How Australia climate change affects vacations

What climate change can you see in Australia?

The average vacationmaker won’t come across an extreme weather event on a tour. Operators are careful to run their tours at sensible times of year – out of peak seasons for wildfires, for instance. But visitors to Australia will likely note the effects of climate change.

After all, you can’t hide the rock walls that have been built along the Great Ocean Road to shore it up against rising sea levels.

“In the past several years, the sea level has risen to a point where the coastline was being lost and the road was under threat from the waves,” explains Jeremy Redmond, owner of our partner Australian Natural Treasures Touring. “The local council, state and federal government have intervened and saved a very expensive rebuild and the loss of a tourism region by building rock walls along the coast.”

Guides point out the walls to guests en route, as evidence of climate change.

Some tourists might see more dramatic effects of natural disasters. Our travelers Rex and Karen Berney, who went on our self drive tour of Tasmania, happened to be there as a wildfire threatened the area. “Many Australians were busy either guarding their homes from the fires, or figuring out how to live if they got burned out, or were afraid that fires might come to their area.”

Whilst most operators wouldn’t advise visiting an area during a wildfire, tourism is often crucial to helping these areas get back on their feet.

“There were a lot fewer people ‘on vacation’,” say Rex and Karen. “We felt that we helped just a bit to contribute to the local economies by just being there, as ‘outsiders’ with more freedom.”

Whilst vacation companies will divert their itineraries to protect guests on high fire danger days, or when flooding or fires might affect a route, they also often try to get tours back on the same routes as early as possible.

“We try to be there for local communities and help them recover,” says Magnus Nilsson, marketing and strategy director at our walking vacation partner Auswalk. “We try as quickly as we humanly can to deliver people in those areas… I myself go into areas where they are recovering when it is safe to do so.”

In the wake of wildfires or floods, Magnus makes sure that walkers are back on the trails as soon as possible, so that support to local communities affected by natural disaster comes when it is needed most.

“It’s obviously a bit confronting to do a hike in an area like that,” says Magnus. But for these places – where people can no longer pay their skyrocketing insurance premiums, and where they have lost their homes and livelihoods – money coming in is vital. It’s not disaster tourism; it’s a form of post-disaster aid.

Last-chance tourism

As Australia’s climate problems brew, the country is seeing a rise in last-chance tourism. In a recent survey, two thirds of visitors stated that they want to see the Great Barrier Reef before it’s gone.

Who can blame this type of tourism, when Australia’s international reputation increasingly becomes smeared by its natural disasters, and its political ones? Successive governments in the country have chosen coal mining over renewable energies, whilst Australia’s extinction record is one of the worst on earth.

But last-chance tourism could lead to increased pressures on high-risk sites, and its very attitude goes against responsible tourism – why bother caring about something if you know it’s going to be gone?