URGENT – Submissions and letters needed to stop Pagoda Resort development in the Gardens of Stone Conservation Area
If we don’t stop these glamping proposals, in these sites of international heritage significance, in this state conservation area—in this national park in waiting—then reservation becomes meaningless.
Making matters worse, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service is marking their own homework, by acting as both the proponent and the approval authority for these proposals.
Our national parks will pay the price if rare heritage sites can be developed for resorts.
Keith Muir, OAM, Wilderness Australia
Make a submission on the draft Review of Environmental Factors (draft REF) before 5pm Thursday 26 February, 2026.
Call to Action
This is a fight we must win.
To make a objection to these resorts on the NPWS webpage (best to draft your submission off-line, then upload it – page contains useful information and another link the REF documents).
Submit your Feedback (form)
Let Environment Minister Penny Sharpe know she needs to decide if her legacy will be the protection of our national parks, not the damaging privatisation of them (link above goes to the Minister’s webpage, so write your letter off-line first to avoid silly mistakes)
Online Form
Please also write to Intrepid asking them to please reconsider whether they want their brand linked to the blighting of significant and rare near-pristine pagoda landscapes in a conservation reserve that should be protected. Write to Mr Brett Mitchell, Managing Director, Intrepid Travel
https://www.intrepidtravel.com/au/contact-us
Please make formal objections in your own words and ideas before the exhibition period closes. The draft Review of Environmental Factors (REF) is on exhibition until 5:00 PM, Thursday 26 February, 2026.
BRIEFING FOR REPRESENTATIONS AND SUBMISSIONS
What’s at risk – nature’s crown jewels
Approval of three resorts in an internationally significant pagoda landscape sets a gold-plated precedent for future damaging private developments located in visually prominent, high-value heritage sites in our national parks.
Previously, when these sorts of proposals haven’t been rejected outright (almost always), they were tucked away discretely in forest. But not these proposals. These proposals are in your face. They shout F.U. at national parks being protected, permanent and public.
What’s proposed
If approved, three resorts sites – each is set in a pagoda landscape – will include:
- Six two-person glamping cabins each with a deck
- A communal area the size of a small house with a kitchen
- Amenities building with 2 showers and 2 toilets, with toilet waste flown out by helicopter
- Three water tanks totalling 30,000 litres
- A solar array for power to run the resort and a utility services hut
- Boardwalks to connect the cabins, common area and amenities block
- A 60m2 grey water system with septic tank and a large artificial soil mound sown with exotic grass, regularly mown and the grass carried off site (the big heap of dirt is needed because the sites are on rock!).
- Clearing for the resorts totals 1,935m2 – equivalent to about 10 average sized houses.
Wrong and misleading assessments
The images in the draft REF reports demonstrate the resort sites and surrounding landscapes are virtually undisturbed bushland. The three sites were chosen by NPWS and Wild Bush Luxury because they are largely unmodified by logging, coal mining and off-road vehicle use. The draft REF reports twist this truth inside out.
The NPWS claims that the proposed glamping resorts are not on the pagoda formations, but they are beside pagodas in the largely unmodified landscapes that surround Carne Creek. When assessing the integrity of the general landscape, the NPWS considered the more distant and irrelevant logging, coal mining and off-road vehicle disturbance of Newnes Plateau, not the near-pristine Carne Creek environs where proposed sites are located.
Considering the actual proposed sites, the NPWS confuse areas of natural sandstone rock as being large (non-existent) areas of clearing, and that wildfire degraded the rockplate heaths and pagoda scrublands. These plant communities regenerate from seed after fire, and the 2019 fire didn’t cause crown scorch in the few trees present on these sites, so the fire damage claim is also wrong. The NPWS wrongly claim a “paper road” actually exists on site 2 and that two campfires beside the 4WD access roads leading to sites 1 and 3 degrade these sites (one campfire on site 1 is off-site anyway). Only 15 metres of an access road is within one site, site 3, and some minor off-track vehicle damage has occurred to a small area of site 1. On balance, these sites are essentially pristine bushland in an essentially pristine Carne Creek landscape context (which is why Wild Bush Lux wanted them).
Resort development lobbyists believe conservationists are too precious about the pagodas and these environmental concerns are quibbles. The truth is the opposite. The NPWS has recommended development of internationally significant and rare heritage in a conservation area and twisted its assessments to the wishes of Minister Penny Sharpe. These are not quibbles, they are a perversion of process seeking to set to a precedent for development of important heritage sites in national parks. As I said, this proposal shouts F.U. to national parks.
Developer “Firewall”
There is no transparency regarding the commercial negotiation of leases for use of national park lands. The lease proposal remains hidden from public view, despite the impending takeover of Wild Bush Luxury assets by Intrepid Travel for $5.1 million.
The NPWS is doing the dirty work for these private companies, shielding them from the brunt of the consent process so their green credentials remain unsullied.
Intrepid Travel has a strong green reputation, but they are stepping into a highly controversial and unacceptable proposal that has already seen thousands of objections.