Resort wins over guests

Townsville Bulletin
Thursday 21/2/2008 Page: 7

AWARD-WINNING Hidden Valley Cabins is a climate-neutral, eco-friendly resort at the top of the Paluma Ranges. Located one and half hours northwest of Townsville, near Running River, it has been one of our best kept secrets, but word is out and it's fast becoming a tourism hot spot for those seeking the ecotourism Australian bush experience. Apart from its innate charm, tucked away in the wilderness, Hidden Valley Cabins has earned recognition as the first Carbon Neutral Resort in Australia, now operating on 100 per cent solar power.

With the help of Climate Friendly, Hidden Valley Cabins has purchased carbon credits to offset the greenhouse gases produced, making it proudly carbon free. According to Bonnie McLennan, Hidden Valley was not on grid power, forcing the resort to be self-reliant The McLennan's over the years have tried to develop ideas to decrease their generator use, thereby saving on greenhouse gasses.

The challenge was to still giving their guests the best resort experience possible. In 1986 they installed 12 volt battery lighting in the cabins for guests to have lights once the generator was turned off. A battery charger charged these batteries while the generator was running but that was both noisy, expensive and carbon costly.

In 1988 12-volt lighting was installed in the shop and entertainment area. This then progressed to their house in 1997 and they decided to develop a small 12-volt system that would power only a few small appliances such as lighting and television. In time, the McLennans were able to, through the federally funded Renewable Remote Power Generation Scheme, install a stand-alone solar system to run the entire resort 24 hours per day.

Interpretive signage will be placed around the resort to help guests understand the system and its challenges, with guests input sought for further strategies to reduce greenhouse emissions. "This project alone saves 26000 L of diesel or 78 tonnes of CO2 emissions. The CO2 emissions produced by the LPG gas the resort uses for hot water and cooking, fuel used for transporting supplies, and fuel used in our tour bus which leaves Townsville twice a week are accounted for and we have purchased carbon credits from a Sydney- based company, Climate Friendly, to offset this.

Therefore the entire resort is carbon free." Committed to ongoing change, one of the McLennan's climate friendly's projects is involvement with the Hebei Wind Farm, in China. The Hebei wind farm in northern China is a 40-wind turbine project on Wolongtu Mountain, Kangbao County, near Zhangjiakou City in China's Hebei province. It is already in operation and is generating some 57,946 MWhs of clean energy a year, displacing the use of polluting coal-fired electricity in the region and reducing more than 55,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution.

The project meets Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Project standards and has the additional benefit of providing much needed energy security to a remote region that previously suffered from unreliable energy sources. Hidden Valley recently won two NQ Tourism awards, one for Hosted Accommodation and the other for New Tourism Development in 2007 and were finalists in the Qld Tourism Awards for Hosted Accommodation in 2007.