Best laid plans are often victim of the user..

Mid-semester break is upon the long-suffering students. Oh we doth protest too much! Despite a number of assignments which magically need to be completed before next week's return to grindstone, I could not let a 5-day weekend go by without some bush camping and general R&R. There is something strangely therapeutic about no mobile reception, dubious hygiene practices and beholding some of our most amazing creatures. Best not tried in the confines of a civilised home!

Our destination was some of the gorgeous remote coastal area of South Australia, Lincoln National Park and Coffin Bay National Park as well as further up the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula around Venus Bay. We had quite a visual feast of Australian emblems - wallabies, kangaroos and emus, not to mention a host of other furry creatures and quite poignantly given the Christian influence of the festivities, a plague of locusts. The highlight had to be the amazing pod of more than 20 dolphins frollicking in the waters off the point at Venus Bay.

With many hours spent driving between camp sites, I got thinking about the whole National Park concept. One of the strange things they allow folk to do in SA is drive on the beaches (including in the National Parks) which doesn't strike me as a particularly environmentally sustainable thing to practice (on multiple levels - from carbon emissions to erosion and squashed furry locals).

After Yellowstone in the USA, it turns out that the Royal National Park in N.S.W. was the second National Park in the world. I was fascinated to read about its history which highlights that even some of the most inspired ideas can sometimes run contrary to good sense in hindsight. You'll note in the link above that in the early days of what was then just the National Park (QE II - the woman, not the boat, caught a train once in its vicinity and miraculously the name was changed in the 1950's), the park was "improved" for the entertainment of visitors, to include vast expanses of lawn and the introduction of exotic species! The type of thing which makes even the less environmentally minded in this day and age wonder....

Will we look back in 100 years time at the way we managed National Parks and also wonder, what on earth were we thinking?