Natasha Clarke
Travel Trouble

Ticked off trekker exposes family’s selfish act

Australian bushwalkers are bristling at one family’s claim over an entire viewing platform in Victoria. 

A picture, shared to Reddit, shows a family - of at least four - taking over at Wilsons Promontory National Park with their set up. Camp chairs, bags, and meal trays can be seen around them, blocking access to the viewing point for anyone else who might like to enjoy what the park has to offer. 

The area - well known for its stunning vistas and bountiful wildlife - is a popular weekend retreat for tourists and locals alike, and Parks Victoria have revealed that it gets “extremely busy over summer”.

“This family [is] taking up an entire sightseeing platform so nobody else can take photos,” the poster stated. 

“It’s a long weekend,” he continued below, “so Wilsons Promontory was very busy. A lot of people missed out on great photos and views because these people wanted it for themselves.”

One had a simple, if not entirely beneficial solution, declaring that “confrontation is not always wrong.” 

“As I walked past, a guy said ‘that's just f***ing rude’,” the individual behind the post responded. 

“Especially in the case of entitled twats, I feel sorry for the kids though, they have parents who convince them shit like this is ok,” agreed another. 

“This park have rangers?” enquired one. “I'd be getting them to get those a***oles outta there.”

“Despite being 2hrs from civilisation, it was packed because it's a long weekend here,” the original poster responded. “There's a huge campground nearby that was completely full.

“But I didn't see any rangers all day, just a bus driver shuttling people up a mountain because the car park at the top would have been overflowing if everyone drove up.”

Another shared their past experience with the spot, noting that they’d seen the same thing happen before, and that they’d just gone over and taken pictures anyway.

“They then realised they were in the way,” they said of their encounter, “apologised, moved a little, and we had a chat about the weather. People do dumb s*** all the time without taking into consideration other people.”

“I’m wondering this too if maybe they didn’t connect that it was a specific overlook platform at the time of the pic,” mused one responder. 

Meanwhile, another only had “never assume malice when stupidity will suffice” to say. 

Some, however, had a little more compassion for the family in the picture, writing that there were a lot of people “describing how they'd solve this problem. How about ‘excuse me, can I take some photos here?’ like a normal person?”

“Exactly. I cringed. Like what if they just thought they stumbled upon the spot and were like ‘let’s picnic real quick’ and didn’t know people were going out of their way to find that spot or just that it’s a viewpoint spot,” another offered in agreement. “I have to sympathise, we’re all humans and hopefully it was not malicious. Just parents trying to have fun with their children?”

“Duuuude, seriously,” one more wrote. “The ‘perpetrators’ might not even know [that] what they’re doing isn’t cool. It looks like they hiked out there and saw a decent spot to chill.”

Images: Reddit

Tags:
bushwalk, tourist, travel, trouble, National Park