A brief insight into ‘The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc.’ and their efforts to protect a special place.
“Gain a short, little known insight into a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens who came together led by the late Neil Stuart to become guardians of a very special natural valley in the Upper Blue Mountains. Learn about the wealth of stories, how over 26 years locals cared for the valley’s integrity, how volunteers committed to half a lifetime of unpaid bushcare, made and sold jam at street stalls to raise funds, and fought a council Goliath. Be shocked by the truth of what really happened in 1957 and the lifetime trauma to what was once an harmonious yet socially marginalised community subsisting on Katoomba’s fringe.
This is of living contemporary social history. This is a controversial expose into one group’s community volunteerism, activism, environmentalism and nimbyism and social justice – thousands of hours given up to save ‘Katoomba Falls Creek Valley’, known by some as ‘The Gully’, known by others as ‘Catalina Raceway’.
This is very much an Australian story, a microcosm of Australian history and pre-history – one locally as rich as it is beautiful yet very sad. It has impacted upon dozens of locals, old families and their ancestors. It is a story about respecting the natural, anthropological and community values of one valley. Recent history became complex, protracted and nasty – involving displacement, forced eviction, invasion, desecration, secret deals, politics, animosities, divide-and-conquer manipulation, empty political promises, conflicting interests, threats and designs by influential millions, the various meetings, many plans of development (some silly), token consultation, one of metaphorically trying to herd cats and twenty six years of community emotional snakes and ladders.
Katoomba Falls
This presentation was delivered by a former member of ‘The Friends’ yesterday at Hobby Reach, Wentworth Falls, the home of the Blue Mountains Historical Society Inc.
For those who attended and requested the reading of the poem…
Thomson River from Walhalla Road Bridge, Victoria, Australia.
(Photo by editor 20170322 looking north)
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Walhalla Mizzle
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It’s been raining gentle all night
In crisp mountain air
I sit on my dawn porch
I gaze through the grey mizzle
To the thick treed ridge
Covering the steep spur
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Across Stringers Creek
The creek babbles far below
Feeding the mighty Thomson
Low heavy cloud envelops
Robins, larks, parrots, finches, firetails, martins or currawongs
Greet the daylight
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Walhalla’s quiet now
As it should be up here
In the wild ranges steep
The 50 year army of gold reefers
Has long been and gone
Shafters taken their bargains and fortunes
Till the ground lay barren, the hills denuded, the Thomson damned
The batteries, the boilers and engines and waterwheel are gone
The miners, drinkers, shop keepers, the shafted
The school kids who played in bad soil
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The long tunnels lie empty and dank
The dark shafts abandoned to victim ghosts
The slag heap lies as a mountainous waste
Still laced with arsenic
Stringers choked by discarded tailings
They all went back up over Little Joe, the twenty-five hundred
Back to their big smoke
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The rail remains as industrious memory
To the heyday of industry and hardship
Fifteen tons of gold taken
On the marble column count
Dividends paid out
Two fires, a flood, disease and arsenic
Dozens perished for the gold fever
As the slain to Odin
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The mizzle is pure till it touches the ground
Surrounding forest seems back
The creek tries flow as it did, crystal but dead
A heritage cancer cluster
A new breed of shafters.
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Stringers Creek, from Main Road, Walhalla
(Photo by editor 20170322)
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Further Reading:
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[1] “Elevated arsenic values can be detected up to 15 metres from the mineralised zone” – in ‘Nature of gold mineralisation in the Walhalla Goldfield, eastern Victoria, Australia‘, 2007, by Megan A. Hough, Laurent Ailleres (School of Geosciences, Monash University), Frank P. Bierlein (Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, Adele Seymon (Geoscience Victoria) and Stuart Hutchin (Goldstar Resources, Rawson), ^https://www.smedg.org.au/HoughOct07.html
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[2] ‘Approaching a century-old legacy of arsenic and mercury contamination’, 2016, by Dr. Linda Campbell, Senior Research Fellow at Environmental Science, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ^http://ap.smu.ca/~lcampbel/Gold.html
[8] ‘Thallium and Arsenic Poisoning in a Small Midwestern Town’, 2002, by Daniel E Rusyniak at Department of Emergency Medicine and Division of Medical Toxicology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA, and R. Brent Furbee and Mark A Kirk, ^https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/11867986/
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[9] ‘Cancer incidence and soil arsenic exposure in a historical gold mining area in Victoria, Australia: A geospatial analysis‘, 2012, by Dora Claire (University of Ballarat and Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne), Kim Dowling (Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne) and Malcolm Ross Sim (Monash University) in Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology (2012) 22, 248–257, ^http://www.nature.com/jes/journal/v22/n3/full/jes201215a.html
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[10] ‘A cross-sectional survey on knowledge and perceptions of health risks associated with arsenic and mercury contamination from artisanal gold mining in Tanzania’, 20130125, by Elias Charles, Deborah SK Thomas, Deborah Dewey, Mark Davey, Sospatro E Ngallaba and Eveline Konje, at BMC Public Health, BioMed Central, London UK, ^https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-13-74
"We're coming to you from the custodial lands of the Hairygowogulator and Tarantulawollygong, and pay respects to uncle and grandaddy elders past, present and emerging from their burrows. So wise to keep a distance out bush."
