…somewhere backing Australia’s World Heritage ecological values…
The Habitat Advocate has sadly learned about a governmental threat to evict this much loved and valued local community volunteer-run nursery business in Katoomba in the Australian Blue Mountains region, successfully operating onsite since 1999.
This author learned about this from off the grapevine, else we should have otherwise learned about this news development from reading our local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper. Yet, that valued weekly newspaper informing locals about Blue Mountains goings-on has been denied us for some years. The paper has not been distributed to our Katoomba Falls Creek residential precinct since long before COVID – like for the past 5 years or so!
An unviable newspaper business model for these times? One notes that the newspaper’s distribution statistics have been removed from this newspaper’s print masthead for some time (Read a harbinger of the Gazette’s pending closure)
Moving on… a few weeks back a Blue Mountains friend informed us about this news of the nursery, then kindly dropped around his copy of the Gazette issue dated Wednesday 15th January 2025.
This is the front page article with the legendary Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service (‘Wildplant Rescue’) on the front page we read:
‘Eviction day looms for Wildplant Rescue nursery’
15th January 2025, by Jennie Curtin, BMG journalist)
[SOURCE: Blue Mountains Gazette (BMG) newspaper, Page 1, Wednesday 15th January 2015. Photo by Jennie Curtin]
‘Time is running out for the Wildplant Rescue nursery at Katoomba.
The volunteers have been told they have until the end of April to find a new home, after the owner, the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), cited maintenance costs and fire safety issues. (Author: aka the landlord’s wanton neglect of this bushland site for decades, and a rubbish slack ulterior motive excuse to flog off the site for profit to a developer for housing – truth telling!)
The department wants to sell the site, which used to be adjoined to the now-closed and re-purposed Clairvaux Children’s Home adjacent and which is in need of repair, restoration and safety features.
The NSW Government department’s old notorious ‘Clairvaux Childrens Home’ (1969-1990) situated at adjacent 41 Violet Street Katoomba. It became a ‘home of horrors’ for violated young boys. It was eventually shut down in criminal disgrace. Since the 1990s it has been ‘occupied’ by the Katoomba Christian Convention (KCC). God knows why – It’s a place of Evil. [Recent photo by author]
The entire Clairvaux Community Services site has long been neglected by the NSW Government for decades. Dozens of abandoned and vandalised buildings by ACRC snuggled in nativve bushland, now warrant demolition. They contain asbestos interior fabrication wall lining from the 1970s.
Adjacent to Wildplant Rescue’s pro-bono tenancy is this other unrelated tenant of DCJ’s Calirvaux Community Centre site. The photos shows one of dozens of outbuildings situated on the DCJ’s Clairvaux Community Services’ 8 hectare bush site in outer Katoomba – but long vacated, (evicted by DJC?) so since abandoned, left derelict and since vandalised. [Recent photo by author]
The cost of setting up elsewhere is beyond the means of the volunteer-run nursery, which rescues local native species from building sites and propagates them as well as other rare and difficult natives. It sells the plants to home gardeners as well as council, landscapers and Bushcare organisations, providing the income to keep going.
The volunteers are desperately hoping the department changes its mind and gives them a permanent lease on their small section of the site. The only alternative, said president Verity Harris, is to find a benefactor with deep pockets. “If there’s a good millionaire out there with a plot of land …” she said hopefully.
The group had talks with council about a possible site during the planning of the old Katoomba golf course precinct. But a spokeswoman for council said “a plant nursery is not a permissible use on this site under the current zoning, and an amendment to the LEP would be required to include this and other additional uses. That would be a lengthy process including making a submission to the state government and further public consultation.”
The DCJ said it recognised the important service the nursery provides in protecting threatened species but a land condition audit of the site in 2020 found that it was not fit for purpose and was not safe for long-term use because of its fire zone.
DCJ:
“Tenants of the site were notified of the need to vacate the site in 2021 and since then almost all have relocated. DCJ has not provided formal notification to the nursery to leave the site whilst we continue to assist them to find a new home.”
The nursery has operated at the site since 1998. Although it receives no funding, Ms Harris acknowledged that DCJ did not charge them for rent or for water and electricity.
One of the difficulties with an unknown future is that no forward decisions can be made. The group recently spent money on new benches for the plants but don’t want to install them in case they have to take them down. There is also a greenhouse which is lying unassembled for the same reason. “The uncertainty is really quite crippling,” Ms Harris said. Volunteer Frances Scarano said the group only propagates native plants from the Mountains to ensure genetic purity. “We extend the diversity” of plants grown in Mountains gardens as well as giving wildlife more food and shelter sources,” she said.’
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service – a portion of its professional Native Plant Nursery, juxtaposed to native habitat surrounding the site. An ideal position. [Recent photo by author]
There’s a local Blue Mountains community story in this.
The above news item conveys more than a harbinger of pending closure; rather it tells publicly (about time, frankly) of an existential threat to the future of the Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service (Wildplant Rescue) not just from its current site, but because it has nowhere else to go, from its very existence – termination of the whole not-for profit business, of its local volunteers and of its support base membership – the lot facing oblivion!
[NOTE: An “existential threat” refers to a danger that could lead to the complete destruction or a permanent and severe degradation of something. It’s a threat to the very being or future potential of something – aka Wildplant Rescue in this case.]
Wildplant Rescue continues to be a long-established successful not-for-profit local business very popular in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of Australia and founded and run by its volunteers, and with a strong long-standing membership backing.
We reckon this eviction threat to Katoomba’s much loved native nursery is yet another example of the distant NSW Government’s bureaucratic insular mindset and its ongoing anti-social culture of destroying local small businesses for the greed of selling off public land (native bushland) that it controls on a entrusted custodial basis on behalf of the community. This eviction threat is bureaucracy selfishly seeking to profit from more bushland asset sales for inevitable housing development. It is not good government.
This closure threat to this unique endemic native plant nursery is unnecessary, unfair, contrary to the departmental landlord (DCJ’s) community focuses, and down right politically motivated by the incumbent NSW Minns Government bureaucracy and his politicians. The NSW Government’s eviction threat is wrong and unjustifiable. It’s threatened eviction of Wildplant Rescue is for non-genuine grounds. Yet hypocritically, the incumbent NSW Minns Labor Government publicly has stated:
“Landlords could be fined for making up a “non-genuine reason” for punting a tenant under NSW laws to scrap no-grounds evictions”.
This has been an election policy of Labor Chriss Minns before the NSW state election on 25th March 2023. Subsequently, as Premier, Minns is overseeing his own government department, DCJ as landlord using non-genuine reasons for punting Wildplant Rescue as tenant at the Clairvaux Community Centre site.
DCJ’s Eviction Threat Facts:
(from our research)
Wildplant Rescue has been an active nursery business tenant at the site since 1998, so for a continuous 27 years;
DCJ has/does not charge(d) Wildplant Rescue for rent, for water nor electricity. Yet this has been a mutual agreement between landlord DCJ and tenant – since DCJ has from the outset acknowledged that Wildplant Rescue is a local not-for-profit organisation providing a highly valued community service – rescuing Blue Mountains native plants from development sites, propagation local native plants (including threatened species) and participating in key roles in the local Blue Mountains bush regeneration industry. Further, DCJ has over the years seconded the community support of Wildplant Rescue to ’employ’ youth offenders under undergoing criminal rehabilitation within the community, and WildPlant has obliged (although its petty cash box went missing a few times – subsequent measures are that no cash it kept on premises such that so little of it ever was);
DCJ for decades has chosen not to maintain its Clairvaux site in outer Katoomba. It is this systemic bureaucratic failure by DCJ which underlies how now the dilapidated state of the buildings across its owned Clairvaux property site in outer Katoomba has been continually neglected and allowed to deteriorate by DCJ. (See our recent ACRC photo gallery below);
That DCJ’s outsourced site audit in 2020 reported that many buildings were not fit for purpose, remains wholly the responsibility of the DCJ as ongoing landlord for its systemic neglect of the buildings across the site. It is no way any fault of the long standing good tenant, Wildplant Rescue;
The site is dominated by bushland, so it is in a bushfire zone, but then this is an ideal site for a native plant nursery – juxtaposed next to native bushland. It is not an appropriate site for social housing, which would necessitate many hectares of intact native bushland to be first bulldozed, and considerable environmental harm and cost to DCJ;
DCJ’s eviction reasons to Wildplant Rescue are on spurious, non-genuine and unreasonable grounds. So much for Labor Chris Minns’ no grounds eviction ban election promise.
On 24 October 2024 the NSW Parliament passed the (NSW) Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill 2024. The legislation is now the (NSW) Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2024. Relevant to Wildplant Rescue’s tenancy eviction threat, despite it being a business tenancy and not a residential tenancy, we raise pertinent sections of this new (NSW) Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2024. Why should not the same principles apply to a not-for-profit tenant? That analytical article is pending on this website. We thank readers for their patience. We believe that no other website of journalist is covering this details issue as we are. We seek the truth in such topics always.
Aboriginal Cultural and Resource Centre derelict – photo gallery:
And who seriously, would turn on the ACRC’s private fire hydrant and leave it running for weeks…months to waste precious drinking water?
We took a video of this upon our visit to the DCJ’s Clairvaux Community Centre site on Sunday 30th March 2025.
DCJ’s eviction threat of Wildplant Rescue is a conjured bureaucratic notion for an impractical social housing estate white elephant in bushland some 2km outside Katoomba
It’s all a political ruse!
Wildplant Rescue’s nursery site occupies a very small parcel of rural bushland covering less than half a hectare. The nursery is situated on a western boundary off Oak Street Katoomba as part of the quite sizeable 8 hectare DCJ Clairvaux bushland site.
The Clairvaux site is geographically located within The Gully Water Catchment on the western edge of the regional township of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains region of Australia. The nursery site is within native Eucalypt bushland and is some distance from Katoomba’s high street, which is more than 2 km away and an uphill walk.
A location map of Wildplant Rescue relative from Katoomba township’s (high) Street – about a 3km uphill walk to Katoomba Train Station one- way. Wildplant Rescue lies within The Gully Water Catchment. [Source: Google Maps, recently]
So, the Clairvaux site location is not exactly convenient to shops nor amenities and the only public transport an hourly bus service into town along Oak Street. So the site suits being a place to propagate native plants, which is what Wildplant Rescue does and has been doing successfully on a shoestring budget consistently since 1999, so now twenty-six continuous years.
A recent walk around of Wildplant Rescue’s current site by this author:
Yet management has known about this eviction threat since before May 2020…
Let the truth be known – the founder of The Habitat Advocate and as Editor of this website, Steven Ridd, is a local of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains since 2001, so far, here for 24 years and going nowhere.
Consistent with the conservation tenets of The Habitat Advocate organisation, Steven had been a committed and active member of Wildplant Rescue on and off since 2009, having first initiating contact with committee member Alison Hatfield back in April 2008. Steven’s association included volunteering in various capacities and then joining the management committee. It was an on-and-off participation as work and family priorities permitted such volunteering contributions, as many juggle with.
The road to Wildplant Rescue…
Arriving at Wildplant Rescue’s unique, genuine nursery – plentiful with local endemic Upper Blue Mountains native plants…an emblematic not for profit charged to truthfully sustain planetary health by example [Recent photo by author].
Back on Thursday 26th February 2009, Steven attended his first meeting of Wildplant Rescue’s Management Committee Meeting, as a guest. Minutes of that Management Committee Meeting of Thursday 26th February 2009 are provided below.
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue is a community group and nothing herein is personally private, but only about this community-based not-for-profit organisation. It’s website is appropriately in the public domain. The Habitat Advocate Editor, Steven, remained a member of Wildplant Rescue on and off for more than a decade.
However, Steven’s association with Wildplant Rescue abruptly ended upon him initiating his email letter of membership resignation from Wildplant Rescue to the management committee on 1st July 2020. His reasons are twofold, as follows:
ACTION 1: Previously, on 24 June 2020, this author, at the time continuing to be on the Wildplant Rescue Management Committee had responded in an email to the committee thus:
“EVICTION THREAT
Importantly as well, Wildplant Management Committee needs to immediately respond to the notification of the imminent threat of eviction from its ‘lease’ at Clairvaux Community Centre 14 Oak Street Katoomba as warned by the NSW Department of Community & Justice (so-called) on 7th May 2020, per Verity’s email.
It would be responsible to inform the membership of this threat ASAP.
Kind regards,
Steven”
However, the management committee decided NOT to follow Steven’s advice to issue a “broadcast’ email of this existential threat to the membership.. “until they had more definite information from the DCJ.”
(2) Two days later on 26th June 2020, Steven added in another email to the management committee:
“I re-emphasise that waiting for a governmental department formal response in writing may just well be an eviction notice.
This will place Wildplant Rescue in an invidious position with little wriggle room to negotiate or to seek a delay to consider options.
I have recommended to the Wildplant Committee they need to seek legal advice and to utilise the current government grant funding to finance such legal advice so as to be on the front foot, rather than waiting for the inevitable so to speak.
I do not see a reason for keeping this critical news from the Wildplant membership, who may well be able to assist the Committee somehow, or at least given an opportunity to do so.
As volunteer representatives of Wildplant Rescue, the committee should not feel compelled to take on this burden of the threat of eviction themselves and with it the likely folding of Wildplant with it, given no alternative site has been so far found viable. I wish to add…as a committee member my dissent in not informing the membership of this predicament. They would be shocked to learn and if it were to eventuate without their knowledge, hold the committee to account and condemnation. I am prepared to be a whistle-blower on this to the membership by July 14. Surely the committee can come up with a responsible announcement to the membership that is informative without being alarmist.
I have the future viability of the Wildplant organisation and spirit foremost in my mind; whereas committee members can come and go.”
Steven Ridd as Founder, Conservation Consultant, and Editor of this website realised the existential threat by the governmental landlord to the very viability and future of Wildplant Rescue. For the Management Committee members not to alert the membership and fight the government eviction went against the craw – against the very raison d’etre of The Habitat Advocate – publicly challenging ‘Government Greenwashing‘.
Waiting for government…
(3) So, on 27th June 2020, Steven emailed his broadcast email to the 66 active members of Wildplant Rescue thus:
“Hello Wildplant Membership,
As a current voluntary member of Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service and serving on the management committee, I wish to express my repeated concerns since receiving an email from the President on May 8th 2020 about a serious risk to the viability of our organisation. I have tried my darndest multiple times within the committee communication that the broader Wildplant membership be made aware of this situation, but I have been unsuccessful, and only accused of “bullying” by the President, which I totally reject.
I refer you to the President of Wildplant Committee to explain. My commitment and heart is with the conservation spirit and viability of Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service Inc.”
Sincerely, Steven Ridd”
(4) After then receiving a threatening email response from the president alleging “data breach” of Steven’s broadcast emailing to the members, Steven reflected upon his membership of Wildplant Rescue and on 1st July 2020 emailed the committee stating he would not be renewing his membership. (All email correspondences are retained on file).
So that episode is approaching five years ago now. Yet sadly, the same threat of governmental eviction by the same NSW Department of Communities and Justice still looms dark over Wildplant Rescue’s very existence.
(5) This disturbing experience has affected us. So we write this truth telling to share…
This nursery’s landlord? …NSW Department of Communities and Justice – seriously?
As mentioned above, the Clairvaux Community Centre overall property site is owned by the New South Wales (state) Government (through its delegated and so-called ‘Department of Communities and Justice‘ (DCJ).
We remind readers that the ‘NSW Government’ essentially translates to being the authorised custodian on behalf of the citizens of New South Wales. Australia is a democracy. Assets of this state government are indeed the assets of the State and thus belong to this states citizens.
Eviction for social housing out ‘woop woop’..?
This much valued Blue Mountains community run not-for-profit venture frankly threatens to unjustifiably cause its permanent demise. Bloody why?!
Yet the current incumbent NSW Minns Labour Government’s Department of Communities and Justice has threatened designs on the site to flog it off for ‘social’ housing development.
What a ridiculous notion! The site is over 2km from Katoomba’s high street, so not exactly accessible for social housing such as like dilapidated northern Lurline is adjacent to Katoomba High Street.
The site is not suited to planned housing development and certainly not for government so-called ‘social housing‘ concept.
There are more sites in town near shops and the railway station far more suited for such government-funded social housing. Whereas Wildplant Rescue is located over 2 km from town so every resident would need a car for starters. It would require considerable costly demolition of many buildings, the killing hundred of native trees and bulldozing bushland to replace it with a conurbation of unneeded new housing – so another white elephant for the Blue Mountains.
The DCJ claims that the centre tenanted by the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre has significant accessibility and bushfire safety non-compliance issues that are not able to be remedied under the property’s existing land zoning.
“The Department of Communities and Justice is committed to funding Aboriginal community controlled organisations to provide programs and services for the local Aboriginal community,” a spokesperson told the Gazette.
“DCJ recognises and appreciates the important work that the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre undertakes in the community, and has been working with the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre to assist in sourcing and transitioning to a more appropriate property.
“DCJ remains committed to working collaboratively with the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre to assist them in their goal of providing services to their local community.”
At the Blue Mountains council meeting, the mayoral minute was supported unanimously. The council intends to write to the Department of Communities and Justice; Stronger Community Ministers; the Minister and Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs; and Trish Doyle, state member for the Blue Mountains, advocating for investment in the renovations required so the NGOs can continue to operate from the DCJ’s Clairvaux Community Centre.
Since 1999 our nursery has been located at the Clairvaux Centre, which is Govt property in the portfolio of the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) The property was surplus to their requirements since the children’s homes closed in 1988. It was abandoned and derelict until Katoomba Neighbourhood Centre (KNC) got a licence from DCJ in 1998 to use the site for community groups. We moved in in 1999. KNC withdrew from the licence in 2009 and since then we have just remained on site developing the nursery, being totally ignored by the DCJ until they suddenly appeared in 2020 threatening eviction. While departmental decisions were still ongoing, we secured an official short term licence (lease) to continue operating on site for a further 15 months. This lease expired in September 2024. We have sent several requests for this term to be extended but now we have been verbally informed we will definitely be evicted soon, probably at the end of April.
The situation….
The DCJ have advised they wish to divest themselves of this property since they have determined that we are not a community organisation they can support and so they wish us to vacate by April this year. They tell us they have already offered the property to BMCC who have declined to accept without substantial accompanying funds to upgrade the premises, fair enough. KNC did massive work to upgrade the site for all the community groups to move in. Since then the residents of Clairvaux have done their best to keep the place operational but it definitely is in need of a major upgrade.
BMCC have indicated that we could be included in the Planetary Health Initiative on the old Katoomba Golf Course, but all we have so far are words, no action, and now we are running out of time! Moving a nursery is a huge endeavour and would take so much of our time and resources that without major assistance we may not be capable of achieving this!
Why bother to save us?….
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how valuable our nursery is to the whole Blue Mountains community. We are a unique nursery growing and supplying real local natives which are mostly not available anywhere else. By supplying genetically sound local plants for thirty years to gardeners, council and bush regenerators, we have helped to connect our community to the bush and increase indigenous biodiversity. We also provide an opportunity for all our volunteers to find companionship in worthwhile and fulfilling volunteer work. We work with local schools and join in all the local environmental education events.
(Given all that, one wonders how we don’t fall under the auspices of the Department of “Communities”?)
It is a fact that we receive no regular support or funding from any source at all for this important work! We have been serving the community and our environment since 1995 by our own efforts only.
In 2015, the NSW Parliament’s Member for Blue Mountains Trish Doyle MP, wrote a letter to the Minister for Communities on our behalf asking for the Minister’s help to find a permanent home for us.
We had a meeting with representatives from the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) yesterday and they have allayed our fears of sudden eviction by stating that we will not be just ‘thrown out on the street’ come the end of April, but that we MUST relocate from the site “as soon as an alternative is found”. They have assured us they are still working hard to find a solution. (So this is the same situation since at least 2009!)
I hope the DCJ and the Minister may have more influence than us to come up with an alternative site, since in the more than 20 years we ourselves have been looking none has so far been identified. If no other site at all is identified we may still be forced to close.
So the situation is still grim for us as no other locations can be identified at this stage. If you have any solid ideas or any sphere of influence to help us find our forever home, (or have a spare billionaire in your pocket?) then please send us an email to bmwrskat3@gmail
And please keep sharing our petition and watch here for updates
We are all hoping for a miracle!
Yet, this is government hypocrisy, since directly across Oak Street from where Wildplant Rescue’s nursery has been for 26 years at number 14, is Blue Mountains Council’s bankrupted golf course.
Who plays golf in 2025?
In the process this same DCJ department has given no consideration to the future of this long-standing successful not-for-profit nursery business. Wildplant Rescue since 1999 continues to It provide a much valued native plant service to the local community.
The Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service nursery and its office building occupies just a relatively small portion of the overall old ‘Clairvaux’ site situated on the southwestern bushland outskirts of Katoomba township site.
The nursery is amongst a few other community-focused small business tenants. However, over the years many of the former tenants have long departed and many of the remaining buildings are long abandoned and have been left to become derelict and vandalised. There is no indication that the governmental landlord (DCJ) maintains the site or the buildings.
A brief history of this ‘Clairvaux’ site – ‘Home’ of Horrors:
The overall old ‘Clairvaux’ site is an asymmetrical odd squarish shape between Oak Street and Cliff Drive bounded by Hall Street (street access), Cedar Street, Violet Street, Ficus Street and Cliff Drive. See recent aerial photo map below.
It is estimated that the overall area approximates 80,000 m2 ( 8 hectares). [NOTE: 113 Cliff Drive, Katoomba, NSW 2780 has a land size of 69,662 m² (^SOURCE) – so this raises the question that entire land parcel ownership between Oak Street and Cliff Drive remains is unclear. Was a portion sold off?]
The overall site (shown below) is characterised as being half remnant bushland and half sports fields and from researching Google Maps and onsite ground-truthing also dotted with about two dozen dispersed dwellings.
The original building of the fibro-cement/asbestos clad NSW Government ‘Clairvaux Children’s Home‘ would seem to date back to the 1960s. Various other brick and tiled dwellings of different but consistent style seem to date to the 1970s. Many of the 1970s dwellings appear unkempt, else abandoned, derelict and indeed a few have been vandalised and left open to the elements. There is also signs of illegal squatting.
There are currently multiple tenants, dominated by the Katoomba Christian Convention (KCC) over about three quarters of the site.
Clairvaux Children’s Home had been established at this site outside Katoomba NSW by the then NSW Government’s Child Welfare Department in 1969. At the time, other state institutions like Mittagong, Brush Farm and Werrington Park were becoming overcrowded, so Clairvaux was opened (outside remote Katoomba) to house another 24 ‘wards of the state‘.
In the beginning, the Home provided accommodation for boys who were described as having “intellectual disabilities”. However, over the years, regrettably paedophilia rape stories emerged about the boys’ mistreatment and horrific sexual abuse. Clairvaux Children’s Home had been allowed by the NSW Government to become an “offending institution”…
Clairvaux Children’s Home in 1969
“Clairvaux Childrens Home was ultimately closed in 1990, remembered only by the boys (now men) who lived there. In 2014, the grand old building was repurposed into the Clairvaux Community Centre and now serves as the operations centre for a wide range of community-based charities.”
“Clairvaux Children’s Home was established at Katoomba NSW by the Child Welfare Department in 1969. At the time, other state institutions like Mittagong, Brush Farm and Werrington Park were becoming overcrowded, so Clairvaux was opened to house another 24 wards of the state.
In the beginning, the Home provided accommodation for boys who were described as having intellectual disabilities. Clairvaux was closed in 1990, remembered only by the boys (now men) who lived there. In 2014, the grand old building was repurposed into the Clairvaux Community Centre and now serves as the operations centre for a wide range of community-based charities.
But what happened behind closed doors between 1969 and 1990 was disturbing, to say the least — but you won’t hear about it in the news. The boys’ complaints were brushed off by their houseparents and other members of staff on-site.
As wards of the state, they had nowhere else to turn. They lived out of sight of the community. They didn’t have a voice. In this article, we share the story of one individual who suffered at the hands of a cleaner who worked at Clairvaux.
Active paedophiles roamed the grounds
Image: Care Leavers Association
A former resident of Clairvaux (who remains unnamed for privacy) was only six-years-old when he arrived at Clairvaux as a state ward. For the next 10 years, he was sexually abused weekly by a cleaner named “Darryl” who the victim remembered had red hair — a recognisable, memorable feature.
The victim was often sexually abused in Darryl’s work shed, located near the Home’s pool.
Darryl subjected the child to anal penetration every single time.
Believing that someone would help him or at least send Darryl away, the victim told his houseparents, Mr and Mrs Brady, about what was happening to him. Rather than reporting Darryl to the police, they ignored the complaints and the cleaner continued to work there… and continued to abuse the vulnerable child.
The victim then tried to report the abuse to the woman who cooked in the kitchen. She at least sent the child to be checked over by the nurse but again, nothing was done to help him.
With nowhere left to turn, the victim ran away many times but was caught every time.
Eventually, the Department removed him from Clairvaux and sent him to Reiby Youth Justice Centre, followed by Mt Penang Training School. This was a common practice for boys who were considered “difficult to manage”.
Reiby and Mt Penang are known for their harsh discipline and rampant sexual abuse. For this particular victim, moving to Reiby and Mt Penang was not a “light at the end of the tunnel”. Safety was not a luxury enjoyed by the boys who lived there.
If you were abused at Clairvaux, we want to hear your story
So little information is known about Clairvaux and the boys who lived there. Their stories have been lost in time — many are too scared to come forward and tell their stories. This is not uncommon; around 60% of survivors never disclose their experiences with abuse. Many are ashamed and fear they will not be believed.
There are many grown men who still haven’t spoken about their abuse by Darryl the red-haired cleaner, other on-site staff or by their own houseparents.
At Kelso Lawyers, we want to hear your story. Our specialist lawyers have helped hundreds of survivors achieve compensation across Australia. We will lend a sympathetic ear and most importantly, we will believe every word you say.
From here, we will make the compensation application process as simple and stress-free as possible. It is our goal to ensure you achieve the best possible outcome and achieve your own personal breakthrough.”
The home buildings have been abandoned ever since. They are situated off Cedar Street, at a quite separate location to the Wildplant Rescue nursery which is accessed off Hall Street over 250m around the corner.
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service is wholly a community service. It is the first of its kind in Australia, conceived and founded by local Blackheath village residents Mikla Lewis and Naturalist Wyn Jones in January 1993 to be a community driven, not-for-profit organisation, based in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales to help protect and promote the natural values of the Blue Mountains. It operates to rescue and re-home wild native plants, and to propagate these in its substantial dedicated in order to supply a range of locally endemic plants to local community bushcare groups, landscapers and to the local Blue Mountains Council for ongoing native habitat rehabilitation projects.
Copy on an early newsletter to members ‘Wildplant Press:
The Blue Mountains region, despite being mostly world heritage listed in 2000 continues to come under housing land use development pressures from hundreds of building permits issued every year, with most of the development affecting unspoiled native vegetation.
“Block by block, the bushland nature of the Blue Mountains urban area was being slowly but steadily lost, replaced by exotic gardens which deprive native wildlife of food and habit and create huge weed problems in surrounding bushland and National Park. As the group evolved, the original idea of rescuing native plants developed into a bigger plan. The group became aware of the importance of protecting wildplant and wildlife communities in the Blue Mountains on a broader scale than solely rescuing condemned wildplants. The collection of seeds and cuttings for propagation and on-selling to the local community was added to the concept. The facilities at Mount Tomah Botanic Garden were used for propagation of rescued seeds and cuttings, which were then cared for by group members in their own gardens.”
Indeed, the website of Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service was made possible by the Federal Government’s Stronger Communities Grant.
As well as engaging dozens of local community volunteers, the nursery also employs disabled young people as well as youth offenders undergoing rehabilitation and community re-adjustment through various governmental programmes. These would all cease if the DCJ bean counters get their way.
So what the hell is the Minns Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) thinking by destroying a community project – seriously?
DCJ’s website motto: “We work with children, young people, adults, families and communities to support vibrant, sustainable and inclusive communities.”
Is this seriously hypocritical or what? DCJ’s threat to shut down this community nursery.
What a hotch-potch of disconnected public service functions the DCJ is! It combines a legal justice type portfolio with community services. Cop this disparate mixed bag of its portfolios in DCJ’s Executive Structure:
Social Housing
Disaster Welfare
Courts and Tribunals
Victims Services
Child Protection
Disability
Seniors
Women’s Safety
Youth Justice
High Cost Emergency Arrangements
Law Reform
Volunteering
Sentencing
Disease Testing
Jury Service
Domestic Violence
Anti-Discrimination
Custodial Services (Prisons)
Legal Services
Public Defenders Office
Solicitor General
Aboriginal Outcomes
IT Services
Financial Performance and Transformation
Compliance
Anti-Slavery
Infrastructure and Assets
It’s a miscellaneous bucket list, and may as well be badged ‘Other’.
The last one here is managed by Katherine Tollner. She’d be the one going after WildPlant Rescue in cahoots with Financial Performance and Transformation’s Bronwyn Roy and Social Housing’s (Homes NSW) Rebecca Pinkstone. And how is Wildplant Rescue not recognised given that DCJ has a Volunteering programme?
Combined, DCJ’s has a bloated army of staff currently numbering 24,000 with a annual spend of $17 billion according to its 2024 annual report! That is 13% of the NSW Government’s annual spend of $130 billion according to the Audit Office of New South Wales website. It spends more than it earns. Its accumulated debt is $137 billion, with official forecast annual interest payments on debt to be (conservatively) $8.6 billion for 2027-28. So, Macquarie Street under the Liberal-National Coalition or Labor/Greens spends half of DCJ’s budget on interest repayments.
Well, Macquarie Street knows how to spend taxpayers’ money like proverbial drunken sailors. It has programme sub-departments to conjure up new programmes to ensure it spends all it gets annually, so its budget doesn’t fall in subsequent years. [NOTE: One is familiar with the NSW governmental bureaucracy, having contracted as a management accountant for multiple NSW Government departments for over a decade].
In the case of the building that houses Wildplant Rescue’s administrative office and other separate outbuildings on the old Clairvaux site, the DCJ has neglected building maintenance and proper upkeep for many decades.
DCJ’s current so-called Executive Director for its Infrastructure and Assets portfolio since Sep 2019 (less lockdowns), Katherine Tollner, has three months governmental experience in a property portfolio as Executive Director Property, Fleet & Procurement at NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (Jul 2019 – Sep 2019).
The NSW Minns Labor Ministry includes this Department Communities and Justice, so-called (DCJ). But under Premier Minns, it is a mish mash mega department of unrelated portfolios as follows:
Attorney General: The Hon. Michael Daley SC, MP
Minister for Families and Communities, Minister for Disability Inclusion: The Hon. Kate Washington MP
Minister for Youth Justice: The Hon. Jihad Dib MP
Minister for Corrections: The Hon. Anoulack Chanthivong MP
Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness, Minister for Youth: The Hon. Rose Jackson MP
Minister for Veterans: The Hon. David Harris MP
Minister for Seniors, Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault: The Hon. Jodie Harrison MP
So not one minister is accountable. Which one is in charge of the eviction threat? This mega department is supposed to be about ‘communities’ as its name suggests.
The three non-government organisations that are the tenants at the Clairvaux Community Centre are:
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service, the native plant nursery
The Blue Mountains Aboriginal Culture and Resource Centre (ACRC), which has been at Clairvaux for 27 years and claims “to provide crucial support services to the local First Nations community”
Leura Day Options, a disability support service provided by Greystanes Disability Service
These are each COMMUNITY based services. Hello!
It’s website About Us page reads:
“We work with children, young people, adults, families and communities to support vibrant, sustainable and inclusive communities.”
“DCJ is the lead agency in the Communities and Justice portfolio, which aims to create safe, just, inclusive and resilient communities through its services. DCJ enables services to work together to support everyone’s right to access justice and other help for families, and strengthen the promotion of early intervention and inclusion, with benefits for the whole community. Our purpose is to help create a safe, just, resilient and inclusive NSW in which everyone has the opportunity to realise their potential.”
At Clairvaux COMMUNITY Centre, the tenants facing eviction are a COMMUNITY nursery, an Aboriginal COMMUNITY centre and a disability support centre for disabled members of the local COMMUNITY.
What hypocrisy! The DCJ is also supposed to be about justice, as the name suggest – but it seems it’s more like ‘injustice’.
Council’s Centre for “Planetary Health” – seriously again?
In 2022, Blue Mountains councillors voted unanimously to oppose the eviction of the community groups that use Clairvaux by the DCJ! The mayor will support Trish Doyle’s appeal to the Minister to reconsider.
That same year, the Blue Mountains Council purchased the adjacent defunct Katoomba Golf Clubhouse situated on 30 hectares of public land (long controlled by Council), Council decided to re-branded it a ‘Centre for Planetary Health‘…whatever that means.
We point out that Blue Mountains Council had over previous decades, owned the public land of the Katoomba Golf Course, in its entrusted capacity as a custodian on behalf of the citizens of the Blue Mountains local government area it represents in trust. But the various golf course club operators had gone bankrupt and ‘sympathetically connected’ councillors had bailed them out using ratepayer funds. Say no more.
During the time of 2022, as part of Council’s community consultation outreach invitation, Steven responded to Council in writing proposing that a small portion (1/2 hectare) of the old golf course site be considered by Council allocated to Wildplant Rescue’s nursery, given the imminent threat of the nursery’s eviction from its current site. The current nursery site directly across the street from the old golf course at 14 Oak Street covers about that size.
This relocation literally just across the street, would be the most convenient option for Wildplant Rescue out of other flagged site options considered, if eviction became imminent and unavoidable. Other considered options had been Planet Ark’s former site in Wentworth Falls (north side) off 321 Blaxland Road and the original proposed site for the nursery at the old and disused Blackheath Tip (2 hectare) site off Ridgewell Road, situated about 600 metres along the road from the Great Western Highway, just east of the locked road gate for the Hanging Rock Parking Area. See map below.
Blackheath’s former tip site, contaminated with asbestos and still abandoned by Blue Mountains (city) Council
Blue Mountains Council’s old Blackheath Tip site along Ridgewells Road
Recall the lead newspaper article above:
‘The group had talks with council about a possible site during the planning of the old Katoomba golf course precinct. But a spokeswoman for council said:
“a plant nursery is not a permissible use on this site under the current zoning, and an amendment to the LEP would be required to include this and other additional uses. That would be a lengthy process including making a submission to the state government and further public consultation.”….
In 2022, Blue Mountains City Council has voiced its concern over the threat of eviction for three community non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the Clairvaux Centre in Katoomba.
At the council meeting of February 22, Labor mayor Mark Greenhill introduced a minute that detailed how the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) intends to end the lease of the Clairvaux Centre-based NGOs because of renovation costs.
“We need to stand up for those affected NGOS, they operate significant community support services to the Blue Mountains,” said Cr Greenhill. “When I heard about this I was horrified.”
Ward 1 Labor councillor, Suzie van Opdorp, who has an association with the Clairvaux Centre that extends back to the 1980s, also voiced her concerns over the eviction threat.
“These groups are feeling very anxious about their future,” she said. “As anyone would know who has lived and worked in the Mountains, there’s a scarcity of affordable office space for community organisations … These groups are really going to struggle if they’re put out to the open market to look for accommodation – some of them may not survive. It’s clear the facility is worth a lot of money. Our state government has gone about selling lots of publicly owned assets, and I can imagine it would be very tempting to sell this off.”
Ward 2 Greens councillor Brent Hoare and Ward 1 Greens councillor Sarah Redshaw also expressed their disappointment with the proposed eviction, Cr Hoare accusing the state government of “demolition by neglect”.
Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) have finally answered our questions regarding our suggested involvement in the Planetary Health Initiative on the old Katoomba Golf Course.
BMCC have now clearly stated that this is not a viable option for us because of zoning and other issues which would take years of process to remedy, if at all. They have also confirmed they have no other suitable site available within their portfolio to which the nursery could be relocated. Despite expressing their concern and saying they really value our contribution to the community, they say they can do nothing more to help us.
Yet local Blue Mountains Council has its new ‘Centre for Planetary Health‘ notion situated immediately across the road from Wildplant Rescue’s current site!
It’s Autumn in the Greater Blue Mountains, and the New South Wales Government’s bush arsonists are out in full swing deliberately setting fire to native habitat at every opportunity. Governmental ‘Habitat Reduction Season‘!
Is this pastime not comparable with the antiquated British imported tradition of the ‘Duck Season‘ – killing NATIVE ducks that is – just for sport. It’s the very same time of year!
“Capital climes for rough shooting old sport, what! Live on peg, we ought to bag a few dozen before tea.”
On Monday 25th March 2024, the NSW Government’s National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) published a media release about its continuing “hazard” reduction burns across the Blue Mountains National Park. It read as follows (main extracts):
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has announced plans for an 850-hectare hazard reduction burn in the Glenbrook area of Blue Mountains National Park, set to commence on 26 March, weather conditions permitting. This preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires and protect surrounding communities.
Scheduled to unfold over consecutive days, the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park. The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.
…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW. These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.
The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.”
Our comments to this bush arson justification spin doctoring:
The above is bush arson propaganda by contracted consultants with Communications Degrees, justifying the perpetual decimation of Australia’s native habitat since the first day of colonisation and usurpation of the continent since 1788. Nothing has changed or is likely to. Surviving intact wilderness has become reduced to mere islands. Just go to Google Maps [See our extract map below]
“850 hectares” is an area equivalent to about 30km x 30km (√ 850ha). In relative terms, that’s three times the size of Sydney’s CBD, a native habitat area capacity for many fauna;
“preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires” – this is because when wildfires do occur the NSW Government invariably fails to (A) detect, (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions promptly whilst small and controllable. It has an attitude that native habitat has a lower value than human habitat. In contrast, the urban Fire and Rescue Service is tasked to (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions involving human property immediately, and unlike their unpaid volunteer Rural Fire Service (RFS) counterparts, they get paid to do it;
“protect surrounding communities” – this means human communities that have been built encroaching more and more into and usurping native habitat. These human “communities” are the only focus of the NPWS and its support RFS. Under this culture, wildlife communities matter not, irrespective of any threatened species impacted/killed. This attitude belies an antiquated anthropocentric mentality. Neither the NPWS nor the RFS employ an Ecologist. They just don’t care about protecting Ecology – in this case forest ecology;
“the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park“. That’s right, the NPWS as delegated custodial organisation ‘manager’ of the Blue Mountains National Park treats native habitat and its dependent fauna within such national parks in NSW (one of some 800) instead as “fuel loads” to be reduced to sterile urban park status. NPWS should be relegated to managing urban parks like Hyde Park in Sydney’s CBD;
“The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.” – “crucial” for whom? An expanding Sydney human housing sprawl? So the NSW Government’s volunteer and under-resourced RFS has less forested native habitat risk and so less work to do in the event of wildfires because year-on-year there is less forested native habitat left. Perpetuation that long term strategy, there will eventually be little or no native habitat left across NSW. So down the track a future NSW Government may well decide that the RFS is therefore no longer needed and so make the organisation redundant. Sydney that has been deliberately morphed by successive governments (state and federal) into the ‘Greater Sydney Region‘ has, on paper, swallowed whole the ‘Blue Mountains Region‘ (see NSW Planning map below) , presuming its world heritage status is now just outer-upper western Sydney parkland for the rezoning offing. Allowing the 2019 megafires to incinerate 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, clearly has achieved the NSW Government’s intended devaluation of the UNESCO recognised “Outstanding Universal Value” of all the Eucalypts, and is wholly consistent with a usurpation agenda for an even Greater Sydney megalopolis.
“The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” The spin doctoring clearly by outsourced consultants with Communication Degrees is palpable here. It’s more repetition of contrived persuasive terms: “planned hazard reduction burns”, underscore the “ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety”. Ask the residents of Mount Wilson who lost their homes by RFS reckless arson in 2019 on this point! “taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads”, “the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires”, “ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” What so burning the natural landscapes to protect them? Seriously? In truth it is all about avoiding bad publicity when the RFS lights a high risk fire on 14th December 2014 causing homes to be incinerated like at Mount Wilson. “The state coroner has confirmed that a bushfire that destroyed homes in Mt Wilson, Mt Tomah, Berambing and Bilpin in December 2019 was caused after a planned RFS backburn jumped Mt Wilson Road.” [SOURCE: ‘Bushfire inquiry: Mt Wilson backburn to blame‘, BMG, 2nd April 2024]
RFS MOUNT WILSON ARSON: Sam Ramaci, like several of his neighbours, claims a back-burn lit by the RFS on December 14, 2019, was responsible for the destruction of his cool room, tractor and the property that was to fund his retirement. “If they hadn’t started the back-burn, my house would be still standing,” he said. (The NSW Government has refused to compensate him and others (nor even apologise) for the reckless misjudgment of its RFS – a NSW Government agency. Who can afford a class action? [Go to Video Link]
The Mount Wilson fire was the sixth backburn to escape along the southern containment line that was intended to protect the upper Blue Mountains from the Gospers Mountain Fire.
What sane person would join the Rural Fire Starters?
Bush arsonists have a psychological compulsion to set fire to see fire . It’s a ritual – they’re eyes light up. “Behold, The Fiery Cross !...”
NPWS is beholden to NSW Planning
A headline environmental protection agency that is supposed to be caring for national parks reporting to a state land use planning authority (aka Development). Is this a warped governmental portfolio conflict of interest of what? Liberal-Labor-Liberal…? Same Same.
The Regional Map of NSW according to the NSW Government’s Department of Planning and Environment fiefdom in 2024. Note that the Blue Mountains Region no longer exists, but has become annexed by the ever expanding ‘Greater Sydney Region’ in the mindset of Macquarie Street’s urban expansionism campaign. Mount Victoria a Sydney suburb now? Lookout Broken Hill!
Deforestation of Australia since colonisation and its usurpation from 1788. Remnant native forests and their native habitat have been decimated to ecologically unsustainable islands. The entire pre-colonial eastern seaboard of the continent was originally blanketed by native forests unbroken, extending about 600km inland. [SOURCE Google Maps – satellite view, April 2024]
It’s no wonder that Australia continues its record of perpetuating the world’s worst rate of wildlife extinctions. It’s akin to countries like Madagascar. It’s all hell bent on serving the Human Plague Order, currently 8.1 Billion! and in 2024 growing (and demanding more) by $75 million p.a. The current population of Australia is 26,654,200 as of Monday, April 29, 2024. Compare Australia’s Federation census of 1901 counted 3,773,801 people across Australia. [Check: Census Bureau Projects U.S. and World Populations on New Year’s Day; and ^https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/]
But wait there’s more bush arson planned…
An update last Friday, 26th April 2024 (just days ago), the NSW Government’s environmental department website again posted a media release advising of its further planned “Hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park” for the weekend.
It read as follows:
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) with assistance from the NSW Rural Fire Service is conducting a hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park starting Sunday 28 April, weather permitting.
Staff from Metro South West and Blue Mountains regions undertaking the Pisgah Ridge hazard reduction burn near Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains National Park The hazard reduction burn will focus on an area south of Woodford, in the mid-mountains, and cover a total area of about 400 hectares. The burn aims to reduce fuel hazards and assist in the protection of property in the surrounding Woodford, Hazelbrook and Linden areas.
Fire trails around the burn area, including Bedford Creek, will be closed to the public, along with the Murphy’s Glen camping and day use area. The campground will be reopen when it is safe to do so.
Smoke may be seen in the area for up to a week after the initial operation.
The burn is one of many hazard reduction operations undertaken by NPWS each year, many with the assistance of the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) and Fire and Rescue NSW.
All burns around the state are coordinated with the NSW RFS to ensure the impact on the community is assessed at a regional level.
People with known health conditions can sign up to receive air quality reports, forecasts and alerts via email or SMS from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. For health information relating to smoke from bushfires and hazard reduction burns, visit NSW Health or Asthma Australia.
More information on hazard reduction activities is available at NSW Rural Fire Service and the NSW Government’s Hazards Near Me website and app.”
Asthma sufferers? – NSW Government care factor?
Carbon emissions? – NSW Government care factor?
10th December 2019: NPWS world heritage Eucalyptus woodsmoke enveloping Sydney from what started as an abandoned pile burn off Army Road near Gospers Mountain in the distant Wollemi NP two months prior on 26th October 2019. She’ll be right, eh NPWS boss David Crust?
The RFS is one of the planet’s highest emitters of airborne carbon particulates by way of causing mass wood-smoke by repeatedly lighting bushfires and ignoring wildfires. Wood smoke we feel is a tad more polluting than humans exhaling carbon dioxide. But then how many humans on the planet?
Yet the climate change cult remains quiet on this more serious global problem. Why so selective about a lesser pollutant in the hysterical ideology that has morphed from ‘Global Warming‘ (Wallace Smith Broecker’s term of 1975) to ‘The Greenhouse Effect‘ (Mike Hulme’s term in 1994) to ‘Climate Change Scientology‘ (U.S. National Academies of 2014) to currently ‘Climate Crisis‘ actually predating the former (U.S Vice President Al Gore of 2007).
The RFS and NPWS press on regardless – as it’s not carbon dioxide, so all good!
Here’s the latest bush arson schedule to further set fire to the still unburnt native habitat of the Blue Mountains:
RFS:“It’s ok love, it’s good for the bush. She’ll be right.”
It’s an age old mentality of the fox charged to look after the chickens. Both the NPWS and RFS have a cultural attitude that the national parks are NOT to be protected, despite the NPWS delegated to so-called manage NATIONAL parks across New South Wales (NSW). That is despite the Rural Fire Service (RFS) charged with putting out wildfires.
That perverted culture is conditioned to regard native habitat only as a ‘fuel’ that burns and so NOT habitat but a ‘hazard’ to be controlled and burned to prevent it burning. If there is no habitat left, then the meathead rationale, no hazard, so job done! Of recent times the spin doctors in government seconded as contractors with Communications Degrees (aka the art of spin) have softened the community sell of these ‘hazard reductions’ to ‘prescribed burns” to justify and take some noble authority from on high that the BUSH WAS ORDERED TO BE BURNED, WE HAVE NO CHOICE !
All their fire trucks are filled with more flammable liquids light a bushfire than water to put it out. ‘RFS’ should stand for for Rural Fire Starters.
Blue Mountains World Heritage?
Eventually the bush grows back but with a vastly different flora community make up. The biodiversity is gone. The wildlife don’t come back from the dead.
One of countless Koalas tragically burned to death in her native habitat during the Blue Mountains megafires of 2019. They won’t come back. [This website is not suitable for children to view]
This native Koala would have looked something like this:
National parks throughout Australia over the 236 years since colonisation and its continent-wide deforestation, land use destruction and introduced bushfires, have consistently and hatefully made Australia’s ecological landscape very very quiet and devoid of wildlife.
The 2019 mega bushfires of NSW that the NPWS and RFS let get out of control over months, wiped out 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, including rare remnant koala communities and hosts of other at-risk wildlife and their special native habitat that NPWS has no clue of the statistical losses. NPWS does not manage, it mismanages, else just oversees politically drive projects like multi-million dollar tourists track upgrades to benefit humans. The NSW State Government tasked to look after UNESCO world heritage on behalf of the Australia Government?
This habitat reduction regime is to burn the remaining 20% that didn’t cop the 2019 wildfire megablaze. They call this “stewardship”? All trust in the NSW Government to protect world heritage has long gone out the window.
The ‘NPWS’ is a misnomer
‘NPWS” is an abbreviation for the National Parks and Wildlife Service in the state of New South Wales.
Logo of the NPWS
The problem is that this government bureaucracy is supposed to be the governmental (public) custodian for national parks is misleading:
NPWS is not national, rather it is only a NSW governmental sub-department. Governmental ‘management’ of national parks is not national, rather each state and territory has its own national parks, and the Australian Government is not involved – so a bizarre and misleading naming tradition;
NPWS does NOT look after wildlife. Native habitat in these ‘national parks’ is supposed to be protected. Yet every year vast selected areas are burnt deliberately else left to burn on a grand scale, so killing wildlife and destroying their habitat.
As a consequence, the NPWS deserves to be more appropriately renamed as ‘NSW Parks Service‘ just like in Victoria, the Victorian Government calls its equivalent ‘Parks Victoria‘.
On the relevant NSW Government’s website pertaining to its NPWS, it explains that the NPWS is part of a sub-department called ‘Environment and Heritage, which in turn:
“Environment and Heritage is part of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Our vision is for a thriving, sustainable and resilient New South Wales.Environment and Heritage works with communities, businesses and governments to protect, preserve and strengthen the quality of our natural environment and heritage. We do this through active stewardship that supports a healthy New South Wales.We are committed to creating thriving environments, communities and economies that benefit the people of New South Wales.”
The three most trendy feel-good terms above include: “thriving”, “resilient” , active stewardship”. Pure motherhoodism by the contracted young spin doctors with a Communications Degree. So where are the published wildlife regional extinction stats before and after the Blue Mountains 2019 megablaze?
Recall Tathra Sunday 18 March 2018, the consequence of the RFS deliberately lighting a bushfire on a 38 degree Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) gusty day upwind of this coastal village. [Read Our Article: ‘Bushfire Scenario Was Not Rocket Science‘
[8] ‘Impact of the 2019-20 Mega-Fires on the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, New South Wales‘, 20221129, by P Smith and J Smith, Issue Vol. 144 (2022), Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, ^https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/LIN/article/view/17079
The Blue Mountains conservation grapevine has alerted Leura locals to a new development threat atop the Jamison Escarpment. It’s seems to be all about facilitating mass tourism and its coming from the custodial land holder itself, the so-called National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).
Trust NPWS?
Apparently, local residents were letterbox dropped on 22nd April 2020 by NPWS. Its Community Information Letter on official NPWS letterhead outlined a project proposal described as the “Gordon Falls Lookout accessibility upgrade“. Accessibility upgrade for whom? Busloads overflowing from nearby congested Echo Point?
It is flagged to be part of some grander “Grand Cliff Top Walk“, and it seems NPWS has already selected a construction contractor, NewScape Designs from inner Sydney.
The colourful ‘artist’s impression’ of this proposal: it’s not what you know, but who you know in the NSW Government.
So why is Gordon Falls Lookout targeted for tourism development?
Well, NPWS’s distributed Community Information Letter to nearby Leura residents reads as follows:
So NPWS is calling this tourism development its ‘Gordon Falls Lookout Accessibility Upgrade‘. So it is all about providing disabled access is it?
According to the 2020 sales pitch of NPWS for this tourism infrastructure proposal, it’s apparently just an “upgrade” for Gordon Falls Lookout, not a new development, but this smells of legislative avoidance speak. The entire project is wholly within the Greater Blue Mountains Area, and Sydney Water Catchment, so with such a proposal clearly NPWS are keen to not trigger any sense of ‘development’ (which it obviously is).
The authority behind this Community Information Letter is…
These public servants are invariable in ‘Acting’ responsibilities akin to casuals. Should they stuff up, then their acting days are immediately over.
The overarching policy and funding is coming out of NSW Premier Gladys Berijiklian‘s tourism infrastructure programme dubbed ‘The Improving Access to National Parks Programme‘. Publicly announced on 9th February 2019, the programme funding is almost $150 million in capital expenditure budgeted to span four years (2019-2023).
“This includes major upgrade works in places like Sydney’s Royal National Park and in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, making it easier for people to enjoy our wonderful natural beauty,” Ms Berejiklian said. The funding is to “upgrade” walking tracks, better visitor infrastructure and facilities, etc. Specifically the Gordon Falls Lookout Accessibility Upgrade is part of a masterplan to “upgrade” a 13.6 kilometre Grand Cliff Top Walk from Wentworth Falls to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area costing $10 million, and “upgrading” access to iconic lookout points to a mobility impaired access standard (another $10 million).
The problem is that the 13.6 kilometre Grand Cliff Top Walk from Wentworth Falls to Katoomba does not exist. Prince Henry Cliff Walk extends from Scenic World to Gordon Falls. But there is no track east of Gordon Falls, not yet anyway, just untouched bushland to Sublime Point to the back of the Fairmont Resort in Leura. So this masterplan is not an upgrade but a new tourism infrastructure development.
Is NPWS Cameron Chaffey tasked with finding a lookout overflow for mass tourism saturated Echo Point? Isn’t Echo Point on local council land? Isn’t the access to Gordon Falls Lookout on local council land as well?
Three Sisters lookout on a quiet day
So this is the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the delegated official governmental custodians of the Greater Blue Mountains Area?
Has NPWS turned corporate exploitative for the mass tourism visitation buck?
This is test wedge tourism development to broaden the overburdened mass tourism of over-crowded iconic Echo Point to spread the day tripper visitation to multiple eye candy lookouts to suit bus loads of international tourists.
Whose Grandiose Idea is it to rename Prince Henry Cliff Walk?
And why delete the heritage named track Prince Henry Cliff Walk constructed by hand by unemployed men during The Great Depression in 1934? The famous hiking track is seven kilometers long and skirts the northern Jamison Escarpment clifftop track extending from what is now Scenic World on the southern edge of Katoomba to Gordon Falls Reserve on the southern edge of Leura.
The track is undulating and in many sections quite poor, eroded and neglected by the custodial land manager, Blue Mountains Council, to the point of being quite dangerous.
Since the deluge from an East Coasts Low weather event in mid February 2020, the track has been closed due to a number of unrepaired landslips. The entire Leura Cascades area, popular for picnickers and families has been completely off limits to the public for the past four months.
Prince Henry Cliff Walk heritage walk since 1934
Prince Henry Cliff Walk is named in honour of Prince Henry William Frederick Albert, Duke of Gloucester, a son of King George V and Queen Mary. Prince Henry visited Australia and Katoomba by train in 1934. The New South Wales government of the day engaged hundreds of unemployed young men between 1934 and 1936 to construct the track by hand as a means of keeping them gainfully employed and to create a healthy tourist visitation experience for the Blue Mountains. [Source: ^https://sydneyuncovered.com/prince-henry-cliff-walk/]
Prince Henry Cliff Walks is listed on the State Heritage Register as a walking track of historical and aesthetic significance (Item K014).
Then Katoomba local council funded the track, suitable for “comfortable walking for pedestrians of all ages and conditions, linking many of the cardinal attractions of the Jamison Valley escarpment at Leura and Katoomba, is a significant historic token of the efforts to repair the Mountains economy and to serve a public need after the worst of the Depression of the early 1930s. The long track has considerable historic significance at the local level”..and has aesthetic significance at the local level.” [Source: ^https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=1170735].
Realise the Political Background…
Feb 2019: ‘Wentworth Falls to Katoomba – all along the cliff tops’
Blue Mountains (Labor) MP Trish Doyle, with Leura Bushcare worker and cliff top walk advocate, Norm Harris, near Olympian Rock at Leura.
In 1982, then chief engineer at Blue Mountains Council, John Metcalfe, had a vision of a walk from Wentworth Falls to the marked tree at Katoomba – all along the cliff tops.
Map of existing tracks and the missing links for a Wentworth Falls-Katoomba cliff top walk.
Some 20-odd years later, Leura Bushcare worker Norm Harris and his wife, Laurel, took up the cause, convincing the Conservation Society that it would be a “great tourist attraction”. And last week, the NSW Government announced a $10 million grant for an “significant upgrade to the 13.6 kilometre grand cliff top walk”.
Mr Harris was “ecstatic” at the news. “I’m so delighted. I just want them to do it,” he said. The crucial missing links are from the Fairmont Resort around to Sublime Point. But Mr Harris believes a path could be built 60 metres from the rear of properties on Sublime Point Road, which would be invisible to, and not interfere with, the private land owners who live there.
Some years ago he wrote to Waverley Council, asking how it had managed to secure land to complete the Federation Cliff Walk from Watsons Bay to Bondi.
Council replied it had unsuccessfully negotiated with a private land owner but later was able to compulsorily acquire an easement because the land was zoned “regional open space”.
Mr Harris is hoping such an approach may work around Sublime Point Road. He praised the efforts of Blue Mountains MP, Trish Doyle, for raising the issue with then premier, Mike Baird, in 2015, which included sending him detailed maps and concept plans.
“I’ve contacted all the state MPs – Bob Debus, Phil Koperberg, Roza Sage and Trish and Trish is the only one that’s done anything,” Mr Harris said.
Ms Doyle said: “Mr Harris has been plugging away quietly at this proposal for many years, and the announcement of $10 million for stage one of the grand cliff top walk is a testament to his methodical, thorough and expert analysis of the project.
“I am thrilled to have been able to help Mr Harris put forward this proposal and see it come to fruition after four years of making representations to the government on his behalf,” she said.
The premier, Gladys Berejiklian, also announced funding of $9.9 million to upgrade access to iconic lookout points in the Mountains so they comply with mobility impaired access standards.’
July 2019: ‘Work begins on $10M grand cliff top walk upgrade’
Work is underway on a major upgrade of national park walking tracks along the cliff tops between Wentworth Falls and Katoomba.
NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean was in the Blue Mountains on Friday to talk with National Parks and Wildlife Service walking track teams carrying out the work, and to visit some of the areas to be upgraded.
Blue Mountains Councillor Kevin Schreiber (disguised in sunglasses), MLC Shayne Mallard, Environment Minister Matt Kean and the Blue Mountains director of NPWS David Crust, at Govetts Leap Lookout at Blackheath. The carpark at the iconic lookout will be improved, accessible paths added, and the toilets will include disabled access.
Work has begun in the national park at Wentworth Falls, with the full upgrade expected to take four years to complete.
David Crust, the Blue Mountains director of the NPWS, said they would be adding in a few missing links to walking paths between Wentworth Falls and Katoomba, but mostly they would be improving the quality of existing tracks.
In February the state government announced it would spend $10 million on a “significant upgrade to the 13.6 kilometre grand cliff top walk”. “The changes will include improved walking tracks, better visitor infrastructure and facilities, and upgrading of access to iconic lookout points including mobility impaired access standards,” Mr Kean said.
The grand cliff top walk links a series of existing tracks and is accessible from multiple locations, providing the opportunity for visitors to tailor the length of walk and to create a multi-day itinerary. The walk also provides access to many sidetracks, which offer a variety of experiences and opportunities for all park visitors. Govetts Leap at Blackheath is one of the iconic lookouts in the Mountains set to be upgraded with accessible paths, toilets with disabled access, and improvements to the carpark.
“The investment recognises the importance of the tourism economy in the Blue Mountains and will provide for better and safer visitor experiences across the Blue Mountains National Park,” Mr Kean said.
Work is underway on a major upgrade of national park walking tracks along the cliff tops between Wentworth Falls and Katoomba. NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean was in the Blue Mountains on Friday to talk with National Parks and Wildlife Service walking track teams carrying out the work, and to visit some of the areas to be upgraded.
Councillor Kevin Schreiber, MLC Shayne Mallard, Environment Minister Matt Kean and the Blue Mountains director of NPWS David Crust, at Govetts Leap Lookout at Blackheath. The carpark at the iconic lookout will be improved, accessible paths added, and the toilets will include disabled access.
Work has begun in the national park at Wentworth Falls, with the full upgrade expected to take four years to complete.
David Crust, the Blue Mountains director of the NPWS, said they would be adding in a few missing links to walking paths between Wentworth Falls and Katoomba, but mostly they would be improving the quality of existing tracks.
In February the state government announced it would spend $10 million on a “significant upgrade to the 13.6 kilometre grand cliff top walk”.
“The changes will include improved walking tracks, better visitor infrastructure and facilities, and upgrading of access to iconic lookout points including mobility impaired access standards,” Mr Kean said.
Young Matt Kean – Gladys patsy to “Kick Start NSW Tourism” by the cruise ship load?
The grand cliff top walk is a head office branded construct stealing Tasmanian ideas. This late night thought bubble amongst marketing types fueled by taxpayer happy juice, was to link a series of existing tracks and is accessible from multiple locations, providing the opportunity for visitors to tailor the length of walk and to create a multi-day itinerary. The walk also provides access to many sidetracks, which offer a variety of experiences and opportunities for all park visitors. Govetts Leap at Blackheath is one of the iconic lookouts in the Mountains set to be upgraded with accessible paths, toilets with disabled access, and improvements to the carpark.
“The investment recognises the importance of the tourism economy in the Blue Mountains and will provide for better and safer visitor experiences across the Blue Mountains National Park,” Mr Kean said.
Rockclimber Michael Connard on his Facebook page ‘Rock Climbing in the Blue Mountains‘ views this project as a “New threat to the Blue Mountains.”
He comments:
“National Parks have just announced the development of a new Grand Clifftop Walk Project – an upgraded walking track stretching from Echo Point to Wentworth Falls. So far National Parks have provided minimal details, but it seems that they are planning to replace at least sections of the existing tracks with raised boardwalks and paving. Part of this redevelopment will be a series of new lookouts including an Echo Point style lookout at Gordon Falls, Leura.
This redevelopment will exacerbate the problems already associated with Echo Point and Wentworth Falls, ie increased visitor numbers, traffic, parking, litter. It will create a new monstrosity at the base of Leura Mall.
Echo Point and Wentworth Falls represent a catastrophic failure of different levels of government to coordinate. The sites are owned by Parks, but council are responsible for parking, traffic management, sewerage & rubbish. Leura simply does not have the capacity to absorb another Echo Point.
This project will cause irreparable harm to Leura and possibly to the clifftop environment. Parks have not released a detailed proposal. They have not released estimates of visitors. There is currently no plan for accommodating tourist buses, toilets, parking or traffic. We would never allow a private developer to undertake such a major project in a national park without releasing detailed plans for public consultation. We shouldn’t allow Parks to do it either.
National Parks are requesting comments regarding this proposal but are proposing to commence construction in June 2020. This is not a genuine public consultation process. If anyone can put me in touch with Wentworth Falls and Katoomba people who are grappling with the impacts of the Echo Point and Wentworth Falls lookouts I would greatly appreciate it.”
Now for starters, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is not national. It’s a misnomer. The NPWS is a New South Wales Government department; actually it is not even that. It has been reduced to being a sub-department within a department, having had years of funding cuts and staff mass sackings. Since 2009, restructure after restructure has meant 50% fewer rangers since 2009, deliberate dumbing down of rangers to non-graduate classifications and junior roles, with dozens of scientists, ecologists and specialists having been made redundant. In 2016 and 2017, 27% ($121 million) was pulled out of the NPWS budget according to Labor’s opposition then environment spokesperson Penny Sharpe with 500 full time positions lost since 2011.
NPWS is just like Parks Victoria across the southern border. It is a state agency headquartered in Hurstville in southern Sydney, not in Canberra. Even the headquarters is a shell..
It has been swallowed up under what is currently called The Environment, Energy and Science (EES) Group, a corporatised body within the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (NSW).
It is a shadow of its former self from the halcyon optimistic days under conservationist Premier Bob Carr between 1995 to 2005, when 100 national parks were rolled out between Nowra and the Bega Valley, and when the Greater Blue Mountains Area received world heritage recognition by UNESCO in Geneva. In New South Wales, there is no Department of Environment, and the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) is gone.
And NPWS is not a service for wildlife. The recent Summer 2019-20 bushfire emergency that engulfed the Greater Blue Mountains Area is a testament to that. Three small remote ignitions were allowed to burn away – one in the Wollemi National Park, one in the Kanangra Boyd National Park and one in the Blue Mountains National Park. They were dubbed respectively the Gospers Mountain Fire, the Green Wattle Creek Fire and the Ruined Castle Fire. NPWS allowed some 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains Area wilderness and native habitat to be incinerated causing wildlife extinctions throughout the region. Across the state, more than five million hectares of mainly natural bushland was allowed to go up in smoke, most of it under the custodial responsibility of the NPWS.
According to ecologist Professor Chris Dickman from the University of Sydney, over a billion fauna and “hundreds of billions” of insects have been killed in bushfires throughout New South Wales over the summer season.
“For some species we’re looking at imminent extinction. There will almost certainly be species of all geographical ranges and populations that are cooked before we’ve even had the chance to discover that they exist.”
Professor Dickman said the aftermath may mean “species that are rendered extinct, ecosystems that have been eroded to the point where they are completely changed, and habitat in a state of widespread impoverishment. The loss of life we’ve estimated for NSW is 800 million terrestrial animals, including birds and reptiles. But that figure doesn’t include frogs, fish, bats and invertebrates,” he said. “Combining these figures [it] is likely well over a billion animals lost.”
‘Premier Gladys Berejiklian has today announced a new national park for NSW – providing another significant boost for the State’s koala population – along with a major new package that will improve access to existing national parks.
The State’s newest national park will cover around 3680 hectares in the north of Goulburn electorate, bordering Wollondilly. The new park is centered around Tugalong Station – about 25 kilometres northwest of Bowral.
“The NSW Liberals & Nationals have been careful custodians of the State’s national parks and I am thrilled to be able to unveil a new one today,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“This new national park will ensure that a vital koala wilderness area south of Sydney is preserved. Like all national parks, it will be open to the public so they can explore the wilderness country.”
Ms Berejiklian also announced a $150 million investment to improve access to national parks across NSW – funding made possible due to the strong economic management of the NSW Liberals & Nationals.
“This includes major upgrade works in places like Sydney’s Royal National Park and in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, making it easier for people to enjoy our wonderful natural beauty,” Ms Berejiklian said.
Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton said the new national park contains some of the Southern Highlands’ best koala habitat.
“Koalas are an iconic species and we are acting to ensure their survival,” Ms Upton said.
“The new national park will not only add to the State’s conservation lands, it is yet another example of how the NSW Government is moving to protect and preserve the koala population.”
The Government’s $150 million investment to improve access to existing national parks includes upgraded walking tracks, better visitor infrastructure and facilities and new digital tools such as virtual tours and livestreaming cameras.
This will include:
More access – significant upgrade to the 13.6 kilometre Grand Cliff Top Walk from Wentworth Falls to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area ($10 million). Also, upgrading access to iconic lookout points to a mobility impaired access standard ($9.9 million);
Improved park visitor infrastructure and facilities – expansion of picnic areas, BBQs, water provision, facilities ($38.7 million) and increased support for families and people with restricted mobility ($45 million). This will include upgraded picnic facilities and the walking tracks at Audley Weir, in the Royal National Park.
Safe access – Investment in making our extensive network of walking tracks and trails safer and more accessible ($36.4 million); expansion of the ‘Think before you Trek’ safety program for bushwalkers and work with other agencies to deliver other priority safety programs like rock fishing and enhanced mobile connectivity in the parks ($1 million).
“NSW boasts some of the most majestic and picturesque coastal lookouts, outback walking tracks, camping grounds and beaches in the world and we want more visitors to experience the natural beauty and wonder of our national parks,” Ms Berejiklian said.
Ms Upton added:“As well as international and interstate tourists, we want to make it easier for families to get out there and discover the natural beauty our State.”
Pre-2006: The Grose Valley’s 500m+ deep upper Grose Gorge displayed a Blue Mountains profile of sandstone cliffs above talus thickly carpeted by Eucalypt forest supporting rich diversity in plantlife, wildlife, birdlife, creeklife and buglife – just an eco-happy cradle of conservation.
(NB: This photo shows Eucy-mist, not Eucy-smoke. – Ed.)
In 1926, developer Ernest Williamson famously described the Blue Gum Forest in the heart of Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains thus:
“… a flat, unsurpassed on the mountains for the beauty and grandeur of its trees! Magnificent blue gums, straight and towering skyward in great heights … they appear like the huge pillars of a mountain temple.”
Ernest went on to more infamously propose:
“the Valley of the Grose could, in a few years, be transformed from a riot of scrubland to a hive of industry conveniently situated at what has been aptly described ‘the back door of Sydney’”.
According to Blue Mountains historian and author, Andy Macqueen, Williamson’s property development outfit calling itself The Grose Valley Development Syndicate, proposed in the 1920s or the Grose Valley’s forests to be deforested for timber exploitation and that a shale coal mine and coal-fired power station be built there. It would be an industrialised Lithgow Mark II. Other threats to the Blue Gum Forest included a proposed railway line and a dam. So why not a tannery and nuclear waste dump to boot?
Grose Valley Vision Splendid? – a gross Lithgow industrial vision…note the few remnant token gums retained for ambience, or was it just slack ‘clearing’.
Blue Gum Forest – Australia’s Cradle of Conservation
For generations since the 1920s, conservationists have posited somewhat a more respectful plan for the Grose Valley than by Ernest Williamson and his robber-barons. The plan being to respect and conserve the ecological values and the anthropocentric aesthetic ‘eye-candy’ tourist benefits of the Grose Valley.
Since 1875, the Blue Gum Forest was the scene of an artists’ camp established by Frederick Eccleston Du Faur of the Academy of Art. Since then, conservationists have lobbied to protect the Grose Valley from “alienation” – read ruination.
In 1931, during an Easter hiking trip, a group of bushwalkers from the Mountain Trails Club and the Sydney Bush Walkers club, led by Alan Rigby, camped in the Blue Gum Forest.
Since 1931 the Blue Gum Forest has been ecologically recognised and presumed protected.
[Source: Myles Dunphy Collection, Mitchell Library in the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.]
While the bushwalkers camped, an orchard farmer of Bilpin, Clarence Hungerford, rode in on his horse to confront the bushwalkers ‘squatting’ on his property. Hungerford had secured a lease of the forest to graze his cattle. Hungerford told to the hikers that he intended to deforest all the blue gums and to sell the timber in order to finance a walnut orchard.
Blue Gum Forest – flagged for deforestation in 1931 for Hungerford’s walnut orchard ‘vision splendid‘
The bushwalkers’ Hungerford experience didn’t go down well. Incensed and horrified, the bushwalkers immediately started a campaign to stop Hungerford’s decimation of the Blue Gum sanctuary. Their impassioned rallying ultimately raised £130; quite a substantial sum in the depth of the Great Depression. They then paid all the funds to Hungerford in exchange for his undertaking to relinquish his pastoral lease of the Blue Gum Forest.
The bushwalkers met with Hungerford at the Blue Gum Forest on 15 November 1931 in pouring rain, and he agreed with their suggestion. Most of the funding had been donated by James Cleary, then head of the NSW railways, a keen bushwalker and conservationist. One of the key activists in the campaign was Myles Dunphy, who at the time was developing his plans for the Blue Mountains National Park.
“We hold our land in trust for our successors.” (1934) – Myles Joseph Dunphy (1891-1985), architect, legendary long distance wilderness trekker, map maker, and conservationist before his time. Dunphy always took his Lee Enfield .303 with him for hunting for food when trekking, like on this occasion – it’s under wraps under the tent fly. A daily twilight roo kill for protein was the secret behind him managing to trek his incredible distances. Born on 19 October 1891 in South Melbourne, eldest of seven children… [Read More]
Hungerford’s horse track became a developer tribute to Hungerford. The contour-following bush track starts about 300m south of Evans Lookout and descends zig-zagging down the escarpment to the flats of the Grose Valley at Govetts Creek. In its ignorance, the NPWS or more aptly, the Tourist Parks Service, named this track ‘The Horse Walking Track’ – for visitors to walk their horses?
The Blue Gum Forest has since been referred to in the conservation movement as the Cradle of Conservation for it was the focus of Australia’s original ecological protection by a small group of “thoughtful, committed citizens” (Margaret Mead quote extract) and which seeded generations later, the international listing of The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area in 2000. What legends!
David Noble is the parks ranger who discovered Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) in 1994. In September 2012, Noble revisited the Blue Gum Forest leading a hike to celebrate eighty years since the Blue Gum Forest was saved on 2nd September 1932.
Dave wrote at the time:
“This majestic forest lies at the intersection of the Grose River and Govetts Creek near Blackheath. Back in 1932, a large portion of the forest (it was then private land) was going to be felled and replaced by walnut trees. Visiting bushwalkers were alarmed, and rallied together and ended up raising money to purchase the block in question and saving it for conservation. Many regard this as the start of the conservation movement in NSW.”
But conservationist idealism ignored the arsonist culture. Government baby boomer arsonists have had a view of native Eucalypt forests like the Blue Gum not as cherished ecology but as a valueless hazard, just like Williamson, generations before. The New South Wales Government ‘autorities’ have been chafing at the bit for years to hazard reduce Blue Mountains World Heritage “fuel“.
History of Neglectful Arson
In December 1957, a bushfire that was left to burn in bushland east of the Grose Valley, once the wind picked up, ultimately ripped through the timber clad villages of Leura and Wentworth Falls destroying 170 homes.
In December 1976, 65,000 hectares of Blue Mountains native bushland was burnt. A year later, a bushfire burnt out 49 buildings and another 54,000 hectares of Blue Mountains native bushland.
In summer 1982 a bushfire burnt right through the Grose Valley incinerating 35,000 hectares of tall native forest, and wildlife.
Again in 1994 the Grose Valley was let burnt by bushfire.
Grose Valley Arson in November 2006
Again in November 2006 the RFS backburned into the Grose Valley from Hartley Vale. Ignited by Rural Fire Service along the north side of Hartley Vale Road on a day of Total Fire Ban, bush arson incinerated native forest ecology up the length of Hartley Valley Road and then was allowed to spot over the Darling Causeway let descend into the Grose Valley. It was deliberate bush arson sanctioned by the NSW Government under then RFS Commissioner Mal Cronstedt at the time.
The fire was fanned by westerly winds over days, allowed to cross over the Darling Causeway, merge with the Burra Korain wildfire and descend down Perrys Lookdown hiking track in and through the Blue Gum Forest. Many Blue Mountains residents will be well familiar with this infamous photo of the Grose Pyrocumulus (flammagenitus) cloud rising from the Grose Valley on Thursday afternoon 23rd November 2006.
At the time there was local community outrage about how the precious Blue Gum Forest was not defended by authorities and allowed to be incinerated. Blue Mountains resident meetings were staged and a full page article was published in the Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper entitled >’Burning Issues – Fire in the Grose Valley (a statement funded and supported by concerned residents‘. It would have cost at least $2000. Community meetings were held, arranged by former parks ranger Ian Brown. But then it got political and the campaign was strangely suddenly aborted.
Blue Gum Forest burnt in 2006 by an RFS hazard reduction. [Source: Photo by Nick Moir of Blue Mountains Botanist Dr Wyn Jones inspecting the fire damage to the Blue Gums, dated 2006122 in the Sydney Morning Herald, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/2006-grose-valley-fire-a-cover-up/]
Grose Valley Arson of December 2019
Then Last month in December 2019 the government Baby Boomer arsonists ultimately had their way. On 16th December, the Gospers Mountain Fire crossed the Bells Line of Road and spotted into the Grose Valley. By 21st December the Blue Gum Forest was gone.
Media warped termed ‘lava waterfall‘ up the Blackheath escarpment in the Grose Valley.
Months prior, a remote rural pastoral property near Gospers Mountain somehow within the Wollemi Wilderness, created an ignition on Saturday 26th October 2019.
Gospers Mountain showing remote historic rural cattle paddocks deep within the Wollemi Wilderness. The Australian Government calls it a national park but takes no accountability by delegating custodial protection but no funding to the state government of New South Wales.
Gospers Mountain is 50km NE of the locality of Bell as the crow flies or fire spreads. Officially declared started by dry lighting in the ‘national park’ on a hot Saturday, this crime of arson and subsequent government firefighting neglect remains secretive. So NSW Police Bush Arson Squad ‘Strike Force Toronto‘ where are you on this – honest or corrupted by the Premier and RFS?
The RFS Gospers Mountain Fire has been the largest bushfire in New South Wales state history. The total number of days between Saturday, October 26th, 2019 and Monday, December 16th, 2019 was 51 days; or one month and 20 days. Over 51 days the fire was allowed to become a ‘megafire’ (likely a new Macquarie Dictionary term for 2020) and ultimately the largest single bushfire in Australia’s history – incineratingmore than 500,000 hectares of bush wilderness…
Of course the Gospers Mountains Fire was left to spread into a mega-fire and to cross over the Bells Line of Road some 50km south-west.
So what did the RFS do for PR but rebrand the Gospers Mountains Fire southerly spread as a new Grose Valley Fire, and to so to be allowed to incinerate down the escarpment into the Grose Valley and to incinerate the Cradle of Conservation – the Blue Gum Forest.
As if RFS arsonists care a damn?
Now government paid white collar fire chiefs have had their way. Forest incineration complete. Easy-peasy till retirement.
Yes RFS let an ignition with a small plume of smoke rising in remote National Park inaccessible to fire trucks burn neglected for days and weeks, negligent of the consequences. What hazard predictably eventuates when ignored for weeks? From the RFS ignition detected at Gospers Mountain on Saturday 26th October 2019 bordering the World Heritage Wollemi National Park …to 16th December 2019 – what response and when was undertaken by the RFS as a supposed fire fighting service?
Truthful answer: Defacto hazard reduction because the bushfire was atthe time not immediately threatening human properties.
Then as normal, the wind picked up, and the wee plume of remote rising smoke morphed into a fire front, then inferno and then into Australia’s worst megafire on record.
Rural Fire Service (NSW) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons (aged 50) is ultimately responsible for the bushfire prevention, planning, resourcing, response for New South Wales outside metropolitan areas services by NSW Fire and Rescue. In our view the he has failed to protect rural NSW to the standards of urban NSW by failing to oversee a government entrusted fire-fighting authority to promptly detect, respond to and extinguish bushfires in a timely manner.
His predecessor also repeatedly failed in his bushfire plan and following the 2006 Grose Valley Pyrocumulus of 2006 promptly skedaddled back to Perth to WA’s chagrin and cost (on record).
If only the ‘000’ Fire Brigade extinguisher standard applied outside metropolitan Australia?
No longer enjoying the benefits of the tourism economy. The Grand Canyon Track closed since 30 November 2019 and still closed on 21 January 2020 -peak tourist season.
What had started as a small plume of smoke off Army Road on Saturday 26th October on a rural property near Gospers Mountain some sixty kilometres to the north, had been allowed to burn away into the World Heritage of the Wollemi National Park wilderness for weeks. It was allowed to destroy all the magnificent Wollemi wilderness from end to end.
By the time the bushfire had crossed to the southern side of the Bells Line of Road 50km south, the RFS changed their pet name of the ‘Gospers Mountain Fire’ to being dubbed the ‘Grose Valley Fir’e. Why not? That was the goal – defacto hazard reduction.
The iconic Blue Gum Forest in the Grose Valley of the Blue Mountains was left to incinerate by the New South Wales Government in December 2019. They did what Williamson in the 1920s failed to achieve. [Source: Editor, The Habitat Advocate, photo taken from Valley View Lookout 100m north of Evans Lookout, 20200121]
Once World Heritage values of the Grose Valley have now gone up in smoke. The icon Blue Gum Forest has been incinerated yet again since the previous RFS successful attempt in November 2006. No wonder the place is very very quiet. All the wildlife is dead and the native birds have flow away.
Close up of the Blue Gum Forest from near Evans Lookout (top of photo) showing the canopy of Eucalyptus deanei incinerated; not much left of the forest in the foreground either. [Source: Editor, The Habitat Advocate, photo taken from Valley View Lookout 100m north of Evans Lookout, 20200121]
This time they have succeeded in total incineration – their goal of converting hazardous forest ecology into anthropocentric manageable parkland has long been misunderstood by ideologically hopeful environmentalists. The misnomer National Parks and Wildlife Service (NSW) ethically should now do the right thing and re-brand itself State Parks Administration Service it commercially is.
More than 80% of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and more than 50% of the Gondwana world heritage rainforests of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland have been burnt in Australia’s worst bushfire disaster in history. The scale of the disaster is such that it could affect the diversity of eucalypts for which the Blue Mountains world heritage area is recognised, said John Merson, the executive director of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute.
The Habitat Advocate has written to UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre expressing shock, outrage and anger over government mismanagement and contempt for Blue Mountains ecology through abject neglect in bushfire response. With most of the world heritage incinerated, we have questioning the status of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area as these values apply to Eucalypt diversity, since 80% has been incinerated.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre has expressed concern about the scale and intensity of bushfire damage to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and to the Gondwana Rainforests and has asked the Australian government whether it should de-list their world heritage status. In a statement on its website, UNESCO said members of the media and civil society had asked about the bushfires affecting the areas inscribed on the world heritage list as the “Gondwana rainforests of Australia”. The forests are considered a living link to the vegetation that covered the southern super-continent Gondwana before it broke up about 180m years ago.
According to UNESCO:
“The World Heritage Centre is currently verifying the information with the Australian authorities, in particular regarding the potential impact of the fires on the outstanding universal value of the property. The Centre has been closely following-up on this matter and stands ready to provide any technical assistance at the request of Australian authorities.”
Blue Mountains World Heritage is a misnomer and a sick joke. This RFS blackened moonscape now blankets 80% of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Incinerated, quite dead, quiet, subsequently oven baked in the scorching sun and now sterilised. The tamed moonscape is far easier to manage for the Parks Service, like Centennial Park. [Source: Editor, The Habitat Advocate, photo taken 20200121 of escarpment track near Evans Lookout.]
[2] ‘Wild About Wilderness‘ in ‘The Ways of the Bushwalker’, 2007, a book by Melissa Harper, published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd, pp.258-259.
[6] ‘Bushwalking and the Conservation Movement‘, in printed book ‘Blue Mountains – Pictorial Memories, 1998, by John Low AO, pp. 96-97, published by Kingsclear Books
While exercising through Katoomba Falls Creek Valley in the Blue Mountains last October, this author came across this sign.
How would one like to see the future of The Gully..for the next 15 years? Have my say? Internet submissions only?
Local government authority Blue Mountains Council in about 2007 renamed this natural valley west of Katoomba ‘The Gully’ because that is the affectionate name it had from the previous residents of mostly regional Aboriginal heritage extending back many thousands of years.
Since 2001, this author has lived 50 metres from the native bushland valley we know as Katoomba Falls Creek Valley, or Sydney Water’s defined Upper Kedumba River, or as Amusement Parlour tourism businessman Horrace Gates’ Catalina Lake, or as Blue Mountains Council’s sponsored car racing enthusiasts (1957-2003) as Catalina Park, or as NSW National Parks call the valley, ‘The Gully’.
Such mixed interpretation of this watercouse valley reflects its history as complex, contested and ongoing culturally problematic. Yet since 1957, here we are in cultural denial in 2019.
In 2002, The Valley was unilaterally declared ‘The Gully’ by Blue Mountains Council – typically again no community consultation.
Ok, so what’s in a name?
‘The Gully – Aboriginal Place’ under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 by the New South Wales government was justified out of recognition of the Valley’s significance holding pre-contact Aboriginal sites, post-contact settlements, its ongoing occupation by Aboriginal People until forced eviction in 1957 (to make way for bulldozing a racetrack), and by lobbying and evidence from local Aboriginal Gundungurra elder, the late Aunty Dawn Colless.
All good. But ‘Aboriginal Place’ only? Says who? By which Blue Mountains heritage Aboriginal people/clan? The Gundungurra Traditional Owners Inc. only and so denying the rights of all other Gully residents and descendants – Aboriginal (eg: Dharug or otherwise) or of non-Aborigines of The Gully?
This is at best Council prejudice and community divide and conquer; at worst Council prejudice against non-Gundungurra, non-Aborigines.
Aboriginal Place declaration while historially valid, was democratically invalid. The NSW Government declaration of such was selective and secret behind Blue Mountains Council’s closed doors – a frequent setting to get things done without pesky outspoken community awareness.
Trust? Blue Mountains Council?
From 1988 to 2016 local residents action group The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc., under the inspiring and consultative leadership of the late Neil Stuart BSc., had championed a local community cause to save the Valley. From grassroots local resident motives, the Friends aims were from the outset consistently to value and respect the remnant environmental values of the Valley, to lobby to remove the invasive racetrack, to restore the Valley’s ecological integrity throughout and to foster a local community management structure to underpin the Valley’s environmental protection and rehabilition.
Basically The Friends set in train a local community management structure to care for country – the Valley as we called it. But Blue Mountains Council hegemony, situated less than 200 metres east of the Valley, corporate-culturally frustrated and ostracised The Friends out of having any say, participantion or rights in caring for the Valley.
As the awareness of the tragic local Aboriginal past was realised, The Friends respected, engaged and partnered with former residents of The Gully and their descendants (irrespective of racial background). The goal was to properly protect, rehabilitate and manage this acknowledged special place collaboratively. It was a noble mission and undertaking. The activism occupied core Friends members half an adult lifetime, proudly.
Yours truly joined The Friends’ fight to save the valley for just five years from 2002 to 2007 until other commitments took family priority.
The nearly three decades of local resident activism well exceeds the capacity of this article. Suffice to say that the resultant ‘Upper Kedumba River Valley Plans of Management Revised 2004’ achieved not just a desired and just termination to the car racing invasion, but signalled an opportunity and hope for local community partnering with Blue Mountains Council and NSW Parks Service to manage and restore the valley as a valued natural place.
So there is this new signage put up by Blue Mountains Council. After fourteen years, Blue Mountains Council deems The Gully Plan of Management is up for renewal, whatever that means.
Blue Mountains Council claims “This Plan of Management (POM) is fourteen years old and does not reflect the contemporary cultural values and perspectives held by the Gully community.” But what are these?
The local Katoomba community in and around The Gully continues to be shut out of secret talks with the parks service and only select Aborigines – The Gundungurra Traditional Owners Inc. – the legal custodians of most of the valley as appointed by closed shop local council with absolute control over the valley since 2007.
Council entered into an exclusive co-management agreement with The Gully’s traditional owners in 2008, recognising the owners’ deep connection to the place. What about the Dharug? What about other community members who share a deep conservation interest in preserving and rehabilitating the Valley’s ecological values?
Council claims: “Funding from the Office of Environment and Heritage, NSW Heritage Grants – Aboriginal Heritage Projects has been made available to review and up the Plan of Management for the Gully.” But what are these?
“Engagement and consultation with former Gully residents, their descendants and other stakeholders”. Who’s a stakeholder? Blue Mountains Council? The NSW Parks Service? This is not made clear. What about the local community, former members of The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc. who volunteered years of their lives to save and protect the Gully/Valley from all sorts of harm and development threats?
Council instructs: “The Plan of Management review is being undertaken by Blue Mountains City Council in cooperation with the Gully Traditional Owners Inc.”
Why exclusively this one group of limited Aboriginal representation? Convenience? Simplicity? Becuase the planned outcome has already been decided? What about council consulting with Aboriginal Dharug residents actually born in the Valley/Gully? What about consulting with the immediate local community irrespective of racial background?
Council’s initiated review was made public from about October 2018.
Spell check?
Council instructs that in preparing its revised Plan of Management, its process will include:
Engagement and consultation with former Gully residents, their descendants and other stakeholders
Assessment of relevant information and knowledge to be included in the revised plan
Assessment and determination of current management issues and future opportunities for the Gully
Updating of the management policies and the action plan for the Gully
Prioritisation and costing of actions and works
Except that the entire process is secret. Is it to play into the hands of a few powerful and influential people? Does local council have something to hide from the local community and non-Gundungurra former residents and their decendants until commercial contracts in confidence are signed and its too late to object?
Council instructs: “The existing Plan of Management does not include the Katoomba Falls sports fields or the Tourist Park. The inclusion of these areas into the Gully plan of Management is a significant change from the existing plan.” What is the reason and motive for including more land into the proposed new plan of management?
Council instructs: “The revised Plan will be developed with reference to the Local Government Act 1993, the Crown Lands Management Act 2016, the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974, and with the Guideline for Developing Management Plans for declared Aboriginal Places. (OEH 2012) The plan also needs to consider the future implications of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill 2018, which is earmarked to replace functions of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 in relation to the management and protection of Aboriginal places.”
Council acknowledges: ‘The Gully’ was a place where Gundungurra, Darug and other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people lived as a fringe community from around the 1890’s onward over a number of generations.”
Council’s References Used:
Local Government Act 1993 (NSW)
Crown Lands Management Act 2016 (NSW)
National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (NSW)
Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill 2018 (NSW) – earmarked to replace functions of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 in relation to the management and protection of Aboriginal places.
Guidelines for Developing Management Plans for declared Aboriginal Places, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (2012)
Council has restricted consultative capture of any local community input to some outsourced website based software outfit in Melbourne: Bang The Table’s ‘Have Your Say’: https://www.bluemountainshaveyoursay.com.au/gully-plan Yet Blue Mountains Council’s website now instructs: “Consultation has concluded”.
It’s July 2019 and Blue Mountains Council’s webpage on this process shows the following timeline update:
It would suggest that insufficient resources have been allocated or there are delays in the communications process,or insufficient scheduled time was provided for this project from the outset, or a combination of these.
If local stakeholders missed out on finding out what is going on, should they just await Blue Mountains Council’s press release on its pre-decision making?
Chairperson of the Gully Traditional Owner Inc., Aunty Merle Williams, says: “The Gully is a sacred place to the Aboriginal community who came from the Gully. It was a place for everybody, regardless of who you were or where you came from. It is important that The Gully is managed in a culturally appropriate way using both traditional and contemporary practices.”
The mayor, Mark Greenhill, said council had a strong commitment to working closely with traditional owner groups to care for country. “The revised plan of management for The Gully will guide the future use and management of this significant site over the next 10-15 years.”
Ok so regardless of who you were or where you came from, why are non-members of the Gundungurra Traditional Owners Inc. being excluded from consultation in Blue Mountains Council’s review process?
Partners in crime: big ego Blue Mountains National Parks with even bigger ego Blue Mountains RFS, have jointly stuffed up big this time.
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A hazard reduction north of the Hawkesbury Road from the previous weekend was left abandoned. A few days later the forecast wind picked up and voila: HR come wildfire. Woops.Sound familiar? Warrumbungles (2013), Macleay River (2012), Grose Valley (2006), Canberra Firestorm (2003)
[Source: Fairfax, ^http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/hazard-reduction-burn-started-major-sydney-bushfire-20130913-2tois.html]
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Hawkesbury Heights residents will recall last year’s escaped hazard reduction along the Springwood Ridge inside the Blue Mountains National Park. It was left for few days, then the forecast prevailing sou’wester picked up on 30th August 2012. The fire jumped containment lines then threatened the Bowen Mountain community to the nor’ east.
<<More than 30 firefighters from the NSW Rural Fire Service and National Parks and Wildlife Service have worked behind homes in the community of Bowen Mountain to contain this fire. Crews backburned to establish containment lines around the fire with the assistance of helicopters and earth moving machinery.>>
How much did that stuff up cost? This is where donations to the RFS are going.
The Habitat Advocate reconstructs that the HR folly at Hawkesbury Heights two weeks ago probably unfolded as follows:
Blue Mountains National Parks decides that its a good idea to set fire to the Blue Mountains National Park along Shaws Ridge. Shaws Ridge is over two kilometres from the Hawkesbury Road. It has nothing to do with ‘asset protection’ to private properties. So the Parks Service just calls it ‘strategic’ or an ‘ecological burn’ – good for the bush.
“Generally over an 8-12 year cycle it [vegetation] needs to be burnt, which allows it to regenerate.” ~ Blue Mountains RFS district manager David Jones, 20130918.
The bush and its wildlife likes being burnt. Parks Service’s gospel Fire Maps shows in bright red that this part of the protected Blue Mountains National Park (World Heritage Area) hasn’t been burnt for 8 years, so it must to be burned, just in case it burns!
So the fire cult’s mindset is fixated. Parks Service includes the area to its annual hazard reduction burning programme and checks the weather forecast. The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts low winds but with expected changes later in the week. She’ll be right. The job will be over in a day. Parks Service sees the low wind HR window and goes for it.
Parks Service musters up their fire friendly mates at the RFS down at Winmalee and Hawkesbury Heights and complicitous stations. The HR is on! So all the cracks had gathered to the fray. All the tried and noted firies from the stations near and far mustered along Shaws Ridge fire trails. For the firies love the smell of wood smoke along the fire trails and the old red Isuzu’s snuff the battle with delight.
Hazard Reduction: Reducing the World Heritage Hazard‘Cos see when there’s a real wildfire, Dad’s Army can’t cut the mustard
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The hazard reduction proceeds on the Sunday 8th September with hardly a breeze in hilly timbered terrain, using trucks only along ‘fire’ trails. We won’t need choppers. They’ll only blow the budget. Sunday night falls, job done and the vols go home. Monday a bit windy, then Tuesday really warm and the wind picks up, gusty to blazes.
The media reports as follows:
<<A hazard-reduction burn that got out of control sparked one of four major bushfires that ravaged western Sydney and the Blue Mountains this week, fire authorities have revealed.
NSW Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said the National Parks and Wildlife Service had been conducting a hazard-reduction burn near Hawkesbury Road in Winmalee last weekend, which flared up in Tuesday’s soaring temperatures and high winds. [Ed: Winmalee? Close, but try Hawkesbury Heights further north.]
Rob Rogers:
“Basically it was burnt on the weekend, it was patrolled on Monday, there was smouldering activity. That fire then jumped containment lines [on Tuesday].”
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The Parks Service and RFS secretively keep fire operational matters behind closed doors for fear of embarrassment and of being sued.So our research investigator conducted a post-fire inspection on Saturday 20130921 and has estimated the above impact and scenario. Perhaps those in charge can prove us wrong? We invited them to.
[Source: The Habitat Advocate, assisted with Google Maps]
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<<Just 10 minutes earlier the family had been told by firefighters to remain calm before a freak wind change sent the blaze roaring uphill towards their house. “Evacuate” was the order.>>
Tackling the Winmalee Hazard Reduction come Wildfire on Hawkesbury Road. Heroes extinguishing the neglect of their Parks Service cousins.
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<<A fire burning in the area of Hawkesbury Road at Winmalee has already claimed one property, with more than 100 firefighters working to contain the blaze. Five firefighters have suffered from smoke inhalation and two received minor burns battling the fire in Winmalee.>>
<< Firefighters have contained a blaze that has burnt through more than 1000 hectares of bushland west of Sydney. The fire, at Winmalee in the Blue Mountains, has been burning since Tuesday fanned by high temperatures and strong winds, plunging the region into emergency. Firefighters were still water bombing the burning bushland on Thursday.
The Rural Fire Service on Friday said the fire had been contained.
RFS spokeswoman Laura Ryan:
“It was brought fully under control last night just before a community meeting at Winmalee High School. Firefighters (unpaid) would today work to extinguish the blaze, but said it was too early to say how long that would take. Firefighters will be working hard to get every bit of that fire out.”
The RFS and NSW Police say they have launched investigations into the cause of the bushfire, with some locals raising concerns that recent hazard reduction burns in the area may be responsible. [Ed: NSW Police need not investigate far beyond the operational records of the Blue Mountains National Parks and Wildlife Service, with internal documents circulated to the RFS]
<< A Rural Fire Service organised community meeting held last week at Winmalee to discuss the fire situation in Winmalee and Yellow Rock was well attended.
Winmalee and Yellow Rock residents aired their bushfire concerns at a community meeting organised by the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) at Winmalee High School last Thursday night.
Despite the meeting only being publicised that day, the school hall was nearly full with 350 residents. At least 10 people in the room did not receive an RFS emergency safety warning text message to take shelter.
Blue Mountains RFS district manager David Jones said he would, “feed that back up the line … it may be a service provider issue, I’m not sure, that may be part of it” and that he would look further into the issue.
A Yellow Rock resident asked what hazard reduction burns would take place in Yellow Rock in the near future.
Supt Jones said the weather conditions last week hadn’t been suitable to maintain control of a backburn.
“It’s a one-way, one-road in and its never received the recognition it deserves on that basis in terms of protection,” the Yellow Rock resident said. “I would hate to see a real emergency situation develop here at Yellow Rock.”
Supt Jones said he’d look at the RFS organising a meeting with Yellow Rock residents in the near future to address these issues. Supt Jones said residents could have a fire mitigation officer assess if hazard reduction was needed in their area by lodging a hazard complaint with the RFS.
“Generally over an 8-12 year cycle it [vegetation] needs to be burnt, which allows it to regenerate,” he said.
National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) Upper Mountains area manager Richard Kingswood said there weren’t many days a year suitable for conducting hazard reduction burns — only 10 days in the Upper Mountains and a few more in the Lower Mountains, although last autumn and spring had provided more opportunities. He said in the last financial year NPWS had initiated 38 burning operations over 50,000 hectares, which was more than usually occurred.
Another resident asked why, with safety concerns with overhead powerlines, they couldn’t go underground, especially as the highway was being widened. An Endeavour Energy spokesman said cost was an issue. “It costs about 10 times more to put mains underground.”
Others were concerned about issues around road blocks, where children as well as adults were allowed to walk past roadblocks to return home, yet people couldn’t get their vehicles through. It didn’t make sense from a safety perspective, the resident said.>>
<< More than 1200 firefighters were involved in battling the four major fires on Tuesday along Hawkesbury Road in Winmalee; in Marsden Park in the Blacktown area; near Tickner Road in Castlereagh; and Richmond Road at Windsor. Fourteen helicopters and 350 trucks from the Rural Fire Service, Fire and Rescue NSW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service were involved in the firefight.
Just before 1.30pm on Tuesday, the temperature in Sydney was 31.6 degrees. Mr Rogers said strong wind also made fire conditions worse, with gusts reaching 90 kilometres an hour, which was much higher than forecast.
He said RFS firefighters helped in the hazard-reduction operation in Winmalee, which was under the supervision of the NPWS, and he apologised to anyone who experienced property damage.
“Combined with the winds, how dry it is, the temperature and the steep terrain, fire takes hold very, very quickly.”
He said the RFS also was investigating whether a hazard-reduction burn escaped and forced the closure of the M1 (formerly the F3) Motorway on Thursday.
“You would have to obviously be suspicious that it did come from a hazard-reduction, given that it was in a very close proximity to it. That’s something that we’re going to be looking at very, very closely,” he said.>>
<<Fire authorities have issued an emergency warning for a bushfire threatening homes in Castlereagh in Sydney’s west, and alerts for other out of control bushfires in Blacktown and Hawkesbury.
NSW Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said National Parks and Wildlife Service had been conducting a hazard reduction burn near Hawkesbury Road in Winmalee last weekend. The fire flared with Tuesday’s soaring temperatures and high winds.
..He apologised to anyone who experienced property damage from the Winmalee fire. ”..It appears on first look that it’s a case of the weather was worse than was predicted, the fire jumped out, it took hold really..quickly.” >>
Even though the fire ripped through Hawkesbury Heights, the National Parks and Wildlife Services has released a public notice asking any Winmalee residents who experienced property damage or loss have been urged to contact NPWS on 1300 361 967 for sympathy and counselling.
New South Wales Rural Fire Service (paid) Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers has said that his (unpaid) RFS firefighters helped in the hazard-reduction operation in Winmalee, which was under the supervision of the NPWS, and he apologised to anyone who experienced property damage.
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RFS: Sorry about thatProperty loss at Hawkesbury Heights (Wheatley Road?) but who pays?
Owner: “we won’t need hazard reduction for a while.”
[Source: ‘Bushfire wake-up call’, 20130918, by Shane Desiatnik,
^http://www.theleader.com.au/story/1782048/bushfire-wake-up-call/]
In New South Wales the National Parks and Wildlife Act became law on 1 October 1967. The legislation created a single agency, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, to care for, control and manage the original nineteen parks and any new ones created in the future.
Rainwater, streams, surface water, ground water, aquifers and Australia’s Great Artesian Basin are all interconnected hydrology across Eastern Australia.
In the Blue Mountains plateau country, west of Sydney, sandstone-ironstone geology creates a subterrainean barrier to rainwater absorption and so the ground water slowly flows horizontally over longer periods. This sustains upland swamps and wetland ecosystems.
Human built settlement across the central Blue Mountains ridgeland since the 1820s introduced sewage contamination into the downstream watercourses, gullies and gorge country below. The raw sewage drainage piping into the valleys below the townships has recently been diverted expensively to contained closed system sewage infrastructure. But urban runoff and dodgy stormwater overflows into legacy sewage mains cause ongoing leakages into the water catchments of the Blue Mountains.
Savvy local bushwalkers know not to drink the water from watercourses downstream of Blackheath, Springwood, Katoomba and other such townships.
Prudent government authority, Sydney Water, disinfects its drinking water reservoirs in the Blue Mountains, to be safe.
But some of the Blue Mountains water that falls as rain in a largely wilderness region, is captured as drinking water in a few reservoirs, then pumped by larged pipes up to large water tanks above the Blue Mountains townships to enable gravity to deliver pressurised water to thousands of homes.
Ed: Are we to now expect fresh green paint over the chlorine salt efflorescent tanks to hide the problem?
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Chloramine Tap Water
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Across New South Wales, Sydney Water routinely disinfects drinking water in its reservoirs to control the risk of prevalent and toxic E. coli, Cryptosporidium and Giardia bacteria contamination.
Sydney Water applies a derivative of chlorine known as chloramine in its reservoirs – a disinfectant formed by mixing chlorine with ammonia. This is less toxic than the hypochlorous acid typically applied to swimming pools. Given the history in the Blue Mountains of sewage and runoff downstream from upstream townships, Sydney Water ups the dosage of chloramine, to be sure.
Chloramine is a less effective disinfectant than the hypochlorous acid, but it is longer lasting and stays in the water system as it moves through the pipes that transport it to consumers (a process that can take three or four days). For this reason, chloramine is often used alongside chlorine as a “secondary” disinfectant designed to remain in drinking water longer. But what are the long term impacts of drinking Chloramine contained in drinking water. What long term scientific studies have been done and publicly reported?
Chlorine by itself is a very dangerous material. Liquid chlorine burns the skin and gaseous chlorine irritates the mucus membranes. Concentrations of the gas as low as 3.5 parts per million can be detected by smell while concentrations of 1000 parts per million can be fatal after a few deep breaths.
In the Blue Mountains, the tap water is decidedly hardened in taste by the chlorine additive. So should tap water in the Blue Mountains be drunk safely?
<< I can feel the souls of my ancestors calling me back home
To all the familiar places and tracks I once did roam
I can see my Grandmother’s house at the end of Adams Street,
Where all the Aunties, Uncles and Cousins I did meet
To the banks of the Bokhara River running under the Richmond Bridge
You can hear the waters flow to the sound of an Elder’s didge
I can smell the boogalies cooking in a camp oven at my Aunty’s place
I can see the sun arising on the wrinkles of my Pop’s face
I can recall how my uncle taught me how to ride
In a paddock near their place with Robbo by my side
But I know I must stay here to get a good education
For I want to go back home after my graduation
To see the many family, friends and familiar faces I have known
I can feel the souls of my ancestors calling me back home
They’re calling me back, my ancestors in Mother Earth
I want to go back home, to the country of my birth. >>
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Young Matt Kean – Gladys patsy to “Kick Start NSW Tourism” by the cruise ship load?
