Clifftop Stupidity
On August 17, 2019 at approx. 11.20a.m, a woman slipped from the Vaucluse cliffs at Diamond Bay and plummeted to her death, by 2:00pm that afternoon social media enthusiasts flocked to the site in some cases oblivious to what occurred only a few hours before and some of which came specifically to get the shot.
The site is regarded as one of the hottest Instagrammable locations in the world, and since the death, visitors continue to climb fences and scale down the cliffs.
I have visited this site a number of times over the past few weeks. I was told of this site when I first started this project in mid 2018 and a year on the only difference is I am more aware of the site now, and not being from Sydney I didn’t know the exact location, I do now.
Today (Saturday), I was glad to see the local council had employed Rangers to patrol the spot. In the couple of hours I shot the location, I watched people scale the fences and newly installed barriers only to be advised to politely climb back over. One group of Instagrammers (12) arrived via mini bus on a social media tour around Sydney. The destinations Vaucluse, Bundeena (Wedding Cake Rock), Figure Eight Pools and Sea Cliff Bridge… all notoriously dangerous spots and spots in Sydney that recent selfie deaths have occurred.
I won’t hide away from the fact they were overseas visitors, they have come to experience Sydney and joined a tour through the social media platform WeChat. The visitors asked me questions, they knew the risks, even asking me where the girl fell. Four of the visitors told me they had followers of over 100K on Instagram and changed outfits under the walkway. The ones that were a little more skeptical stayed at the lookout and watched on. They paid the tour operator $459.00 AU for the privilege to visit 4 locations for the day maybe a fifth if time permitted. The WeChat post that I was shown was a social media tour, with photos of others risking their lives in these locations.
In hindsight, I dont actually know who I should be more angry with. The visitors or the tour operators (2 caucasian 20 somethings) making more than $5,500 for a days work, presumable to do it again tomorrow. I don’t believe they are an official tour company, it was a hire Avis bus, and I would guess no operator insurances. Just drive these people from location to location and bare no responsibility.
This is not something that is limited to Sydney, we also discovered this in Melbourne with Autumn Leaves and Fields of Gold tours in a similar WeChat and Weibo platforms… Even MeetUp.
But with that in mind… Where does the responsibility lie?
As this documentary goes on, I become more and more aware of the issues and they are more and more varied. I never thought that some of the issues that would arise would actually be the issue, but I am still at a loss how to actually fix the issue.