Songlines vs. Pipelines? Mining and Tourism Industries in Remote Australia
- When: 28th - 29th February
- Location: Room 221/223, Level 2, John Goodsell Building,The University of New South Wales, 2052 NSW
A Two-Day Seminar at the University of NSW
Conveners: Dr Carsten Wergin, SPRC / UNSW and MLU (Germany); Professor Stephen Muecke, EMPA / UNSW
The mining boom in remote Australia sees leisure tourism competing against a fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workforce for limited accommodation and flights. Industrial development seems not simply to increase visitor numbers in affected regions but to replace one type of visitor with another, namely leisure tourists with business tourists and travelers.
Aviation, food services and accommodation providers have benefited from the significant increase in business tourism and travel, but other parts of the tourism sector, notably Indigenous, environmental and heritage tourism, experience considerable pressures. Another significant area of impact is Indigenous culture. Indigenous, environmental and heritage tourism enterprises are in many ways closely related to people and country. Since country represents Indigenous culture and identity, any impact on it is not only an impact on tourism but can mean major transformations for Indigenous people.
Critique of mining and industrial development has been raised in different contexts. Cases have been made in regards to Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, or the impact of mining and industrial development on Indigenous people and country in the Pilbara (WA). A more recent example is the town of Broome, one of WA’s most popular tourist destinations, and the controversy surrounding a proposed LNG gas facility and mining projects in popular tourist sites in the area such as ‘Horizontal Falls’
Songlines vs Pipelines Participants Abstracts (PDF) (4 Mb)
Songlines vs Pipelines Program (PDF) (351 Kb)
