Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
reserves and walkways (see the case study below on the New South Wales bush-walking
movement and the creation of national parks in Australia).
The pursuit of walking as a leisure activity in the urban environment in the twentieth
century has seen a significant transformation, as Short (2001) argues:
Walking is about being outside, in public space, and public space is also
being abandoned and eroded in older cities, eclipsed by technologies and
services that don't require leaving home, and shadowed by fear in many
places…. In many new places, public space isn't even in the design: what
was once public space is designed to accommodate the privacy of
automobiles; malls replace main streets, streets have no sidewalks;
buildings are entered through their garages…. Fear has created a whole
style of architecture and urban design, notably in Southern California,
where to be a pedestrian is to be under suspicion in many of the
subdivisions and gated communities.
(Short 2001:10)
Consequently walking in many urban industrial societies has seen it move into rural
settings and become embodied as a recreational activity, where the rural environment is
encountered both physically and mentally, rather than just as a visual contemplation
(Edensor 2000).
CASE STUDY Myles Dunphy and the Australian Bushwalking Movement
Myles Dunphy has been described as the 'father of conservation in New South Wales'
(Barnes and Wells 1985:7). Dunphy was born in Melbourne in 1891, the eldest child of
an Irish father and a Tasmanian mother. The family moved to Sydney in 1907 but
because of the economic pressures in a large family, Dunphy left school early to join the
workforce as a draughtsman, a career that would stand him in good stead to influence the
public's appreciation of wilderness through high-quality maps and drawings (Thompson
1986). Although not a follower of organised religion Dunphy did appreciate the spiritual
significance of wilderness. Thompson (1985:26-7), on studying an old notebook of
Dunphy, observed that Dunphy had scribbled, 'For a knowledge of God, study nature',
lines reminiscent of the romantic ecological writings of John Muir (C.M.Hall 1992a).
Dunphy's central importance in any account of the development of parks in Australia
lies in his contribution to the development of the bush-walking movement. Along with
friends Herbert Gallop and Roy Rudder, Dunphy formed the Mountain Trails Club in
October 1914 (Dunphy 1979b:55). As revised in 1924, the objects of the club combined
an aim 'to reach and enjoy the canyons, ranges and tops of the wildest parts of this
country', with an intention to 'establish a definite regard for the welfare and preservation
of the wildlife and natural beauties' (Prineas and Gold 1983:29). According to Dunphy
(1979a), the Mountain Trails Club
had become a kind of bush brotherhood…. They liked to travel quietly
and see wildlife. It was good to boil the billy in the welcome shade of
river oaks harping in the breeze
to watch wood smoke drift down the
