DEW Accessibility Officer Yvie Eglinton’s address to the Friends’ Forum in August certainly impressed a past President of Friends of Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park.
On returning home from the Forum Dinner he emailed members of the group to tell them there was a developing program within parks that they needed to embrace immediately. He later discussed ideas with the group’s Liaison Ranger Tom McIntosh to learn what plans park staff might have for reviewing accessibility to facilities, camping, trails, visitor experiences and other park assets, and offering strong participation by the park’s Friends.
The outcome of those discussions was an agreement for Friends to conduct an audit of everything in the park that visitors can access. Using the detailed Park Accessibility Checklist provided by Yvie, the Group prepared Audit Worksheets to enable a thorough and detailed audit of all that Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park can offer a visitor, as seen through the eyes of a person with a disability.
The Accessibility Audit of the park was carried out by Friends during their November 2024 working week. To ensure continuity of standards and evaluations only two teams of two volunteers were involved. All visitor accessible sites within the park were audited. Not surprisingly the nature of the Flinders Ranges terrain poses numerous challenges to able bodied people and these are greatly magnified when imagining how people with a disability might be provided with access. Nevertheless all sites were equally audited by the audit team totally committed to identifying opportunities.
The Audit Report has now to be written. The initial review of Audit worksheets suggested a grouping of sites. For example, there is already a small number of sites within the park that can be accessed by people with a disability and a few more could be accessed after repairs to minor issues such as track levels and width, and location of bollards and fencing. Then there are numerous opportunities to provide accessibility by funding and undertaking more major works to enable visitors with a disability to move between carparks and visitor experience locations. Campgrounds can also be improved with sufficient funds. Perhaps the major obstacle to accessibility throughout the park is the absence of disabled toilets that meet Australian Standards and the conditions of surrounding terrain to provide ease of access to them.
The Friends group has made a start and members are ready to undertake the minor repairs identified in keeping with the work program of par management.
We look forward to welcoming visitors with a disability among the people we greet when working in the park.
If you’re Friends group would like to complete an audit, please contact Yvie at yvette.eglinton@sa.gov.au
