Barham River gorge .Stay away

Marriners Falls is again Closed .
One person was seriously injured recently by a falling tree.
 Trees are always about to fall in this steep gorge,  so why not close it altogether ?
. The natural gorge erosion makes soils shallowand slopes very high the likelihood of falling or sliding of these very tall thin trees is a high ongoing risk  .The big question is could  anything have been done to minimize the risk to walkers ?  You simply can't just leave such walks, like some naturalists want , and hope for the best .The tallest trees in the Otways ( and the tallest flowering plant in the world ) choose these gorges because the light competition is severe.  The risks to people accessing them  grows when no maintenance and managementof the trees occurs :  risks increase if  less is being done to reduce those risks.

I wonder what previous coronial enquiries said about deaths in Parks .Did management neglect and incompetence play a part ?  I don't need to ask  The biggest coronials have been in or near Parks Thredbo ,Canberra , Marysville.
Like the ragwort along the track perhaps indicates  , basic maintenance to reduce the impact of wet weather ( drry windy weather)  isn't being done. Rocks and steel come along like shiny knights on this track to try and deal with some smaller non life threatening  problems that should often be dealt with using the natural materials   . Blackwood regeneration could be encouraged to make the gorges  safer,  as would some timber falling on a site risk basis  . Expensive engineering consultantacies have replaced integrated ecosystem protection.What is normally simple and inline with nature becomes complex and in conflict with nature.
Take the erosion control too that is needed in several spots  - it would take less than a day in each site to provide a solution that respects habitat and process in the current sections ( there is always going to be erosion)  .
Instead of fixing these things soon after they happen, risk avoiding managers and polys seem to hide behind the idea that " its an unusual flood " Why?  Did God cause the problem,  or did we have a hand in it  by our acts of omission ? Labelling the problem "Unpredictable "is an easy out, ,  but it makes it so much easier to explain  and avoid blame at the same time . What such statements can mean is " I don't understand why it happens"  but few ever are honest  enough to say that , so noone moves on there in manageing risk and avoiding disaster .Disaster management and risk avoidance has infact has become the order of the day now for many managers  .
Worse , "Lots more  money " is now needed to FIX even the smallest of problems; :it need not be if the government trained people to know and make risk decisions. Like polys at a high level  though " the field managers no longer need to know "- "Public servants are just facilitators" .No science needed here .   Not that we can remove all risk from falling timber, as any bush user knows .
A stitch in time isn't even required if you work with nature's forces . yet someone's job will be lost to pay for damage that could often have been prevented.See blogs on Thredbo.
Meanwhile , more people get almost killed , reports get written and emergency management services grow like the trees that just topple over naturally. The politics of fear can overwhelm a system that no longer knows and no longer wants to know what is really going on in the environment. The politics of fear can overwhelm a system that no longer knows and no longer wants to know so it can prevent the next problem from happening. Before long,  will it be that  the only ones fit to run the department will be the consultants ? Save the Minsiter getting the blame for what his staff don't do.... win win sitaution for the upper classes of bureaubrats. ,

Barham River - is it still in the too hard basket ? ------A completely wild and untamed river it still  for some.  Nothing will change while fear and a totally inadequate  understanding drives the no action policy that will  leave this track closed for some considerable time yet  .