Sydney’s collapsing rock formation: $300 fines ignored
Wedding Cake Rock is a sandstone formation in Sydney’s Royal National Park that looks exactly like a slice of wedding cake — white, layered, and improbably cuboid. It sits 25 metres above the Tasman Sea. According to Wikipedia, monthly visitors to the coastal trail jumped from 2,000 to over 10,000 in early 2015, driven almost entirely by Instagram users performing stunts on top of it for photos.
The New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service got nervous. Regional manager Gary Dunnett wondered aloud “whether having 30 or 40 people standing on that area has the potential to tip it one way or the other.” They closed the rock in May 2015. Then came the geotechnical survey, which delivered worse news than expected: the formation was “precariously balancing on the edge of the cliff, and severely undercut,” held up by debris from a recent fracture. It would collapse into the sea within ten years.
The closure did not stop people from jumping the safety fence to take photos on the unstable formation. Authorities instituted $300 fines. People kept jumping. Police began patrolling. By July 2018, only thirteen fines had been issued — the Instagram clout apparently worth the risk and the ticket.
One death has already occurred at the site, though not from collapse: a 24-year-old French tourist tried to jump from the lower tier to grab the upper tier, slipped on impact, and fell more than 40 metres. The rock remains closed and will stay that way until it falls into the ocean.
Man, the internet has a lot to answer for. Paying people for having other people watch them drives a lot of stupid behavior.