Report from UTS on Tourism in La Perouse 2010
A new survey into who visits national parks and what they like to do has highlighted the importance of the state’s park system to communities and local economies, reporting 38 million visits to NSW national parks in 2008.
The study was the first of its kind undertaken in NSW and involved more than 15,700 telephone surveys.
Survey results showed the five most popular national parks were Blue Mountains, Royal, Ku-ring-gai Chase, Lane Cove and Kosciusko.
Sydney, the most populous National Parks region fared below the Blue Mountains, Sydney South, Sydney North, Central Coast and Hunter,South Coast, Northern Rivers.
Sydney Region includes the northern section of Botany Bay at La Perouse (including Congwong and Little Congwong beaches and the historic La Perouse headland), Wolli Creek, Sydney Harbour beaches and islands as well as western Sydney parks such as Leacock, Mulgoa, Scheyville, Bents Basin, Kemps Creek, Cattai, Rouse Hill, Windsor Downs. While over 20% of the population of NSW live in the Sydney Region catchment the Parks in this region attract less than 7% of the visits. By contrast Lane Cove and Kuring-gai, in the Northern Region are two of the most popular parks. These parks offer well supported volunteering opportunities are responsive to visitor and local community needs and conduct plenty of reasonably priced events to suit families.
Bushwalking was the most popular activity in all our parks – 54%, followed by water sports 17% (including swimming & surfing 10%; fishing 4%) and picnicking came in around 14%.
Males 25-49 were the most represented users at 53% (population = 49%) while females 18-24 and 50+ and couples over 35 with children were least likely to visit.
La Perouse Coast Care 