Sightseers are taking serious risks in National Parks around Australia in the pursuit of the perfect picture. As many as 100 people were injured in the Royal National Park, just south of Sydney, on Saturday afternoon as they posed for photographs on the edge of a rock shelf near the Figure 8 Pools.
The pools are only accessible at low tide and even then large swells have the capacity to crash over the rock face washing visitors off their feet.
This trend, which sees individuals placing themselves at risk in order to capture a dramatic image, is driven largely by the desire to share experiences on social media such as Instagram & Facebook.
In June 2014, a 23-year-old student plunged 40m to his death in the Royal National Park after hanging from the edge of Wedding Cake Rock, another hot-spot for photo opportunities in the park. Just last year two men fell from the same ledge and had to be winched to safety. Since this time the landmark has been closed to the public in order to prevent such unnecessary stunts.
In a similar incident in 2014, a 22-year-old woman was found deceased in the Blue Mountains after falling to her death off a cliffs edge. Police reports suggest that she was meditating atop the bluff when she decided to scale a fence and fell.
This craze seems both dangerous and needless – no photo is worth losing your life over.
