I'm reading the Tasmanian tourism industry's paper on major projects. Page 22, entitled "Reimagining the visitor experience: Cradle Mountain" is accompanied by this photo of a young lady sitting outside a rustic hut, enjoying a cuppa, and at peace with the world. Nothing wrong with that?
No, not as long as you understand that the hut is Du Cane Hut, roughly 4 days or so's walk south for most people, and the photo has been flipped 180 deg to improve the artistic layout. So, we're representing Cradle Mountain and Dove Lake with a photo of a hut you can't see there, and even if you could, it doesn't look like that because we've taken artistic licence with it. It becomes just a generic rustic hut in the wilderness, rather than the well-known historic structure encountered as you walk the Overland Track. Reimagined indeed.
It's perhaps not as bad as the business directory a good many years ago which tried to compete with the Yellow Pages. They put Cradle Mountain on the cover, but they'd flipped it 180 degrees. Obvious to most who'd been there, but, at that time, less so to many other people. I think these days, everyone would notice. Amusingly, I think the same was done by one of the GPS manufacturers in an ad which appeared in outdoor magazines. At least on this page, the graphic of Cradle Mountain itself is the right way around.
Few will notice this, or care, but I think it indicates the thinking we see too often - it's about making money from it, not remaining true to anything. The people doing the selling of our wilderness have too often never been there, wouldn't want to go, and have little idea why anyone else would want to. After all that, they do present some good ideas in the paper. The implementation will be interesting.
