Leanne King running cultural walks through Yengo National Park in New South Wales and lives nearby, was out of the country when not one but two bushfires swept the area Beginning of December 2019.

By the time she returned in late January, both areas of the national park and half of the normally quiet valley in which her property lies had been reduced to a sparse, Mars-like landscape adorned only with a few stubborn rubber trees. After the national park closed for four months, her tours stalled and there was little work for six to eight months, she says.

The past 18 months have been a roller coaster ride for Australia $ 122 billion tourism industry. First there was the bushfire that swept across the Australian continent in the summer of 2019-2020, as estimated by the Australian Tourism Export Council cost the sector $ 4.5 billion. Then, in March 2020, the Australian government responded to the pandemic by closing its borders to international travel and preventing Australians from coming and going unless they applied for a waiver.

[Australia largely beat the virus. But it left thousands of its people stranded abroad.]

Although it was difficult for many Australians stuck out of the country, For travel-hungry Australians unable to leave, this has provided an unprecedented opportunity to explore domestic tourism. Many individual states have banned for about six months interstate travelEven people only have their own backyards.

Like the rest of the country, the state of South Australia went into Curfew End of March 2020. But until May was the South Australian state government Encourage people to travel again within the state.

Yale Norris who does it Island Estate vineyards on badly hit by the bushfire Kangaroo Island, which lost 55,000 vines on 26 acres of vineyards to the fires, said tourism after the bushfire only lasted three weeks before Covid-19 stopped things. But “when we opened up again, there were thousands of people from Adelaide who had never been here,” he says.


A satellite image shows scorched land and thick smoke over Kangaroo Island on January 9, 2020. (Handout by Nasa Earth Observatory / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock)

A silver lining from the bushfires was advertising, says Dana Mitchell, who runs the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park. “All of the media coverage of the bushfires showed people who didn’t know about Kangaroo Island it was here,” she says. And “the regeneration is amazing to see. It’s one thing to see what burned, it’s pretty surreal. “

Indigenous Australian tour operators say the bush fires helped raise awareness of indigenous land management practices and culture. For Dwayne “Well” Bannon-Harrison, who operates Name Name Culture Awareness and is also the chairman of the NSW Aboriginal Tourism Operators Council, says this is a good time to promote and support Aboriginal businesses, especially in regional areas that may not have traditionally been known for tourism.

“The pandemic is definitely making people think inward and look inward,” he says.

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Clark Webb who operates Giingan Gumbaynggirr Cultural Experience and Wajaana Yaam Gumbaynggirr Adventure Tours six hours north of Sydney In Coffs Harbor, he shares knowledge, language and culture on his stand-up paddleboard and hiking tours. He says his stores have never been so popular. “We’ve been in full swing since October,” he says, referring to the start of the Australian high season for domestic tourism.

“The bush fires actually gave us a point of reference,” says Webb. “It’s a mix of people who travel domestically [because of the pandemic], but also because of the fires. People are rightly interested in understanding how we look after the land. “

Currently, many Australian tour operators are hoping to enjoy the effects of domestic cabin fever and are using the time to prepare for international visitors when they cross Australia’s borders finally open.


Members of the Humane Society International Disaster Response Team search for animals to be rescued in a burned forest on Kangaroo Island on January 20, 2020. (Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post)

On Kangaroo Island, both Mitchell and Norris had to adjust their stores to accommodate the new market. For example, Mitchell says that Australians are less interested in keeping koalas than international tourists.

Meanwhile, Norris’ business as a winery has flourished. After all, it’s a lot easier for domestic travelers to pack away a few bottles of wine to drink later. Aware of the void these visitors will leave once the borders are open, he has tried to create more portable experiences to be ready for overseas travelers.

“It’s a strange situation because some parts of the community are doing well and others, especially those who rely on international tours and group visits, have suffered wildly,” says Norris.

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Fortunately for the landscape and perhaps less fortunately for beachgoers, the weather phenomenon The girl brought fresh temperatures and rain for most of the summer. In Yengo National Park, where King runs her tours, green branches have filled the gaps between the trees, the trunks of which are themselves covered with green regrowth. The koalas are back too, she says.

“Everything is green!” says Jenny Robb, the owner of Kiah Wilderness Tours in the sapphire coastal region of NSW. Robb lost everything except her house and her kayaks violent bush fires that prevailed on January 4, 2020.

After the business was wiped out earlier that month, in February, when the area was hit by floods, it was able to offer tours to some “curious people who wanted to see what it looked like after the fires.” With the road to the region’s main tourism market across the border in Victoria still closed, many businesses in the region were hoping for a good Easter season. “And then Covid Hit.”

But Robb is optimistic. “We’re busier than ever,” she says. “A lot of people from Sydney kept coming almost to the Victorian border to explore [when they couldn’t leave NSW]. Now they are like that, it’s beautiful. We opened a new market. … We have won. “

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