Public feedback on the draft plan closed on 24 January 2021.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute their feedback. All of the feedback received is being analysed and a summary of consultation findings is being prepared. The final plan will be released later in 2021.
Overview
Parks Victoria, Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, and Barengi Gadjin Land Council Aboriginal Corporation have prepared a draft management plan for the Garwierd landscape. This landscape includes Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park and adjacent parks and reserves.
The existing Grampians National Park Management Plan released in 2003 is over 15 years old.
In that time, bushfires, floods, increasing visitor numbers and park use, have all impacted the landscape. Approaches to environmental and cultural heritage management have also evolved over this time.
A new plan, the Greater Gariwerd Draft Landscape Management Plan will underpin strategic planning for the Gariwerd landscape over the next 15 years to ensure that this it is preserved for future generations to enjoy.
This plan also reflects the journey Parks Victoria and the broader community is undergoing to understand Traditional Owners’ connection to the land and supporting their rights and responsibilities to care for their Country.
The draft of this plan is now publicly available for community review and give feedback.
2020 Engagement - closed
Greater Gariwerd Draft Landscape Management Plan
00:06 - 00:19
Connection to Country over tens of thousands of years is just, it can be hard to comprehend for a lot of people. It's a long period of time where you know, you can say that your people had lived in a place.
00:20 - 00:45
Gariwerd means a lot to myself and the Traditional Owners of the Gariwerd area. It's what you might call a living cultural landscape. So, it's environmental, cultural, spiritual. It's a lot of things to myself and other Traditional Owners and incredibly important to us that is often hard to express to non-Aboriginal people in, you know, in a full sense.
00:48 - 01:29
The significance of Gariwerd is profound. It's iconic both in a cultural sense and a spiritual sense. It's a, it's definitely place of solace, reflection, it's also a place of learning and teaching. We believe that there's an opportunity for the broader Victorian community to have an understanding of that and to actually walk that landscape with that lens as well. Here's an opportunity to have a relationship with Country in the context of how it should be.
01:32 - 02:07
Gariwerd is such a heart for all our Country. It connects us, the Gunditjmara, the Wotjobaluk, the Djab Wurrung. It all comes together and we're very respectful of that. But we also know that we've had 200 years of colonisation, so a lot more people love Gariwerd. A lot more people are involved with Gariwerd and they need to have that connection as well. So with landscape planning it's got to bring everyone into the tent and we need to work together to get the best outcomes. Not only for us, but for Country itself.
02:10 - 02:40
What a management plan does is it brings all those things together. So the cultural landscape is really the theme all the way through. There's values, both natural and cultural, that we need to balance and manage. And then of course, there's how the people move through this landscape and recreate in this landscape. We are refreshing, in many ways, our partnership with our Traditional Owners, our knowledge with Traditional Owners and putting it all into a plan for the community to come on a journey with us.
02:41 - 02:56
The Gariwerd landscape plan is going to bring the communities together and it's going to bring that landscape together. The bushland, the cultural landscape, the farmlands, the townships. We need to work together because Gariwerd is important to all of us.
Learn about the draft plan
Online information sessions
In November - December 2020, people were encouraged to attend a community information session to learn more about what is in the plan and discuss the proposals in depth. Due to current health restrictions, these were mostly online. A recording of the presentation is available on the right hand side of this page.
The dates and times for the information sessions were:
Online webinars (unlimited spaces):
- Thursday 19 November, 5.30 – 6.30pm
Online discussion sessions (max 30 people each):
- Tuesday 24 November, 5.30 – 7.30pm
- Thursday 26 November, 5.30 – 7.30pm
- Tuesday 1 December, 5.30 – 7.30pm
- Wednesday 2 December, 5.30 – 7.30pm.
Drop-in, information sessions
Parks Victoria also provided three, small, informal information sessions for community members that were unable to attend an on-line session in November - December.
Laharum Community Hall
Northern Grampians Road, Wartook
Wednesday 13 January 2021,
5.00 - 7.00pm
Sterling Place Community Centre
14 Sterling Place, Dunkeld
Thursday 14 January 2021
4.00 - 7.00pm
Parks Victoria Office
Mural Room
Grampians Road, Halls Gap
Friday 15 January 2021
10.00am - 12.00pm
Provide feedback on the plan
This plan is a draft, Parks Victoria, Barengi Gadjin Land Council, Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, and the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation want to hear your feedback. All feedback will be carefully considered in preparing a final management plan.
You can provide written feedback in two ways:
- Complete the survey below
- Send a written submission to parkplan@parks.vic.gov.au
Electronic submissions are preferred, but if you would also like to provide a hard copy you can mail it to: Attention: Manager Park Planning, Parks Victoria, Level 10, 535 Bourke Street Melbourne VIC 3000
Parks Victoria will be accepting feedback until the end of Sunday 24 January 2021.
2019 Engagement - closed
Consultation summary report from first round of engagement
The purpose of this report is to provide a summary of the consultation activities, participants and findings. This report has been prepared by Parks Victoria.
All feedback and ideas presented in this report were collected at consultation activities or online via Engage Victoria. All input has been considered equally.
This consultation process and summary report were independently peer reviewed, the findings are included below.
Engagement events for the first round of engagement
As part of the first round of engagement, Parks Victoria held 12 engagement events about the Greater Gariwerd (Grampians) Landscape Management Plan.
Six community workshops and a drop-in were held in the following locations:
- Halls Gap workshop, Thurs, 5 September 2019, 6.30-8.30pm
- Laharum workshop, Tues 10 September 2019, 6.30-8.30pm
- North Melbourne workshop, Thurs 12 September 2019, 6.00-8.00pm
- Halls Gap drop-in, Tues 17 September 2019, 12.00-3.00pm
- Dunkeld workshop, Tues 17 September 2019, 6.30-8.30pm
- North Melbourne workshop, Thurs 19 September 2019, 6.00-8.00pm
- North Melbourne workshop, Wednesday 25 September 2019, 6.00-8.00pm
In addition to the workshops a series of ‘listening posts’ (small staffed stalls for short conversations) were also be held to ensure that we hear from a range of views. The times and locations were:
- Moyston General Store, Friday 6 September 2019, 8.30am - 10.30am
- The Giant Koala Dadswell Bridge, Wednesday 11 September 2019, 8.30 - 10.30am
- The Dunkeld General Store, Wednesday 11 September 2019, 8.30 - 10.30am
- The Bridge Café Cavendish, Wednesday 18 September 2019, 12.30 - 2.30pm
- Halls Gap Visitor Information Centre, Sunday 22 September 2019, 10am - 12pm
You can view the presentations from the workshops on the right hand side of this page.
Halls Gap workshop presentations 05-09-19
If you could not attend a workshop, you can provide your feedback and ideas for the Landscape Management Plan online
Collection Notice
All submissions (this includes surveys) are public documents within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 1982. Please do not include personally identifying information in the body of your submission. If you do not wish your submission to be published or to have content from your submission quoted in the Parks Victoria response to consultation, please select the appropriate tickbox in the survey or contact us at parkplan@parks.vic.gov.au
Parks Victoria is committed to protecting personal information provided by you. Your personal information and the content of your submission will be dealt with in accordance with the Public Records Act 1973, the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic).
The personal contact information you provide will be kept separate from the body of your submission and used to administer the public consultation process only. Your personal contact information will not be provided to any other organisation unless required by law. Your personal contact information may be used by Parks Victoria to update you on this project . You have the option to opt out at any time.
To access your data or opt-out, please email us at parkplan@parks.vic.gov.au
For more information read Parks Victoria’s Privacy Policy. Parks Victoria uses Campaign Monitor to distribute project updates, you can read their privacy policy here - www.campaignmonitor.com/policies/#privacy-policy
