Has an ACT government spat turned a nature spot into a garbage dump?

Former park ranger and Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve manager John McRae is outraged at the state of the reserve's entrance - and he fears that some sort of internal government dispute has meant the eyesore is left to fester.

Subscribe now for unlimited access.

or signup to continue reading

Next to the two bright orange welcome signs, the ground is strewn with burnt-out tyres, vaping equipment and fast-food containers.

The former manager of the reserve thinks the rubbish has been deposited by hoons, and then allowed to stay by parks staff so that complaints mount up, finally prompting the right department of the ACT government to gets its act together and clean it up.

The ACT government didn't accept this conspiracy theory. It said that the road was a fast one so clean-ups needed to "minimise the risk to staff".

"This section of road has a 100 km/h speed limit which can present a significant safety risk for roadside workers," an ACT government spokesperson said.

John McRae is fed up with hooning and rubbish at the park entrance. Pictures by Karleen Minney

But Mr McRae, the former manager of the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, said he had evidence of a dispute between departments.

He said he had asked an employee there: "They didn't know who I was. I said, 'What's the idea with all the rubbish, it's been here for weeks'. And their response was, 'We've been told to leave it there'. To me, that means someone's made a decision to leave this garbage," he said.

"I don't attribute this problem to the staff who work here at Tidbinbilla. They do a great job. Someone has made a decision and issued an instruction, as best I can tell, to leave this (rubbish) here, and it wasn't them. It's someone in management.

"It's not their job to go out on public roads and clear garbage. It's the job of ACT roads, and the job of the police to sort out hooning."

He has now written to the ACT's environment minister, Suzanne Orr, asking her about "tyres, tangled wire, empty drink bottles and KFC boxes".

"Is that Canberra's new image?" he opined to the minister. "When I see those piles of garbage at the entrance to Tidbinbilla I'm disgusted."

Mr McRae worked for the ACT Parks Service for 17 years, ending his career as the manager of Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. He's angry because he views Tidbinbilla as a showcase for the ACT to people from near and far.

"We get huge numbers of school kids and this is the first thing they see when they arrive and the last thing they see when they leave.

"We get VIPs, we get diplomats, heads of state, royalty, you name it, they come out here. At certain times of year, there's probably more diplomatic plates in Tidbinbilla than there are in Yarralumla."

The wider problem he sees is that the entrance has become a burnout site.

"When the hoons come out here on some of the nights, often it's 50 to 100 vehicles. They'll do their burnouts here.

"The entire driveway will have cars both sides, lights on, noise. And it becomes a gauntlet because there are still people who use this road at night. There are people who live here, and there are staff at Tidbinbilla who work at night, and they have to try and leave and drive through that gauntlet to get home. It's intimidating."

The ACT government said the police did act against hooning. "In September, they conducted a targeted weekend operation that saw 76 fines and 45 defect notices issued," the government spokesperson said.

More from Court and Crime