More Aboriginal Bullsh*t. Reminds me of the Hindmarsh Is bullsh*t about the women's business. This bullsh*t is about Aborginal men's business.
One tribe against another. Aussies shouldn't have to put up with this BS.
Protestors defy Mt Warning-Wollumbin climbing ban by traditional owners to gather for second year in a row to see an Australia Day sunrise
Protesters campaigning against the banning of hiking on one of Australia's most scenic mountains have climbed to its peak to shoot a defiant Australia Day video.
The trail up Mt Warning, now known as Wollumbin, was closed in 2020 amid the Covid pandemic but has since remained shut due to its cultural significance to Indigenous Australians.
In 2022, 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.
The group, made of Indigenous families and community organisations, caused an uproar when they claimed allowing females - including those of Indigenous heritage - on the site would ruin its cultural significance.
The Re-Open Mt Warning group, which has 4,700 members on Facebook, filmed their January 26 protest, which was attended by Ngarakbal elder Sturt Boyd, and shared the video to social media.
One of the group's founders Marc Hendrix, who authored A Guide to Climbing Mt Warning, said in a speech to those gathered at the summit that the mountain should be 'for all Australians'.
'We're here to catch the first sunrise on Australia Day 2024,' Mr Hendrix said.
Marc Hendrix (left), author of A Guide to Climbing Mt Warning, and Ngarakbal elder Sturt Boyd (right) during the protest on Friday morning atop Mt Warning
The Wollumbin National Park track to Mt Warning-Wollumbin has been closed since March 2020 due to Covid-19, public safety risks due to recent floods and further consultation with the Aboriginal community
The mountain is famous as it is the highest peak at Australia's most easterly point, thereby being the first part of Australia each day to get sunlight.
'Despite all this recent division we've gone through,' Mr Hendrix said referring to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, 'we're here together with an elder from the Ngarakbal people'. Protesters stage 2023 climb of Mt Warning Wollumbin
A group of protesters (pictured) climbed Mount Warning on Australia Day last year
Mr Boyd's mother Marlene has been referred to as the custodian of Mt Warning and his sister Elizabeth has campaigned against the Wollumbin Consultative Group claims.
'We're here on his permission to be up here to enjoy this wonderful day together and that's what Australia Day should be about - to work together to make this country a great place.' Mr Hendrix said.
'So let's end the division, if you look out to this wonderful sunrise and sub-tropical rainforest below us, the views out to the coastline this is Australia in a nutshell.'
The mountain attracted more than 127,000 visitors every year before the picturesque trail in the Tweed shire was shut down in March 2020.
The Wollumbin Consultative Group says the national park holds physical and spiritual importance to the community, particularly for the Bundjalung nation.
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.
