'Disgusting': Locals outraged at tourists' disrespect for famous Aussie beach
“Make your visit low impact and leave no trace.”
A group of visitors to a famous Queensland beach, apparently didn’t get the message.
Locals recently spent hours cleaning up a beach in Noosa’s National Park after visitors moved rocks to spell out their names, and other statements, in giant letters on the sand.
Photos of the considerable effort show the entirety of Granite Bay beach taken up with rocks that were elaborately placed to spell dozens of names, a love heart, a penis and other phrases including “Fraser fkn island baby”, “send nudes” and the word Poland.
While ostensibly a bit of fun, not everyone was seeing the amusing side.
Dennis Massoud – whose Facebook page states that he worked at Tourism Noosa – was left more than a little annoyed by the display and organised a big cleanup effort on Sunday November 24.
Restoring the natural beauty would involve “cleaning the beach, removing garbage, putting rocks back where they belong,” he wrote. “If you love the natural beauty of the park please come.”
To help explain his frustration, he posted images of a nearby sign which asks tourists to keep Noosa’s “special values”.
“Imagine how quickly this beautiful national park would be destroyed if people didn’t look after the park,” the sign says.
“Make your visit low impact and leave no trace.”
“Really sad to see people just trashing the beach like that,” one Facebook user wrote.
“That’s pretty ugly, why would people do that to a beautiful national park beach,” another wrote.
“Disgusting. Can’t backpackers leave our beaches and stop destroying them,” commented a different user.
Many were thankful for Mr Massoud’s spirited response, but not everyone thought it was such a big deal with at least one person accusing him of overreacting and policing fun.
On November 25, Mr Massoud proudly showed off the efforts of those who cleaned up the natural graffiti.
“Thank you all for your help. And thank you to those who are prepared to monitor Granite Bay on a daily basis,” he wrote alongside before-and-after photos of the beach.
He said locals would continue to monitor the Granite Bay area.
“Noosa National Park is the most visited National Park in Australia with the least amount of protection.”
The Queensland Department of Parks and Forests has been contacted for comment.
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