Commercial luxury accommodation in conservation reserves incur high costs, causes environmental impacts, brings few additional visitors. Placing commercial developments in parks undercuts tourism services in neighbouring towns, where tourists would otherwise spend money. These resort proposals are being sold by Wild Bush Luxury Experience to Intrepid Travel, so this proposal is a land grab.
What you can do:
Let Environment Minister Penny Sharpe know she needs to decide if her legacy will be the protection of our national parks, not the damaging privatisation of them (goes to the Minister's webpage, write your letter off-line first to avoid silly mistakes)
Please also write to Intrepid asking them to reconsider whether they want their brand linked to the blighting of significant and rare near-pristine pagoda landscapes in a conservation reserve that should be protected. Write to Mr Brett Mitchell, Managing Director, Intrepid Travel brett.mitchell@intrepidtravel.com
Please make formal objections in your own words before the exhibition period closes. The draft Review of Environmental Factors (REF) is on exhibition until 5:00 PM, Thursday 26 February, 2026.
The REF documents (at least look at some of the pictures - document pages 62 and 63, also page 29 - they are scarily like the cartoon above)
To make a objection to these resorts on the NPWS webpage (best to draft your submission off-line, then upload it - page contains useful information and another link the REF documents).
The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC
Minister for the Environment and Heritage
www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/ministers/minister-environment-heritage
Dear Minister Sharpe,
Don't lease rare pagoda heritage in Gardens of Stone SCA for resort development
In your letter to Minister Sharpe, express some of these concerns in your own words:
- I oppose commercial resorts inside in internationally significant and rare pagoda landscapes in a national park in waiting, the outstandingly diverse Gardens of Stone State Conservation Area
- The resort developments in sites of heritage significance set a gold-plated precedent for future development in national parks in other rare and scenic locations, like headlands or cliffs, or in heritage sites such as coastal rainforest
- The three proposed resorts will benefit from the construction of a tax-payer funded multi-day walk the lessee has not paid for, a free handout they don’t deserve for their heritage damaging developments
- It's wrong that decisions on these leases are made in secret between you and the lessee, without any opportunity to review and comment on the draft lease, and don’t give me any nonsense about the lease notice being the public’s opportunity to comment, as it had no lease information in it
- I am concerned that the proposed lease has already been announced as sold by Wild Bush Luxury to Intrepid Travel and so that this lease will effectively become a "land-grab" of public parkland, sold right under your nose, Minister
- The National Parks and Wildlife Service are marking their own homework, by being the proponent and decision-maker on these resorts, so why should I have any confidence that beautiful pagoda landscapes can be protected when the proposed resorts are located in them
- The NPWS is doing the dirty work for private companies, in a pathetic attempt to shield their green credentials from the brunt of valid criticisms arising from this rubber-stamp consent process.
Further information
Concerns regarding these three proposed resorts
Destination Pagoda - how the Gardens of Stone SCA should be managed
You could also write to the:
Blue Mountains Gazette
letter to the editor
Lithgow Mercury
letter to the editor
