| Opening Address: Looking back and looking forward
Elery Hamilton-Smith
Rethink Consulting P/L
I first visited the South-east region with caves in mind some 50 years
ago. Two things stand out in my memory:
-
My shock at seeing how far the Town Cave at Mt Gambier had departed from
Tenison-Woods 1862 description, and the shock of the City Council at my
suggestion that it was not a really great idea to dump all rubbish into
caves and at the same time, to drink from the groundwater !
-
Visiting the caves at Naracoorte, being shown the really important things
like the Butcher’s Shop, Ladies’ Wardrobe, Toffee Shop, Wedding Cake and
the Goldfish in the Pond, and being told that the caves resulted from bubbles
coming up through the rock as a result of the volcanic eruption at Mt Gambier
!
By the end of the 1950s a number of us involved in caving developed the
feeling that better public understanding of caves was vital, and that improvement
of tourist guiding was one very basic way in which this might be furthered.
We started talking with cave managers, and building better relationships
with managers and private landowners. But it was not until 1973 that we
were able to call the first conference on cave management at Jenolan. As
we all know, this was the first of a series, and in 1987, those present
at the NSW marathon-conference agreed to establish what we now know as
ACKMA and which has provided a basis for accelerating progress in karst
management.
Today, this conference with its numerous participants from Malaysia,
USA and Canada as well as Australia and New Zealand, speaks for itself.
ACKMA has indeed become a very healthy organisation. We can also look around
us, and see that although there are continuing problems, many of the most
important karst regions are in protected areas, and the quality of management
continues to improve.
At the world level, we have the formally approved IUCN Guidelines for
protection of caves and karst, together with the current World Bank initiatives
for developing better policies and practices for the quarry industry, at
least in SE Asia.
Looking to the future, we need to maintain and strengthen our current
efforts to achieve both better protection and better management, in spite
of the economic irrationalism of contemporary governments. We also must
recognise that there are some new emerging challenges:
Some of the re-emerging old countries, such as Slovenia, Roumania, Hungary,
Vietnam and Thailand are setting a new sense of direction and a new standard
in cave management. We must work with those countries in a spirit of mutual
learning - and stop thinking we have it right !
Then our understanding of karst processes is becoming increasingly
complex. This includes a rapidly growing understanding of the role of microbiota,
even in cave genesis; the recognition that many caves have not been formed
simply through erosion by carbonic and humic acids but that many other
processes including sulphuric acid solution and hydrothermal activity have
been indeed prevalent. All of this raises new issues in the maintenance
of environmental integrity and in our role as interpreters of the cave
environment. We have an exciting time ahead. |