by WarrenH » Thu 04 Feb, 2010 6:13 am
The honesty of wilderness photography harps back to the honesty of what is a wilderness.
There are conventions for wilderness. UNESCO's 'Man and the Biosphere' and 'Sustainable Environments' have definitions of wilderness ... which rules out anywhere in NSW and the ACT and I guess in Tasmania?
A UNESCO wilderness has a core area of totally unspoilt habitat, surrounded by a larger buffer zone of minimal human disturbance and then a secondary protective zone of acceptable/essential minimal disturbance. No where in NSW and the ACT has even a core area of wilderness that meets UNESCO's criteria for non disturbance or the minimum size for the core. Australia is a signatory to both of these conventions, now being impemented strategies and programmes ... and becoming a new Biosphere near you?
Here in the ACT and NSW there are many very small wilderness regions. Only experiencing 'Relative Wilderness', is not a joke.
Here a wilderness can change its original name and size frequently and can be named differently on each side of a dirt road or the State border (the original Bimberi Wilderness in the northern Alps in particular). Yet, we can not travel in any direction here where we will not run into a road or fire trail greater than 16 kilometres between the tracks. I think that there is one area in NSW that is about 25 kilometres between roads not counting fire trails. Just the width of a dirt road is all it takes ... the Hernani Road criminality (through New England or is it through Guy Fawkes or through neither?), does no longer just one wilderness make.
If I sit on a mountain in a wild place and I can see jet trails ... am I still in a wilderness?
If I walk for days only to find a park sign or a boardwalk or an elevated sleeping platform ... am I still in a wilderness?
If I look across a valley and see walkers in brightly coloured clothing dressing unsympathetic to my thoughts of the ethics of being in a wild place ... am I still in a wilderness?
If government regulations and park rules dumb-down and change the spirit of being in a wild place ... am I still in a wilderness?
If a wild place isn't called a wilderness by legislation ... am I still in a wilderness?
If I can walk across a wild place in a day ... have I traversed a wilderness?
If I can kid myself that I'm a wilderness photographer, well it shouldn't be too hard to kid the home viewer reading the book either? ... until they go into the wilderness and then they cant find it.
I don't think wilderness exists in the SE on the Mainland, except in the name.
Warren.
PS, One of the American tour companies advertises a coach trip from Sydney to Canberra, travelling on the Hume Hwy only, as a wilderness experience. I wonder if the trip is called 'A Relative Wilderness Experience'? Relative to doing most of the journey, travelling on the Pacific Hwy!
Last edited by
WarrenH on Thu 04 Feb, 2010 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.