Lonely Planet write-up irks Port Hedland

Visitors to Port Hedland often remark how much the place has changed in recent times – not so, according to an uber-popular travel guide.

Lonely Planet’s latest assessment of Port Hedland will no doubt leave many wondering if anyone from the publication visited the North West in the past two years.

The summary of Port Hedland in the 7th edition of the guide to Perth and West Coast Australia, released last week, reads word-for-word as it did in the 2011 6th edition.

“Port Hedland ain’t the prettiest place,” the book states of the town on page 201.

“Confronted by its railway yards, iron-ore stock piles, salt mountains, furnaces and massive deepwater port, the average tourist might floor the accelerator…yet Hedland is not just another bland prefab Pilbara town.”

The North West Telegraph reported in 2011 that Lonely Planet paid tribute to a growing cultural “renaissance” in Hedland.

Exactly the same phrasing was used in the “updated” edition.

“While (the resources boom) pushes up prices and squeezes accommodation it’s also sparked a renaissance,” the Lonely Planet wrote.

“Old pubs are being renovated, the art and café (real coffee!) scenes are expanding, fine dining is flourishing, cocktail and tapas bars are sprouting and cycle paths are spreading along the foreshore. Just don’t mind the red dust.”

The new guidebook did include the Courthouse Gallery saying the facility was “the centre of all goodness in Hedland”.

“If something is happening these folks will know about it,” the book wrote.

Lonely Planet spokesman Adam Bennett said Port Hedland was visited by staff for reassessment in 2013.

“While our authors research and update every edition and visit everything that they write about, if they feel that nothing has changed in the last two years since they were there they don’t reinvent the wheel for the sake of just changing the copy,” he said.

FORM executive director Lynda Dorrington was disappointed with the write-up Hedland received in the 7th edition.

“(The town) has changed dramatically in the last two years – in the last 18 months some very significant changes have occurred,” she said.

“It really raises the issue of what are we going to do about changing our reputation, with running the visitors centre most of the feedback we receive is that people are warned off coming to Port Hedland, it just highlights how damaging the past reputation has been to the Pilbara’s identity.

“We need to run a Pilbara-wide strategy on changing our reputation, and it’s not going to happen by convincing people who already live (here)…by addressing each of the capital cities and doing a really strong online campaign about why people should come to the Pilbara.

“It is extremely damaging in the international market to be viewed as a very ugly backwater.”