A hiking activist and a state MP have scaled an iconic NSW mountain in an effort to get it reopened to the public after it was closed under Indigenous ownership.
NSW Upper House MP John Ruddick and Marc Hendrickx, of the Right to Climb advocacy group, climbed the Wollumbin-Mount Warning summit trail near Murwillumbah in northern NSW on Saturday despite the track being closed to the public since 2020.
Wollumbin-Mount Warning was ‘temporarily’ closed to the public in early 2020 but remains closed to this day and hikers fear it will become ‘the next Uluru’.
The Wollumbin Consultative Group has been fighting for the mountain to stay permanently closed to all but a select group of Indigenous people – who are all male – but other Indigenous groups in the region have said they disagree.
Mr Ruddick and Mr Hendrickx, who oppose the closure, defiantly appeared at a planned protest at the base of the mountain after their early morning hike.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia both men slammed the current rules around Mount Warning, the disrepair of its walking tracks and the state government for continually extending its closure.
‘Access to these wonderful natural places is part of what really underlies and builds our Australian character; and if we were unable to access these places, then really it’s like an attack on being Australian,’ Mr Hendrickx said.
‘Mount Warning genuinely is a charismatic mountain and so I understand why some Aboriginal groups say it’s a sacred mountain, but I agree with other Aboriginal groups that say, ‘look, it is sacred, but it’s so sacred everybody should be able to climb it’,’ Mr Riddock said.
NSW Upper House MP John Ruddick (left) and Marc Hendrickx, a member of the Right to Climb advocacy group, (right) climbed the Wollumbin-Mount Warning summit trail on Saturday despite the track being closed to the public since 2020
Mount Warning was ‘temporarily’ closed to the public due to social distancing concerns but several more delays have kept it close to this day and hikers fear it will become ‘the next Uluru’
Mr Riddock tabled a petition to parliament calling for the immediate reopening of the Wollumbin Mount Warning summit trail earlier this year.
The MP said its closure is costing the region millions in lost tourist revenue and labelled the move to close it as a ‘power grab’.
‘This closure is hurting this town, there used to be hundreds of thousands of people who would come and climb this incredible, very unique mountain who don’t come anymore,’ Mr Riddock told Daily Mail Australia.
‘I spent about seven hours here yesterday with the local community at the pub, which is the main sort of meeting place for the town, and not one person I met said that they’d ever heard that it was a sacred Aboriginal site until Covid.’
The Wollumbin trail once hosted more than 100,000 climbers a year and brought in more than $10million annually.
It was so popular as it is located near Byron Bay and it is the first point in the country to get sunlight at dawn.
The NSW government initially closed Mount Warning in order to comply with social distancing restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic but it has yet to reopen.
In 2022 extensive flooding damaged the area and the road leading to the mountain which extended its closure due to safety concerns.
In that same year, the NSW Department of National Parks recommended fully handing over management of the site on the Tweed Coast to the small Wollumbin Consultative Group who support a ban on visitors to the popular hiking spot.
From April to October last year, private security guards were paid $7,000 per week to make sure climbers were prevented from attempting the summit trek.
Overall, nearly $200,000 was spent securing the mountain and security is still brought in on occasions such as New Year’s Eve and Australia Day.
Mr Hendrickx told Daily Mail Australia that closing culturally significant walking trails was ‘like an attack on being Australian’
Mr Riddock began his six hour trek of the mountain at 5am and he said the trail itself is still in complete ruin two years after floods damaged the area.
‘I climbed the whole freaking thing this morning and the track is in complete disrepair. It’s dangerous,’ he said.
‘There’s about 30 fallen trees on the track, and right at the top, for the last half hour, it’s basically rock climbing to get to the top.
‘It’s really tough. There used to be a chain there to help people get through that section but it has been removed since the track was closed.’
Mr Hendrickx, who is an engineering geologist, said there was no reason to remove the chain other than to extend the mountain’s closure even further.
‘The decision to remove the chain just simply doesn’t make sense from any rational perspective,’ he said.
‘It was based on a conservative assessment from the National Parks and Wildlife Service which leapt on it as an excuse to bring up safety as a reason that people can’t climb.’
Despite that obstacle Mr Hendrickx said it was ‘awesome’ for a politician to make the effort to come and raise awareness by climbing the mountain.
‘It’s been four and a half years of agony, and hopefully, with John’s assistance, we can move this forward quicker than what’s been happening,’ he said.
The activist become the first person to be fined for climbing the trail on Friday when he was sent a $300 fine – one day before his protest with Mr Ruddick
Mr Hendrickx was the one who looped Mr Ruddick in on what was happening at Mount Warning and the MP said he was sent daily updates about the issue until he got involved.
The activist has spent years trying to get the trail reopened and had written to former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, the Ombudsman’s Office and the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 2021 about the issue.
Despite receiving little to no word back from any agency he continued protesting the closure by climbing the mountain in his spare time.
One such climb included a number of other activists on Australia Day which the group filmed and posted online.
Mr Hendrickx has climbed the mountain several times, including one hike on Australia Day with a group of other protestors who oppose Mount Warning’s current ban on hikers
He was fined $300 for an April 13 climb after returning to the base to find two park rangers waiting for him at the bottom, however, Mr Hendrickx did not receive the fine until Friday – one day before his planned protest with Mr Ruddick.
‘It was really an act of intimidation and something designed to generate fear in me and in other people that we shouldn’t climb the mountain,’ Mr Hendrickx said.
‘I’ll be fighting that fine [and] if there’s a new fine today, well, I’ll just add it to the pile that seems to be developing and we’ll fight that one in court as well.’
Mr Hendrickx’s offence carries a maximum fine of more than $3,000 – which he has managed to avoid thus far.
He was the first person to be fined for climbing the mountain since the hiking ban was enacted.
A spokesperson from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service said a second person from found climbing with Mr Hendrickx had also been fined.
The spokesperson added that anyone who ignored the climbing ban would ‘be subject to appropriate law enforcement’.
‘We appreciate that there has been community uncertainty about the time taken to resolve this issue,’ a statement provided to the publication read.
‘It is important however, that we ensure all stakeholders, including the Aboriginal custodians, are appropriately consulted about future management of Wollumbin National Park.’
Mr Hendricks received a $300 for climbing Mount Warning on April 13 which he intends to dispute in court
Both men from Saturday’s protest slammed the Wollumbin Consultative Group for its ‘secrecy’ and its difficulty to get into contact with regarding their concerns.
‘I don’t have confidence in them,’ Mr Ruddick said.
‘They’re a very secretive group. I’ve asked a number of times through national parks to have meetings with them, but I’ve been denied access,’ Mr Hendrickx said.
‘I haven’t been able to get in touch, or get phone numbers, or make contact with them. I’d love to be able to sit down at a table and discuss the issue face to face.’
The Wollumbin Consultative Group represents a range of Aboriginal groups and families with connections to Wollumbin, according to its website.
‘The group operates within an agreed formal consultation guideline, with representatives from Bundjalung and adjoining Aboriginal nations community members, Elders, Native Title claimants and corporations, Local Aboriginal Land Council, ancestral families and knowledge holders,’ its biography reads.
‘We have a responsibility for caring for Country, our environment, plants, animals, water, earth and sky. As the oldest living culture in the world, we are sharing our cultural knowledge and entrusting this knowledge with the broader community so that our values, tradition, and law are respected, understood and acknowledged.’
Daily Mail Australia has contacted members of the Wollumbin Consultative Group for comment.
Mr Ruddick and Mr Hendrickx spoke at a protest at the base of the mountain after their hike on Saturday to advocate for the trail’s reopening (pictured: a protest banner flown from a plane over the site)
The Wollumbin Consultative Group says the national park holds physical and spiritual importance to the community, particularly for the Bundjalung nation.
But a proposed new management plan for the site has sparked an outcry and divided the local Indigenous community.
Opposing local Indigenous elders, including the Boyds, claim the group appears to be extinguishing the ancestral women’s lore sites by claiming everything in the park as exclusively male and Bundjalung.
They also claim the Yoocum Yoocum and the Ngarakbal Githabul people were the original people, not the Bundjalung.
Elizabeth Boyd said in 2022 her late mother Marlene Boyd, who died in 2007, is recognised as the ‘Keeper of the Seven Sisters Creation Site’, one of the two women’s lore sites.
There’s also a memorial dedicated to her late mother on the Lyrebird Track at the base of the park.
Mr Hendrickx initially became involved with the reopening of Mount Warning after becoming ‘outraged’ by the closure of Uluru to the public in 2019.
‘Access to these wonderful natural places is part of what really underlies and builds our Australian character,’ he said.
‘Mount warning has a very lush subtropical rainforest you walk through, and as you ascend the vegetation changes with altitude, until you come out at the top and the view is just remarkable.
‘It’s just a really special experience, and it’s quite shocking in a way that National Parks won’t really acknowledge the Heritage associated with that experience.
Mr Hendrickx initially became involved in activism after being ‘outraged’ at the closure of Uluru in 2019
‘It was an opportunity for kids to learn about why these places are important to protect and to preserve, and for future generations that’s being lost now.’
Mr Ruddick and Mr Hendrickx’s protest coincided with the 95th anniversary of Mount Warning become a national park and to their surprise, despite the public nature of the event, no park rangers or officials were there to stop them getting to the summit.
‘I was really quite sad today when National Parks didn’t show up,’ he said.
‘You know, joining the celebration of that event, and also to face the music and to speak to stakeholders who want to know why it’s still closed.
‘They just totally failed at an opportunity to do some meaningful stakeholder engagement.’
Looking forward Mr Hendrickx believes there is a great opportunity to reopen the park by Easter 2025 when road repairs in the area are expected to be completed.
‘I think there’s an opportunity here to do two things at once: they could get the road fixed and while they’re doing that they could also be working on restoring the track to a condition more amenable to tourist access,’ he said.
‘We’ve offered in the past to help them do that through community working days.
‘So there’s a big community here who would put their hand up to go up the mountain with a rake and a shovel and start cleaning off the track.
‘I wish that would happen and there’s a great opportunity for it there.’
