Hello children!
Something very exciting is happening
right now near Milford Sound: New Zealand is getting its first proper theme park
– Fiordland!
Very soon the boring old tramping
tracks and huts will be replaced with fabulous gondolas, ecologically sensitive
monorails (a bit like a rollercoaster but slower and painted green) and spooky bus tunnels.
The Department of Conservation has
already given its okay to the first of the theme park rides; the spooky tunnel
(officially known as the Milford-Dart Tunnel Project) pending a public review. So
as long as the grumpy locals and dirty hippies don’t spoil the fun it should be
opening up soon.
This ten-kilometre-long, five-metre-diameter
tunnel is going to be an engineering marvel and although it’ll be a little spooky
it’ll be completely safe, just like the Pike River Mine was and totally
earthquake proof, just like Christchurch was.
So don’t worry kiddies there’s
absolutely no chance it’ll ever make international headlines for all the wrong
reasons like the Mont Blanc tunnel did back in 1999 when a margarine truck
caught fire in it sending 39 people off to heaven.
The next couple of rides: an
all-terrain-vehicle and monorail ride between Lake Wakatipu and Lake Te Anau
and a Gondola through the Caples Valley; might take a bit longer because the
Department of Conservation isn’t playing nicely with the businessmen, but don’t
worry they’ll be here just as soon as DOC rubber stamps the proposals and goes
back to bothering the possums.
This isn’t just great news for
children around the world – it’s great for the economy (yes, eco-no-my is a bit of a big word
kiddies, it means is it’ll make the rich people happy).
You see, letting the big
businesses build the rides means they get to decide who goes on them and how
much they’ll have to pay – and that will make them lots of pocket money.
Of course they won’t keep it all
to themselves – that’d just be mean – they’ll share it with their friends the
lawyers and the property developers… and they might even give a bit with the
politicians while no one’s looking. They’re not supposed to – but we won’t tell
anyone will we.
Every theme park needs a theme and although the ideas for
the rides have come from different companies they’ve landed on exactly the same
theme – convenience. They’ll all shorten the ten-hour trip to Milford Sound to
as little as four hours.
What a clever idea! After all who wants a place like Milford
Sound to be remembered as wild, rugged, and untamed? No, we’d much rather have our theme park remembered as cheap,
convenient, and looking exactly like it did in the brochures.
Around the world convenience theme
park projects like this have been a wonderful success. In Tibet and Nepal, once
upon a time you had to endure weeks of heathen culture and prehistoric
infrastructure to see the big mountains, now you can just take a train or a bus
most of the way – it’s very convenient.
Some people say that the road has
spoilt an ancient way of life for the families who’ve made a living looking
after travellers for centuries and that the railway to Tibet is just a way to
encourage Han migration to Tibet to legitimize China’s territorial claim. But
those people just need to lighten up and realise that change can be fun.
Likewise, in Italy, the big businesses
have done such a good job bringing visitors to Venice on big convenient cruise
ships to see the city’s culture that the little Venetian locals can’t afford to
live there any more – and so have had to take their culture elsewhere.
That’s okay though, because the
tourists’ Venice is much more fun than the real Venice ever was so no one
really minds.
In fact, we know for sure that no one really minds because
in 2010 some cranky Venetians staged a protest at the loss of their culture,
dressing in costumes and handing out admission tickets to “Veniceland”.
But the protestors didn’t realize that American tourists
don’t understand sarcasm and so they thought they’d seriously opened a theme
park. Silly protestors!
Once Fiordland
opens there’ll be no telling what fun attractions might come next. Perhaps a
tunnel under McKinnon Pass, so people can do the Milford Track on Segway
scooters. Or maybe a giant ferris wheel at Sandfly Point – just like
Melbourne’s Southern Sky. With an open mind and a pro-business government in
the Beehive, the possibilities really are endless.
All this is coming soon children but it’s not here quite yet.
So you must be on your best behaviour. That means no sending angry emails to
the Minister for Tourism, no writing letters to the newspapers, no lodging submissions
to DOC – and absolutely no sending silly satirical columns to Wilderness Magazine!
If you misbehave then Fiordland
might just stay a boring old national park.
[As published in Wilderness Magazine April 2012]
[As published in Wilderness Magazine April 2012]