
"Bailey, love, are you there?" one of her rescuers called, as Bailey dissolved into tears. One of the Parks staff hugged her and wrapped her in a coat.
Her rescuers told her they had been delayed because they'd had to cut through several trees across the 4WD access road. It then took the group another hour and a half to get out of the park with mud and more overgrown trees obstructing their way.
Bailey is grateful to her rescuers, but the condition of the road makes her wonder: "If it was my park and I knew that that was one of my only driving access points, I would every few days check it for trees and things like that, especially if I knew hikers were going in."
Current and former NSW Parks workers say that Bailey's fraught rescue could highlight a bigger issue about how resources are allocated in national parks.
To understand the service's priorities, some workers say to look at the multi-million dollar tourism development planned for the park next door to where Bailey got into strife.
The issue has Parks workers, bushwalkers, fishers, surfers, conservationists and members of the local community questioning the purpose of a national park: is it for conservation or human recreation?
For many, the answer is fraught.
'It's not a hotel'
Fisherman Mick Ripon and conservationist Dave Gallan pull up at the turn-off to a large campground in Ben Boyd National Park. They're staring down a closed road.
"I'm going to drive," Mick says defiantly.
"There'll be surveillance cameras … and fines," Dave warns.
To walk would mean an eight kilometre detour. "Makes it a long day", Mick says.
Ben Boyd is the national park just north of where Bailey was rescued. And there are changes in the park that worry Mick and Dave.
Preparations have begun to upgrade a campground in the park as part of the NSW Government's $14.48 million Light to Light multi-day walk.
The development includes the upgrading of a 30-kilometre walking track between two old lighthouses, rerouted to maximise ocean views.
There will be eco huts and one of the lighthouses will be renovated to accommodate the fee-paying hikers.
When the project was announced in 2018, there was some excitement. But as long-time park users found out more details, their reactions cooled. "We want to keep it wild," Mick says.
Mick and Dave decide not to cross the battle line today. They drive further into the national park towards a favourite fishing spot called Pulpit Rock.
Mick, who belongs to an alliance of fishermen mostly based in Victoria, has been coming to Pulpit Rock for 45 years. He proposed to his wife there.
"I just love that it's miles away from the city. It's wild," he says.
"It's just an amazing place to sit and contemplate the world … to nourish the soul, to heal wounds, catch up with mates, make new friends."
Mick parks the car beside some birdwatchers. They've just photographed the rare Eastern Ground Parrot. As Mick tells them about the development, their brows furrow.
"I don't see why you can't stay in [the neighbouring town of] Eden if you want to come down here," birdwatcher Sam Osterballe says.
"They call it progress. It's not really, is it."
Sam doubles down when pressed on the possibility of access for a wider range of people: "You can [already] do tours," he says.
"It's a national park. It's not a hotel and I can't really put it more simply than that."
The following day, Mick leads the way to Mowarry, one of the remote beaches where nine huts and other accommodation infrastructure are planned, as part of the development.
He geotags 42 fallen trees along the three-kilometre stretch of trail.
The beach is empty and a school of fish ripple the water just beyond the rocks.
"It's just an amazing sensory experience, isn't it?" Mick says.
"No wonder Eden locals are so protective and angry."
This isn't the only hut-to-hut style multi-day walk in development in Australia's national parks.
Some, like the recently announced Dorrigo National Park walk in NSW, are being rolled out by state governments.
Others, like the proposed luxury huts along the South Coast Track in Tasmania, and the Australian Walking Company's recently approved Kangaroo Island Lodge Walk in South Australia, are being set up by commercial interests.
The model many are trying to emulate is the famous Three Capes Track in Tasmania.
'Degradation of what a park should be'
An hour south of Hobart, wilderness researcher Martin Hawes pulls up maps of Tasmania dating back three decades.
In the 1990s, when he was a planner for the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, Martin assessed the state's wilderness. He says the tourism developments along the Three Capes Track have had a significant impact on the wilderness value of the Tasman Peninsula.
"This is what happens when you put in buildings and also a very high grade walking track, because what the walking track also does is make it more accessible," says Martin.
Martin remembers when it was just a simple trail etched across the landscape by walkers.
"It was much wilder. It was more exciting. It was more memorable. It was more beautiful."
To understand the impact of the project, Martin says it's important to understand what wilderness is.
He explains wilderness isn't an abstract concept — there's a formal equation for it that calculates remoteness from man-made things.
Just five countries hold 70 per cent of the world's remaining wilderness and Australia is one of them.
Martin is one of Australia's most experienced wilderness mappers. He says the discipline has come a long way from its colonial origins to better recognise First Nations land management.
But over the course of his career, he's seen an increased interest in developing the precious places he studies.
He remembers "a lot of really crackpot schemes being thrown around" in the 90s. He says he did what he could to kill off the silliest.
But not the Three Capes project. The wilderness quality wasn't as high as other areas being put forward. So, Martin says, the area was sacrificed.
In 2015, the Tasmanian Parks department opened the upgraded track, including hut complexes. It cost $25 million and took 17,400 helicopter flights to get materials to the remote locations — some of which were home to nesting eagles and potential habitat for several endangered species.
Martin is proud of the track itself, but horrified by other parts of the project.
"I don't think in my wildest nightmares I could have imagined the scale of the accommodation structures that have been built or the impact they have on the experience of going there," Martin says.
He's also troubled by the commercial lodges that opened in 2019.
"We've taken a national park and put hotels in. And I think it's a degradation of what a national park should be."
"What's important about going into wilderness is the sense of going into nature on its own terms.
"You're stepping out of a world dominated by humans … lodges and a luxury wilderness experience is contrary to the spirit of all of this," he says.
Luxury lodges
At Tasmania's Fortescue Bay, most signs guide walkers onto the paid 48-kilometre Three Capes Track — a three-night, $495 hut-to-hut style experience.
It's easy to miss the nondescript markers directing hikers towards the $13 options.
Behind the public campsite signs, a section of old track winds into the bush.
Nick Sawyer, president of the Tasmanian National Parks Association, strides along the narrow dirt trail.
After a couple of hours, the official Three Capes track appears. It has endless sections of hard, elevated, metre-wide boardwalk that stretch like a travelator through the bush.
After another hour of walking, the toilet blocks for the publicly-owned Munro huts are visible in the bush.
The huts themselves blend into the landscape, but they're more than a few rustic sheds scattered in the wild.
There's a long building with plywood bunk bed rooms that sleep up to eight. There is staff accommodation, outdoor shower enclosures, storage sheds, and a helipad.
Retiree George O'Brien arrives at the huts as the sun tilts west. He's been hiking for two days, and he says he wouldn't have done the hike at all if camping was the only option.
"I've gotta say, I love the huts," George says.
He compliments the track for the way it has engineered all the hard points out. George heard a woman in her 90s had completed the walk the day before: "You wouldn't be doing that without the boardwalk."
A map reveals the private Tasmanian Walking Company lodge is roughly half a kilometre further down the main track. Suddenly, the bush experience doesn't feel so remote.
After a 20-minute walk and a steep zigzag climb, the Cape Pillar Lodge appears. Inside are glass-walled rooms, pannacotta deserts, good wine, hot showers, massages, and a plunge pool to relax in after a long day's hike.
Nick says there wasn't much opposition to these Tasmanian Walking Company buildings when they were proposed: "I think most people probably felt the damage had been done by the original proposal [for the government huts]."
The lodge uses "misting showers" to minimise grey water before it passes through a sand filtration system and into the surrounding soil. And, like the public huts, the Tasmanian Walking Company flies sewage out of the Park by helicopter four times a year.
The Tasmanian Walking Company says that all their huts are "subject to stringent environmental guidelines and are built to a standard of environmental compliance that even exceeds the states' expectations of their own public huts."
The company says its ultimate goal is to protect national parks by increasing the number and range of people who access and appreciate them.
"Our national parks belong to all Australians, so no one type of walker should own exclusive access to our parks to the exclusion of others."
"If we can't reasonably access parks, we question how we can fully appreciate them".
But Nick feels the lodge changes the purpose of the park.
"As soon as you start alienating even small bits of [parks] for commercial operations and their guests, then it's the thin end of the wedge towards commercialising a whole lot more and restricting public access a whole lot more," he says.
'I'd like to see an investigation'
Yuin and Monaro elder BJ Cruse says he's been waiting years to talk to someone about the Light to Light proposal.
He's carrying an old leather briefcase when we meet at a cafe in Nowra. He slaps it down on the table and pulls out an inch-thick wad of documents.
BJ is the chairman of the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council, one of the First Nations groups impacted by the Light to Light proposal.
"I'd like to see an independent investigation on what went down in relation to the Land Council's submission that we put in for a Light to Light project. Then we get knocked back and the National Parks gets funded for a carbon copy program," he says.
It turns out this latest Light to Light development isn't the first time that NSW Parks has looked at developing the walk.
In 2011, Parks called for expressions of interest and the first successful proposal came from a local consortium including the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council. It was led by a community-based skills and training business called Auswide Projects.
The driving purpose behind their Light to Light proposal was to provide training and then jobs for First Nations people in the local area.
Their proposal shared many similarities with the development now underway: a three-day hut-to-hut style walk from lighthouse to lighthouse, and a final night's accommodation at Green Cape Lighthouse.
But there were also some key differences. The consortium didn't plan to reroute the track, and they didn't seek to accommodate as large a number of people. They also weren't going to restrict general public access to the accommodation at the Lighthouse as the current proposal seeks to.
Loz Hunt was part of the consortium with BJ when she was starting a business in low-impact wilderness expeditions. She was excited about developing a training program and quality employment for First Nations guides. "It was looking like, ‘This is going to be a real way forward'," she says.
But Loz also noticed the local Parks staff were "much more concerned about the impacts [of development] than the people who came in from Sydney to talk about what was possible."
She initially shared their fears, but as she spoke with her friends about the project, she developed another perspective. Friends who had injuries or partners with a disability were enthusiastic about not having to carry a pack.
"It opened my mind to, you know, another whole demographic of national park users that I hadn't considered," says Loz.
"I think it's only fair to try and allow people to experience that [wilderness]. But it's a double-edged sword, because once you put all that infrastructure in, it takes away from all those beautiful sensations."
'A theme park-type situation'
In the end, the Auswide plan fell over when their national arm went bust.
Then, a few years later, the NSW Parks and Wildlife department furnished their own similar proposal — the one they are putting forward now.
While Parks say they consulted extensively with First Nations stakeholders, BJ says the Land Council has been sidelined, compared with the consortium's original proposal.
The huts in the current proposal are far more extensive than those in the 2011 proposal, and for his part, BJ says he always preferred the glamping option.
"I think they're losing sight of what ought to be a natural landscape, and moving more into a theme park-type situation.
"Their ideas about the forests and how things should look and how the biodiversity should operate, they're looking at it from a person that lives in the city and has grown up in a concrete jungle.
"It's not really catering to the local people that are on the ground and live in the bush and have a greater appreciation for those natural things."
BJ is not happy that the current track will be rerouted. He says it will open up unimpacted land and affect Aboriginal heritage sites. And he's upset that accommodation at the Lighthouse will be mostly restricted to multi-day walkers.
He says that while the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council signed off on the heritage assessments, they often sign off on developments they don't agree with. They worry that if they oppose every development they dislike, government will change the law and limit their oversight.
BJ invites the government to reach a settlement with the Land Council. "If you can't give us back what we originally asked for, you give us something of equal value," he says.
"We have a saying for them, governments, we call them ‘mirror man' or ‘mirror person'. You ask them somethin', and they say, ‘We'll have to look into it and see what we can do'. I said, ‘Well, if you look in the mirror, you can see who the person is that can do something."
Parks defend huts
Atticus Fleming, head of the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service, says the proposal BJ is referring to was long before his time.
But he says the Land Council wasn't sidelined on this project and he is committed to working with them as the Light to Light project progresses.
"I'm happy to catch up with BJ or anyone else to talk about their aspirations for the park and for the business opportunities that will arise."
Atticus says his department is trying to maximise Aboriginal employment and business opportunities, and that over the next 20 years, they plan to hand title to every NSW national park back to First Nations owners.
For Atticus, the Light to Light project is part of a much bigger plan. He says this is encapsulated in a quote by David Attenborough: "No one will protect what they don't care about, and no one will care about what they've never experienced," he paraphrases.
He says the huts are a central part of a visitor strategy to draw people who might not otherwise visit, and convert them into conservationists.
But there are many long-time Ben Boyd National Park users who are wary of the plan.
Aspects of the proposal went through rounds of community consultation where the response was overwhelmingly negative.
Many are confused about how the project can proceed with such opposition.
"Some people are philosophically opposed to having a hut in a national park, and there are some people who are not philosophically opposed to having a hut in a national park, but would prefer it to be in a different location," says Atticus.
"On the philosophical issue, we think that it is okay to have huts in national parks, provided they are in the right location, that they're sensitively designed, and they don't have an impact on the environment and they're small scale."
Atticus says Parks has already made several adjustments to the Light to Light plan as a result of community feedback. And he's happy to make more, including where some of the huts get built.
Another broad concern was that management of the hut-to-hut style walk and its accommodation would be privatised or commercialised over time, in the same vein as the Three Capes Track.
Atticus is adamant that Parks will own and manage the Light-to-Light Walk, but he is open to talking with First Nations organisations and businesses. And he says that commercial partnerships might be pursued for multi-day walks in other parts of the state.
Finally, Atticus addresses the plight of Bailey, the experienced hiker who got into strife in Nadgee Wilderness. He says the poor state of the tracks and road is due to repeated storms and heavy rain. He points out that Parks, like other government departments, are in disaster management mode.
He rejects the suggestion that Parks management have been distracted by the Light to Light project at the cost of attending to core park work like maintenance. And he insists that his department has sufficient resources.
"Yes, climate change will mean things change and we'll have to keep under review whether we've got the resources," he says.
"I'll be the first to put my hand up and say to government, ‘We need more', if that's the case."
'They're exhausted'
Bailey says she's noticed the fatigue amongst Parks workers as she's hiked through Victoria and New South Wales over the past 10 weeks.
"They've been burnt out within an inch of their life. They've had floods. They've had their tracks closed everywhere because of just the natural devastation that's happened over the last two years."
"They're exhausted. And you know what? Rightly so."
As she continued hiking in the fortnight after she was rescued, Bailey says she was a nervous wreck. She'd cry over small mishaps like getting a little bit lost, or coming upon a river she didn't expect.
"It was just a sort of ripple effect of that stress I'd been under," Bailey says.
"I didn't express the story in a way that I'm, you know, pointing fingers.[But] awareness obviously brings action."
"Sometimes systems have a bit of a downfall, but … things need to be addressed and discussed [so] that you can actually do stuff about it."
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