DARK SKY TOURISM BY DR JOHN H COLLINS
The Upper Gascoyne Kennedy Loop Car Rally 2022, Chaff Cutters Spring Stargazing & Astrophotography. The Shire of Upper Gascoyne continues to work hard to identify gaps in services and resources for their local government area that would be beneficial to the larger system through improved community resilience in times of drought and other significant change events.
R
egular readers will recall several articles about activities associated with the Kennedy Range area. For new readers or just to simply recap, the winter edition of Western 4W Driver (#122, page 160) described the Baston family vision for Jimba Jimba Station to restore parts of the former shearing shed that was destroyed in the 2010 Gascoyne floods and to make minor repairs to former Winnemia shearing shed infrastructure to allow for low impact tourism which will give independent overlanding travellers who are wanting to camp close to and enjoy the Gascoyne River prior to entering the Kennedy Range
78
| Western 4W Driver #124
National Park. Will Baston also described the process his family has taken to formally recognise the Yinggarda people as being the traditional custodians of the land and how they formalised this acknowledgement by negotiating and then by executing an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) on 31st August 2021. At the time of writing, Track Care WA volunteers have made a start on the project and reportedly, already the area isn’t recognisable. Around the Kennedy Range in Five Days: A Vintage Car Challenge published in Western 4W Driver's spring edition (#123, pages 140-151) discussed how this Vintage Car Challenge was intended to be the first step in assisting the creation of a new trail that will add value to the existing Gascoyne Murchison Outback Pathways (www.outbackpathways. com). It was anticipated by the authors that this new trail will spotlight the Gascoyne Murchison attractions of astrophotography, astronomy, stargazing, geology, station stays, birdlife and wildflowers. The authors predicted that these attractions will appeal
