When a historic site is turned into a “ecotourist” site of leisure and pleasure, what is missed? Especially in the context of Australian history, which is scarred by layers and layers of oppression related to race, gender and class (but foremost race), what is being erased from community memory and from public discourse through the marketing of leisure and pleasure in the form of ecotourism, which is being driven by a positioning of branding aimed solely at profit? Pain and suffering, historically real and often unresolved to the present day, are covered over phenomenologically in order to avoid any dent on the marketability of a commercially controlled historic site.

Indeed what is sacrificed through a commercially operated aestheticisation of a historic site of pain and suffering is moral courage. Not only history in its authenticity, but human decency based on conscience, stand at crossroads when a historic site is no longer remembered in its totality. Its visage of trauma awaits discovery and discussion.