Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape receives funding for Tracks

Friday, 1 May 2009

Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape – the first place included in Australia's National Heritage List – is the first site to receive part of the $60 million heritage funding under the Australian Government's Jobs Fund – a component of the Economic Stimulus Plan.

Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, the Hon Peter Garrett, visited Budj Bim in South-Western Victoria yesterday, to announce that funding of $360,000 will be provided to the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners and the Winda Mara Aboriginal Corporations, for the Budj Bim Tracks project.

The Tracks will allow people to bushwalk or bike ride from the Mount Eccles Visitor Centre through Allambie, Lake Condah, including track construction and improvement, and the development of interpretation and directional signage.

The project is ready to begin immediately, and construction work is expected to support local jobs and business, and also provide for future employment opportunities through increased tourism.

The story of Budj Bim and the Gunditjmara people who live in the region is intimately linked to the volcanic eruption of Mount Eccles around 30,000 years ago. The Gunditjmara people took advantage of the changing environment to develop the landscape into an ingenious system of channels, fishtraps and weirs, providing the basis for one of the world's oldest known aquaculture systems and one of Australia's earliest settled societies.

Budj Bim was included in Australia's National Heritage List – which recognises and protects our most valued natural, Indigenous and historic heritage places – in July 2004.

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