Here is why this matters to me

When I think about Keep It Wild Australia, I think about my two sons.

I want them to inherit the same choices I have had: the chance to walk through landscapes that still feel wild, camp somewhere simple and remote, and experience places where nature remains the reason for being there rather than the backdrop to a commercial product.

More than that, I hope they carry the same responsibility forward. One day they may have children of their own, and I want them to be wise and humble enough to ask what they are leaving behind. Enjoying a place does not give any of us the right to take everything we can from it during our lifetime.

That is the personal reason Keep It Wild exists. It is about the landscapes themselves, but it is also about the kind of ancestors we choose to become.

What the outdoors has taught me

I have spent much of my life walking, camping and exploring Australia’s natural landscapes. Through Trail Hiking Australia, I have also spent years helping other people find trails, prepare properly and develop the skills needed to experience these places safely and responsibly.

The outdoors has given me far more than recreation. It has challenged me, restored perspective and repeatedly reminded me that people are not the centre of everything. In the bush, the landscape sets the conditions. Weather changes, tracks become difficult, water can be scarce and plans sometimes have to be abandoned. You prepare as well as you can, make decisions and adapt to the place in front of you.

That relationship is part of what makes wild places valuable. They do not always provide what we want, when we want it. They ask something of us in return.

Over time, I came to believe that enjoying protected landscapes carries an obligation. Those of us who benefit from them should also be prepared to speak when their character, public purpose or long-term future is at risk.

The question I could not ignore

For many years, my relationship with national parks was mainly personal. I walked through them, photographed them, researched their tracks and encouraged other people to experience them.

Then I began paying closer attention to proposals for commercial tourism inside protected areas. The language was often reassuring: low impact, sustainable, nature positive, accessible and economically beneficial. Each proposal could appear modest when viewed on its own.

What concerned me was the direction they represented. Commercial accommodation, premium walking products and privately operated infrastructure were increasingly treated as a natural extension of park management. The debate usually began with how a development should proceed rather than whether it belonged inside protected land in the first place.

I also noticed an imbalance between the confidence of the promises and the permanence of the outcome. Visitor numbers and regional benefits were projections. Claims that infrastructure would create a stronger conservation ethic were repeated but difficult to prove. The buildings, access routes and service systems, however, would be real and could remain long after the business or government behind them had gone.

I could not accept that uncertainty should be used to justify permanent change in places established for conservation.

Why I started Keep It Wild

I started Keep It Wild because I did not want to stand by while national parks were gradually redefined as tourism assets waiting to be developed.

My concern has never been that people should be kept out of protected landscapes. Trail Hiking Australia exists to help people get outdoors, and I believe strongly in public access, responsible recreation and the value of time in nature.

But access does not require luxury accommodation, commercial lodges or high-impact attractions inside national parks. Australia has thousands of places where people can connect with nature, and commercial tourism has many appropriate locations on private land, in gateway towns and within established precincts.

National parks should remain different. They were set aside to protect natural and cultural values, not to provide every experience that the tourism market can imagine.

Keep It Wild began in response to particular proposals, but its purpose has become clearer to me. It is not simply a campaign against commercial development. It is an ethic of stewardship, humility and responsibility to future generations.

Knowing our place

As humans, we are not always good at restraint. We tend to assume that an opportunity should be taken, that a beautiful place should be promoted or that an experience becomes better when it is made easier, more comfortable and more marketable.

We often speak as though our generation has the right to decide what every national park should become. I believe we need to see ourselves more humbly.

We are not owners. We are custodians.

We inherit these places for a short time, care for them as well as we can and pass them on. Knowing our place means recognising when our desire for access, convenience or economic return is asking more than the landscape should be expected to give.

It also means understanding that doing nothing can be an active and responsible choice. A development that is not built leaves future options open. A landscape that remains largely unchanged can still be experienced and understood differently by the generations that follow. Once permanent infrastructure is introduced, those choices narrow.

Clear boundaries, not opposition to tourism

I support nature-based tourism, regional businesses and the people who help others experience the outdoors. Guides, accommodation providers, transport operators and visitor services all have a legitimate role.

The issue is not whether commercial tourism has value. It is whether permanent commercial development belongs inside land set aside primarily for conservation.

Public stewardship and private enterprise are not the same thing. A public land manager can establish a basic campsite, build a boardwalk or install a toilet because the park needs it. Those facilities remain part of a broader responsibility to protect the place.

A private development must also serve customers, generate revenue and remain financially viable. Those needs can create pressure for more visitors, additional services and further investment. Even a responsible operator and a national park do not have the same primary purpose.

There is room for both, but they do not need to occupy the same land.

What I hope Keep It Wild can contribute

I do not expect everyone to agree with every position we take. Protected-area management can be complicated, and reasonable people may reach different conclusions about particular tracks, campsites and public facilities.

What I want to encourage is a better starting point. Before discussing architecture, operators, visitor forecasts or economic benefits, we should ask what the land was protected for and whether the proposed use is consistent with that purpose. We should consider the precedent it creates, the expectations it normalises and the choices it removes from people who are not here to speak for themselves.

I also want restraint to be recognised as a positive outcome. Governments and land managers should not be judged only by the infrastructure they build or the visitor numbers they attract. Sometimes excellent stewardship means managing existing use carefully, directing a commercial proposal elsewhere or leaving a landscape alone.

Through submissions, public commentary and this website, Keep It Wild aims to contribute a clear and independent voice to those decisions. The purpose is not simply to object. It is to explain why protected places deserve a different standard and to show that better, publicly managed alternatives are often available.

The inheritance I want to leave

When I imagine my sons walking through these landscapes many years from now, I do not want them to inherit only what our generation left behind after taking every opportunity that suited us.

I want them to inherit choices. I want them to experience places where nature still sets the terms, where simplicity has not been treated as a deficiency and where wildness has not been replaced by a carefully managed tourism product.

I also hope they recognise the responsibility that comes with that inheritance. I hope they think about their own children and ask whether the decisions they make will preserve the same possibilities for them.

That is what Keep It Wild means to me. Our time with these places is brief, our claim on them is limited and the most important measure of our stewardship may be what we had the humility to leave untouched.

We are not owners of Australia’s wild places. We are their custodians, and our responsibility is to pass them on.

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