Wedding Cake Rock: new fence will stop visitors climbing 'unsafe' Instagram attraction

National Parks and Wildlife Service says sandstone ledge could ‘collapse at any time’

An Australian national park is building a new fence to stop visitors climbing on to an Instagram-famous yet dangerous rock – but critics say it will not keep anyone away.

Wedding Cake Rock – a white, cake-shaped cliff in New South Wales’ Royal National Park – has become a popular destination for selfies and photos, with thousands of visitors a year.

However, the sandstone ledge is “very fragile” and a 2015 geotechnical survey found it could “collapse at any time”, according to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).

In 2014 a French student was killed nearby when a cliff collapsed, and in 2015 two men had to be rescued after falling from Wedding Cake Rock and landing on a narrow ledge below it.

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Park rangers have since built warning signs and a 1.6m fence around the rock but enough people have ignored it that they have announced plans to upgrade their defences by 2019.

While the new fence will not be higher, it will be “more difficult to climb, using more robust materials”, a spokeswoman said.

Roughly 1,500 people visit the rock on a busy weekend, according to the NPWS, and dozens of Instagram posts using the hastag #weddingcakerock are made every week.

Those who have taken photos on the rock say it is likely the new fence will also be ignored.

Monika Mydlowska took a photo on Wedding Cake Rock and posted it to Instagram on Monday with the caption “Stable people dancing on an unstable rock”.