Archive for the ‘Habitat Campaigns’ Category

Large Gully Tree Killed

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

This large healthy mature native Eucalypt has just been chainsawed to death today. We could hear the noise of multiple chainsaws ripping reverberated around the neighbourhood from early this morning.

This tree grew on private residential land within The Gully Catchment on a large double block on the top of a prominent natural spur overlooking the northern part of The Gully not far from Horrie Gates’ old Catalina Dam.

The Gully is a valued small natural valley situated on the western edge of the township of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

The particular site is zoned by local Blue Mountains Council as ‘Heritage’ and ‘Environmental Land’ under current Local Environmental Plan 2015. It is also a very old settlement area of the Blue Mountains dating back to 1876. In fact, it forms part of the oldest housing area of the Blue Mountains Local Government Area (LGA) and traditionally known as ‘North’s Estate’.

Land sale auctions advertisement from 1883

It was named after the first land Torrens Title owner John Britty North (1831-1917), an English immigrant during British colonial times who owned most of the immediate area and became a coal shale miner and then property developer there.

Close Up of the above map, the particular site is situated within ‘Sect IX’.

Recognition of this colonial heritage is such that this North Estate precinct has been especially zoned by council as ‘K171 – Norths Estate Conservation Area‘ under council’s LEP 2015.

Was Council permission sought? It appears from a call to Council, that it knew nothing about the owner’s plan to kill this significant native tree in this heritage and conservation precinct, as confirmed by CSR525105. Council used to have a Significant Tree Register to protect identified significant trees within its LGA. It no longer does.

So why kill it? It was a slight 5 degree lean but in the direction of the prevailing wind. Was it some perceived fear that in many years to come it might fall on the house? Was it a prejudiced fear of gum trees? For fire wood?

This native tree was probably over 100 years old, perhaps dating back to the 19th Century and was the most prominent specimen in the immediate area.

What was left of the tree this afternoon before the rain came again.

Yet this majestic native tree was in good health and vigour, and showed no signs of decay.

Close up: This tree was structurally sound. No dead wood from the tree can be seen in these chainsawed sections (‘body parts’)

Was any prior assessment by professionally qualified arborist conducted on the tree?

We recall back in 2014 with regards to saving the 300+ year old Eucalyptus oreades tree that local conservationists had dubbed ‘ATLAS’, that The Habitat Advocate contracted renown expert arborist (the late) Mr Fred Janes, to conduct a professional arborist appraisal and report on the relative health of ATLAS. This was sought because a property developer of the adjoining land wanted the tree killed by chainsaw so that he could selfishly have an overflow car park for the benefit clients of his proposed industrial estate complex. So he had secured a dodgy arborist, only licensed to use a chainsaw. Where as Mr Jane’s report found the tree to be in good health and vigour, and Council agreed.

SAVE ATLAS Campaign – Part 1

It’s a sad loss.

We have observed over time since our own arrival in this special place in 2001, that whilst in The Gully’s ‘Aboriginal Place’ dissociated land parcels of native bush, the native trees within are culturally sacrosanct, as they should be; yet around the immediately periphery of adjoining private lands, housing development and deforestation continues incrementally. It is death by a thousand cuts transforming the natural valley into an artificial urban landscape.

This is why council insists on being called Blue Mountains City Council in its urbane dreams within a world heritage area.

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SAVE ATLAS Campaign – Part 1

Friday, June 2nd, 2023

‘ATLAS’? This is the worthy name our campaign branded this magnificent and extremely rare 250+ year-old Eucalyptus oreades that came under greedy developer threat. It is an endemic native tree estimated to predate Katoomba and indeed pre-date Captain Cook (that is pre-1770!)

About ‘Friends of ATLAS’

Back in 2014 at the start of spring in the Blue Mountains (Australia), Katoomba residents Maureen and Peter Toy from their home at 57 Megalong Street observed a man inspecting this magnificent tree on the verge out front. They approached the man, who then told them that he reckoned the tree was “diseased” and so had to be “removed” (aka killed).

The Toy’s campaign to save this magnificent tree was on in earnest!

ATLAS survives in good health, not diseased, as a 250 year old (in 2014) native Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalyptus oreades), with a still-growing canopy of 40+ metres high.

ATLAS pre-dates the settlement of Katoomba. Indeed, ATLAS predates colonial settlement of Australian in 1788. According to a learned Grade 5 arborist with long experience in these species, ATLAS probably started growing as a sapling from the 1760s – before the French Revolution, before the American War of Independence, before James Cook first set sail from Britain to explore the Pacific and find the rumoured great southern continent in 1768.

This tree is an icon like the Three Sisters, yet hidden in Blue Mountains {city} Council’s assigned industrial area of Katoomba near the headwaters of Leura Creek and upstream of the popular tourist attraction of Leura Cascades and Leura Falls which tumbles into the Jamison Valley within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

According to advice the Toys received from local conservation consultancy The Habitat Advocate, this large Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalyptus oreades) is a native tree only found in the Upper Blue Mountains. Thousands of oreades were incinerated by the 2003 Centennial Glen bushfire, making the species now threatened in the upper Blue Mountains.

Maureen says:

“It is a beautiful and rare specimen and Blue Mountains folk are fortunate that we have such a significant tree still growing right by Megalong Street in industrial Katoomba. Over the many decades, this tree has withstood fierce windstorms, bushfires, (dodgy) road-widening and even industrial development all around it.”

A new industrial development in 2014 was constructed behind ATLAS, replacing a old motor garage.

With a canopy about 40 metres high and a trunk girth of over 5 metres (measured at 1.4m above the ground ^SOURCE), the tree has become a recognised icon and reference point in the area. It is home to a large flock of Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos that roosts in the tree daily.

Campaign Background

Some years prior in 2012, The Habitat Advocate’s Conservation Consultant Steven, had had his own concerns about the new development taking place behind the tree at 59 Megalong Street Katoomba, and decided to take some before-shot photos; the following three taken on 11th January 2012.

Our editor by ATLAS in 2012

So two years hence, with the new ‘mega industrial park’ constructed adjacent to the tree, the consulting arborist David Ford, whom Maureen and Peter had talked to, became the arch enemy to the preservation of the tree.

Peter couldn’t understand why the tree was NOT already listed on Council’s Blue Mountains Significant Tree Register or why anyone would want to harm it. The tree is situated on a community verge (Council-community land) and for the prior few years there had been an industrial development constructed behind it.

Peter and Maureen were vehemently opposed to any further harm being inflicted upon the tree and they have lodged a protest with council. Several others in the local community sided with the Toys and together formed an informal local community activist group ‘Friends of ATLAS’ – determined to save and protect this magnificent native tree. Their daughter Angelique started up an online petition to garner local community recognition and support to protect the tree.

Peter reckoned at the time:

“It’s early days but he is ready for a sustained fight.”

A fellow local supported commented:

“Dear Friends,

There is an emergency right now, to save one of the oldest Blue Mountain Ash trees that we have left.. The tree is now known as ‘Atlas’. You may well know this magnificent tree located at 59 Megalong Street, Katoomba. It has a girth of 5 metres and a growing canopy of 40 metres high. The tree has been estimated to be between 200 and 300 years old, I love this tree and hope you will help us save it 🙂

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT

Peter H. Marshall”

A spokesperson from Blue Mountains {city} Council confirmed that the tree is situated on council verge land and not on the industrial development site behind. Research into the planning approval for the industrial development behind revealed that Council had stipulated in its development consent conditions that the tree must not be harmed by the development activity.

Though Peter disagrees. He says “guttering has been dug right into the tree roots system, then just a month ago the developer (behind) had a bobcat grade the topsoil and roots around the tree for an entire day!.”

Council’s spokesperson at the time clarified that council had not received any request for the tree to be destroyed. The community battle to save this tree from Council neglect and indifference was set to ensue.

Save ATLAS Campaign

The Habitat Advocate took a particular interest in saving this tree shortly after noticing the sign on it ‘SAVE OUR TREE‘, placed there by Peter and Maureen in September 2014.

Our Conservation Consultant, Steven, had first observed the sign on the tree whilst a driver for Blue Mountains Bus Company as he sat in a bus in the depot one morning doing his bus pre-checks.

After his shift, Steven took a chance that the sign’s maker lived nearby and so knocked on the door of the house adjacent at 57. Peter and Maureen opened the door and the contact was established. [Editor’s Note: Peter and Maureen have long since relocated back to their home town in Western Australia].

Steven suggested the tree deserved a name, as a brand for a public campaign to save it from being killed. Maureen affectionately called it the ‘Atlas’, after the Greek God, appropriately for its towering size and for be so enduring. In Greek mythology, Atlas was one of the most famous Titans, the son of Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia (or, possibly, Clymene). He was the leader of the Titan rebellion against Zeus, and he got a fitting punishment after the end of the Titanomachy: he was condemned to eternally hold up the sky. The etymology of the name ‘Atlas’ is from the ancient Greek word τλῆναι “to endure”.

This is a Roman statue of Atlas at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples in Italy. It is believed to be the oldest, dating from 2nd century AD.

Steven suggested a change of sign to generate more passerby interest, given that adjoining Megalong Street is a busy thoroughfare between the industrial precinct of Katoomba and Leura.

This new sign proved very effective. It reads: “THIS TREE IS THREATENED, Contact Council“. Many concerned locals indeed did contact Blue Mountains {city} Council to protest and demand what was going on. [Photo by Editor: Katoomba locals Maureen and Peter Toy, with Glenn Humphreys on the right, spring 2014]

“Threatened” was a play on words, since it had three meanings, intentionally.

Firstly, this flora species, a ‘Eucalyptus oreades’, is locally endemic to this small area of the Central Upper Blue Mountains, that is it is wildly found nowhere else on the planet and the species natural habitat and number of trees have been decimated by human deforestation since British colonisation of the area from the 1870s such that the remnant number of trees can almost be counted. This species and its ecological community is likely botanically deemed “threatened”, that is, it is likely to become extinct in the foreseeable future.

Secondly, this extremely large and mature, yet healthy specimen, could be more than 250 years old and so an even rarer example of the species. The number of such specimens growing in what once was their wild habitat may well be currently counted on one’s hands.

Thirdly, more imminent a threat is that the industrial developer who owns the site immediately behind this tree has intention of having it killed the tree in order to make way for some greedy notion of providing an overflow of customer parking on the verge outside his site.

Peter Toy quickly set up a dedicated Facebook Page (now defunct) in September 2014, calling it ‘Friends of ATLAS’. Maureen and Peter’s daughter Angelique established an online petition on the Change.org website.

Garnering a community support base of nearly 300 individuals on a petition to save one important tree was one campaign success outcome

Fact Finding

As the publicity campaign to save the tree got under way, The Habitat Advocate considered some fact finding needed be done about the compliance of this development with Council’s conditions of consent, and in order to clarify the justification posed by the consulting arborist for killing this magnificent and otherwise healthy native tree.

Suspicions were that the arborist had assessed the tree on behalf of his client the property developer and had concluded what the developer wanted – the tree’s removal to make way for concrete paving of the Council verge to facilitate increased vehicle parking for the new industrial site.

Enquiries to Blue Mountains {city} Council confirmed that the development at 59 Megalong Street Katoomba was recorded by Council as ‘Industrial Development DA X/435/2010‘. A number of publicly available documents were obtained by The Habitat Advocate in relation to this development threat.

[Editor’s Note:

This habitat story is to be continued sometime in spring 2023, due to other pressing commitments that we currently have. The story shall be told in a number of parts discussing the SAVE ATLAS Campaign, its goals, strategy, opponents, supporters, relevant framework (planning and legal), research, publicity and ongoing updates. Unlike other attempts by Blue Mountains conservationists to save valued trees, especially endemic natives like this one, this conservation campaign succeeded and the campaign story shall provide not just a wonderful Blue Mountains story about a community coming together to protect natural heritage but also shall be instructive to others facing similar challenges of how to win against often overwhelming odds. Future parts to this story shall be posted in turn as a lead article on the front page of this website, The Habitat Advocate, which continues to be based in The Gully Catchment in the town of Katoomba since 2001. We thank our readers for their interest, support and patience].

ATLAS Warriors

Wollemi Wilderness Champion

Haydn Washington dedicated most of his adult life to selected environmental campaigns that affected him in eastern Australia about protecting wilderness areas from human harm, most notably the Wollemi wilderness in the northern part of the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales. Haydn at the time lived nearby, so was this noble planetary Nymyism beyond his backyard?

What is wrong with that? It’s such a selfless cause.

Haydn became the lead campaigner for this vast Wollemi wilderness region of 5,000 km². He successfully saw it legally protected in 1979 as the Wollemi National Park.

The Wollemi National Park was then in 2000 officially incorporated into the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, respected as one of eight contiguous national park protected areas along with the Blue Mountains, Yengo, Nattai, Kanangra-Boyd, Gardens of Stone and Thirlmere Lakes National Parks, and the Jenolan Karst Conservation Reserve.

Tragically, two decades later from Saturday 26th October 2019 into January 2020 the custodial authority (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service of NSW (a misnomer) in cahoots with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service) stood back and allowed a private pile-burn off Army Road near Gospers Mountain inside the Wollomi wilderness get out of control and spread over days, weeks and months.

That single ignition was allowed to blanketly incinerate the pristine Wollemi wilderness in its entirety – all 5,000 km², endangered Koala communities and all! It was wantonly despicable neglectful act by the Wollemi NP’s and Blue Mountains World Heritage Area’s governmental custodian, NPWS.

Indeed this is why we refer to the NPWS organisation as merely the NSW Parks Service; that’s all it is useful for, just servicing parks, as in urban parks and gardens.

NPWS employs no ecologists, no botanists, no zoologists, no ornithologists, no geologists, and no environmental scientists like Haydn Washington; but only public servants.

This is despite NPWS as a state government agency being delegated with supreme responsibility for the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and all other national parks within the Australian state of New South Wales and their threatened and endangered ecosystems within.

Indeed defacto bush arson on a calamitous scale never before in Australia’s history by a anthropocentric governmental culture, having a total disregard and contempt toward Wilderness values.

Haydn would have been utterly devastated.

The entire loss of his favoured wilderness by preventable fire would have sapped him of energy and hope. He lived next to it, knew it intimately by exploration on foot and down the length of the dominant wild Colo River by paddle. One presumes the 2019 bushfire disaster of the Wollemi wilderness caused him immense grief and impacted upon his mental health.

Did wiping out the Wollemi trigger Haydn’s heath demise?

We think so. The physical cause of cancer can emerge from psychological stress.

‘Psychological stress‘ describes what individuals experience when they are under mental, physical, or emotional pressure.

‘Stressors‘ are factors that can cause stress such as negative external factors that arise outside one’s control or influence, such as the total loss of one’s life work to protect a wilderness area and its ecology as an environmental scientist with a deep passion for its ecology. Perhaps his psychological stress had become enduring and chronic, causing translating into physical harm.

Research has shown that people who experience chronic stress can have digestive problems, heart disease, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system. People who experience chronic stress are also more prone to having headaches, sleep trouble, difficulty concentrating, depression, and anxiety and to getting viral infections. The medical science is out (unschooled) on the causation of cancer from chronic psychological stress.

But what is established is that chronic psychological stress can lead to many health problems. A 2019 meta-analysis of nine observational studies in Europe and North America also found an association between work stress and risk of lung, colorectal, and esophageal cancers. Even when stress appears to be linked to cancer risk, the relationship could be indirect. For example, people under chronic stress may develop certain unhealthy behaviours, such as smoking, overeating, becoming less active, or drinking alcohol, that are themselves associated with increased risks of some cancers. The condition may also prevent the body’s immune system from recognizing and fighting cancer cells.

Three years hence in late 2022, Haydn died of cancer, a chronic disease, at aged just 67, before his time. It is in this editor’s view that the government’s apathetic destruction of the precious Wollemi wilderness by bush arson that Haydn loved so dearly, contributed to the premature demise of his health.

NPWS Blue Mountains Branch Director David Crust had the temerity to present himself at Haydn’s funeral, appropriately donned in a full blackened suit and said nothing. The past Commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, Shane Fitzsimmons who was in charge of the NSW 2019 Bushfire emergencies, including the Wollemi bushfire, did not attend.

Vale Haydn, we’re on to your noble legacy. Your passionate championing of native habitat values and your tireless campaigning fights for the preservation of Wilderness will not have been in vane on this website!

The Gully Water Catchment

One of the headwaters of Katoomba Falls Creek. One of three StreamWatch water quality testing sites selected by The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Bushcare Group [2003-2007]. (Photo by Editor 2011-04-01)

Given the field focus of The Habitat Advocate is ecology, for ecological clarity we shall herein refer to the entire valley catchment area with a hybrid title of ‘The Gully Water Catchment‘. We include the term ‘gully’ as a conciliatory recognition and respect to the former residents who used this term affectionately when they lived here before the racetrack land usurpation* of The Gully.

[Ed: *Usurpation is the act of taking somebody’s position and/or power without having the right to do this. Land Usurpation is the appropriation of land from the previous or lawful owner].

Ecologically, this creek valley is most importantly fundamentally a hydrological environmental system. The natural geography of this creek valley is characterised as an upper course riverscape, which takes the form of a south-facing naturally steep bushland amphitheatre shape in the northern portion of this valley. The valley lies about a thousands metres above sea level.

This area is defined as the entire water catchment area of 290 hectares/2.9 km². The water catchment’s geographical boundaries comprise the Cox’s Watershed (Bathurst Road) to the north, Valley Road to the Jamison clifftop escarpment to the west, a meandering watershed though central Katoomba to the east and Katoomba Falls to the south.

‘The Gully Water Catchment‘ [SOURCE: Dr Val Attenbrow’s Map of 1993 as ‘The Study Area’, in Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Environmental Study | Draft Report and Management Plan prepared for Blue Mountains [city] Council | by F.&J. Bell & Associates | June 1993 | page 3 of 87]

Rainwater that becomes surface water and ground water, flows from a small perennial waterfall and a number of springs which flow into several watercourses that confluence into the central creek with a native sedge swampland riparian zone leading to and surrounding the creek. The creek flows downstream southward over Katoomba Cascades and plunges over Katoomba Falls into the Kedumba River about 300 metres below in the magnificent Jamison Valley of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Kedumba River then flows and meanders southward confluencing into the flooded Cox’s River and the artificial Lake Burragorang (constructed 1948-1960) which has since been Sydney’s primary drinking water supply.

Lake Burragorang (reservoir) is situated about 40km downstream south of The Gully Water Catchment [Photo on Wikipedia by Goran Has taken in January 2014, https://www.flickr.com/photos/goranhas/11897893604/ ]

This all means that indeed the relatively small creek valley on the western fringe of Katoomba forms part of an official drinking water catchment. But it is not just for the benefit of a distant growing urban Greater Sydney metropolis.

The Gully Water Catchment in its own right serves as a vital small natural ecosystem to sustain remnant locally native flora and fauna including aquatic macroinvertebrates throughout its creek riparian zone. This was despite the catchment’s history of land management abuse and neglect by local council and self-interested outsiders.

This author for five years between 2003 and 2007, as a former volunteer member of local community group the Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Bushcare Group (‘The Friends’ for short) undertook regular water quality monitoring and testing of three test sites of this creek under the instruction and resourcing the then Sydney Catchment Authority’s Streamwatch Programme.

‘Citizen science’ indeed!

Our group proudly won five awards over this time for our efforts including this one below in 2005. Our winning award was a recognition by the Sydney Catchment Authority for our specific work in monitoring, testing, investigating and reporting incidents of sewer overflow pollution of the creek from Sydney Water’s sewer network in the valley.

As part of our win, Sydney Catchment Authority rewarded our StreamWatch group with a $2000 cheque thank you.

Fresh flowing water has always been an integral value of this small creek valley. It is not just that it is part of the Kedumba River Water Catchment that supplies drinking water to Sydney, but vital to restoring the local riparian ecology.

At the time our volunteer charity group The Friends subsequently invested this $2000 into a fixed interest account, since its operational expenses continued to be funded by our street stalls in Katoomba Street. Ultimately, upon the sad passing of the founder and chairperson of The Friends on 26th May 2016, The Friends elected to formally wind up the incorporated organisation. These funds along with the balance of the operational bank account were then gifted to the Blue Mountains Historical Society as part of a successful handover of The Friends archival records spanning 27 years.

Over two centuries, government in NSW (both state and local) continually re-zoned and divided up The Gully Water Catchment from being a pristine natural water catchment into various ‘sold out’ portions, thus.

The New South Wales colonial government’s land usurpation of Aboriginal country west of Sydney for colonial settlement since the British colonial explorers’ crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813
Government sales of the Blue Mountains plateau lands around what is now Katoomba and Leura (including this creek valley) to various colonial settlers who subsequently deforested the land for timber, cattle and horse grazing and for town building and associated housing subdivision
The acquisition of this creek valley and surrounding land by one John Britty North [1831-1917] in the 1870s for subsequent deforestation, housing subdivision and then for coal mining exploitation to the south
John Britty North’s Katoomba Coal Mine’s coal shale tramway corridor (3 metres wide along the western ridge of the valley since the 1870s from the Jamison Valley escarpment (where Scenic World is located) to a rail loading platform called North’s Siding near the corner of Valley Road and Bathurst Road (next to what locals call ‘Shell Corner’ – where the Shell servicestation used to be situated, currently Bohman Automotive repairs.)
Incremental sales of bushland by Council for housing subdivisions along with urban streets over many years since the 1880s
Catalina Park amusement park and lake [1946-1951]
Council’s subsequent purchase of the land of Catalina Park in 1952
Catalina Park motor racing circuit leased by Council to the Blue Mountains Sporting Drivers Club Ltd [1957-1971]
Council’s aquatic centre constructed in Katoomba Falls Creek valley in the 1980s
Two Council cricket ovals at Katoomba Reserve
Katoomba Golf Course [1911-2013]
Council’s rezoning and subdivision approval of ‘The Escarpments’ townhouses on a portion of the Katoomba Golf Course site (2000 – current)
Council’s caravan park (currently called ‘Katoomba Falls Tourist Park’)
The NSW Government’s Rural Fire Service’s South Katoomba RFB Station with subsequent access roads
The NSW Government’s Rural Fire Service’s Bushfire Control Centre built near the aquatic centre below Mission Street
As a secret waste dump for hundreds of tonnes of sand and rock on top of the swamp extracted from the RTA’s Great Western Highway cutting between Blackheath and Mount Victoria
The areas previously gazetted by Council as Frank Walford Park, Mc Rae’s Paddock, Selby Street Reserve and Katoomba Falls Reserve have in piecemeal been handed over to Gundungurra (Aboriginal)-only custodianship as ‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ in 2002
Council’s proposed ‘Centre for Planetary Health’ to occupy the defunct golf course clubhouse from 2022

This list is not complete.

The remnant natural bushland portions of The Gully Water Catchment continue to be steadily sold off periodically by Council (along with many other bushland blocks owned by Council in order it seems to bankroll Council’s annual operations and councillors’ capital works indulgences – external consultants, legal fees, media public relations, over-paid executive management, and unnecessary capital works projects.

The Gully

‘The Gully’ is the old affectionate name given to this creek valley above Katoomba Falls and in particular to the northern portion by its former residents (numbering two or three dozen or so) who lived there for decades from the early 19th Century first contact with British colonial settlers. This was until the last residents were forcibly removed from the gully 1957-1959 by Council and their homes demolished by contracted bulldozer.

“By May 1959, the shacks of the last Gully residents had been all demolished to make way for the Catalina Racing Circuit which officially opened in 1961. “

– John Merriman, Blue Mountains historian.

Aboriginal interpretative sign of 2008 positioned at the entrance to The Gully. It briefly outlines the record of former residents who lived there before the racetrack land usurpation of The Gully.

Those residents comprised both locally Aboriginal clan families, comprising predominantly people of Gundungurra and Darug ancestry as well as non-Aboriginal, many of whom had inter-married. It had been a tight-knit self-sufficient yet quite poor community refuge of displaced persons, subsisting in bushland typically in meagre dirt-floor shacks with no utilities (i.e. no connected running water, electricity, gas, plumbing, phonelines or streets).

It had been simple bush living refuge of poor folk subsisting on the fringe of Katoomba of both regional Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal and a intermarried mix of both. Many had been previously displaced in 1948 from their Burragorang Valley bush homes when the NSW government evicted them to flood the valley to create a Sydney’s Warragamba Dam reservoir. The Gully was a close-knit community.

It holds archaeological evidence thanks to field research separately by Dianne Johnson, Ph.D (2001) and Alan Lance (2005) which confirm ancient Aboriginal archaeological sites within the gully extending to ancient origins, extending back as far as 12000 years.

The Gully in the old days (early 1800s to the 1957-59 forced eviction by Blue Mountains {city} Council.

But The Gully people must have had sewage since around 1907 when then Katoomba Municipal Council had trenched up the valley for sewage to flow to the ‘Leura Filter Beds’ via the escarpment around Katoomba Falls and situated down in the Jamison Valley. Remnants of the long disused iron sewer pipe infrastructure may still be seen along on the hiking track between Katoomba Kiosk and the Furber Steps access down into the Jamison Valley.

Before colonial settlement, The Gully had been a traditional ‘summer camp’ location used by regional Aboriginal peoples for meeting and ceremonial place of traditional Aboriginal peoples of the Gundungurra, Darug, Wonnarua, Wiradjuri, Darkinjung and Tharawal of the greater Blue Mountains region and adjoining lands. This was usually is the warmer times of year and this connection to country. Particularly appealing to these traditional people was the constant and reliable supply of fresh flowing spring water and the abundance of bush tacker and wildlife to sustain a small community.

‘The Gully Bringing Back the Sweetwater’, by former residents of The Gully and descendants.

[Source: Blue Mountains {city} Council]

Katoomba Falls Creek Valley

Katoomba Falls Creek Valley was long the gazetted name of this creek valley by local council for decades throughout the 20th Century. The following map shows some identified sub-portions of the creek valley juxtaposed within the black dotted line of the overall water catchment, flowing to Katoomba Falls to the south.

Katoomba Falls Creek Valley – Study Area and Land Status, Draft Plan of Management, (renamed by Council as Upper Kedumba River Plan of Management), by Connell Wagner April 1996.

It was affectionately referred to simply as ‘The Valley’ by surrounding residents’ grassroots environmental group The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc. (The Friends) which functioned to respect and rehabilitate its natural values and ecology as informal ecological custodians and to challenge the many damaging threats to it by various vested outside interests between the years 1989 and 2016; some 27 years.

Katoomba Falls Creek Valley was the historical name of the full length of this creek valley water catchment up until 1995.

The following recent YouTube video shows the downstream water emanating from this creek valley flowing over Katoomba Cascades and then down Katoomba Falls.

Upper Kedumba River Valley

In 1995 Blue Mountains {city} Council unilaterally decided to rename Katoomba Falls Creek Valley as ‘Upper Kedumba River Valley‘ without local community consultation. One presumes that Council’s renaming logic was because this the central creek flows of this upland valley flows to Katoomba Cascades and over to Katoomba Falls into the Kedumba River more than 300 metres down in the Jamison Valley below, so it seems that some bureaucrat in Council wanted to continue the name to the small creek above the falls.

The renaming suggests Council’s recognition of this upland creek valley as being part of the water catchment area of the Kedumba River below Katoomba Falls and through the lower Jamison Valley. One suspects that given Council’s decades of fighting against the wises of local community environmental activist group The Friends of Katoomba Falls Inc. and that the renaming of the creek valley was a snide attempt by Council to undermine the validity of this group.

Compare the following two documents below. The second shows the original name crossed out by Council.

This study and report by Fred Bell and his environmental consulting team was commissioned by The Friends at a cost of $10,000. It was formerly submitted by The Friends to Council, but was wholly ignored by Council bureaucracy and the councillors at the time. A full transcript copy is made availabe on this website at: https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/gully-report-1-the-bell-report-of-1993/

This subsequent report was commissioned by Council at ratepayer expense and prepared by Sydney based consulting firm (in Neutral Bay) Connell Wagner and probably at considerably higher cost – not their money.

Council’s 1996 plan of management was pretty much a copy of Fred Bell’s 1993 plan of management for The Friends. Both plans considered the entire water catchment and recommended similar environmental restorative actions be undertaken. It didn’t happen.

As a former member of The Friends, this author recalls that when the group learned of the renaming on Council’s 1996 plan of management title, the group chose not to change their name. Affectionately the members just referred to the entire water catchment simply as ‘The Valley’ for short anyway.

What is so hypocritical of Council’s recognition of this upland creek valley as forming the upper reaches of the water catchment area of the Kedumba River, is that over the decades both state and local government have repeatedly divided up the contiguous water flowing nature of this creek valley in various ways. This includes rezoning various portions of the land from being gazetted as ‘community land’ to being ‘operational land’ so it could be re-purposed and exploited. This dates from the colonial 1870s and continues with Council’s most recent culturally exclusive plan of management of 2021.

Land use development examples include:

James Henry Neale’s subdivision and lobbying from the 1870s to build what has become Katoomba township
John Britty North’s adjoining subdivision and joint lobbying for housing and coal shale mining access from 1883
Various housing subdivision approvals by Council since
Horace Gates Catalina (amusement) Park and dam construction 1946-1951
Council’s sewer network trenching throughout The Gully to facilitate further housing subdivision
Blue Mountains Sporting Drivers’ Motor Racing Club Limited’s motor racing circuit [1957-1971]
Two Council cricket ovals
Council’s aquatic centre – which keeps getting bigger
A bushfire brigade building, hardstand and two access roads
Hundreds of tonnes of sand and rock dumped from a highway development (at Soldiers Pinch) on The Gully’s swampland by the RTA in 2001 (with Council approval)
Sydney Water’s dumping of hundreds of tonnes of sewer fill in The Gully in 2005
Scenic World’s Skyway development in a secret land swap deal between the Parks Service and Council [2006]
Sydney Water’s sewer amplification trenching [2007-2008] to facilitate further housing subdivision

About a hectare of sand and rock fill (1 metre thick) was dumped on top of The Gully swampland by the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) in 2001. The RTA has since been rebranded RMS and current TfNSW, probably to avoid its bad reputation.

This is just to name a few, and this doesn’t include the many hair-brained proposals for The Gully over the years, like an ice-rink, basketball courts, Scenic World’s cable hang-gliding and flying fox, a complete housing subdivision to be called ‘Highmark’, low-rent accommodation, a museum, and even Katoomba’s own mono-rail! Study Council’s 1981 Plan of Management map below.

The Gully’s legacy of exploitation exemplified in Blue Mountains {city} Council’s 1981 proposed development Plan of (mis)Management, page 38.

The word ‘Kedumba’ is has Aboriginal origins and is just a variation of the word ‘Katoomba’ depending on how it is pronounced. The original meaning was supposedly “tumbling waters” in reference to Katoomba Cascades and Katoomba Falls below.

Katoomba Falls

Another theory espoused by local Blue Mountains historian Jim Smith Ph.D. is that ‘Katoom-ba‘ could have been a local aboriginal Gundungurra phrase relating to the pointing to a certain edible ‘fern: ‘Katoom’ (the fern plant) and ‘ba’ (over there) down in the Jamison Valley. We like the tumbling waters version.

Blue Mountains {city} Council has since renamed Upper Kedumba River as Kedumba River on Google Maps:

Council renamed Katoomba Falls Creek as Kedumba River. Seriously, has Blue Mountains {city} Council bureaucracy got nothing better to do than indulge in ‘cancel culture’ renaming of local geography?

McRae’s Horse Paddock

This middle portion of the creek valley used to be colloquially called by locals as McRae’s Horse Paddock possibly in the post-WWII days of nearby Catalina Park.

This portion comprises the riparian zone and bushland either side of Katoomba Falls Creek extending southward downstream situated south of Gates Avenue in the north, to Neale Street in the south and east of Peckmans Road in the west as the following map shows. It excluse the lands already sold off by Councik for residential housing in the east along Loftus Street.

McRae’s Paddock map, in McRae’s Paddock Action Plan (1996-1999) in Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Draft Plan of Managamnt Main Report, prepared for Blue Mountains {city} Council by Connell Wagner, April 1996. (no page number)

McRaes Paddock (as it has become abbreviated by Council) is characterised as a narrrow riparian swampland corridor midway along the valley creek that extends from being channeled as a drain culvert underneath Gates Avenue and then south for about 800 metres to being similarly channeled as a drain culvert underneath Neale Street.

The creek corridor at this creek valley portion narrows from about 200 metres wide to 100 metres at Neale Street, and the approximate remnant swamp/bushland area not yet been encroached upon by housing, covers about 70 hectares (or 0.7 km²).

Anecdotal local oral history records that the land owner was a grazier by the name of McRae (Scottish heritage spelt ‘Macrae’) who grazed his horses in this ploughed up swampland and the surrounding natural grassland either side of the comparatively narrower section of this creek valley.

Prior to the use of this area as a horse paddock, it had been utilised for market gardening as old photos reveal.

Jimmy War Sing, a Chinese market gardener (circa 1903) of this creek valley area from which the swamp has been ploughed up and soil brought in.

Over the decades post-WWI, Gully locals shortened the name to just ‘McRae’s Paddock’ and the name stuck. The surname has Scottish ancestral origins, the ‘Clan Macrae’ being a traditional Scottish highland clan, however the origins of McRae’s Horse Paddock are not know to us, yet, but give us time with our ongoing research for this website.

Catalina (amusement) Park

Post World War II, between 1946 and 1951 local Katoomba tourism entrepreneurial businessman, Horace Gates, established an amusement park in the valley (The Gully) that, with support from local council aldermen, he named Catalina Park.

Catalina Park circa 1949. [SOURCE: ‘Catalina Park’ blog article by John Merriman, Blue Mountains Local Studies, 2010-06-18, ^https://bmlocalstudies.blogspot.com/2010/06/catalina-park-katoomba.html ]

However not long after, by 1951 Horace Gates had lost patronage for his amusement attraction and the venue fell into disrepair. In 1952 local council acquired his land in the valley.

Catalina Park Raceway

At this time, Council had hiked up the land rates of properties across the Blue Mountains including those in this creek valley. It was in order to fund Council’s then utility obligations in a growing need for sewage, electricity and road making. Over more than a decade post-war, Council had forcibly acquired many bushland properties that had been investment block of private land holders due to the repeated non-payment of Council’s increasing rate hikes, outsourcing the legalities to the Katoomba legal firm Soper Brothers. By 1957, Council owned most of The Gully.

During the 1950s motorcar racing had become very popular in Australia and particularly with local businessmen in the Upper Blue Mountains who had bought racing cars and wanted to test them out and to compete with one another. Numerous small motorcar garages established and there became a growing motorcar racing fraternity. They registered as as company as the Blue Mountains Sporting Drivers’ Club Limited.

Their short uphill car races became popular, usurping various steep local streets of Katoomba and their power and influence evolved into them lobbying Council for a dedicated local car racing circuit to be established in the Upper Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains Councillors obliged on Tuesday 2nd April 1957 by passing the following motions thus:

SOURCE: Council of The [city} of Blue Mountains councillor special meeting minute 447 (c), page 216, dated Tuesday 2nd April 1957.

And then on the same day:

SOURCE: Council of The [city} of Blue Mountains councillor special meeting minute 450, page 216, dated Tuesday 2nd April 1957.

So between 1957 and 1959, Blue Mountains [city] Council proceeded to forcible evict the residents of The Gully and demolish their homes in order to appease these influential businessmen and to construct a motor-racing racetrack circuit in the northern amphitheatre portion of this creek valley. Council funded the racetrack construction by way of a loan to the Blue Mountains Sporting Drivers’ Club Limited, using ratepayer moneys. That loan was never repaid.

The usurping motor racing fraternity then called the place ‘Catalina Park‘, named after the float plane that had decades earlier been positioned in an artificial dam alongside the creek as an amusement attraction.

The Catalina Park Raceway motor racing circuit launched in 1961 – with track sections; and the start grid so labelled shown in standard chequered black and white lineage. [Source: ^https://www.racingcircuits.info/australasia/australia/catalina-park.html]

Frank Walford Park

This is the name that Blue Mountains {city} Council gave to the northern portion of the creek valley which forms a natural amphitheatre shape and covers about 80 hectares. In the 1990’s, following the demise of Catalina Park racetrack, the government landowner of The Gully, councillors on the Blue Mountains {city} Council unilaterally named this northern portion of the creek valley after one of their own, former alderman Frank Walford [1882-1969] who was also the local mayor on three occasions.

Frank Walford was from Sydney and settled in Katoomba from 1919 just after The Great War where he worked as a journalist with the local newspaper The Blue Mountains Echo and became its editor. He was a keen and experienced bushwalker, bushman, mountaineer a variable adventurer. He became an accomplished author of novels and poetry.

As alderman and mayor he was largely credited (accused by former residents of ‘The Gully’) as being largely responsible for approving the motor racing circuit in 1957 in this portion of the creek valley. However, while he supported the race track construction, Council records show that he was not mayor at the time in 1957, but an alderman.

The park sign off Madge Walford Fountain car park just by Lake Catalina. It was moved likely by Council sometime around 2014. Madge was Frank’s wife. [Photo by Editor 2007-10-27]

Frank Walford Park is bounded by a steep bushland amphitheatre up to the surrounding ridgeline along where Lower Wells Street borders to the north, where Valley Road and Mission Street borders to the west, where Cascade Street borders to the east; and to the south where Gates Avenue, Catalina Avenue and Farnells Road. There is also a spur-line that juts into the valley from the east which includes the residential streets of Murri Street, Waimea Street and Warriga Street.

The surrounding street map around Frank Walford Park. [Google Maps, 2022]

It was the broader gazetted land area of the creek valley around which the 1940s amusement park ‘Catalina Park’ centred around the artificial lake was constructed by Horace Gates and later from 1957 where the 2.1 km ‘Catalina Park’ motor racing circuit was constructed by the former Blue Mountains Sporting Drivers’ Club Limited.

Probably a key justification for Council’s naming of Frank Walford Park after Frank’s passing in 1969 was because his home with his wife Madge was situated close by in an 1880s stone house up on the eastern spur-line overlooking Dunlop Corner at 6 Kundibar Street in Katoomba. Frank and his wife became a fan of the motor racing so much so that during the circuit’s peak operation in the 1960’s Frank had a second storey added to their the stone house as well as a small balcony so they could better watch the car racing especially from the starting grid up Lockheed Straight and left around the sharp Dunlop Corner.

Dunlop Corner of Catalina Park (anti-clockwise) motor racing circuit circa 1965 looking west from up near Katoomba Tyres on Cascade Street. Frank Walford’s family home was located left of the photo, uphill on the spurline above the racetrack. With all the trees cleared by Council, Mayor Walford created an uninterrupted view from his new upstairs balcony. [SOURCE: Blue Mountains Local Studies, ^https://www.flickr.com/photos/blue_mountains_library_-_local_studies/33414945591/]

Katoomba Park (and Katoomba Park Extension)

This comprises the southern portion of The Gully Water Catchment between Neale Street and to the Jamison clifftop escarpment around Katoomba Falls. It includes the two sports ovals primarily used for local cricket during the summer months, as well as the caravan park called Katoomba Falls Tourist Park. It also includes the riparian zone along the eastern tributary that has its headwaters at where Hinkler Memorial Park is situated and flows through Selby Street Reserve and alongside Council Maple Grove tourist picnic area. This water course confluences into the main creek just near the road bridge at Cliff Drive.

The confluence of Katoomba Falls Creek (Upper Kedumba River) and the eastern side watercourse (unnamed) which flows through Selby Street Reserve from Hinkler Park. [Photo by editor August 2022].

The names ‘Katoomba Park’ and ‘Katoomba Park Extension’ date from the 1990s and are documented in the Bell Report to Council of 1993 and in the Connell Wagner Plan of Management Report to Council of 1996.

Extract of ‘The Gully Water Catchment’ [SOURCE: Dr Val Attenbrow’s Map of 1993 as ‘The Study Area’, in Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Environmental Study | Draft Report and Management Plan prepared for Blue Mountains [city] Council | by F.&J. Bell & Associates | June 1993 | page 3 of 87]

Eight years hence, by the time of Council’s Plans of Management of 2004, prepared by consultancy Environmental Partnership, this area was re-labelled ‘Katoomba Falls Reserve – Cascades section (Selby Street)‘. It had become a disjointed collection of land parcels as the following map shows.

Katoomba Falls Reserve Katoomba Cascades land categorisation map in Upper Kedumba River Valley Plans of Management, revised edition 2004, p. 65

Notably, the following land parcels have been excluded from Katoomba Falls Reserve in Council’s 2004 plan:

The two sports ovals
Most of the bushland south of Cliff Drive
The escarpment top bushland that includes Prince Henry Picnic Area
The area bushland around Katoomba Falls Kiosk, including the kiosk
The area of bushland around what is now Scenic World’s Skyway East Station (sold by the Parks Service to Scenic World in 2006)
The riparian area around Katoomba Cacades and atop Katoomba Falls, including Katoomba Cascades
About 4 hectares of intact swamp/bushland including Maple Grove picnic area (Area ‘A’ below)
About a hectare of intact swamp/bushland south along Cliff Drive (Area ‘B’ below)
About a hectare of intact swamp and bushland at the address 14-20 Katoomba Falls Road (Area ‘C’ below)

Edited Google Maps aerial photo, 2022.

Katoomba Falls Reserve

This comprises the southern portion of The Gully Water Catchment and is a mix of Crown Land owned by the NSW Government around the creek to Katoomba Cascades and the top of the Jamison Valley clifftop escarpment at Katoomba Falls.

It includes council owned riparian zone of the creek and surrounding bushland from Neale Street flowing southward, as well as the two sports (cricket) ovals, Katoomba Falls Tourist Park, Maple Grove Park, as well as the side creek riparian zone from Warialda Street and Selby Street, which for years was referred to as Selby Street Reserve.

Selby Street Reserve

This is the above mentioned side creek riparian zone and bushland to the north east direction to Warialda Street and Selby Street. The headwaters of this watercourse begin from a spring originally situated where Hinkler Park lies in a hollow.

The original swamp headwater location of the watercourse in Selby Street Reserve.[Photo by editor August 2022].

Katoomba Golf Course

The Katoomba Golf Course site lies wholly within The Gully Water Catchment situated on the south western portion near the Jamison Escarpment. It covers 30 hectares and the land is owned by Blue Mountains {city} Council, formerly Katoomba Council, and as such it is community land. The Katoomba Golf Club formed in 1911 after the Council approved the native woodland and swamps to be destroyed to make way for fertilised lawn fairways and putting greens.

An historic pursuit by Scottish gentry from 1297AD, Katoomba Golf Course was bulldozed into this creek valley from 1911 as a 9-hole golf course and later bulldozed out to a 18 hole golf course. It went broke in 2013 due to lack of interest in golf, but the ecological damage had been done.

In the 1990s the 9-hole course was expanded to 18 holes by deforesting more adjoining woodland. By 2013 the owner of the club went into liquidation.

At the time of writing, Council has leased the upstairs level of the clubhouse to the Parks Service and is proposing to lease the lower level to a new organisation it terms The Centre for Planetary Health in a joint partnership with two universities. It remains unclear what that organisation will achieve and what the future use of the land will be.

21 Stuarts Road: bushland subdivision for housing

21 Stuarts Road Katoomba is located in the south-west portion of The Gully Water Catchment. It is a single bushland site of covering 12 hectares that is situated between Stuarts and Wellington Roads, west of Burrawang Street in the west of Katoomba. The site comprises remnant bushland, swampland and riparian zone around a watercourse in a easterly-sloped side gully flowing westward confluencing with Kedumba Creek (previously Katoomba Falls Creek) about 200m to the east and downstream.

SOURCE: Google Maps 2022

The following street map identifies ’21’ Stuarts Road in more detail.

SOURCE: Blue Mountains {city} Council, Interactive Maps, ^http://emapping.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/connect/analyst/mobile/?mapcfg=Locality#/main?mapcfg=Locality

Blue Mountains {city} Council records reveal that between 2002 and 2006, the property owner of a rural bushland site, one Ronald Heasman applied for a land use subdivision of the entire site so he could sell off the land for housing development. Heasman’s initial development application to Council proposed a one into 69 lot subdivision [DP 593545, No. 21 STUARTS ROAD, KATOOMBA, FILE NO: (DA) S03/0029]

Essentially, the DA was to bulldoze all the 12 hectares of entire remnant woodland and swampland ecology of the site in order to create and profit from a village-scale dense urbanisation of 69 residential dwellings.

In order to revalue the ecological integrity of this western side gully of The Gully, over time Heasman despatched various bulldozers, excavators, forestry cutters and mulchers and his tractor with a mowing slasher attached to destroy the bushland.

Heasman’s tractor in action on 21 Stuarts Road that The Friends dubbed ‘Hector’. It has been used to steadily deforest this side valley to undermine the ecological integrity. [Photo courtesy of the (former) Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc. taken 2005-01-08].

Relevant planning controls at the time included

Local Environmental Plan 4 (LEP 4) zones the site Residential 2(a1), a zone that permits subdivision and detached dwellings. The minimum allotment size is 700m2 for ordinary allotments and 1,100m2 for hatchet shaped allotments. The minimum frontage is 18.5m.
Local Environmental Plan 1991 (LEP 91) zones the site Environmental Protection. LEP 91 identifies land with a slope in excess of 33% as Protected Area – Environmental Constraints Area.
Local Environmental Plan 2005 (LEP 2005) zones the site Living Bushland conservation and Environmental Protection – General Zone. The LEP designates part of the site Protected Area – Slope Constraint Area, Protected Area – Ecological Buffer Area, and Protected Area – Water Supply Catchment.
The Blue Mountains Better Living Development Control Plan (the Better Living DCP).

At the time, local resident conservation group the Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc. actively campaigned to prevent the ecological destruction of this side valley and against the subdivision for mass housing development application, lobbying Council and arguing as follows:

An over development of the site
The building parameters are unclear.
Significant Alteration of Bushland Character
Fails to comply with ‘Lot Layout’
Fails to comply with ‘Cluster Housing’
Proposal Fails to Provide Adequate Environmental Protection Buffer
Proposal is Contrary to Objectives of LEP 1991
Proposal Is Contrary to the Objectives of ‘Residential A1’ Zoning Under LEP4
Proposal is Contrary to The Objectives of ‘Environmental Protection’ Zoning Under LEP4
Proposal is Contrary to Objectives of ‘Environmental Protection’ Zoning under Draft LEP 2002
Proposal is Contrary to Objectives of ‘Living Bushland Conservation’ Zoning under Draft LEP 2002
Proposal is Contrary to Objectives of ‘Protected Areas’ Zoning under Draft LEP 2002
Likely adverse environmental impact on the ‘Slope Constraint’ Areas
Likely adverse environmental impact on the watercourse
Likely adverse environmental impact upon the water supply catchment.
Likely adverse environmental impact upon the indigenous vegetation and native fauna
Likely Adverse Impact on Biodiversity
Failure to undertake adequate surveys for likely Aboriginal heritage
Failure to assess likely impacts upon Aboriginal Place downstream
Consequential Excessive Demand Upon Katoomba’s Existing Infrastructure, Services and Utilities
Lack of Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
Failure to provide an assessment of the likely impact on traffic pressures on nearby streetsnersurvey Increased Traffic Congestion to Adjoining and Nearby Streets
The Proposed Creation of Burrawang Street Will Destroy The Existing Bushland Amenity
The Proposal Fails to Identify Likely Impacts to Carlton Street
The Site Location is Too Distant From Town to Justify the provision of ‘Accessible Housing’
The Proposal Fails to Provide Sufficient Details of Dwelling Locations, Design and Landscaping
The Site is Zoned for Environmental Protection
The Subdivision Boundary Will Encroach Upon The Ecological Buffer Area
Destruction of Indigenous Vegetation Communities & Habitat
Downstream Contamination of Kedumba Falls Creek Valley and the Blue Mountains National Park
Absence of a Conservation Management Plan or EIS
Loss of topsoil & contamination by sediment into the watercourse
Steep Slopes Outside Limits for Building Construction
Kedumba Falls Creek Valley holds historical and cultural significance as an aboriginal place.

On 23rd November 2004 [ITEM NO: 7] Blue Mountains {city} Council rightly refused consent for Heasman’s DA outright at its councillors’ ordinary meeting, and pursuant to Section 80 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.

Council formal refusal of Heasman’s massive subdivision was made on the following grounds:

The proposal is contrary to Clause 33 of Local Environmental Plan No. 4 as the proposed battleaxe allotments are below minimum size requirements and there are numerous allotments that do not have minimum frontages required, resulting in an over development of the site.
The proposal is contrary to Clause 42 of Local Environmental Plan No. 4 as the proposal if carried out would not achieve satisfactory arrangements to reduce the risk of bush fire without significantly impacting on the environmental qualities of the site; and due to the impact on the visual amenity of the locality.
The proposal is contrary to the objectives of the Environmental Protection zone within Local Environmental Plan 1991.
The proposal is contrary to Clause 10.5 of Local Environmental Plan 1991 as the proposal if carried out would have an unsatisfactory impact on the native vegetation contained within the site and would have an adverse impact on the water supply catchment and on development excluded land within the site.
The proposal is contrary to the objectives of the Environmental Protection zone, the Living Bushland Conservation zone and the Protected Areas on the site as proposed and mapped under Draft Local Environmental Plan 2002.
The proposal will, if carried out, constitute an over development of the site due to Draft Local Environmental Plan 2002 as the applicant has failed to demonstrate that the proposal will have no adverse environmental impact:
1. The proposal includes development on the slope constraint areas within Precinct C and Precinct B; and
2. The proposal will impact on the watercourse that traverses the site and on the buffers that contribute to the protection of that watercourse; and
3. The proposal will impact on the water supply catchment (Kedumba Creek Catchment) mapped for this locality; and
4. The proposal will impact on the indigenous vegetation and native fauna present on the site and on significant vegetation communities on the site and downstream of the site; and
5. The requirements for Asset Protection will have significant impacts on the biodiversity of the site; and
6. The proposal does not comply with the considerations for lot layout, nor does it comply with the definition of cluster housing.
The development proposal will if carried out, result in significant alteration of the character of the area from a residential bushland character to an urban character.
The applicant has failed to undertake adequate surveys or assessments of the potential of the development to impact on the potential for Aboriginal heritage significance on the site; nor has there been adequate assessment of the potential for the development to impact on the Aboriginal Place located downstream of the subject site.
Insufficient details have been provided in relation to the management of asset protection zones on the site; and landscaping details for individual allotments and across the public areas of the site; and Aboriginal archaeology and cultural significance.

Persistent to get his way, Heasman took Council to the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales (in Sydney) multiple times between 2004 and 2006. He amended his DA proposal thus:

“The applicant proposes to subdivide the land under community title into 46 lots (43 residential lots and 3 community lots) and to erect a dwelling on 42 of the residential lots. The development is divided into three sections: Precincts A, B and C. Lot A8 is a residential lot of 5,032m2, which is proposed for a six-lot subdivision but presented as a single lot because of the uncertainty of access from Burrawang Road. The applicant indicated that when that access becomes available, it intends to lodge a development application reinstating the original six-lot subdivision.” [SOURCE: Heasman v Blue Mountains City Council, 11039 of 2004].

Heasman’s appeal to the Land and Environment Court (LEC) in Sydney used a team of solicitors and barristers who seconded five so-called expert witnesses to support his appeal on technical grounds, being:

Mr M Ball, a town planner retained by the applicant;
Ms N Cavanagh, a town planner employed by the council;
Mr P Mehl, a consulting civil engineer retained by the applicant;
Dr P Bacon, a natural resource scientist retained by the council; and
Mr R Morse, an environmental scientist appointed by the Court,

With support from Council’s appointed experts Ms N Cavanagh and Dr P Bacon, The Land and Environment Court subsequently overruled Councillors’ decision to refuse the application. LEC Senior Commissioner, Dr John Roseth, residing, upheld Heasman’s appeal thus:

“As I indicated above, discussions between the experts led to complete agreement between them. The agreement is reflected in the amended drawings as well as in the conditions of consent. The parties appeared before me on 10 March 2006 stating that there were no outstanding issues and that I should make orders in chambers approving the application.

Orders
1. The appeal is upheld.

2. Development application subdivide the land under community title into 46 lots (43 residential lots and 3 community lots) and to erect a dwelling on 42 of the residential lots on lots 1, 2 and 4 DP 593545, known as 21 Stuarts Road, Katoomba is determined by the granting of consent subject to the conditions in Annexure A.

3. The exhibits are returned except Exhibits 28, A, J, K, L and M.”

The ecological destruction of this side valley incrementally persists to this day, as remnant bushland gets bulldozed and the site is converted to a housing estate and Heasman profits.

Built-Up Subdivided Residential Katoomba

Almost a half of The Gully Water Catchment comprises housing and commercial subdivision across the eastern portion. It includes the commercial high street of Katoomba being Katoomba Street. This water catchment extends from Cascade Street in the north to Ada Street in the east to Lurline Street in the south. North’s Estate housing subdivision extends into the creek valley down a spur westward from the Carrington Hotel on top of the hill. The eastern boundary of the housing subdivision runs north-south along Loftus Street.

The exact date of Katoomba’s settlement is unclear, but since 1815 it has been on the south side of the Cox’s Road first colonial crossing of the Blue Mountains high plateau bush country. The railway passed by the site of what would become Katoomba from 1967, but the railway platform was not built until 1874. Katoomba was then just a remote rural locality, referred to as The ‘Crushers’ a sandstone quarry for ballast for train descent down plateau eastward. It was situated adjacent to the rail line opposite the site of what is currently The Edge Cinema) as shown in the late 19th Century land title map below.

In 1967, English emigrant pastoralist and later Australian politician, James Henry Neale [1828 – 1890], acquired perhaps the first private permanent houses within The Gully Water Catchment including his ‘Froma House’ situated on the site of the current TAFE college on what is now Parke Street.

As the map reveals, Neale purchased the then swampland of what is referred to as McRae’s Paddock south of what is now Gates Avenue to Katoomba Park. Neale Street on this land is named after Neale. Contrary to standard compass point street planning of the time, Neale Street formed a convenient direct bee-line diagonal access road from his Froma House home to the coal mine that was owned by English emigrant, John Britty North [1831-1917] from 1880. North was a merchant, stockbroker, mining agent and later mining operator of Katoomba Coal and Shale Co. Ltd.

In the 1870s, North had acquired the rest of the plateau bushland and swampland of The Gully Water Catchment and southward into the Jamison Valley, by taking out a mortgage loan with England-based London Chartered Bank of Australia. See his holdings are shown in the map above. The land labelled on the map as Katoomba Park in green was probably retained as Crown land, as it remains so today. North steadily subdivided his land holdings during the 1880s in order to profit from the residential land sales as a means of financing his shale mining business.

The Gully Water Catchment is show by the dotted black outline on the map below. The eastern portion is dominated by the Katoomba township.

‘The Gully Water Catchment’ [SOURCE: Dr Val Attenbrow’s Map of 1993 as ‘The Study Area’, in Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Environmental Study | Draft Report and Management Plan prepared for Blue Mountains [city] Council | by F.&J. Bell & Associates | June 1993 | page 3 of 87].

All rainfall runoff and stormwater from these streets, inside the dotted black line, flows to Katoomba Falls and to the Kedumba River below in the Jamison Valley. This has formed part of the water reservoir behind Warragamba Dam for Sydney’s drinking water supply since it was completed and opened on 14 October 1960.

So what goes down these Katoomba drains ends up in Sydney’s drinking water. As a result, WaterNSW, an agency of the Government of New South Wales, which controls Warragamba Dam water drinking supply adds disinfectants (typically chloramine (chlorine), ammonia and fluoride) to disinfect and purify the water to help make it safe to drink.

A large 3 metre wide stormwater drain at the riparian block at 233A Katoomba Street opposite Hinkler Park at the base of the hill of Katoomba Street. Stormwater runoff from the street and via a large culvert under the street pipe raw stormwater directly into the side creek behind through Selby Street Reserve. [Photo by editor 2022-08-12].

And this is where the stormwater from this drain flows to via a large pipe into the side creek…

‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ [Council’s Plan of 2004]

The community lands within this creek valley that had long been gazetted by Council as ‘Frank Walford Park’, ‘Mc Rae’s Paddock’, ‘Selby Street Reserve’ and ‘Katoomba Falls Reserve’ were in 2004 collectively incorporated into Council’s Upper Kedumba River Valley Plans of Management of some 105 pages. This 2004 plan followed a series of previously separate plans for this creek valley that extend back to the 1950s and even back to the days of colonial settler ownership and subdivision of from the 1860s. This 2004 plan was the first to recognise regional Aboriginal historical and pre-historical attachment to this creek valley and was the first plan after this creek valley had been formally declared an ‘Aboriginal Place’, named ‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (NSW).

The rationale and the emergence of legal Aboriginal custodianship of this creek valley came at a brief period in Australia’s socio-political history (pretty much concentrated from Whitlam’s Labor government coming to power in 1972 through to 2002 in respect to this creek valley. The becoming of ‘The Gully- Aboriginal Place‘ is best described in detail particularly 2001-2002 in the documentary book ‘Sacred Waters – The Story of the Blue Mountains Gully Traditional Owners‘ by anthropologist Dianne Johnson [1947-2012] published in 2007. In her superbly researched book, Johnson explains that the critical mover and shaker was local Gundungurra Elder Dawn Colless who in August 2001 had formally nominated the Upper Katoomba Falls Creek Valley (The Gully) for consideration as an Aboriginal Place. Johnson worked closely with Aunty Dawn and members of the Aboriginal community to prepare the submission for state government. This included two related books ‘Aunty Joan Cooper Through the Front Door – a Darug and Gundungurra Story‘ (February 2003) and ‘Report to the Gundungurra Tribal Council concerning Gundungurra Native Title Claim‘ (2004).

On 18th May 2002, the Hon. Bob Debus as NSW member for Blue Mountains and Minister for the Environment, officially declared The Gully “An Aboriginal Place” – a place of special significance to Aboriginal culture.

A concern at the time, was that the declaration had been closed supported by Council and the Parks Service, which had chosen to emphasise the Gundungurra cultural custodianship of this creek valley over and above other cultural claims by Darug, Wonnarua, Wiradjuri, Darkinjung and Tharawal Aboriginal peoples. Council with the Parks Service also behind closed doors and with selective invitees to the declaration process, had deliberately excluded interested local residents, particularly ostracising the Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley (bushcare group), who had since forming in 1989 had continually lobbied Council to end the car racing and to start ecologically rehabilitating this creek valley. The Friends wholly supported respecting Aboriginal cultural claims to The Gully, having over the years learning about their legacy of Aboriginal dispossession. Founder and leader of The Friends, Neil Stuart [1937-2016] initiated a joint community informal partnership between The Friends and former residents of The Gully (aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) and with other caring local residents in 2002, called the informal partnership The Gully Guardians.

But on matters concerning any decisions and management of The Gully – Aboriginal Place, Council has cultural form and policy of refusing to consult with anyone outside their selected few of the Gundungurra. It is an effective socio-political tactic of ‘divide and conquer’ by an organisation hell-bent on process control through ostracising those in the community it does not wish to be accountable to.

As a former member of the Friends, let the truth be told.

Katoomba Falls downstream, politics upstream

The truth about ‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ as set aside by Council is that it is only a part of The Gully Water Catchment. Of the remnant bushland within this catchment, ‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ comprises selective land portions that are not contiguous, that is, they don’t link up. Yet The Gully historically, before the racetrack land usurpation, which the former residents considered The Gully. It was/is one unified little valley from the northern ridgetop down to Katoomba Falls – two kilometres north to south and one kilometre east to west.

This is what Council bureaucracy has done ‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place‘ portions – divided them up piecemeal. Careful observation of this mapping reveals that many boundaries have changed since Council’s 2004 plan of management.

Upper Kedumba River Valley Plans of Management map, revised edition 2004, page 6.

Gargaree

In around 2005, a small group of former residents of The Gully (from the pre-1957 Council evictions) and their descendants who hold Gundungurra aboriginal ancestral heritage, decided to form an organisation they named The Gully Traditional Owners (GTO). Their purpose has been to become the sole managing custodians of ”The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ in a memorandum of understanding partnership agreement with the legal landholder Blue Mountains {city} Council.

Regrettably, this has proven to be a controlling initiative over what management decisions are made concerning the Gully, about the priority works and their funding and funding streams. Local residents around The Gully and The Gully Valley Catchment, the broader interested local community and former members of The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley have been deliberately excluded in the consultation process and so effectively ostracised by Council and this group.

If the 1957 forced eviction of The Gully residents for an elitist motor tracing group’s exclusive usage as a racetrack was land usurpation with racist overtones, then how is the current exclusion by The Gully Traditional Owners comprising a select Gundungurra-only membership that excludes interested local residents around The Gully, not the comparable reverse land usurpation…with this time reciprocal racist overtones?

When locals of one race is favoured for planning and decision making about a land area (place) to the deliberate exclusion of a different race of locals, this suggests a racist agenda and so is illegitimate in a national society. This implies a reciprocal repeat of a sad history. As a society here are we learning? Age and experience does not automatically translate to wisdom. It is not a bad thing to grow past your elders in some things.

A few years later GTO decided to rename The Gully (yet again) as ‘Garguree‘. This word apparently means ‘gully’ or ‘valley’ in the Gundungurra language and was sourced from Blue Mountains historian, researcher and author into the Gundungurra history, Jim Smith Ph.D. This follows a contemporary trend of renaming geographic places in Aboriginal language. Is it sending a socially dividing message of some sort of cultural payback to the descendants of non-Aboriginal Australians, who had no say nor played no role in tragic past events in our social history before they were born, just as do the descendants of Aboriginal people and of mixed marriages thereof?

The Gully used to look all like this, pristine riverine ecology uninterrupted by human harm – all the way to Katoomba Falls, Kedumba River, Cox’s River, Nepean River, Hawkesbury River out to Broken Bay on the coast into the Pacific Ocean.

Remnant upland swamp/wetland of The Gully, lately called ‘Gargaree’ [Photo by Editor]

‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ [Council’s Plan of 2021]

Blue Mountains {city} Council persists with ongoing re-categorisation of land tenor within The Gully Catchment Area with its ulterior motives that are locally divisive.

Council’s latest 2021 Plan is one of many over the years. But this one is perhaps worse than the others in that as a plan of management it not about rehabilitating this creek valley , but a biased Aboriginal cultural document that has excluded locals to the benefit of a select few. It prescribes a racist agenda of Reverse Land Usurpation.

‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place‘ divided up in Blue Mountains {city} Council’s Plan of Management of 4th October 2021.

We are also aware of prior land use plans for this valley extending back after WWII in the mid-1950s to impose the racing car circuit; and even back to the 1870s, when the first private colonial landholder of the area, John Britty North, subdivided a ridgetop portion for the first tranch of profiteering housing development. Befitting his robber baron ego, North dubbed it ‘North’s Estate’.

We at The Habitat Advocate are actually situated on the old North’s Estate since 2001, as our later reasearch tought us. We chose to live here because it was old established residential and so not to cause more deforestation by buying a finge ‘bush block’. So we research this area where we live in order to better understand its history, stories and so to better appreciate its conservation values.

We embed on this webpage below the draft document extract entitled ‘Assessment of Frank Walford Park Katoomba – Land Suitability, Environmental Constraints, Management‘. It appears to be hand typed, in the days before computers.

We also embed below the subsequent ‘Frank Walford Park – Plan of Management‘ of 1981 by local council. Both documents are supplied in PDF format and are made available here to the public for printing and downloading. Both the draft extract and the final plan of management relate to what was/remains ‘community land’, so we have no qualms in reproducing them here and making them freely publicly available.

Both documents are instructive in that they prescribe land use planning for what is currently termed ‘The Gully’ (or ‘Gungaree’ in native Gundungurra) that have subsequently been reguritated by council with many reiterations and renamings ever since. Consistently, as has been local council’s form similarly for decades, that is solely about being seen to comply with New South Wales Government’s mandatory planning laws for community lands.

Yet equally consistently, local council has serial form in implementing little if any on-ground action in this creeek valley. Why? Simply because of the lack of political/bureacratic will, and council’s decided to not even apply for external funding to have any of its plans of management for rehabilitating ‘The Gully’ implemented – since its 1972 demise of the racetrack. It’s a classic case of persistent organisation cultural guilt that continues to be seeded across subsequent generations of politically swayed bureaucratic management and incoming councillors decade after decade. Council’s cultural hate toward The Gully is despicable.

The contents focuses on the natural environmental features of the then ‘Park’, its historical and existing (human) uses, proposed land uses and a management plan.

Frank Walford Park – Catalina Motor Circuit Map (circa 1980) showing the symetrical three-leafed shamrock shapped loop 1.3 miles in length. [SOURCE: Frank Walfors Park Managament Plan 1981, Blue Mountains {city} Council].

The above included street map shows hand written existing uses of the Park as approved by Council (utilising a good magnifying glass):

Catalina Motor Racing Circuit
Rally Cross Circuit (inside the circuit)
BMX Track (inside the circuit)
Three car parks (2 for spectators, 1 for competitors’ cars)
Pit Area (inside the circuit)
Four food stalls (outside the circuit) including the Apex Club food stall (top left)
Three toilet blocks for spectators (outside the circuit)
One toilet blocks for spectators (outside the circuit)
One shower block for competitors (outside the circuit)
Catalina Lake (for swimming)
Indoor Recreation Centre (Council’s)
Swimming Complex (outdoor pool)
Bushfiire Shed (Rural Fire Service)
An archery field

So at the time, the predominant appproach by Council to the use of the Park was for recreational and tourism use, less so environmental conservation and ecological rehabilitation.

Note that the aforementioned ‘Apex Club food stall‘ at the motor racing circuit reveals key connection with the then Council Mayor Frank Walford. In 1956 Frank with his wife Madge were guests of honour at this fundraising Apex District Convention held at the then Katoomba Town Hall on nearby Parke Street situated on the ridgetop overlooking Frank Walford Park. Frank and Madge Walford are seen sitting at the head table (top left in this photo). [SOURCE: Blue Mountains Library – Local Studies, copyright licensing: Attribution, share alike, creative commons].

Frank Walford Park Management Plan of 1981

After Blue Mountains Mayor Frank Walford [1882-1969] passed away at age 80 years, Blue Mountains {city} councillors decided to name the creek valley after him as Frank Walford Park, probably sometime during the 1970s. Frank Walford had been a key supporter on council that approved a motor racing circuit to be constructed from 1957 in this small amphitheatre-shaped creek valley on the western fringe of the township of Katoomba.

Mayor Frank Walford in 1956 (then aged 76) at a council meeting in the old Town Hall situated in Parke Street on the ridgetop just above the creek valley. The Town Hall was demolished in the 1960s and not replaced. Instead councillors voted to build a brutalist monolithic Council Chambers highrise building at a site isolated from the Katoomba business community.

Local residents who had lived in this small creek valley before 1957 had affectionately referred to it as ‘The Gully’. Council as the landowner of the valley, forcibly evicted all the local residents between 1957 and 1959, which involved council sending in a bulldozer to raze all their homes in order to make way for the new racetrack for a group fo locally influential and wealthy businessmen who were avid sportscar racing enthusiasts. Dubbed ‘Catalina Racetrack’ by council, the track operated between 1961 and 1971, after which the organisation running it went bankrupt.

By 1980, New South Wales Government planning laws required local councils throughout the state of New South Wales to periodically produce appropriate land use plans of management for community lands under their control, such as in the case of locl council, Frank Walford Park.

The draft extract of the 1980 plan would seem for the first time to start respecting the environmental values of this creek valley portion referred to by local council as Frank Walford Park. Local council’s draft assessment of Frank Walford Park is divided into two sections:

Section 1: Reviewing the existing landscape, natural features, persent land use and historcial uses and :
Section 2: Proposed land use development options

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The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2022

Neil Stuart [1937-2016] the founder and inspirational community leader of The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc. (The Gully). Neil was also oft the group’s lead environmental activist, bushcare volunteer, bi-monthly meeting chairperson, campaign organiser, volunteer on Clean Up Australia Day in The Gully, organisation administrator, letter writer to the obstinate Council, organisation archivist, and renown jam maker for The Friends fundraising street stalls (shown here), etc, etc.

The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc. was a legendary, yet little known, grassroots volunteer group of local residents of The Gully Water Catchment (creek valley) situated on the western fridge of the rural bushland township of Katoomba in the central Upper Blue Mountains plateau, 100km west of Sydney.

Conveniently and affectionately shortened to ‘The Friends’ by its members, the group formed and functioned to respect and rehabilitate the natural values and ecology of this creek valley (including The Gully) as informal ecological custodians and to challenge the many damaging threats to it by various vested outside interests between the years 1989 and 2016; some 27 years.

Some former members of The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc. at their final fundraising street stall on Katoomba Street on Saturday 26th July 2014. Observe the home-made jam jars on sale on the two trestles. The Friends founder Neil Stuart (second from right) made both the jams and the trestle tables. [Photo by John Rule]

The editor of The Habitat Advocate was an active former member of The Friends between 2002 and 2007, after which The Gully (Gundungurra) Traditional Owners usurped management control of The Gully.

(more details to follow)

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Transforming The Gully by stone ‘yarning circles’?

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022

Sometime back in early 2022, Blue Mountains {city} Council, in its insular ‘ivory tower’ bureaucratic wisdom, reckoned that wasting thousands of grant funding from the NSW Government on a so-called sandstone ‘yarning circle‘ for The Gully in Katoomba would be a public relations hoot!

Council’s yarning circle site was strategically chosen for maximum PR exposure for visitors to The Gully, just by the lake off Madge Walford Fountain carpark, just off Gates Avenue in Katoomba. Sure enough, the project, completed in February 2022, found its way to a press release in the local newspaper, the Blue Mountains Gazette, on 20th April 2022 entitled ‘Transforming The Gully’.

Council’s press release in the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper on page 12, dated 20th April 2022.

This press release states that this new stone yarning circle on..

“the edge of Catalina Lake in The Gully is slowly being transformed after the decade-long work of a vibrant bushcare group, Blue Mountains council’s environment team, the Gully Traditional Owners and a special NSW environmental trust grant…. a yarning circle at the Gully and a YouTube bird watching tour are now just some of the welcome additions to the restorative Bushcare and Swampcare work.”

A stone yarning circle being part of restorative bushcare? Seriously?

Council previously had approved three similar stone circles nearby in The Gully back in 2008. That’s where an external grant of some $600,000 went – on an Aboriginal-only interpretative history path.

Sure, the dedicated group of volunteers of Garguree Swampcare Group who frequently convene in The Gully to weed out invasive plant species and plant out locally native plants do certainly effect restorative bushcare. The group formed a decade ago back in 2011 under the New South Wales Government’s Landcare NSW umbrella (not Council’s). As a local, the regenerative on-ground results of this volunteer group’s Swampcare efforts are readily observed by one walking around The Gully, especially noted inside the Dunlop Corner section of the old racetrack with the removal of all the blackberry and cotoneaster and the landscaping and planting out our of locally native plants and trees.

Former members of ‘The Friends’ would be well pleased that the native habitat restoration in this creek valley has continued since 2011. Yet sadly, no mention is made of the 27+ years of the Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Bushcare Group [1989 – 2016] and their related subgroups who continue to work in adjacent McRae’s Paddock and Selby Reserve, contributing many thousands of volunteer hours weeding The Gully of invasive plant species. Let the truth be told.

The Habitat Advocate has been based in The Gully Water Catchment since 2001 and over the two decades we have become very familiar with this rather special creek valley. Our editor walks around it weekly for exercise and peace of mind in Nature, not just the old racetrack, but south from the aquatic centre through MacRaes Paddock, Selby Reserve and to Katoomba Falls. He observes the goings on – the creek health, the landslips, continuing off-leash dog walkers, and the incremental new housing replacing the bushland along Wellington Street, etc.

Council’s press release states that the group’s volunteer co-ordinator David King (being a son of a former Gully resident) has been..“slowly mulching, planting, moving logs and stones to create habitat for the amazing number of aquatic birds that frequent the Lake – 100 have been recorded..The group is working hard to restore the delicate environment at the headwaters of the Katoomba Falls Creek and make it a happy place for new memories.”

The Habitat Advocate supports David King’s Swampcare leadership, wholeheartedly.

Council’s press release goes on…

‘Mr King said for thousands of years Garguree – which means The Gully – was a campsite that sustained the Gundungurra and Darug people. Indigenous communities were displaced when council approved a car racing track – the Catalina circuit – in 1957. It has been recognised as an Aboriginal place since 2002.

The 81 hectare site* is being cared for with the help of a Protecting our Places NSW Environmental Trust grant…Mr King said the lake habitat is linking with the riparian corridor works along Gedumba (sic) Creek and all the restoration works in the middle swamps and McRaes Paddock. The whole 81 hectares of The Gully is an incredible diverse wildlife haven and safe corridor linking up to the valley. While working around the lake it was decided that it would be a beautiful spot to also create a yarning circle on the lake for the Gully Traditional Owners and community to meet and share stories and cuppas.”

Garguree Swampcare has previously won the prestigious regional Indigenous Land Management Landcare Award in 2017.’

[* Editor: “81-hectare site?”

The Gully Water Catchment covers 290 hectares/2.9 km² Dr Fred Ball’s 1993 Plan. So, Mr King’s 81 hectares represents a tiny 28% remnant of the creek valley’s water catchment area. However in fact, Blue Mountains {city} Council’s 2021 Plan at page 17 states the land area is 73.1 hectares as per the extract below, not 81 hectares; that is, unless Council’s doing another sneaky ursurp of its zoned community lands?…]

SOURCE: ‘The Gully Aboriginal Place of Management’, 2021-10-04, Section 1.1 Plan Area, page 17, by Blue Mountains {city} Council, with input by The Gully Traditional Owners, and funded by the NSW Government.

Again, The Habitat Advocate supports this habitat restoration endeavours wholeheartedly. But the timing of Council’s yarning circle is apposite. It took place during the period between July 2018 and October 2021 when Council was undertaking a revision of its 2004 Plan of Management for The Gully Aboriginal Place. Yet in both Council’s 2004 plan and subsequent 2021 plan, ‘yarning circles’ were not suggested, discussed, featured, nor budgeted for.

Instead, Council’s latest ‘yarning circle’ in The Gully seems to be some unplanned whim from grant funding undisclosed and outside any of the now 19 plans for and reports on The Gully. Maybe it was some bureaucrat’s whim within council with connections to the Parks Service to utilise excess stone blocks over-ordered for heli-upgrading of nearby hiking tracks in the national park. Voilà, another Council stone yarning circle crops up!

Anyway, so today we checked out this Council’s yarning circle down by the old artificial dam; a ten minute walk each way and took a few photos of it. Currently in the depth of winter, sitting on these fifteen cold hard sandstone blocks for too long would likely bring on a bout of haemorrhoids, so wise to bring a rug or two. The following photo was taken from the steps leading down to the lake, which originally provided the main access for swimming in the 1940s and 1950s before Council built its aquatic centre. Note the old changing sheds in the background.

Council’s transforming urbane vision in February 2022: It’s priority ‘yarning circle’ due to be just as another unused white elephant like Council’s $6 million concrete amphitheatre installed at Echo Point in 2019, save for PR media releases. [Photo by Editor, 2022-08-03]

Now this new ‘yarning circle’ is situated right by existing picnic tables on the lawn area behind next to the old racetrack and these serve to provide quite adequate seating for picnicking and if you like, some yarning. So it is an extraneous folly indeed.

For some reason Council in its wisdom, also recently decided to remove the only rubbish bin on this side of the lake.

Council’s notice on the old racetrack near the lake

This is possibly because there is no Council ranger assigned to empty it. Instead there is a bin at the Madge Walford Fountain carpark side of the lake, and two of Council’s aquatic centre car park, meaning Council’s ranger now doesn’t have to walk far from his/her car to empty them – must be to do with OH&S walking.

Speaking of safety, the site of this yarning circle is just metres down slope from a small freshwater spring that causes the grass in the vicinity to be constantly boggy. The site was originally a sedge swamp within the original natural riparian zone of the central creek; that is, before the artificial lake was constructed. The problem is that constant ground water seepage drains around and down the only steps leading to this new yarning circle below.

Concrete steps down to Council’s new stone yarning circle #4: Perennial spring ground water here causes moss to grow on the only downward step approach to the yarning circle, so creating a public trip hazard. Council is known to manage occasional grant funding for PR purposes, but has form in neglecting regular maintenance. May be the contractor for the yarning circle on the day responsibly swept away the moss; alas only to return. Council has no interest in The Gully besides its mandatory legal compliance, timely PR on occasion for the local rag and its glossy brochures despatched to ratepayers with their rate notices.

This is simply local knowledge by those like The Habitat Advocate who know this creek valley intimately. But Council in its ivory tower mindset constantly chooses not to consult with locals knowledge about its actions in The Gully. Yes, Council must first legally consult with The Gully Traditional Owners (GTO) as custodians of The Gully Aboriginal Place, yet despite none living within ‘Cooee!‘ of The Gully.

But the GTO would not have designed this folly and not at this location. When the interpretative walking pathway was designed, a primary feature was to enable disabled access so the pathway and boardwalks were all pre-designed to facilitate wheelchair access throughout.

The Gully’s interpretative pathway is wheelchair friendly so that it is accessible to anyone with a physical disability and mindful of the former residents (pre-1959) who are elderly to access this pathway – such a thoughtful design gesture. But the funding did not come from Council’s Environmental Levy as the now deteriorated sign to the right claims. It cam from a NSW Government Grant of $600,000 in 2008.

Key problem with this Interpretation Pathway biasely tell an Aboriginal-only story, not the true account about dispossessed poor folk who were Black and White and mixed. Council funded any of it, rather all the funding was external – NSW Government and Rous Water in the Northern Rivers region. Council did not seek or obtain a development application. Council did not seek or obtain any local community consultation, but only from the Gully Traditional Owners who were by 2008 usurping control in all decision making of The Gully to the deliberate exclusion of all other locals. Council deliberately and hatefully ostracised The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creel Valley Inc., who had undertaken considerable bushcare rehabilitation and lobbied Council since 1989 to protect this creek.

Council did not seek or obtain a development application. Council received no official clearance. It just thought it up and did it.

Sound familiar?

Apocalypse Now quote:

“Kurtz staged Operation Archangel with combined local forces, rated a major success.

He received no official clearance. He just thought it up and did it.

What balls.

They were gonna nail his ass to the floorboards for that one.

But after the press got a hold of it, they promoted him to full colonel instead.

Oh, man, the bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it.”

^https://movie-sounds.org/war-movie-sound-clips/quotes-with-sound-clips-from-apocalypse-now/he-received-no-official-clearance-he-just-thought-it-up-and-did-it

Former residents of The Gully (pre 1957-59) are elderly and many are observed by this author as being physically disabled, having attended a number of invited gatherings with former residents in The Gully. This points to this ‘yarning circle’ down by the lake, accessible by only by the steps, as being is a Council thing and likely contrived by some person without knowledge in perhaps Council’s PR department or by another one of Council’s external consultants driven in from distant Sydney.

Since at least 1981, a whole series of plans and reports to local Blue Mountains {city} Council on this creek valley have prescribed many environmental rehabilitation actions to be undertaken throughout. However precious little has been done by council as the custodial land manager. For instance, the ‘Bell Report’ of 1993 (plan #8) to Council on this creek valley in its executive summary on pages 6 and 7 identifies some sixty recommended actions for this creek valley of varying priorities as part of a prescribed environmental management plan. [Read More]. Had Council acted upon these recommendations then the Gully would have been truly transformed back to approximating its original ecological landscape and health as it was before the colonising usurpation since perhaps the mid-1800s.

Neither the Bell Report nor any of the 19 plans/reports (at least) on this creek valley include any ‘yarning circle’ nor ‘stone circle’, nor even a ‘crop circle’.

Council holds a condescending penchant for installing ‘yarning circle ‘follies for Aboriginal use, with now three in The Gully and one at Echo Point. So where’s this nutty motivation coming from?

Blue Mountains {city} Council has already approved three other such stone block gathering places or ‘yarning circles’ in The Gully. These were part of its approval in 2008 for an Aboriginal interpretative meandering pathway concreted inside its terminated Catalina Park motor racing circuit. It serves to showcase the history of prior Aboriginal residents of The Gully – which Council forcibly evicted between 1957 and 1959 for its motor racing mates.

Evidential of the truth, Council’s meeting minutes recorded this back in 1959:

Truth telling

So why the need for a fourth stone circle in The Gully? And why position it adjacent to an invasive dam that was built by non-Aboriginal people over the top of the pre-existing riparian zone of the creek?

Here we show Council’s other three ‘stone circles’ in The Gully.

Stone Yarning Circle #1 – Notice how blackened the sandstone has become over time to moisture attracting mould in the wet pervious sandstone after 14 years and the lack of Council maintenance. Not exactly an aesthetically welcome look now

Stone Yarning Circle #2. Actually this is the site where in 2001 Council provided dump truck access so the RTA could dump hundreds of tonnes of sand and rock fill on top of The Gully sedge swamp from its highway cutting at the Soldiers Pinch bypass excavation project near Mount Victoria. More black mould neglected by Council.

Stone Yarning Circle #3. More black mould neglected by Council. We predict Council’s latest fourth yarning circle will similarly deteriorate in a few years time due to its record of ignoring maintenance.

The invasive non-Aboriginal history of this creek valley

Council’s stone ‘yarning circle’ is artificial just like the artificial lake adjacent. It is pure aesthetics and seems to be a public relations ploy by Council to showcase: “Look, Council is actually doing something constructive in The Gully!”

But Council’s latest haemorrhoid yarning circle achieves precious little in rehabilitating the riparian zone habitat of this decades-long neglected and abused creek valley.

For starters, the lake adjacent is actually a dam that was constructed post-WWII over the top of the old ‘Frogs Hollow’ spring/swamp riparian area of Katoomba Falls Creek by local tourist entrepreneur at the time, one Horace Gates. It was part of his grand scheme to impose a carnival amusement park called ‘Catalina Park’ in the valley.. offering ‘every facility for fun and food’.

Horrie in 1948 seconded the shell of an old Catalina PBY-5 flying boat for his new dam as a unique tourist attraction to his amusement park. By 1949 he arranged for local council to supply 100,000 gallons of water for it, metered at 1/6d. per thousand litres. [Council of the Blue Mountains meeting minute :’Supply of Water to H. Gates for Catalina Park’, dated 11th January 1949, 7 pm, page 3.]

Horrie also paid £500 towards the £2,500 cost of constructing new Plantation Street westward between Cascade Street and his Catalina Park that same year. [Council of the Blue Mountains meeting minute :’Plantation Street: Katoomba’, dated 15th February 1949, 7:30 pm, page 183.]

Horries’ new ‘Catalina Park’ subsequently served to provide various attractions and activitioes including speedboat rides, tearooms, miniature train, a Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, swimming pool and a Giggle House showing Charlie Chaplin films.

Horace Gates’ Catalina Park circa 1950. This was during summer of course, since the water temperature can get down to 4^o degrees celsius in winter months. The concrete steps to the now stone ‘yarning circle’ would be off picture to the right.

Horrie also locally owned an amusement parlour on the north-west corner of Katoomba and Waratah Streets, as well as his ‘Homesdale Guesthouse‘ at 207 Katoomba Street including its Wentworth Cabaret nightspot downstairs. Subsequently the guesthouse was replaced to become the much larger Katoomba Corps branch of the Salvation Army, then in 2021 it was converted into backpacker accommodation of international Youth Hostels Association (YHA).

Homesdale Guesthouse in the 1920s. Horrie wasn’t exactly short of a few bob and had influence on Council to acquire the portion of The Gully he named Catalina Park in the post-war 1940s.

Katoomba tourism was Horrie’s thing 1920s into the 1950s. He was a relatively successful entrepreneurial businessman of Katoomba. But he used his wealth to be one of the many usurpers of The Gully.

But Horrie cared not for the welfare or quite enjoyment of the adjacent residents of The Gully. They were mostly Aboriginal impoverished families subsisting in meagre self-made shacks in the bush with no utilities – having no running water, no electricity, no gas, may be septic tanks pre-1907. Thereafter Council imposed town sewage be trenched throughout the creek valley, yet not connected to any of the Gully shacks (councillors didn’t want to encourage what they regarded as a shanty bush settlement on the edge of town).

A walking visit to The Gully these days reveals interpretative signage record of the simple subsistence living conditions that former residents endured before Council’s forced evictions and calling in the bulldozers 1957-1959.

Living in The Gully was basic bush camping

May be there was one toilet block for the entire Gully if they were lucky. May be that tiny brick one below Wells Street, or was it a more recent addition for overnighting campers attending motor race meets later in the 1960s and 1970s?

By the early-1950s, Catalina Park as then an amusement park was pretty dated and run down. When Horrie died, Council named Plantation Street adjacent as ‘Gates Avenue’ and Horrie’s dam as ‘Catalina Lake’. Council in the 2000’s renamed a nearby short portion of Farnells Road as ‘Catalina Avenue’ as an appeasement gesture to the petrol-head fraternity bemoaning Council’s 2002 closure of their Catalina Park motor racing circuit just by the lake.

This use of The Gully was all entirely non-Aboriginal use and exploitation by wealthy outsiders – the amusement park (1946-1950s) followed by the raceway (1957-2001). So the pertinent question in relation to this fourth stone yarning circle by Council is why spend money complementing an unnatural part of The Gully. This is just another whim, indeed a folly.

Who’s idea was it? How much did it cost? Why did this civil works project take priority over many other priority ecological rehabilitation actions in the valley as prescribed by many plans of management since at least 1981? Surely, given the latest Plan of Management of October 2021, the use of that “special NSW environmental trust grant” as quoted in the newspaper article, should have applied to the action items listed in that plan. The 2021 plan lists a mere 6 action items on page 111. , just 10% of the 1993 plan.

In comparison to the 1993 plan of management’s 60 recommended action items, Council’s 2021 plan list a mere 6 ‘governance actions’ on page 111 budgeted to cost $54,950. How much did this fourth stone yarning circle project cost? On page 113 indicates a massive budget of $4,742,910 to implement the latest plan of management. But this list is not about habitat restoration of The Gully, its all about human usage as the following cost summary reveals:

Truth telling: The Gully Aboriginal Place 2021 Plan of Management

Council’s 2021 plan includes a pie-in-the-sky budget totalling a massive $4,742,910. Co-incidentally Council’s 2004 plan budgeted a similar $4,682,000. Didn’t happen.

Council’s 1996 (Connell Wagner) Plan listed many distinct habitat restoration focuses and action plans for each portion of the creek valley, then respectively named Frank Walford Park, McRaes Paddock, Katoomba Park, and included Katoomba Golf Course. Featured in all four portions included regenerating of re-vegetation degraded areas and rehabilitating swamps and bushland. Budgeted total costs came in at $794,500.

Didn’t happen.

Council’s 2021 plan won’t happen. This latest plan is set to be mothballed by Council again, because like the 18 previous reports and plans on this riparian valley, the 2021 plan contains the usual escape clause to allow Council to do again nothing in The Gully. A funding excuse. Council is legally compelled by the New South Wales Government to prepare a plan of management for a public (community) land it controls/owns such as The Gully, but Council in its history is yet to seek the requisite budgeted external funding for any plan for The Gully in order to complete the recommended action items.

May we suggest to the insular thought bubble that is Blue Mountains {city} Council that rather than it have imposed a 4th Celtic yarning circle in The Gully for the rarely seen Aboriginal folk around, that Council instead focus its cash on more pressing public safety measures in and around The Gully?

Below is one such pressing public safety problem deserving Council’s prompt maintenance.

It’s possibly the largest pothole currently besetting the Blue Mountains at some 4×2 metres in size!

It’s situated down the very steep road of Warriga Street on the eastern approach to The Gully. Such being the months of this pothole’s deterioration, one almost needs 4×4 vehicle to currently negotiate through it!

.

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Archive for the ‘Habitat Campaigns’ Category

About ‘Friends of ATLAS’

Campaign Background

Save ATLAS Campaign

Fact Finding

Further Reading:

Wollemi Wilderness Champion

Did wiping out the Wollemi trigger Haydn’s heath demise?

Further Reading:

The Gully Water Catchment

The Gully

Katoomba Falls Creek Valley

Upper Kedumba River Valley

McRae’s Horse Paddock

Catalina (amusement) Park

Catalina Park Raceway

Frank Walford Park

Katoomba Park (and Katoomba Park Extension)

Katoomba Falls Reserve

Selby Street Reserve

Katoomba Golf Course

21 Stuarts Road: bushland subdivision for housing

Built-Up Subdivided Residential Katoomba

‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ [Council’s Plan of 2004]

Gargaree

‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ [Council’s Plan of 2021]

Further Reading:

Frank Walford Park Management Plan of 1981

The invasive non-Aboriginal history of this creek valley

Further Reading:

Council’s review of The Gully’s 2004 Plan is long overdue

SOURCE: ‘UPPER KEDUMBA RIVER VALLEY Plans of Management Covering the Community Lands within “The Gully” Aboriginal Place (Blue Mountains {City?} Council, revised edition 2004, Appendix C: ‘Summary of Relevant Strategies / Policies’, p.101.

So who is ‘The Gully Community‘ according to Council aficionados?