Track blockade threat

Council rejects paving of Bloomfield route

THE Mayor of Douglas Shire has vowed her council will lead a Daintree Blockade-style protest if plans to pave the Bloomfield Track progress further.

Two Cape York councils, Cook Shire and Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire, have split the costs of a $30,000 feasibility study to assess the impact of paving the iconic off-road coastal route.

The councils say they want to improve motorist safety and boost tourism along the 40km dirt highway, which stretches from Cape Tribulation to Wujal Wujal.

A majority of the unsealed section of the track is owned and maintained by Douglas Shire Council.

Douglas Shire Mayor Julia Leu said sealing the track would not be sufficient enough to make it an all-weather road.

“If would require realignment, a total reconstruction, substantial earthworks, and result in the destruction of many hectares of World Heritage rainforest,” she said.

“It is highly unlikely that the Wet Tropics Management Authority would allow this destruction in such a sensitive area, adjoining the Great Barrier Reef.”

The council’s original plans to build a road between Cape Tribulation and Bloomfield in the early 1980s sparked one of Australia’s most famous environmental protests, the Daintree Blockade.

Cr Leu said if further development along the Bloomfield Track was approved, Australian and international conservation movements would oppose this latest destruction of the rainforest.

“Unlike the blockade in the 1980s, the Douglas Shire Council would be leading the protesters,” she said.

She said sealing the track would also create enormous traffic issues, overloading the Daintree Ferry and resulting in longer ferry queues to visit the Daintree area, and ultimately destroying the rainforest experience.

“That is one of the key drivers of tourism in our region,” she said.

“It is precisely because the Bloomfield Track is a fourwheel drive experience and not just an extension of the Cook Highway, that the Bloomfield Track is an outstanding international tourism attraction in its own right.”

Cape Tribulation tour operator Lawrence Mason, who has operated four-wheel drive tours along the Bloomfield Track for 15 years, said sealing the track would not improve safety, as there were too many steep hills.

“I’d prefer to see it not sealed, but I’m also practical,” he said. “Given that it’s already sealed down to the Bloomfield River, it’s inevitable.”