The wilderness experience in national parks: A case study of Boonoo Boonoo National Park

The wilderness calls many of us. However, around the world, access to, and experience of, wilderness is mediated and controlled. In Australia, this is through the auspices of the National Parks and Wildlife Services. Wilderness areas are deemed to be dangerous, 'unpredictable' places, only understood by 'experts', who manage the landscape and our experience of it. We, as visitors, enter at our own risk. Using Boonoo Boonoo National Park, in northern New South Wales, as a case study, an example of a national park offering opportunities for wilderness experiences, this chapter discusses the layers of experience available in these managed landscapes. It is argued that the more at-home we feel in one place, the more we test the boundaries of 'our' place in that space. It is further argued, that as a mediated experience, we are limited in our agency and ability to truly immerse ourselves. This, in turn, impacts on our capacity to develop a collective ecological consciousness and awareness - sorely needed in this era of broad-ranging ecological devastation and degradation.