By Romy Greiner, Silva Larson, Alexander Herr and Philipp Pinger

CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Davies Laboratory, Townsville, QLD 4814

This report describes the findings of a Tropical Savannas CRC research project, Community benefits of tourism, which investigated the benefits, impacts and management challenges that tourism in the North Kimberley generates.

You can download the report as a PDF, at right.

The research complements two preceding studies, by Yuco Consultants (2003) on community impacts of tourism and by Greiner and Larson (2004), who profiled and analysed the relationship between landholders—as the prime providers of tourist facilities and services —and tourism, with specific focus on tour operators.

(These reports are also available as free downloads, click on the navigation bar at left.)

The research hypothesis asserted that self-drive tourists —who are referred to in this report as independent travellers —provide important economic opportunities for businesses and communities in the North Kimberley. However, they are also the major contributor to the perceived problems arising from tourism for the region, its communities and the landholders.

Findings

The independent travellers to the North Kimberley regions are predominantly middle-aged Australians, who travel in their own vehicle and whose household incomes tend to be above that of the Australian population in general. The international travellers tend to be European, in their twenties and thirties, and travel in hire cars. About one-fifth of travellers—both domestic and international—are repeat visitors.

The single most important drawcard of the North Kimberley are the region’s natural features, its landscapes and ecology. But travellers also come specifically to ‘do the Gibb River Road’ and have a four-wheel-drive experience. These expectations were very much couched within the context of adventure and wilderness experience.

Independent travellers spent significant amounts of money while in the North Kimberley. They spent on average $51 per visitor day—ranging from $39 for travellers on low incomes to $70 for retired travellers. It must be noted that these estimates did not include any spending by travellers outside the study area, which means they did not include expenses in urban centres such as Broome, Derby, Kununurra and Wyndham, where travellers fuelled up, stocked up on supplies and possibly stayed in nice accommodation.

One of the negative aspects that the community and landholders mentioned about tourists was their propensity to bush camp, i.e. camp overnight in areas within pastoral leases, roadside reserves or conservation areas, which were not designated camping areas. The survey results supported this observation with 38% of respondents spending at least one night in a bush camp. Sixteen per cent of total visitor nights were spent in bush camps.

The community also attributed a litter problem to tourists. The causality is not directly corroborated by the survey data. Only a few respondents (2%) said that they disposed of rubbish in the bush, while some bush campers noted that they removed rubbish and toilet paper left behind by other campers.

Summary

Incremental growth and absence of appropriate plans and management actions to the future of tourism was identified by Wood (2003) as the key threat to sustainable development of Coral Bay on the Western Australia Carnarvon-Ningaloo coast. Wood (p. 13) stressed that “The future of tourism in the region depends on its sustainability and the maintenance of the natural environment, the very attribute that attracts visitors to spend their discretionary dollars in [this region] rather than competing destinations in Australia and abroad.”

The same is true for the North Kimberley.

All issues relating to infrastructure and management (What? Whether? Where? How?) require systematic review in the context of holistic and long-term tourism planning for the North Kimberley. Such a process needs to be intrinsically aligned with impending renewal in Western Australia of grazing and other leases and the discussion about potential exclusions from the current pastoral estate for purposes such as tourism.