I have lived in Gloucester for the past 40 years and I wish to write in favour of adopting the tourism destination brand name ‘Barrington Coast’ for our Local Government Area.
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I work as a volunteer at the Gloucester Visitor Information Centre and I’m the owner and manager of Barrington Hideaway. We have recently been approached and filmed by Channel 7 to appear on their Sydney Weekender show which will be aired on August 19.
I have been involved from the beginning in the destination branding process undertaken by the Destination Marketing Store - experts in their field. This company was hired by the Midcoast Council to develop the destination branding. They have a proven track record of strengthening visitor economy in many regions of NSW. Visitor spending is extremely important to our economy with benefits flowing on to our local community and businesses.
The brand Barrington Coast is a purely tourism brand and from discussions I’ve had with others in the industry there is overwhelming support for the name Barrington Coast.
The highest point in the MidCoast Council region is Barrington Tops. Our major rivers are all born there: Manning, Barrington, Gloucester and Karuah Rivers. If you stood there on a high platform and looked eastward you would see all of the MidCoast LGA: rivers, valleys, farmlands, towns, lakes and beaches…. all the things we're famous for, including world heritage parklands at Barrington Tops.
We need a tourism name that covers all three previous council regions, an umbrella name without using any of the previous council names. Barrington Coast is the only name that truly embraces the whole of MidCoast, from the mountains to the sea; it's the most uniting of them all.
We need a geographical locator that gives people outside our area a point of reference. It won’t detract from the fact that Great Lakes will always be Great Lakes, Manning Valley won’t cease to exist, people will still visit the Myall coast and Gloucester will always have its own identity. Barrington Coast answers the challenge of tying all these areas together from a tourism perspective.
MidCoast is the most unique local government area in NSW: it's the only council in NSW where you can build a snowman on a mountain top and then a sandcastle on the beach, just two hours later without leaving the local government area. The Barrington Coast brand name celebrates this.
Our indigenous people used to refer to our area as a place where ‘the leaves touch the waters from the mountains to the sea’. Hopefully people will now start to understand the reasons behind the tourism brand name Barrington Coast.
