But Wangat Lodge on the Chichester River north of Dungog has found a place in the hearts of many thousands of guests and proprietor Ken Rubeli has this month chalked up 25 years as the resident naturalist who shares his love of the bush with children and adults alike.

Wangat Lodge was set up in the mid-1980s by Geoff and Isabel Armstrong as a centre for environmental education.  Ken was employed in 1988 to design and run residential school camp programs.

He had previously spent more than a decade in Malaysia engaged in rainforest conservation and nature education.  Working with Robert Pollock through the 1990s Ken developed Wangat’s camps into a unique blend of adventure in wild places and sensitivity to the natural world, emphasising the need for balance between the demands of daily living and the conservation of natural heritage.

A parallel business for the Lodge was weekend bush getaways for groups of families.  Ken’s daughters Ella and then Freya accompanied him on hundreds of bushwalks for these weekend guests.  At first they were carried in a baby sling, then in a backpack and finally on their own two legs.

“It’s cheating really, raising kids and earning a living at the same time,” said Ken.

“But weekend guests have their own kids and when they see another little kid unafraid of leeches and confident clambering up creek beds then their own fears and uncertainties are put aside.”

Ken has now conducted more than 500 school camps at Wangat Lodge, each of three or four days duration.  Most are for primary-age children, and the innovative programs involve music, role plays, mime, creative writing, and lots of time outdoors exploring river and rainforest.

A respect for Aboriginal culture is central, as is responsibility for environmental care, local and global.

“It has been suggested that Wangat’s camps are designed so those running them can have as much fun as possible,” said Ken.

“There was a kid on a camp who got the impression I was just on a holiday like he was.  He asked – ‘Like, is this your work, or do you have a proper job?’ - and I didn’t really have an answer….”

Have circumstances changed in 25 years?

Ken says teachers and weekend guests are less fit, less willing to take on longer walks.  Risk assessment has a much higher priority.  Food allergies and hypersensitivities to bites and stings are now a significant issue.

And there is a tendency now to accept that education through digital media in the classroom is a comfortable substitute for the direct outdoor experience utilising all the senses.

“We allowed ourselves to think in the early 1990s that we were on the edge of a new era of appreciation of the impact of humanity on the natural world,” said Ken.

“We talked then about exponential human population growth, about global warming, about resources like coal and oil being finite, about the potential of solar energy.

“The consciousness seemed to grow for a few years, then plateau, and now I can’t help but be despondent that Australians will only follow an environmentally sensitive path if it will save them money.”

Ken is fitter than most people half his age and can’t see himself giving up his vocation as a voice for the world of nature.

While there is a demand for an experience of the Australian bush he will find a way to serve it.

But nature-focused tourism is facing hard times and businesses in the Dungog Shire that have depended on the attraction of National Parks and State Forest are finding that clientele are kept away because they are working longer hours and choose instead the attractions of home comforts like air-conditioning, wide-screen televisions and the internet.

“In another 25 years there’ll be more than a million people living an hour or so from Dungog,” said Ken.

“We have to appreciate the fabulous natural assets we have.  We have to offer an insight into the reverence Aboriginal Australia has for the land and all that lives in it.

“We have to package the bush experience to help people overcome their fears and entice them to open their hearts to the wonder of it all.

“It costs so little for a family to spend a day in the forest at Jerusalem Creek or the upper Williams River.   Yet these are among the most beautiful places on the planet.

“Over the years there have been many people who have contributed to Wangat’s sharing of its message of reverence for the natural world.  None of us has earned a lot financially.

“But we are paid in the pleasure in people’s faces, in the delight children experience in finding we are ourselves not so far from the wild things after all.”