For years tourists have ridden boats through this sacred Australian natural wonder. A new ban will stop them in their tracks | CNN
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Tour boats will soon be banned from passing through what naturalist David Attenborough has described as “Australia’s most unusual natural wonder,” a move that has received both applause and criticism from those affected by the upcoming restrictions.

The Horizontal Falls are one of Australia’s strangest natural attractions, a unique blend of coastal geography and powerful tidal forces that visitors pay big money to see up close.

But all that is about to change.

Located at Talbot Bay, a remote spot on the country’s northwestern coastline, the falls are created when surges of seawater pour between two narrow cliff gaps, creating a swell of up to four meters that resembles a waterfall.

For decades, tours have pierced these gaps on powerful boats, much to the dismay of the area’s Indigenous Traditional Owners, who say the site is sacred.

It’s not the only reason the boat tours are controversial. In May 2022 one boat hit the rocks resulting in passenger injuries and triggering a major rescue operation. The incident led to calls to halt the tours for safety reasons.

Although the boat trips have continued, the concerns of the Indigenous Traditional Owners have now been heeded, with Western Australia, the state in which the falls are situated, saying they will be banned in 2028 out of respect.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    2317·
    6 months ago

    I feel the same way. If I’m going to be an atheist, I can’t draw the line at which primitive superstition is nonsense. Either they all are or none are.

    I get it, it’s a natural wonder that nobody at the time could comprehend. That doesn’t make it “sacred”.

    Banning it for safety? Sure. This is why we can’t have nice things.

    • dustycups@aussie.zoneEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      This is literally their area(well 50% state gov). Just because you are atheist doesn’t mean you can go into their place & do what you want. Would you do a burnout in a church? Would you break a foreign countries laws because they aren’t yours? Being atheist doesn’t absolve you from humanism or courtesy.

    • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      6 months ago

      Strip the supernatural aspect out and just call it “important to the local culture”.

    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      48·
      6 months ago

      Our Abrahamic concept of “religion” bundles together a lot of tendencies that aren’t necessarily linked, anthropologically. If we translate another culture’s relationship with some natural phenomenon as “sacred”, that doesn’t mean it has the same specifically religious connotations for them that the term would imply in our culture. And it doesn’t mean that our attitude toward religion should carry over to their relationship with their environment.

      • richmondez@lemmy.worldEnglish
        112·
        6 months ago

        Does the relationship invoke supernatural forces driving the phenomena? Then it’s superstitious nonsense and has nothing to do with abrahamic religions other then them also invoking superstitious nonsense. Does someone own the land and want to keep people out for idiosyncratic reasons? Fine, rule of law says they get to control the land for whatever reasons they want. Is it public land? Then only safety concerns or preventing the degradation of a natural wonder should affect who can visit and for what purpose.

        • metaStatic@kbin.social
          73·
          6 months ago

          that’s the thing, we need to invoke superstitious nonsense to strong arm the colonial government into respecting the land they stole. do the elders believe it? who cares, get off my lawn.