10 July

The appeal of the outback to tourism is that it’s one of the world’s last ‘untouched places’. So if millions of tourists flock to this place, doesn’t it stop being the thing which they go there to see? Travel is like science before quantum mechanics. It can’t understand that going to a place changes that place, fundamentally. The only way to protect what’s special about a place is to NOT go there. You can pretend your trip was different, that you’re not a tourist, all the other people are tourists. It’s delusional. Some will say they need the tourists, for local economies. An own-goal, if you need visitors to even survive, you’re not living in that landscape. You’re a satellite suburb of a city, somewhere. I’m not saying lock up the country. I’m saying we’re not LIVING in this landscape. We’re still just visiting it. The answer is not to turn our own country into a tourist destination. That will destroy it, it is destroying it. Travel culture is a culture that isn’t grounded, anywhere. Even on the coasts.