Following on from our previous article, a broader article appeared in The Australian on the weekend (subscribers only). The article by John Ferguson covers a lot more than climbing – as now hiking and swimming are in the firing line – and that’s plenty for regular folk to get upset about… and didn’t they just (see twitter, R).

It has been a huge 24 hours for Grampians climbing ban news with several mainstream media sources publishing stories in print, online, radio and even national TV. It certainly wasn’t all positive puff pieces for rock-climbing – but we did get a chance to air some of our views and attempt to refute some of the wilder claims made by Parks Victoria – including their continued insistence on the 10x growth figures that we have proved false on this blog previously. We have seen zero evidence of their claims of 80,000 climbers a year in the Grampians (a crazy 220 people a day!) and their entirely false claim of a 3x expansion of new routes in the Grampians since 2003 (that figure is more like 20%, not 300%).