Wedding Cake Rock Instagram craze: hashtag visitors on edge of danger

Search #weddingcakerock on Instagram and you'll come up with more than 3500 images of grinning young people on and around a curiously geometric, starkly white clifftop overlooking the ocean.

Some are standing, a few daredevils are performing handstands or leaping in the air but the vast majority are seated on the chiselled cliff edge, legs dangling 80 metres above the roiling ocean below.

If it looks dangerous that's because it is. Outrageously dangerous. One person has already died at the location and there are fears more could follow.

Wedding Cake Rock is on the Coast Track in the Royal National Park, about two kilometres south of the village of Bundeena. The track is popular during the summer months and during the annual whale migration but it's generally the sole domain of just a few hardy walking types and trail runners.

That was before the Wedding Cake Rock craze. No one is quite sure exactly where it all started. It was probably with an Instagram or Facebook post showing the brilliant white cliffs against the blue sky. Regardless, it was a case of post it and they will come.

And come they did. According to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) about 2000 walkers get out on the entire coast track each month. But in each of the past few months a massive 10,000 visitors have made the trip to Wedding Cake Rock.

Anecdotal evidence from locals in Bundeena reveals traffic jams and parked cars lining normally quiet streets as the hordes head to "Wedding Cake".

NPWS regional manager Gary Dunnett admitted the service had been taken by surprise. "Wedding Cake Rock has caught people's imagination," he said. "We are coming to terms with how quickly that has happened.

"This is a new phenomenon for us – to have the popularity of a site driven by social media."

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As well as clocking visitor numbers, the NPWS has also been looking at demographics. The visitors are overwhelmingly young, new to bushwalking and speak Mandarin/Cantonese as their second language. Reports of visitors in designer clothes, high heels and even carrying dogs are not uncommon.

But the honeymoon may well be over for Wedding Cake Rock. This weekend NPWS erected temporary fencing around the site and put up signs saying that the area was closed.

"We realised there was a real problem brewing," says Dunnett. "People were sitting right on the edge. Normal commonsense was not getting through. Just because you've seen an image of a friend sitting on the edge doesn't mean it's safe for you to do it."

The move from NPWS comes almost exactly a year after 23-year-old Wollongong University student Fabien Ardoin plunged to his death. He was believed to be hanging from the edge when the soft rock crumbled.

Engineers are also using drones to investigate the stability of the rock column. In a worst-case scenario the whole cliff could slide into the sea, taking with it whoever happens to be standing on top.

"The thing I'm concerned about is whether having 30 or 40 people standing on that area has the potential to tip it one way or the other," said Dunnett. "We need to know whether or not that is on the cards to know whether the messaging is keep three metres back from the edge or keep 30 metres back."

Dunnett said the temporary fencing would "buy time" until a permanent solution could be found to keep visitors safe without ruining the experience.

"You can't put a fence along the entire NSW coastline," he said.

Meanwhile, another disturbing trend has emerged this week – visitors making their mark by chalking names on the rock in bright colours.

"We just can't be that selfish," said Dunnett. "It's outrageous that someone could think that's appropriate."

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