Oz Pics

This fella lives at Seaworld on the Gold Coast........ and on our wall in a frame at home.
Mish

Greiglin,hi hvave you any of a gorge in qld, starting with m.

No mate. nothing starting with "M" in the album.

Bugger! Sick of looking at the same comp picture.

Gillian come back. All is forgiven. Put us out of our misery :)))))

Is it!?

Can you point me towards the law which prohibits such a thing? I may be able to apply it to my house.

Mike Harding

I could be wrong Mike, but I thought I had read it at Ayers Rock, as well as seeing it on tv at some stage.

Cheers

Glenn

It is illegal to take commercial photos of Ayers Rock/Uluru without paying a subscription fee etc. It is somewhere there in the Act covering Aboriginal Affairs etc. In fact it is not only the rock but any other sites on aboriginal land.

Happy snaps for tourists are allowed.

Have not ever heard of any prosecutions with regard to photos being taken and then sold.

Its all a big game.

Yep, it is illegal to take commercial photos of Uluru/Kata Tjuta without a permit.

Even with a permit, there is much you are not allowed to take due to cultural sensitivities.

Get your permit here

In fact, publication (including on an Internet site, and certainly offering for sale) falls within the requirement for a permit.

It is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and regulations that proscribe this.

You can apply for a permit to sell photos you have taken as a tourist and these are generally granted in my experience.

A customer of mine has been approached after putting their work on a stock agency site, and had to apply for a permit and take down one inappropriate image - there are rules about having at least 3 complete domes of Kata Tjuta in the frame!!!! and there are some angles you are not allowed to photograph at all - notibly the brain.

This applies to Federally/jointly run parks (Uluru and Kakadu), but similar, though less rigidly policed, arrangements apply in state parks. The States put it down to making commercial profit from public assets and needing to put a return to the states.

Ciao for now
Andrew.

Thanks Andrew for the proper links. I figured that someone in the know might correct me :-)

These days one has to ever so careful especially when writing and publishing on the internet as I do.

Personally I think that photographic restrictions within the context of the Act and the Dept of Heritage and Environment is a load of rubbish.

Then again, the world has gone mad.

Cheers

I know how you feel Willem.

On the one hand I respect the genuine cultural issues, but the extent to which alleged cultural issues impact vistation at the rock is immense, and not in the best interests of the tourism that they say they are trying to promote.

For the huge number of visitors (400-500k per annum) the massive revenues $25 per head plus permits, tour operator permit fees etc., the facilities and opportunities provided are poor. Not enough of the money gets put back into the park.

The sunset and sunrise car parks are full and overflowing even during the low-season. The frequent closure of the climb - particularly for cultural things like funerals - all too frequent with the extent of petrol sniffing at Mutujulu Community - petrol sniffing capital of Australia - must surely be a case of mis-guided beauracracy if every I've seen it. The sunrise park on the ring-route area is going to lead to someone being run over by a bus one day soon - it is an absolute debacle every morning.

The burn that happened near Mutitjulu waterhole this year is an example of it yet again - it had been burnt not that long ago and I didn't see any extreme levels of scrub that would cause any fire risk. Yet it's been burnt right up to the rock and the viewing platform (and the rock art too for that matter). The viewing platform was wrecked, the nice carved seats they have there destroyed, and the waterhole was full of black fire silt.

There is this phenomenom - you create a bureacracy to administer something simple - and the bureacracy develops this need to self-perpetuate and justify it's existence and so over time increases the areas of responsibility and the list of things that need administration and before long you need to apply in triplicate to have authority to inhale oxygen and exhale noxious carbon dioxide. The photography permits is a case in point - they are a pretty recent introduction - why the need? Have Aboriginal cultures changed since 1985 when the park was handed over?

The classic was a few years ago when Cobb & Co buses were turned away from the park (yes - full of tourists) because the drivers did not have the necessary paperwork (Permits required as Tour Operators). Parks Australia is just absurd at times.

Ciao for now
Andrew getting down off his hobby horse.