Residents of Strath Creek, north of Melbourne, have begun placing dead kangaroos and wombats along a remote road in an attempt to deter visitors drawn to a viral lookout and “magic tree” from trespassing, camping and leaving rubbish behind.
The Hangs Tree, a large dead stringybark on an organic farm, and the nearby Milky Way Point lookout have attracted hundreds of tourists after photographs and videos of the sites spread across social media.
The two locations lie along the same narrow, one-way dirt road overlooking the valleys of central Victoria, about 100 kilometres north of Melbourne and close to the Tallarook State Forest.
Locals say the sudden influx has brought litter, damaged roads and repeated incursions on to private property. Some residents claim visitors have defecated in private driveways, while toilet paper, nappies, food waste, bottles and cans have been left on farmland and outside homes.
Alex Whitford, who grew up nearby in Broadford, has been helping to organise community clean-ups two or three times a week. During one operation last week, volunteers collected 13 bags of rubbish, including coffee cups, nappies and toilet paper.
“People are coming here and having lunch, and they’re having a couple of wines, and then leaving, you know, smashed wine bottles everywhere and beer bottles,” she said. “I’ve never seen so many Red Bull cans in my life.”
Whitford said the road was not equipped for the volume of traffic and that visitors were putting themselves and others at risk.
“It’s a very, very narrow road, and it’s very under cared for,” she said. “It’s a dirt road that’s full of potholes. There are trees down on the way through and people don’t know how to drive to the conditions up here.”
She said a car had gone over the edge of the road several weeks ago, sending three people to hospital, and stressed that the area included homes and private backyards rather than a formal public attraction.
Strath Creek locals fear a bushfire emergency
Residents are also concerned that parked cars, makeshift camps and open flames could obstruct emergency access during the warmer months.
The area was badly affected by the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. The Country Fire Authority says the disaster claimed 173 lives across Victoria and severely affected communities including Flowerdale and Broadford.
Local photographer Sara, who has visited and photographed the lookout for years, said the combination of dry grass, unpatrolled land and a single access road could prove dangerous.
“If people are lighting little barbecue fires up there, and something like a fire did break out, and all these people are just parked across this one-way road, you wouldn’t even be able to get out of there,” she said. “It’d just be a disaster.”
A CFA spokesperson said the local commander had reported “no issue” with crowd numbers or emergency access at the site. Victoria Police and the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action were contacted for comment.
David Francis Palmer, who works on farming properties in the area, said a security presence could help curb the behaviour.
“I can’t honestly see the police going and knocking on people’s doors because they might have seen them taking a poo on the side of the road,” he said. “But if they know that it’s monitored, it may well restrict their bad behaviour.”
The popularity of the sites has also created a commercial opportunity. One operator is charging more than $500 a day for photography tours marketed around the “viral magic tree”.
Melbourne visitors Akhil Bollikonda and his wife, Sravani, travelled to the area after finding the location on YouTube. They said the scenery was even more impressive in person but noticed the litter and dead animals placed along the road.
“I think it’s really sad to see animals like that,” Akhil said, adding that he had seen visitors throwing rubbish away and did not consider it acceptable.
Whitford said she did not object to people visiting the area, but felt the loss of privacy and damage to the landscape had gone too far.
“This is a place that I’ve come to every time that I’m in love, out of love, every major crossroads in my life,” she said. “Every time that I just need to think and be somewhere beautiful, this is where I come.”
“To have that then ruined consistently – it’s devastating.”
