LONELY Planet’s listing of the Scenic Rim as a global tourism hotspot was met with loud celebration last week across the region, but not everyone was popping the champagne.
On Tamborine Mountain, some fear that they have been taken for granted by the Scenic Rim Regional Council and that the very qualities that make their community a tourism icon are under threat.
Tamborine Mountain Progress Association president Jeanette Lockey said the mountain was already a “world famous” tourist destination well before the iconic travel guide put the Scenic Rim on the map.
She said that in 1924 one of the state’s first two asphalt roads was built up the mountain to accommodate tourists, the other road being Brisbane’s Queen Street.
So popular was the drive that a toll gate was built at the bottom. And that popularity continued throughout the rest of the century.
“In the ‘50s and ‘60s it was the place to go,” Ms Lockey said.
“Everyone had their honeymoons here.”
Today she said the mountain had between one and two million visitors per year and was regarded as the most important “day trip” destination for visitors to Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
What attracted those tourists was the semi-rural nature and lush greenery of the mountain, its waterfalls and rainforests, Ms Lockey said.
A TMPA survey of visitors found 92 percent said they came for an “environmental experience.”
But she said that experience was “under threat” by inappropriate development.
“That threat is council’s lack of acknowledgement that this is a special area,” she said.
“Consequently, they are allowing an open door for overpopulation.”
“This place could end up more of a dog’s breakfast than the Gold Coast.”
Ms Lockey said she had personally been involved in promoting tourism for three decades with the TMPA working alongside the Chamber of Commerce, until an acrimonious rift last year when a new Scenic Rim wide tourism body was formed.
She said she worried that was seeing the focus of tourism efforts “going west” and Tamborine left to go to “wrack and ruin”.
“We’ve always encouraged tourists,” she said.
“Because if there is nothing special up here, then who would want to come anyway?”