Promotional Video for The Great South Coast Walk
8 Apr 2023
I’ve just found an embedded promotional video for the Great South Coast Walk on the Destinations Southern NSW website. It displays the natural beauty of the South Coast and also shows the benefits to local tourism of establishing such a walk. As it had a share link, I am embedding it here. NB. It shows a 7:46 minute timeline, but the video only runs for 4:30 – the rest is blank.
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Regional Priority Project Report released
30 Mar 2023
Following the favourable projections of the GSCW Opportunity Analysis, DSSS commissioned a more detailed study on branding and market position by The Destination Agency. This document entitled “A regional priority project to position NSW South Coast as Australia’s premier walking destination: Great South Coast Walks” has just been released. This looks more broadly at developing the South Coast as Australia’s premier walking hub and takes a three-pronged approach to promote day-walks, shorter multi-day walks with the 660km long Great South Coast Walk as the iconic long-distance coastal walk.
The document describes a project that crosses local government and organisational divides, and provides detailed estimates of benefits to the region and proposed time-lines to do this.
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More funding for Great South Coast Walk concept
4 Sep 2021
Here is a little good news to help the lockdown blues.
Destinations Sydney Surrounds South have now put out a tender for brand identity and marketing position of the Great South Coast Walk (see the link in the email below).
This means they are investing $30,000 of their own funds into getting the process of developing the GSCW in motion. This comes on top of $20,000 paid for the strategic plan / opportunity analysis document, which has been commercial-in-confidence until now. You can view the tender offer on-line at EOI – Great South Coast Walk. The document has two further links to tender brief and the opportunity analysis. Maye someone out there is interested in tendering?
Committing this amount of money shows they are serious about the whole idea, Hopefully, the momentum will continue.
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Strategic Plan for Great South Coast Walk produced
Nov 2019
Lobbying can work. Our Steering Committee has spent a lot of time talking to local government tourist organisations and the National Parks and Wildlife Service about the Great South Coast Walk. All thought it a good idea, but remained very non-committal. It wasn’t until I contacted Destinations NSW that things progressed. Destinations NSW was an organisation that could act across jurisdictions and across different state organisations ….. and they liked the idea. After making contact with representatives of Destinations Sydney Surrounds South and Destinations Southern NSW and explaining the concept of the Great South Coast Walk and its benefits for the region, these two State government tourism agencies commissioned an “opportunity analysis” by TRC Tourism.
TRC have now produced a 136 page document highly favourable to the creation of a long-distance walk along the South Coast of NSW. The two Destinations NSW agencies will use it to support a Business Case and Action Plan for the development Great South Coast Walk.
You can view the whole document at GSCW Opportunity Analysis – Full Report/ and a much shorter summary document at GSCW Opportunity Analysis – Summary/.
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Why is the logo a sea-eagle?
12 Aug 2019
Several people have asked me about the logo used for the Great South Coast Walk and on this Facebook page, so I thought I should explain its origin.
For a start, the sweeping curve represents the coast-line with the blue Pacific on the left and sky above. The curve leads to what could be a distant headland (a scene typical of the walk). However, clearly it is also the outline of an eagle – a sea-eagle to be specific. I think that the sea-eagle (or white-bellied fish eagle for the purists) is a great symbol for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, I wanted to give the walk an aboriginal name to acknowledge the past 20,000 years of history of the region, but with three language groups and 12 Land Councils, the feedback that I got was that no one name would be acceptable to all groups. Along came the sea-eagle, which is a totemic bird for all and which can represent the culture without the need for words.
Moreover, when my wife and I first did the walk back in 2004, not a day went by when we didn’t see at least one of these magnificent birds. While climbing Gulaga on the trip, we chanced across an aboriginal ranger explaining the sacred stones on that mountain to a visiting group. He made the point that all the people had an animal totem, but they didn’t choose which animal, rather the animal chose them. We felt that the sea-eagle had chosen us to be our totem on the walk and perhaps the totem of all who might do the walk -hence, its incorporation in the logo.
Apologies for the long-winded explanation.
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Presenting the walk to clubs and organisations
Jan 2018
From 2017 on, I made a number of presentations about the walk to Bushwalking Clubs and Community Organisations. For those interested, here is a link to an example of such a powerpoint presentation. It is in mp4 format and is a rather large file (over 200 Mb) so may take a while to download. he first few slides might need some imagination as there is no sound. most slide, however, have informative text to read.
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A new flyer to promote the walk
1 Mar 2017
While talking to the tourism people from Eurobodalla Shire Council about the walk, I received some good advice. They said that when speaking to people in decision-making positions about any new concept you only have 5 minutes to capture their attention. If you haven’t done it by then the cause is lost already.
This inspired me to produce a 4-page flyer to promote the concept of the walk – some nice photos – brief description of what, where and why – important dot points and the right buzz-words. The flyer could be used to show more clearly the walk concept and could be read in 5 minutes. It seemed to work.
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A track or a walk?
20 Feb 2017
The more observant may have notice a small change on the home page. The title question has been changed from “A new long distance walking trail?” to “A new long distance walk?”. This is because the intention was never to develop a new trail – in fact, one of the features of The Great South Coast Walk is that most of the trail infrastructure is already in place. Existing named tracks have their own identity, which should be preserved.
The walk makes use of a network of smaller tracks and trails to create an experience of landscape, wildlife and culture. To complete the full length of The Great South Coast Walk, whether end-to-end or in stages is to make a spiritual journey. At least, that is what my wife and I felt after we finished it in 2004, and that is what this walk is really about.
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What’s in a name?
17 Jun 2016
“Great South Coast Walk” is a tentative working name for this walk. While it is has a nice ring to it, it could be confused with the South Coast Track in Tasmania and the Great South West Walk in Victoria. Also, the epithet “great” has been pretty much flogged to death in walk titles – and many of them are not so great.
I was originally hoping to find a name that reflected the aboriginal heritage of the region, but the walk passes through three language areas and 12 different cultural groups. My advice from local Land councils and people who know the language is that it might be difficult to find a name acceptable to all. The people I consulted are having a think about this.
In the meanwhile, any sensible ideas for a name?
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Beginnings
10 Feb 2016
This website has been set up to get feedback on the concept of a multi-day walk down the South Coast of New South Wales. The idea came to my wife and myself when we walked from Sydney to Mallacoota over a leisurely three months as part of the transition from work to retirement. This we described on our website Photodiary of a Nomad.
It was a life changer in several ways, one being a love of bush-walking and the other an interest in web design (very much self-taught). On this site, I am using one skill learnt from that trip to (hopefully) help provide an opportunity for others to experience the enjoyment and satisfaction of a long-distance walk.