Second life lost at Gibraltar Falls in less than a week

It was closed Bob, and it was advertised that it was closed.

I thought it was closed since someone fell to their death the week before?

I really love Gibraltar Falls, and my sympathies go to the loved ones of the latest and utterly tragic death. However, reports of deaths invariably fail to follow-up with any enlightenment on the circumstances leading to the tragedy: this information could well be enlightening. As I said in a previous comment, the Falls and other areas of natural beauty are placed in the hands of governing bodies to administer them for *all* members of the public. I see shutting them off as a brutal, short-sighted, and small-minded knee-jerk response. I moved from a State (Victoria) that appears to have such reactions as a first and only response and it is exceptionally tedious and heartbreaking to see some of the most beautiful parts of the State in which you live being shut-off forever or fenced-in all in the name of “safety”. What is the point of a natural wonder if nobody can get to see and enjoy it? The area is currently closed while a “safety” review is underway. My feeling is that even if it is reopened, the experience of visiting the area will be marred forever by a plethora of ugly fences and access restricted to tiny viewing areas that are hardly worth the effort of visiting.

1) The nature, the very essence, of RANDOMNESS, is that things occur in clusters, i.e. unevenly, and this seems likely to be a good example.
2) Bren Burkevics would be well served if his advice from Parks and Conservation related previous Australian experience with such deaths. For example a case I was involved with was when the father of Shree Baligadoo sued the ACT following her death at Mt Coree. The father claimed the ACT was remiss for not having followed a Coroner’s recommendation, regarding a prior death at Booroomba Rocks, to build roads to cliff tops such as Booroomba, in order to enable faster access by emergency services, and to erect signs and railings around edges of cliffs in Namadgi National Park. But no road, railing or sign had been installed at any cliff, including the remote area where Ms Baligadoo died, by the time of her death. Experienced lawyers retained by the ACT for its defence, were in no doubt whatever that the absence of signs, railings and roads in such remote areas was in practical terms, no liability. And if I recall correctly, the case was withdrawn, anyway the ACT did not lose it.
3) Booroomba Rocks is not a climbing wall in a local gym. And Gibraltar Falls is not ‘Wet and Wild’ or any other adventure park. The ACT government is not responsible for water polished rocks being slippery, nor for the falls being higher than it is safe to fall.
4) Gibraltar Falls attracts people because of its naturalness. It would be a travesty to do what Burkevics has indicated and deprive a large number of people of the pleasure of experiencing this spot because two people died there and other people continue to assess risk differently to the assessment made by a government department, and to disregard some of the warnings the department provided.
5) Many local natural features have caused deaths, eg the cluster of unrelated drownings in the Murrumbidgee in the 1980s. Although each death is highly unfortunate, there is no reasonably way to completely prevent them all.