There is a legacy of hoaxes, scams, cons, white elephants, crazy schemes and plans, wacky ideologies and bandwagon movements globally (since before the notorious Dutch Tulip Mania of 1634), and including sadly throughout Australia; also indeed right here in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

Possibly the worst on the cards currently is Blue Mountains {city} Council’s conjured up ‘Centre for Planetary Health Initiative‘, which is set to re-purpose its disused and ultimately failed Katoomba Golf Course situated on the western edge of Katoomba.   

Actually, it seems that this initiative was not Council’s idea, but introduced from Western Sydney University via an intermediary we shall say.  Those in Council’s ivory tower chambers, situated aloof from town, appear to have been hoodwinked by some cult-type global noble phenomenon, termed ‘Planetary Health‘.

‘Planetary Health‘ is an interesting construct.   Where did this crop up from?   Well, our research shall soon reveal the background to this latest fad in subsequent articles.

A decade after Katoomba Golf Course inevitably went broke in 2013, this exotic religious ornament propped up unannounced on Council’s old Katoomba Golf Course site just outside the old club house.  Perhaps the timing was just after Blue Mountains [city} Council forking out $3.3 million of ratepayers’ funds to buy back the golf course club house building on the combined site that it had originally owned. 

We presume this obelisk is not Aboriginal, but may have arrived from a falling comet from the Cosmos, else some Council notional ‘Kumbaya’ committee thought bubble.  Who knows?

 

 

So who on Council arranged this ugly cult thing at Council’s defunct Katoomba Golf Course? 

Back on 8th October 2019, nearby Radiata Plateau outside Katoomba was sold by the Indian religious cult, the Transcendental Meditation Organization (TMO), to the NSW Government Minister for the Environment (NPWS), Matt Kean for $2.8 million.   So is this where the TMO ended up, quid pro quo? 

A zoom-in of this ‘cult-thing’ to some maharishi yogi…

 

Clearly something odd is going down in Council’s ivory tower over in North Katoomba.  Katoomba residents around the old golf course are not impressed, especially local dog walkers being denied by Council off-leash access on the 30-hectare golf course.

‘Planetary Health‘ seems to be some motherhood construct.   It conveys a sense of ‘warm and fuzzy’ do-gooding.   The choice combined wording is a syntax slogan morally is difficult to criticise.  This ‘initiative’ sounds wonderful in concept and hard to morally criticise, so IT MUST BE GOOD?   Good for the planet and good for health?  Such is what propaganda is about.  We suspect this is a deliberate propaganda ploy by another organised social movement.  We shall explore this background.

The Habitat Advocate has been in The Mountains since 2001.  We didn’t come down in the last shower.  We have experienced dealing with Blue Mountains {city} Council especially on matters negatively impacting Katoomba Falls Creek Valley as a member (2002-2008) of the Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Incorporated.  This includes protesting against the now defunct 30 hectare Katoomba Golf Course and its expansionism and residential developments.  

Local residents, again, are concerned with Blue Mountains Council’s motives and undisclosed plans and ends for this public land site that has a record of dodgy ‘Confidential Business Papers, secret closed-door council meetings and deals dubbed ‘commercial-in-confidence’, all the while council has repeatedly wasted ratepayers’ funds for decades in order to bail out its hair-brained golfing mates’ developments and expansions. 

 

A bit of relevant history:

 

Back in 1920, a group of local Katoomba businessmen (golfers) initially set up ‘The South Katoomba Land Company Limited‘ having the idea of leasing bushland on the edge of Katoomba near the Jamison Valley escarpment from then custodial owners ‘The Council of the Municipality of Katoomba‘ (now Blue Mountains {city} Council) –  to deforest the bushland and watercourse in order to convert the land use into a convenient local golf links for their golfing leisure.  This was the heyday of golf, popular up to the 1960s.  

Council was very obliging, probably because many of the then male councillors enjoyed playing few rounds.   ‘The South Katoomba Land Company Limited‘ morphed into becoming Katoomba Golf Club Ltd and so had the golf links constructed – we suspect with generous financial support from Council’s ratepayers’ funds.  This will become evident by reading further. 

By 1923, it was a 9-hole golf course replete with a moderate club house.  It was popular and became crowded, so by 1927, double the bushland was deforested eastward and northward to expand it into an 18-hole golf course. 

Over the decades, Council then acquired adjoining bushland sites to expand the size of the golf course out to about 74 acres (30 hectares).  That’s 300,000 m², or the equivalent area of 550m x 550m – a big chunk of bushland, which included a watercourse and series of natural swamps – all graded and swallowed up – bugger the ecology!  Golf being more important, like Council’s bulldozed Catalina car racing track nearby in The Gully in 1957!  This was all in the same Katoomba Falls Creek Valley natural water catchment above Katoomba Falls.

Later in May 1991, it was Council itself that proposed funding the tenants of the golf course, Katoomba Golf Club Ltd, a massive residential expansion development proposal.

 

Council labelled its own initiated development ‘Katoomba Golf Resort and Spa‘.  It was an A3-sized spiral-bound booklet of 30 pages including promotional ‘artist impression’ watercolour drawings that included a proposed large 2-storey club house including a licensed hotel, multiple function facilities and 48-room ‘lodge’ accommodation in two adjoining side wings either side of the club house/hotel.   

So, a conflict of interest by Council as custodial landlord of this public land to fund a commercial tenant’s recreational interests, or what?   

Here are a few extracts of that proposal commission by Blue Mountains {city} Council via its outsourced developer Leisure Lea Corporation to St Leonard’s based architects John Bruce and Partners: 

 

 

 

Note that multiple golf fairways/holes were to be re-purposed so driving the need to maintain the golf club’s 18-hole golf course offering by Council’s acquisition and re-zoning of surrounding community bushland.  This was an ongoing programme of destructive environmental expansionism for the pursuit of a dying pastime – Golf.   The architectural costs of this plan would have been considerable – all paid by local ratepayers.   

Just one of many examples of Blue Mountains [city} Council’s secret deals concerning its dodgy secrecy with their golfing mates, whilst exploiting ratepayers’ funds behind closed doors:

Council had sold off a number of fairways to housing developer, Mr Tracey Lake of Noroton Holdings Pty Limited, to use the land to build a hotel and ab0ut 20-odd townhouses. 

For over a decade the various developments schemes for the mixed use site were negotiated with Council in secret behind closed doors for more than a decade – suspiciously, the proceeds of Council’s partial land sell-off of what was ordiginall community land (rezoned operational by Council to enable it to be sold for housing, was used to prop the failing Katoomba Golf Club multiple times.   

Mr Lake’s business went broke and re-emerged as Numarra Pty Limited in 2004 and as Katoomba Escarpment Estates Pty Ltd (KEE).  In 2010, Council approved a 99-year lease of the Golf Course to Reed Constructions, which had controlling ownership in the club.   Then the golf course expanded into surround bush to recreate its 18-hole course status.   In 2012, Reed Constructions went into liquidation.  Then Katoomba Golf Club went into liquidation on Monday 1 July 2013.   

In 2020 Council bough the club house using $3.3 million of ratepayers’ funds.  The adjoining townhouse development persists to this day.

 

This is Blue Mountains {city} Council hypocrisy in spades.  Since when has Blue Mountains {city} Council been trusted?

Katoomba Golf Course ultimately went broke, first during Council’s re-zoned residential development and sale to Noroton Holdings Pty Limited, then by Reed Constructions in 2013.   Council all the while schemed with the lessee and successive developers behind closed-door backroom deals, misappropriating Blue Mountains ratepayers’ funds to prop up this dated golfing failed venture. 

Outcome?  A dog’s breakfast. 

 

 

The Katoomba Golf Course had gone broke in 2013 basically due to the lack of local general interest in playing golf.   The similar demise has afflicted the antiquated courses at  Lawson, Wentworth Falls, and Leura, and decades ago the one at Mount Victoria once attached to the Victoria and Albert Hotel harking from before The Great War.

So over time, disused golf clubs incrementally have sold off their land for housing development.   Notably, this includes the golf clubs at Leura, Wentworth Falls and Katoomba.  The defunct Lawson golf course remained in Council ownership, and being so remote, Council proposed no housing development to be viable.

Back to Katoomba Golf Course…

 

 

 

Our Blue Mountains (‘The Mountains’) have a destructive bombardment record of deforestation of this valley to suit its own ends backing selfish indulgences of wealthy business people wishing to indulge in their sporting pastimes – like playing golf, and watching car racing, and profiting from amusements parks (like Catalina and Scenic World).   Cultural spots don’t change.

Council’s old business paper records reveal that near Blackheath some enterprising nutter once proposed Australian prime ministers’ equivalent gouging like Mount Rushmore be carved into the west facing escarpment of Fortress Ridge, so viewable to tourists from Govetts Leap Lookout on the western side of the Gross Gorge, plus a glass elevator shaft up and down Bridal Veil Falls nearby.  There used to be cattle grazing in the Blue Gum Forest and Kanangra and previously in the mid 19th Century, the colonial government of NSW proposed building a railway line up the Grose River Gorge from Windsor to Lithgow.

Exploitative damage to The Mountains natural landscape, along with the permanent destruction of native habitat, has been encouraged by successive governments since 19th Century English immigrant ‘robber baron’ John Britty North’s deforestation and mining exploits of Katoomba in the 1870s.  

Now a decade after Katoomba Golf Course went into liquidation in 2013 and lay abandoned for a decade,  Council since 2020 indulged $3.3 million of Blue Mountains ratepayers’ funds to buy back the golf course and club house.

Government’s latest hair-brained scheme like this failed Katoomba Golf Course site smells surely of more Blue Mountains {city} Council’s PR greenwashing again.  ‘Blue Mountains Centre for Planetary Health’.  Seriously?

Research the history of this 30-hectare site to begin to understand our cynicism.  Where to start?  Start with our thirty-year knowledge and environmental protest legacy perhaps.

The site was Community land.  The original Katoomba Golf Club leased the lands from the land holder Blue Mountain Council in 1920.

Check this document.  A Declaration of Trust with Council that the land only be used for recreation…

 

Embarrassingly so, Blue Mountains {city} Council re-imagined a re-purposing of its failed golf club from a century since 1920.  Bureaucrats are slow learners.  Actually, they most never learn from their mistakes because they are granted impunity from any accountability.   The head honcho fat cat bureaucrats in BMCC senior management are still there, raking it in for themselves and wrecking the joint.

This is our previous article on this matter from 2013: 

Katoomba Golf Club’s escarpment vandalism

 

References:

 

[1]    ‘Declaration of Trust‘, between  The South Katoomba Land Company Limited to The Council of the Municipality of Katoomba, 28th January 1920, declaring said specified council land in Katoomba for the sole purpose of lessee use for golf links, as witnessed by Hughes & Hughes solicitors of 26 Hunter Street Sydney, (3 pages), resourced from The Neil Lewis Stuart Archive – Topic Group ‘F2: Valley Threats Katoomba Golf Course’;

 

[2]   ‘Katoomba Golf and Resort Spa Resort‘ land-use development proposal, Development Agreement Documents, May 1991, by John Bruce + Partners (architects) for Ted Stirling PGA of Golf Development Resources, resourced from The Neil Lewis Stuart Archive – Topic Group ‘F2: Valley Threats Katoomba Golf Course’, A3-size, 30 pages;   

 

[3]   ‘Katoomba Golf Club membership brochure‘, circa 1999, 2 pages, resourced from The Neil Lewis Stuart Archive – Topic Group ‘F2: Valley Threats Katoomba Golf Course’;

 

[4]   ‘Item C3 in Confidential Business Paper – Katoomba Golf Course Development‘, 12 Nov 2002, ‘Quality Local Government’, Ordinary Meeting business paper Page 17, Blue Mountains {city} Council , File No: H00003, 1 page, resourced from The Neil Lewis Stuart Archive – Topic Group ‘F2: Valley Threats Katoomba Golf Course’;

 

[5]    ‘Tulip Mania‘ speculative frenzy, Holland [17th-century], by Doug Ashburn, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2024-05-07,  ^https://www.britannica.com/money/Tulip-Mania

 

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:

1. Engagement and consultation with former Gully residents, their descendants and other stakeholders
2. Assessment of relevant information and knowledge to be included in the revised plan
3. Assessment and determination of current management issues and future opportunities for the Gully
4. Updating of the management policies and the action plan for the Gully
5. 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?

 

References:

 

[1]   Upper Kedumba River Valley Plans of Management Revised 2004, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Upper-Kedumba-River-Valley-Plans-of-Management-Revised-2004.pdf

 

[2]   The Gully Aboriginal Place Map 2004, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/The-Gully-Aboriginal-Place-Map-2004.pdf

 

[3]   Proposed Review of Plan of Management, Blue Mountains Council website – temporary page, October 2018, ^https://yoursay.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/gully-plan

 

[4]   Community Input to Proposed New Plan, by Blue Mountains Council (2018), ^https://www.bluemountainshaveyoursay.com.au/gully-plan

 

[5]   Draft Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill 2018, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Draft-Aboriginal-Cultural-Heritage-Bill-2018.pdf

 

[6]   Blue Mountains City Council Contact:  Environmental Planning Projects Officer, Mr Soren Mortensen,  Tel:  4780 5000.

 

[7]    ‘Have your say on The Gully – Aboriginal place in Katoomba‘, 20090114, in The Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper (no author), ^https://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/5807043/future-of-the-gully-aboriginal-place/

 

[8]   ‘The Gully’s Abuse and Neglect‘, article by The Habitat Advocate, 20110905, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/?page_id=7326.

 

 

The Gully remains an anthroplogical microcosm of Australian unresolved reconciliation

 

A brief insight into ‘The Friends of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley Inc.’ and their efforts to protect a special place.

“Gain a short, little known insight into a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens who came together led by the late Neil Stuart to become guardians of a very special natural valley in the Upper Blue Mountains.  Learn about the wealth of stories, how over 26 years locals cared for the valley’s integrity, how volunteers committed to half a lifetime of unpaid bushcare, made and sold jam at street stalls to raise funds, and fought a council Goliath.  Be shocked by the truth of what really happened in 1957 and the lifetime trauma to what was once an harmonious yet socially marginalised community subsisting on Katoomba’s fringe.

This is of living contemporary social history.  This is a controversial expose into one group’s community volunteerism, activism, environmentalism and nimbyism and social justice – thousands of hours given up to save ‘Katoomba Falls Creek Valley’, known by some as ‘The Gully’, known by others as ‘Catalina Raceway’.

This is very much an Australian story, a microcosm of Australian history and pre-history – one locally as rich as it is beautiful yet very sad.  It has impacted upon dozens of locals, old families and their ancestors. It is a story about respecting the natural, anthropological and community values of one valley.  Recent history became complex, protracted and nasty – involving displacement, forced eviction, invasion, desecration, secret deals, politics, animosities, divide-and-conquer manipulation, empty political promises, conflicting interests, threats and designs by influential millions, the various meetings, many plans of development (some silly), token consultation, one of metaphorically trying to herd cats and twenty six years of community emotional snakes and ladders.

Katoomba Falls

This presentation was delivered by a former member of ‘The Friends’ yesterday at Hobby Reach, Wentworth Falls, the home of the Blue Mountains Historical Society Inc.

For those who attended and requested the reading of the poem…

Soliloquy of a Scribbly Gum

Katoomba Golf Club this week has been placed into administration – about time!

[Photo by Editor, 20130507, Photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

.

Actor Bing Crosby used to famously play golf back in the 1950s, but in 2013 who plays golf but the last of retired male Baby Boomers?  The sport is a ‘has been’ and most courses have been constructed necessitating broadscale habitat destruction, and arrogantly so.

Golf’s origins date back to 15th Century Scotland and to the exclusive pastime of its landed gentry – male gentry, one for Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.  Along with croquet and lawn bowls, it dates to a bygone era – up there with duelling, archery practice and pheasant hunting.

This week we learn about the demise of another golf club struggling to attract new members as its 20th Century members ‘pass on’.

In the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, the Katoomba Golf Club as registered body formed just over a hundred years ago back in 1911.   The land on which Katoomba Golf Club sited Katoomba Golf Course after the war in May 1923, had few previous owners in historic times. 

 

A brief reflection on relevant colonial history

 

In the 18th Century, the island continent we now call Australia, was considered ‘undiscovered’ by the then dominant global European powers that be.   In 1768, the then head of state of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King George III commissioned his Royal Navy to undertake a world expedition voyage under the command of Lieutenant James Cook (combined with Botanist Joseph Banks of the Royal Society) to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, which took place between 1768 to 1771.   Amongst the voyage’s prescribed tasks were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun (3–4 June that year), and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or “undiscovered southern land”, plus other exploratory, naturalist and mapping duties.

In April 1770, the voyage famously became the first known European expedition to reach the east coast of Australia, mapping the coastline and making landfall near present-day Point Hicks, and then proceeding north to Botany Bay, naming the land New South Wales. 

On 21st August 1770,  Cook’s exploration party stepped ashore on an island in the Torres Strait situated 2km off now Cape York Peninsula  (since called Possession Island) and declared possession of this “undiscovered southern land” to the British Crown.  This was on the basis of unilateral possession – the land perceived as ‘terra nullius’, being Latin for ‘land belonging to no one’, because Cook and Banks considered there were few ‘natives’ along the coast and deduced that there would be fewer or none inland. 

Subsequently, the British colonial First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay then Port Jackson in 1788 to establish a British convict settlement was set up in New South Wales..  The Proclamation of NSW Governor Richard Bourke in 1835 implemented the legal principle of terra nullius in Australian law as the basis for British settlement, 47 years later.   Such were the powers that prevailed at the time.  Various ‘frontier wars’ were waged sporadically between the Aboriginal peoples and the vastly out-weaponed British military and colonists for 46 years (1788-1934).  By 1901, Australia was universally declared a unified federated nation state –  The Commonwealth of Australia.

This island continent had been ‘legally owned’ (possessed) by the British Crown since Cook’s authorised declaration of possession in 1770.  From 1788, the British penal colony of New South Wales was ruled by successive British military governors of the Colony of New South Wales.   Until 1824, the military governors of New South Wales were absolute rulers with rights granted to them under an Act of the British Parliament of 1787.   The only power superior to them being the British Parliament at Westminster in London, England.

History is history.

 

So, back to the land of Katoomba Golf Course – obtained historical written records show that the land site was then ‘legally owned’ by the London Chartered Bank of Australia from at least as far back as the 1870s.  Katoomba was then not a settlement.  Only a sandstone rock quarry ‘The Crushers‘ is historically documented to be in the area to supply ballast for the new railway line roll-out from the 1860s to 1874 when a railway siding was built.  It appears that soon afterwards, English migrant (entrepreneurial merchant, miner then property developer) John Britty North acquired vast acreage around the south western area of The Crushers, which would become called the township of Katoomba.

Thus far, our research has not revealed how the local council happened to acquire the land of what would become granted to Katoomba Golf Club in 1920 to deforest the bushland for a golf course.  In 1889, Blue Mountains Council did not exist, rather it was one of a number of smaller regional municipal councils across the central Blue Mountains, then it being termed the Katoomba Municipal Council Incorporated).

This is an historic legal document we have obtained that reveals the original deal dated 28th January 1920 between the Katoomba Golf Club and the then local council.  At the time the deal was in fact legally between ‘The South Katoomba Land Company Limited‘ and ‘The Council of the Municipally of Katoomba‘. The former was the registered legal body that certain local business owners had established as a legal entity, and the then legally named local council.

Now this is a good revealing read.  How’s these stated legal requirements for instance:

 

1. “Council at its own expense… (read Clause 1), (read Clause 2)”

2. (Clause 3) “THAT the said Council its successors and assign will not at any time erect on the said land any dwelling house or other building except a golf club house or a tennis court or croquet cloub house or a club house for any other purpose for recreation as allowed by paragraph (a)  2 and sheds outhouses stables and other buildings in connection herewith.”

 

 

The land was then owned by the then Katoomba Council (i.e. by the local community).  The land was acquired from the local council for £1500 by property developers under the name of the South Katoomba Land Company.  Was the escarpment land paid for, loaned or gifted?   A nearby Gully was acquired a generation later from the Katoomba Council via a £27,000 loan to build a motor racing track, but the loan was never repaid.

So golf playing at the Katoomba Golf Club was in full swing from the 1920’s, and when Bing Crosby was playing during the post War 1950’s, golf was in its heyday.  But by the end of the 1980s for reasons of waning interest, other competing interests for a four hour round of golf, busy lifestyles and basic economics; the Baby Boomer golf fad was fading.  This was not just across Australia, but across America and elsewhere.   Read the article at the end of this one by Nancy Keate, in The Wall Street Journal.

 

 [Source:  ‘Is Economy Or Lack Of Interest Hurting Golf?’, 20110523, by Ian Hutchinson ,

^http://www.golfnewsnow.ca/2011/05/23/is-economy-or-lack-of-interest-hurting-golf/]

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Is Economy Or Lack Of Interest Hurting Golf?

MAY 23, 2011 BY IAN HUTCHINSON  [SOURCE:  http://www.golfnewsnow.ca/blog/is-economy-or-lack-of-interest-hurting-golf/]

 

U.S. golf participation falls for third consecutive year

May 9, 2011   [SOURCE:  http://golfweek.com/news/2011/may/09/us-golf-participation-falls-third-consecutive-year/]

 

“For the third consecutive year, the number of golfers in the U.S. declined, falling 3.6 percent to 26.1 million in 2010, according to the National Golf Foundation.

The slide, from 27.1 million golfers in 2009, wasn’t unexpected in light of the heavy toll the recession has had on the sport and the economy in general.

The silver lining, if any, according to NGF officials, is that the participation falloff is more linked to financial pressures rather than golf losing popularity among consumers.

“Multiple NGF studies of golfers since 2008 would attribute the gradual decline in golfers and rounds primarily to the impact of lower job security and concern over personal finances, not waning appeal for the game,” said Joe Beditz, NGF president and CEO.

The NGF supported that conclusion by citing golf’s continuing ability to attract “new” participants – in 2010 a total of 3.6 million, including 1.5 million first-time beginners and 2.1 million returning former golfers.

That gain, however, was negated by the loss of 4.6 million golfers who played in 2009 but not in 2010. According to the NGF, the number of new golfers held steady while the number of those who left the game decreased significantly. In recent years, golf industry leaders have been emphasizing improving the retention of golfers.

For all their efforts, though, the downward trend of participation remains a major concern. By comparison, the number of golfers in the U.S. in 2000 and 2005 was 28.8 million and 30 million, respectively.

Among the other findings:

• • • The number of “core” golfers (eight or more rounds annually) dropped to 14.8 million – down 3.6 percent from 15.3 million in 2009.
    • “Occasional” golfers suffered a similar decline: a drop of 3.7 percent to 11.3 million from 11.8 million in 2009.
    • The number of rounds played in 2010 was 475 million, down 2.3 percent from 486 million in the previous year. (By comparison, rounds played in 2000 and 2005 was 518 million and 500 million, respectively.)

The participation study defines a golfer as a person, age 6 or older, who plays at least one round of golf in a given year.  Its results are “derived from a multi-sport study of 40,000 Americans, executed in conjunction with the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association,” the NGF stated.

 

Yet, despite this general waning interest in golf and despite specifically the falling membership at both Katoomba and nearby Leura golf clubs, some Baby Boomers in complete denial decided in the 1990s to expand the Katoomba golf course from 9 holes to 18.   [Editor’s Corrigendum:  Correspondence received from an informed reader after publication, has confirmed that the golf course was in fact expanded from 9 holes to 18 holes circa 1927 (^Source).  The development works circa 1995 instead relate to expansion of the course acquiring 5.6 hectares of adjoining community zoned woodland alongside Narrow Neck Road in order to build 13 townhouses and a resort hotel.  Also circa 2007, a fairway/green was extended into bushland near Stuarts Road.]  Further, they had grandiose notions of building a dozen new dedicated golfing townhouses next to the clubhouse, so perpetuating the ‘has-been’ American trend of the 1980s.

Where did the millions in development finance come from and how much was put up by local Blue Mountains Council negotiated behind closed doors claiming a dubious excuse fo commercial in confidence” dealing with this being zoned ‘Community Land‘ ?

Of course, this development necessitated a considerable acquisition of more surrounding bushland to be logged, the vegetation slashed and bulldozed, the soils landscaped, grassed and fertilised.  This has meant permanent destruction of the ecosystem just like open cut mining.    All this occurred immediately above and upstream of the Jamison Valley wilderness, now part of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

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Juxtaposition of the Katoomba Golf Club (light green coloured fairways) replacing virgin habitat across the escarpment;  all so that a few retiring Baby Boomer men can selfishly play golf at the expense of Ecology.

[Source: Google Earth, 2013]

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During the construction of the additional nine holes [Editor’s Corrigendum:  The construction instead related to building 13 townhouses and a resort hotel], the development proposal submitted to the local Blue Mountains Council, specified a new track would be constructed through adjacent bushland to connect two fairways.  It was deceptive, because that track became a new wide fairway, complete with soil replacement, landscape contouring, grass seeding and fertilizer.

Repeated instances of sediment run-off from the construction were formally reported to the local Blue Mountains Council by concerned local residents, yet no remediation action was undertaken and no punitive fines were issued.

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Native bushland along the Blue Mountains escarpment slashed and woodchipped to expand the Katoomba Golf Club out to 18 holes

[Editor’s Corrigendum:  The construction instead related to building 13 townhouses and a resort hotel]

[Photo by Editor, 20071110, Photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

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Native bushland bulldozed to make way for golfing townhouses adjacent to the Katoomba Golf Club

Erosion and sediment run-off has been rife for years

[Photo by Editor, 20071110, Photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

 

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Golf courses not only necessitate absolute ecological destruction in such places, but the ongoing maintenance of the fairways and greens demands constant fresh water irrigation.  Irrigation, as with farming, risks causing saline intrusion into the groundwater.

The keeping of golfing greens green to uphold the lush traditional image, necessitates that golf courses use extensive amounts of chemical fertilizers containing elevated levels of nitrogen (as sulphate of ammonia), potash , sulphur  and phosphorus, as well as the application of pesticides and herbicides.  All such chemicals are toxic to Australian native vegetation and to aquatic wildlife in the downstream watercourses.  Effectively they are environmental pollutants and so next to and upstream of vital World Heritage, use of such chemicals needs to be legally banned.

The local Blue Mountains Council has failed to monitor run-off from the construction activity into the surrounding natural environment.  The custodian of the World Heritage Area, National Parks and Wildlife Service, simply isn’t interested.

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White Elephant golfing townhouses adjacent to the Katoomba Golf Club that have since stood vacant for years

[Photo by Editor, 20071110, Photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

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<< It’s big, blue and beautiful!   Blue Mountains National Park is located just 60 kilometres west of Sydney. It is unique in it’s history, its wildlife and world famous scenery…includes the Grose Wilderness, dedicated for its wild unspoilt natural beauty.   At Katoomba see the Three Sisters and Katoomba Falls… 300 kilometres of heritage walking tracks and hundreds of lookouts, most within easy reach of a string of train stations. It’s a wilderness made easy to get to! >>
[Source:  NSW Government, ^http://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/blue-mountains/katoomba-area/blackheath/attractions/blue-mountains-national-park]

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[Ed:  No mention of golf in the tourism promotion these days]

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Katoomba Golf Club R.I.P.

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<<..“the locksmith has been in” and the club is no longer trading. 

Unfortunately the club has temporarily closed its doors to the public. They have appointed administrators to handle the business. We are no longer employed. We, the staff thank all of you for your patronage, your friendship, your laughs and your well wishes – it has been a wonderful and memorable time for all of us. A bit of a sad day for us, so thank you. >>

[Source:   ‘Katoomba Golf Club shuts its doors’, 20130703, Blue Mountains Gazette, print, p.5, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1614280/katoomba-golf-club-shuts-its-doors/?cs=2062]

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Escarpment Karma?

Yet over 50 hectares of vital escarpment habitat has been lost

to a Baby Boomer selfish pastime.

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Notice of First Meeting of Creditors of Company Under Administration

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Company:     Katoomba Golf Club Ltd
ACN:               000 952 992
Status:            Administrators Appointed
Appointed:    01 July 2013

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Meeting details:

Notice is given that a first meeting of the creditors of the Company, or a first meeting for each of the Companies, (for multiple companies), will be held:
Location:              Katoomba Golf Club, Acacia Street, Katoomba New South Wales
Meeting date:     10 July 2013
Meeting time:     12:00PM

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[Source:  ASIC Insolvency Notices].

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---

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‘Fore Sale – Luxury golf communities have hit a rough patch’

[Source:  ‘Fore Sale – Luxury golf communities have hit a rough patch’, 20120724, by Nancy Keate, The Wall Street Journal, ^http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303703004577474563368632088.html]

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Photo Illustration: Jeff Huang

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<< After years of aggressive golf course expansion, interest in golf declined just as the market for luxury homes plunged. Now, once-pricey real estate is available at below-par prices. Selling a lot for $1.

Debbie Bowers and her husband, tired of life in their cold Ohio town, spent eight years looking for a home near a sunny luxury golf course in a Southern state. Everything they saw was too expensive. Then this past May, they got a call: A lot was available at South Carolina’s Colleton River Plantation, one of the country’s premiere golf communities—for free.

Prices at luxury private golf communities are crashing, done in by rampant overdevelopment, the economic downturn and waning national interest in the sport. Nancy Keates has details on Lunch Break.

The seller was even willing to pay the $15,000 club initiation fee and the first year of $17,000 annual membership dues at Colleton River, which includes three celebrity-designed courses (two by Jack Nicklaus, one by Pete Dye), a Stan Smith-designed tennis center and a new 6,000-square-foot fitness center. Mrs. Bowers, 55, met her husband that day at the site and signed the papers. They’re now building a 3,000-square-foot house that should be finished by November.

The past two decades saw an unprecedented boom in the building of high-end golf courses linked to luxury real-estate communities. Betting that aging Baby Boomers would embrace golf as their pastime of choice, the National Golf Foundation set a goal of building “A Course a Day” beginning in 1988. Real-estate developers teamed up with top-name golf-course architects, building exclusive communities adjacent to courses, and requiring homeowners to pay annual club dues—sometimes even if they didn’t play. Then, in a moment of spectacularly bad timing, both the golf industry and the real-estate market took a nose-dive at once.

Now, private golf communities are dealing with the fallout. Many sellers are dropping their prices radically, in some cases even paying people to take their land. Gated communities that once traded on their exclusivity are aiming to appeal to a wider swath of buyers, building family-friendly “village centers” with ice cream shops, hiking trails and bowling alleys. A few are even “repurposing” by reducing courses to nine holes from 18 and selling off the reclaimed land.

At golf communities near Bluffton, S.C., like Belfair Plantation, Colleton River Plantation and Berkeley Hall, several lots that initially sold for at least $150,000 are now on sale for $1 apiece. Investors who bought but never built on the sites are trying to unburden themselves of the thousands of dollars—typically $12,000 to $17,000—they still have to pay in annual club dues.

At the Mizner Country Club in Delray Beach, Fla., which has an Arnold Palmer golf course, a lakefront home with five bedrooms, a pool and a spa is asking $795,000. It sold for $1.6 million in 2007. A lot in Horseshoe Bay Resort, near Austin, Texas, that sold previously for $300,000, is on sale for $39,000.

In Bend, Ore., interior designer Ronda Fitton and her husband paid $500,000 for a lot at Pronghorn, a gated community with golf courses designed by Tom Fazio and Jack Nicklaus, in 2006. A similar-size lot sold for $10,000 earlier this year. Ms. Fitton is hopeful values will go up but she says the lot is “worth nothing now. It’s a real bummer.” (Lot prices exclude membership fees.) Lots at Rams Hill in Borrego Springs, Calif. are also selling for about $10,000, compared with $100,000 at the peak.

The housing downturn is partly responsible. But the crash in value has been exacerbated by a development binge that resulted in too many courses just as the sport of golf began to fade in popularity.

From 1990 to 2003, some 3,000 new courses were built in the U.S., swelling the total number of courses nationally by 19% and costing about $20 billion, according to the National Golf Foundation.

Many of these new courses were inextricably linked to the luxury-real-estate market. About 40% of the courses built during the 1990s were tied to real-estate communities—a shift from the previous decades, when that number was closer to 18% and the vast majority of golf courses didn’t have people living on them. The golf courses were the lure to get people to buy houses: The bigger the name of the architect who designed them, the greater the prestige and the more expensive the real estate.

Soon after, however, the sport started to lose its allure. The percentage of the overall population in the U.S. that plays golf is down over the past 10 years, from 11.1% in 2000 to 9.2% in 2010, according to the National Golf Foundation.

Last year the number of rounds played in the U.S. dropped to 463 million from 518 million in 2000. The number of golfers fell to 25.7 million in 2011 from 28.8 million in 2000. A net of more than 350 golf courses have been closed since 2005. In 2011, more than 150 courses closed, outpacing the 19 courses that debuted last year.

Compounding the problem: Real-estate developers didn’t think about the viability of the golf courses themselves, says Art West, founder of Golf Course Advisors, a golf-course consulting company. Many of these courses designed by brand-name golf-course architects were championship-level, too difficult for the average player. They took a long time to play and cost millions a year to maintain, pushing up annual dues.

“It was a perfect storm,” says David Hueber, former president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation, who wrote a paper called ” ‘Code Blue’ for U.S. Golf Course Real Estate Development” stemming from research for his Ph.D. in real-estate development at Clemson University.

Across the country, about 2,000 of the 16,000 golf courses are “financially distressed,” according to the National Golf Foundation. Mr. Hueber estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 golf courses will be in financial danger if they don’t change their model.

Membership fees for many clubs have tumbled. The initiation fee at Old Palm Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., which was as high as $250,000 in 2007, is now down to $175,000, while the fee at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Fla., is now at $50,000, compared with $145,000 at its peak.

In some parts of the country, the premium that home buyers are willing to pay for a house on a golf course versus a house that isn’t on a course has dropped to about 25%, from 50% in 2007, says Doug Schwartz, who runs the sales, marketing and homebuilding operations for WCI Communities, in Bonita Springs, Fla., which currently owns four golf communities. Lisa Treu, an agent with the Treu Group in Palm Beach County, says homes on golf courses in Southeast Florida could at one time command a 25% premium over non-golf-course homes; that premium has now dropped to about 10%, she says. (Some areas are still strong, like Palm Springs, Calif., where agents say the premiums are as much as 35%).

“There are a lot of people who would like to get out of here because of the economy,” says Don Davis, who with his wife bought a house in South Carolina’s Colleton River for $970,000 in 2001. The couple, who have loved living in the community but want to move back to Atlanta to be closer to their grandchildren, say it doesn’t make financial sense to move without selling their house because they’d still have to pay the community’s annual membership dues of some $17,000. Their house, listed at $775,000, hasn’t had any offers in its six months on the market.

Real-estate agent Dick Datz of Carolina Realty Group says Belfair and Colleton River are offering agents a $5,000 bonus when they sell a $1 lot; otherwise the commission would be pennies. Rob Norton, president of the Colleton River Plantation Board, says houses in the community are selling and there’s lots of new construction. It’s mostly the people who bought the land as an investment who are having a hard time, he says.

Some developers are recasting their golf communities to appeal to a broader swath of home buyers, including more families and young people. One example: Tuscany Reserve, a 450-plus-acre private golf community in Naples, Fla., which had about $200 million invested in its infrastructure, including a golf course designed by Pete Dye and Greg Norman, before it went bankrupt. Florida developer Syd Kitson recently bought the community for $30 million and changed the name to Talis Park, which he thought sounded more youthful. Instead of building a clubhouse as planned, Mr. Kitson, will build a “village center” with a cafe, a spa and walking paths. Homes are now expected to be in the $700,000-to-$2 million range instead of up to $6 million, as originally intended.

“The model of a country club in its current form is gone forever,” says Mr. Kitson.

After seeing sharp decreases in its sale prices, Pronghorn, the gated community in Bend, Ore., opened its gates, launching a 48-suite lodge in 2010 and inviting the public to use one of its two golf courses. The Resort Group, a resort operator based in Honolulu, Hawaii, took over in February and announced it will bring in Auberge Resorts to manage the property, turning it into a five-star resort with a spa, three restaurants, two pools, tennis courts and a kids club.

The Cliffs—a group of eight residential developments spread among 20,000 acres between Greenville, S.C., and Asheville, N.C., with golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus and Tom Fazio—filed for U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection in February, with estimated liabilities between $100 million and $500 million. A planned golf course for the Cliffs, designed by Tiger Woods, hasn’t been started. According to a 2007 news release, the Cliffs sold 40 lots in the $500,000 price range, and lots at that time couldn’t be purchased below $200,000. Earlier this year a lot sold in one high-end community for less than $10,000, according to real-estate agent Justin Winter.

Owners at the Cliffs, who tried to bail it out earlier by putting up $64 million to keep the club operating, say they are optimistic and are in the midst of a reorganization with Carlile Group, a diversified company based in Marshall, Texas. Carlile is working with two other groups.

Owners say the revamped club will have more options for membership. The initiation fee, which was $150,000, is now $50,000. “We are working diligently to find and deliver the best solution for all members and property owners at the Cliffs,” Steve Carlile of Carlile Group says in a statement.

Golf-course architect Bobby Weed of Bobby Weed Golf Design has been helping residential golf communities over the past few years “repurpose”—by compressing the properties. He is currently working on several proposals to shrink 18-hole courses to nine holes. At the Deltona Club in Deltona, Fla., he helped reduce the amount of land used by the clubhouse and the golf course to create a separate, 17-acre parcel for development.

The steep decline in prices is a boon for potential buyers, of course. “Now I’m getting worried I’m going to miss out if I don’t move quickly,” says Gordon Flach, 44, who has been looking for a golf resort home in Montana, Utah or Oregon for the past three years. Mr. Flach, who is part owner of a resort in the Bahamas, has his eye on a $425,000, 3,800-square-foot four-bedroom house in Pronghorn. A similar house was going for $1.1 million when he first started looking.

Ron Ruff, a 55-year-old semiretired anesthesiologist, got his lot at Pronghorn free about a year ago. The seller also kicked in part of the $115,000 reimbursement of his golf-club membership initiation fee he got back when he “sold” the land. Mr. Ruff says that he felt, despite the dire climate and other people thinking he was crazy, that Pronghorn has a “magical” feel and that the value would be realized again, just as he had seen happen in other areas before. His house is now complete.

John Reed, the original developer of Colleton River Plantation, Belfair Plantation and Berkeley Hall, concedes there are too many golf-course communities. “There’s a train wreck in the industry now,” he says. “We overbuilt and the market stopped.” He had Pete Dye and Tom Fazio design a golf course for his latest development, called Hampton Lakes, but decided to nix it in favor of a 165-acre freshwater fishing and boating lake.

“The best golf course we ever did is 9 feet underwater,” he jokes.  >>

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Ada Ma Way!

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The New South Wales Government’s dictatorial roads department, the RTA-come-RMS, has again kowtowed to the trucking lobby by deciding in its infantile wisdom to remove centre double lines from the Hawkesbury Road through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, so that big sand trucks with trailers (basically ‘B-Doubles‘) can hog both sides of the highway.

Looka Me Looka Me Looka Me!

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The idiots in the fancy new RTA-come-RMA headquarters in Parramatta want no restrictions on truck-length, no speed restrictions for these trucks along Hawkesbury Road – the bigger trucks the better, God Damn!

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Strategy to avoid a B-Double

An Outback vernacular joke, not so funny…

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Outback Crash

Often the End of Everyone’s Story!

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It’s a Northern Territory Outback Approach – unlimited speed and road trains – despite Hawkesbury Road winding tightly down the mountain at Hawkesbury Heights and passing through residential areas between Springwood and Richmond.

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Winmalee ain’t trucking Tennant Creek!

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According to Hawkesbury Road residents typically 90 tipper trucks with dog trailers (basically B-Doubles) hoon along the road daily.

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In late 2012, the RTA-come-RMS removed the centre line marking on four hairpin bends at Hawkesbury Heights so that bigger trucks can cross the center of the road without crossing over centre double lines because the double lines have been painted over.

No centre lines, no road centre, see, just like Mount Panorama!   No speed cameras, no police patrols, speeding cowboy truckers out of control.  Car, motorbike and pedestrian traffic are just collateral damage.

Bugger!

Truck rollover along Mill Road at Kurrajong in the Blue Mountains

Cowboy Trucker going too fast – nuh.

[Source:  Photo by Top Notch Video, in article ‘Lucky Easter accident escape’, 20120412, by Cerise Burgess, journalist, Hawkesbury Gazette, ^http://www.hawkesburygazette.com.au/story/273890/lucky-easter-accident-escape/]

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The local Blue Mountains Council has rightly branded the RTA-come-RMS decision to remove these double centre lines as “absolutely insane”‘, “ridiculous” and “plain criminal” at its councillor meeting on 23rd April 23 2013.   Councillor Brendan Christie stated, “I just think it is completely ridiculous that six bureaucrats from the RMS sat down for a nice lunch and this is all they could come up with.”

Blue Mountains Council’s delegated Local Traffic Committee:  Minutes of Meeting 20130326

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Two years ago in 2011, the Blue Mountains Council reported on a Road Safety Action Plan.    The report identified that:

<<the Blue Mountains has almost triple the amount of speed related crashes than the Sydney Region. Our rate of 33.73% is almost double that of the rate of NSW. This  makes reducing speeding on our roads a clear road safety priority for the Blue Mountains community.>>

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The report also identified trucks as a key issue:

<<The Blue Mountains has a significantly higher proportion of trucks  involved in crashes than the Sydney Region, Western Sydney or NSW.

Over a five year period, light trucks constituted 9.53% of crashes in the Blue Mountains. This can be compared with 7.85% in Sydney, 8.31% in Western Sydney and 8.67% in New South Wales as a whole. The Blue Mountains also experienced significant increases in crashes involving trucks over the last five years.>>

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>Read Plan (PDF, 450kb)

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Yet at the same time, the Blue Mountains Council is similarly embracing more trucks transiting through Blue Mountains by planning a new truck route through native bushland habitat  and over the headwaters of Fitzgerald Creek and carved through critically endangered Sydney Turpentine Ironbark Forest in protected Deanii Reserve.

Example of a Sydney Turpentine Ironbark Forest

[Source: ^http://www.georgesriver.org.au/Riverkeeper-Photo-Gallery.html]

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The Council has already spent $77,000 on a study to consider possible route options for a truck link road between Hawkesbury Road and the Great Western Highway at Valley Heights.     The preferred route necessitates massively increasing the road weight limit, creating a two-lane, three-span bridge 35 metres above Fitzgerald Creek with a total the project construction cost of $26 million, all to encourage more trucks through the Blue Mountains.

Borrowing the same mealy-mouthed spin as the RTA-come-RMS, the Council’s consultants try to justify the new road would “improve traffic flow and reduce delays.”  No doubt its environmental impact statement would be conjured up by darkside ecologists to pretend the road works and bridge works would cause minimal impact to endangered ecology.

The initial council study will go on public exhibition soon with a report back to council in August 2013.  We shall be ready to rip the EIS apart, or will it be watered down to another Review of Environmental Effects as per usual?

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[Source:  ‘Springwood link road plan’, 20130508, by Shane Desiatnik, journalist, Blue Mountains Gazette, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1486914/routes-named-for-springwood-link-road-plan/]

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Truck rollover  in the Blue Mountains April, 2005

RTA-come-RMS is giving tacit approval for truckers to use excessive speed and ignore common safety measures.

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The RTA-come-RMS is the handmaiden to the truck industry and has allowed Hawkesbury Highway to become a trucking cowboy corridor.

The Bells Line of Road is just a bad:

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Somewhere in the Blue Mountains there is a truck collision or rollover a week.  The trucking menace is out of control and these are the bureaucrats responsible – New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell and his Roads Minister Duncan Gay.

Premier Barry O’Farrell (left) and Roads Minister Duncan Gay

Handmaidens of Trucking

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Local residents and ordinary users of the Hawkesbury Road are intimidated by these trucking cowboys speeding, hogging the road and tailgating like their on a speedway circuit.

Blackheath, Blue Mountains, already a statistical victim

Betty Dowdell of Blackheath, 16 Dec 2008, rest in peace

Your memory is not lost.

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Drivers on the bends of Hawkesbury Road have raised concerns about the serious risks of heavy vehicles crossing to the wrong side of the road as they negotiate the narrow corners. The Roads and Maritime Service removed the centre lines on the bends late last year which residents say has only increased the problem.

Trucker Wet Dreaming

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With four schools on the 10km road, driver safety is paramount both on the Winmalee stretch and also for those people driving down from the Mountains via the bends.  According to local politicians, the solution would be for a proper review of the road by the RTA-come-RMS, with a view to enforcing the road rules, including a return to the centre lane markings on the bends and looking at other engineering options.

But many local residents have had enough and are demanding a complete ban trucks from driving on Hawkesbury Road which would mean it would no longer be gazetted as a State Route.

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Barry, unhitch from the greedy Trucking Lobby

Support the safety concerns of Residents

No Articulated Trucks on Hawkesbury Road

No Trucking Shortcuts!

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[Source:  ‘Hawkesbury Road residents driven round the bend’, 20130424, by Damien Madigan, editor, The Blue Mountains Gazette, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1454002/hawkesbury-road-residents-driven-round-the-bend/]

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Kredies Trucking speeding down Victoria Pass, 5th December 2011

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<<A truck driver has been airlifted to hospital with suspected spinal injuries, and a major cleanup operation has been undertaken following a truck overturning on Mount Victoria Pass this afternoon (5 December 2011).

Emergency Services were called to the bottom of Mount Victoria Pass (Great Western Highway) just after 2:30pm today following reports an eastbound semi-trailer carrying scrap metal had rolled onto the concrete divider, leaving the driver trapped in the cabin.

Several Fire and Rescue NSW crews, Police Rescue, an Ambulance and a rescue helicopter responded to the scene. Rescue crews freed the driver about 4:45pm before he was airlifted to hospital suffering suspected spinal injuries.

The Great Western Highway has been closed for several hours while a clean up and salvage operation is underway with debris scattered across the roadway. The RTA has advised traffic is being diverted into the Darling Causeway with eastbound motorists being advised to use Chifley Road (Mort St) and the Darling Causeway as an alternative route.>>

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[Source:  ‘Truck Overturns at Mount Victoria’, 20111205, by NSW Incident Alerts, ^http://news.nswincidents.com/2011/12/05/traffic/persons-trapped/truck-overturns-mount-victoria/]

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Speeding Truck Overturns down Mt Victoria Pass, 3rd August 2011

Two truckers dead

The pass has been there and steep for a long time – nothing new.

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<<Two men have been crushed to death inside the cabin of a truck in the Blue Mountains today.   Police said the truck rolled and crashed into a barrier on the Great Western Highway, near the top of Victoria Pass, just after 10am.  The two men were found dead inside the cabin.   Their ages are unknown.   One eastbound lane of the highway is expected to be closed for some time while police investigate.>>

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[Source:  ‘Two killed in Blue Mountains truck crash’, 20110803, by Georgina Robinson, Sydney Morning Herald, ^http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/two-killed-in-blue-mountains-truck-crash-20110803-1iaqu.html]

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  It’s like the approach to Bagdad after Allied Forces’ Battle of Bagdad in 2003

[Source:  ‘F3 accident outpost clears way for network of depots’, 20111027, Sydney Morning Herald,

^http://smh.drive.com.au/roads-and-traffic/f3-accident-outpost-clears-way-for-network-of-depots-20111026-1mk7i.html]

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Footnote

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Again, we didn’t have to wait long to learn about yet another dangerous trucking cowboy in New South Wales.

In Sydney’s outer north this morning, a truck side-swiped a school bus and didn’t stop.

The small school bus was travelling along Bay Road at 9 am at Berrilee, when the bus driver was forced to swerve to avoid a head-on collision with the truck over the centre lines.

In avoiding the collision, the bus driver scraped along a rockface alongside the left hand side of the narrow section of Bay Road.   Four bus windows were smashed, and seven children on the bus suffered minor cuts from the smashed glass.  Two of them were taken to hospital.  The truck driver drove on (another hit and run) following the incident and yet police decided not to contemplate pursuing criminal charges.

Unbelievably the police are sight unseen self-excusing the trucker for ‘perhaps’ not realising the damage, because of some fabricated personal presumption that the truck was too big for the driver to notice.   “We don’t think he even realised something had gone wrong” the police spokesman said.

Was this comment correctly reported by the media?   If so, how does the police spokesman know?  Does it take a child to die for these police to treat seriously the near fatality of children on a supposedly safe school bus?

If so, these police should state this presumption to the faces of the children’s parents and see what response they get for excusing dangerous trucking behaviour endangering the lives of their children.

If so, then these police are ignorant of what could have happened, of the likely trauma experienced by both bus driver and the children who will never forget this incident that could have ended their lives.  These police seem to nonchalantly care nothing for road safety or for proactive policing.

‘She’ll be right reckless trucking‘  is unacceptable and here we record yet another trucking cowboy excused by police, until next time when an innocent road user is killed.

Not good enough!

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[Sources:  ‘Children injured in school bus crash at Berrilee in Sydney’, 20130529,  ABC News, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-29/three-children-injured-in-school-bus-crash/4719814?&section=news; and   ‘Sydney school bus crash injures children, 20130529, by AAP, ^http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/children-hurt-in-sydney-bus-crash/story-e6frfku9-1226652814870]

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2005:  Another B-Double truck slammed into the rear of a school bus while speeding in fog at 8:30 am (school transit time) in country Victoria. About 20 primary school children were lucky not be killed as the back of a school bus was ripped off in the collision near Ballarat.

[Source:  Photo by Craig Sillitoe, in article: ‘Bus crash students lucky to be alive’, 20050513, by Adam Morton, The Age, Victoria,

^http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Bus-crash-students-lucky-to-be-alive/2005/05/13/1115843345721.html]

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 Sad Sight:    Blue Mountains resident Aanya Mary

devastated by the senseless slaughter of Bullaburra’s Angophora

Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

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But to road engineers with Sydney’s RTA-come-RMS:

“..it was just the easy and efficient option”

..in order that more B-Doubles get line-of-sight through Bullaburra as they nudge 90kph to keep their job

[Source:  ‘Centuries-old tree makes way for highway upgrade’, 20130410, by Shane Desiatnik, Blue Mountains Gazette, p.13,

^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1419083/bullaburra-tree-makes-way-for-highway-widening/]

‘You don’t know what you’ve got

till it’s gone’

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Two generations after the 1960s grassroots protests against corporate environmental destruction and corrupted government bullying justification of ‘progress’, nothing has changed.

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Public display of Government slaughter of local heritage

“Let this be a lesson that Sydney rules over you.”

(But Bullaburra is not 1940’s Poland; we are not Sydney)

[Photo by Editor, 20130406, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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They Took All the Trees

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They took all the trees, put ‘em in a tree museum” (Joni Mitchell, 1970), yet forty years hence we’re still killing 300 year old native trees for a ‘paved paradise.’

Back in September 2008, a communiqué released by the RTA-come-RMS confirmed that this heritage listed red gum (photo) alongside the highway at Bullaburra was to be killed to widen the highway.  It didn’t give a reason to the community, but in its Review of Environmental Effectsjustified the tree’s demise by requiring line of sight for more trucks so they can hurtle through Bullaburra at a new increased speed of 80kph, but nudging 90.

Great Western Highway paved paradise

[Photo by Editor, 20110115, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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The implication was to not just widen the existing highway and make it safer, but to carve a trucking expressway through as though no Bullaburra community existed; just like they did to neighbouring Lawson and Wentworth Falls, and the other now divided highway towns and villages along the Great Western Highway.  And the lessons from the even wider and faster M4 motorway down the hill is that the outcomes have not made the journey safer.  Statistically, faster and bugger trucks have made the M4 motorway and the already widened sections of the Great Western Highway, even more dangerous.

Killing Bullaburra’s Tree was wrong like an invading army shooting surrendering locals because it is inconvenient to imprison them.  To the RTA-come-RMS, decimating local amenity is but collateral damage.   Any wonder propaganda pamphlets were not dropped over the village in the weeks leading up to the carnage like the US did in the Vietnam War.

Widening the highway is the wrong encouragement for an efficient NSW freight system and won’t address road safety.  The widening is destroying local heritage and community values. It is politically short-sighted on all counts.

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Protest 6 years ago in October 2007 to save this healthy heritage tree

A tree that predated colonial Australia of 1788

An expendable victim of an ambivalent Blue Mountains Council’s

‘Significant Tree Register’ of community deceit.

[Photo by Editor, 20071028, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Blue Mountains Significant Tree Register – deceitful faux conservation

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Bullaburra’s Angophora was a rare symbolic remnant of the dominant Angophora Forest habitat that once flourished in the Bullaburra area and which has earned listing on council’s Register of Significant Trees.

Consultation with a local (Level 5) arborist with expertise in Angophoras, had confirmed the tree an Angophora costata and “between 200 and 300 years old and that if given the chance will survive between 400 and 600 years.”  So it predated Bullaburra (1924) and predated the colonisation of Australia (1788).

Why did  local Blue Mountains Council turn its back on its own heritage register and on Mountains heritage.  Had traditional owners been consulted?

Blue Mountains Council’s  Significant Trees were in 1988 registered under Development Control Plan 9 (DCP9): the purpose of which was to identify and protect those trees listed on the Register; promote greater public awareness of the existence of the Register, and the individual items listed; ensure existing and, importantly, prospective land owners, are made aware of the Significant Trees which may be located on their property; and ensure correct on-going care and maintenance of those trees listed, through the recommendations included with the significant tree register.

DCP 9 was formally adopted in 21 June 1988 and since then had effected no legal weight or meaning.   The tens of thousands spent on the plan then and since has been a financial misappropriation.

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Bullaburra’s Angophora

circa 1700 – 1st April 2013

A familar Blue Mountains icon that withstood ^Robber Baron Progress  for 300+ years

Council ratified to the people in writing that it was a protected ‘Significant Tree‘

Until Bob Debus and the RTA-come-RMS expressway arrogance imposed its Sydney industrialist will.

[Photo by Editor, 20130406, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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The then Federal Member for Macquarie (Blue Mountains), Bob Debus MP, openly supported and encouraged the RTA-come-RMS in its highway widening through Blue Mountains communities.

Debus had publicly praised the RTA for “doing exemplary work in consultation with…local communities.”  (Blue Mountains Gazette 20081126).

Yet this Editor, who for the past seven years has observed and participated in numerous RTA-come-RMS community consultation workshops dealing with the Trucking Expressway mission along the Great Western Highway, has found all ‘community consultation’ to be but a recurring deceitful farce designed purely for public relations and so that on paper, community consultation was legally ‘seen to be done’.

The Juggernaut Cake was baked, and the community herded and selected to choose the colour of the icing.  So thanks for coming dumb peasants!

Photo by Editor, 20130406, Photo © ^Creative Commons

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The sad thing is that we see each community hoodwinked one by one, losing rights and amenity to an expanding Sydney conurbation of our Mountains.  How many minutes will widening cut through the Mountains only to be added back in Sydney congestion and the chronic truck queues at Port Botany?   If widening claims to address highway safety why does the six-lane M4 have the highest accident rate in the State?

Debus has publicly been the key driver of the highway widening and increased traffic policy prepared to splurge half a billion dollars to encourage more trucks on our roads and committing a teetering NSW Government already heading into deficit.  Debus’ myopic fixation with trucks has cast him as a reckless pariah against the Federal government’s promise of meeting Kyoto emission targets.  He and his babyboomer age group seem locked in a truck-centric mindset, one that is anti-rail like Premier Nick Greiner’s condemning of freight rail  (1988-92) and like US President Eisenhower’s industrial superhighway ruination of Northern America back in the 1950s.

[Source:  ‘They took all the trees’, 20081203, letter in the Blue Mountains Gazette local newspaper, in print]

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They took all the trees, put ‘em in a tree museum..

by Canadian singer, composer and lyricist Joni Mitchell from her classic hit ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ from her album ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ released in April 1970.

Joni Mitchell’s single cover
Her original recording was this single, but then released later on her album ‘Ladies of the Canyon’  (1970)

Yet forty three years hence dear lady and what have we learnt from your sad message about the bulldozing of Nature?

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“Big Yellow Taxi” became a hit in Joni’s native Canada (#14) as well as Australia (#6) and the UK (#11).

Joni:   “I wrote ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart… this blight on paradise. That’s when I sat down and wrote the song.”

The song is known for its environmental concern – “They paved paradise to put up a parking lot” and “Hey farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now”.

Joni Mitchell in 1970

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The song line “They took all the trees, and put ’em in a tree museum…and charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em”  refers to Foster Botanical Garden in downtown Honolulu, which is a living museum of tropical plants, some rare and endangered.

A wedding in Foster Botanical Garden, Hawaii

[Source:  ^http://www.alohaislandweddings.com/foster_botanical_gardens.htm]

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These days, Honolulu’s Foster Botanical Garden has become home to hundreds of species of endangered Hawaiian and other exotic plants.  The garden’s mission is to plan, develop, curate, maintain and study documented collections of tropical plants in an aesthetic setting for the purposes of conservation, botany, horticulture, education, and recreation. While it is very important to teach people about the natural flora of Hawaii, it is a shame that they have to be kept in such a tree museum and are not able to be appreciated in their natural settings.

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Colonising destruction of Natural Hawaii

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Bullaburra’s Angophora was that roadside tree, always there, estimated to be between up to 200 and 300 years old, but took only a few hours to chop down to a stump on April Fools Day to clear the way for highway widening work in Bullaburra.

The decision to remove the tree listed on council’s Significant Tree Register was made back in 2009.  This is the coniving strategy of the RTA-come RMS employeing those with degrees in ‘Media Communications’ – this 21C black art of corporate propaganda.  Move over 20th C Used Car Salesmen,  Y-Gens in Media Communications are the new low-life to be avoided.

But the shock of seeing the 30-metre tall smooth-barked apple red gum being removed was too much for some local residents, who gathered beside it to take photos and quietly reflect.

Katoomba resident Aanya Mary said she was devastated by the loss of the tree and the public not being told when it was going to be removed.  She called the decision to chop it “the easy and efficient option” and questioned if other solutions were thoroughly considered.

“This tree would have seen generations of Gundungurra and Darug people rest under its boughs and no doubt [the explorers] Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth passed its gracious trunk.”

In a callous afterthought, the RTA-come-RMS has offered to use wood of the tree to create ukuleles and furniture.  Can Chopin’s funeral march be played on a Ukele?

Some callous bureaucrat in the RTA-come-RMS suggested using the Angophora wood to make stupid Ukeles

Not even into traditional Aboriginal instruments, weapons or tools. 

The minds at RMS Paramatta head office are urbane and bewildered.

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Yet others, more attached to the tree and aware of the behind the scenes political deceit, have suggested making council coffins for those who signed off on the Angophora’s demise.

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[Source:  ‘Bullaburra tree makes way for highway widening’, 20130410, by Shane Desiatnik, journalist, Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper, p.13,  ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1419083/bullaburra-tree-makes-way-for-highway-widening/]

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[Photo by Editor, 20130406, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Blue Mountains failure to preserve Natural History

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<<The sudden and surreptitious removal of the mature heritage-listed Eucalypt at Bullaburra last week was avoidable and a total failure of our ability to preserve our natural history.

That tree was the property of the Blue Mountains community just as much as the community hall at Bullaburra.

When it can be arranged for the highway widening to bypass the community hall, there is no reason it couldn’t be diverted around another significant  and far older landmark.

Not only did Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth pass close by this tree in 1813 but the following year the first road was built almost under its branches.  The year after, 1815, Lachlan Macquarie and his entourage passed by this tree as the first public users of the road through the Blue Mountains.  In the 1830s Charles Darwin also made the journey passed it.

Blue Mountains (..) Council has failed miserably to protect our natural history. It’s also obvious how totally toothless is the rhetoric around the Significant Tree Register.

The RTA-come-RMS suggestion to make use of the wood is an attempt to sidetrack and trivialises its destruction.  Who needs a symbol of the endurance of natural beauty when you can have ukeleles and matches?

Trees like this are the Blue Mountains community’s natural history – not the RTA-come-RMS’s.

The bottom line is there is no legislation to protect our natural history, and any clowns with clout can get their way.

Why doesn’t the Blue Mountains (..) Council stand up for us and for  the naturakl environment in matters like these?>>

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[Source:  ‘Heritage tree’ (discretionary label by BMG editor), 20130417, by P.D. Bonney, of Faulconbridge, letter to the editor, in Blue Mountains Gazette (local newspaper), page 4, print only]

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To passers-by this is just another log, like heritage ignored

and so unknowingly foresaken and lost forever.

[Photo by Editor, 20130406, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Ed:  But when Government comes intimidating the homes and amenity of these passers-by?  So loud the NYMBY’s plead for community support.

To reliable taxpayer-funded bureaucrats inside RTA-come-RMS, community NYMBYISM has become a strategic community vunerabilty so exploited to known consultant formalae.  But so unprepared are communities like the Blue Mountains for exploitation that they are prone to and succumb to industrial rape, village by village, and cleverly silenced by the consultants.

But once the Government’s omnipotent Juggenaut invasion arrives and the overwhelming household helplessness, locals try selling up in vain and a few commit quiet, unreported suicide.   It is ultimately then, that Government has come, seen and conquered its own taxpayers so that such issues shrink from mainstream media, are excluded from government statistics and so are relegated into invisiblity, the history cleansed and revised by the government consultants.

The trunk of a healthy 300+ year old Angophora lies beside the highway in Bullaburra

Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Government destruction of Bullaburra has begun.  Last Monday, April Fools Day 2013, they came and killed Bullaburra’s magificent Angophora to make way for a trucking expressway through the village.  But who are the fools who destroy our native heritage?

To many perhaps this is just another tree.  Some people value trees and ecology.  Others have deep value for wildlife and other animals, especially their pets.  Many people value where they live and grow very attached to where they live for reasons that can seem difficult for others to appreciate.  But it is the existence rights of species that humans ignore besides their own self-serving interests.  Male Baby Boomers remain the most extreme in their self-righteousness, and those in government prescribe utilitarian dictates over the rights of the few.

Elie Wiesel, novelist, political activist, and Humanities Professor at Boston University, has said that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.

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Witnessing an old friend being slaughtered

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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A native tree that once was part of an Angophora (Sydney Redgum) forest, existed way back when the three explorers Lawson, Wenthworth and Blaxland crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813.  They would have passed right past this tree.  Two years later road builder William Cox similarly would have laid his rough track, and in 1836 Major Mitchell upgrading the road too would have passed by this tree.  For nearly two centuries travellers have passed by this tree, most probably not even giving it a glance.   Now it is gone and the opportunity to respect and appreciate this remnant of natural heritage has gone with it.

 

We tried to save you

Campaign to Save Bullaburra’s 300 year old Angophora back in 2008

(Blue Mountains Gazette, 20081203)

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Last January, spiteful people set fire to two Hermmansburg ghost gums made famous in Albert Namatjira’s landscape paintings.  In 2006, Barcaldine’s famous ghost gum, ‘the tree of knowledge’ was poisoned.  Just last week an old gum tree in the Rylstone public school was poisoned.  Human hate for native trees has pervaded Australian colonising society since Cook landed at Camp Cove and chopped down trees for firewood.

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Tree of Knowledge, Barcaldine, Queensland

As it used to be, before it was poisioned.

[Source: Queensland Historical Atlas, 1991,

^http://www.qhatlas.com.au/photograph/tree-knowledge-barcaldine-1991]

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A local arborist with expertise in native trees of the Blue Mountains including Angophoras, estimated in 2007 that the Bullaburra Angophora to have been over 300 years old.  It was still healthy and still growing as confirmed by the solid core of the severed trunk.

Now it lies like a dead harpooned whale like roadkill beside the highway, where it has stood all those decades.

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A dendrochronology of more than 300 annual growth rings.

The tree was healthy to the core.  It was not rotting. It was not diseased.

It was just in the way of someone’s trucking interpretation of ‘progress’.

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Significant Tree #29

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This Angophora was recognised as a ‘Significant Tree‘ on the local Blue Mountains Council’s Significant Tree Register back on 17th July 1985 and formally adopted on 21st June 1988, at the time of Australia’s Bicentennary.

No opposition against killing the tree was communicated by the Blue Mountains Council to the RTA-come-RMS.  Indeed, this is one of many such ‘significant trees’ that have been killed for development convenience in recent years. Clearly, the Blue Mountains Council’s Significant Tree Register has become disingenuous and lying greenwash.

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Bullaburra’s Angophora, in memoriam

Registered Significant Tree #: 29
Botanical Name: Angophora costata  (Smooth Barked Apple, Red Gum)
Location: Great Western Highway Bullaburra, Opp. Lot 173, DP13407

[Photo by Editor, 20071028, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Trucking Expressway

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The death of the Angophora is the begining of the end of Bullaburra.  The highway village is set to become a siding for four-laned trucking expressway so that B-double trucks can rumble 24/7 through Blue Mountains towns and villages, nudging 90kph on cruise control.

Bigger Trucks demanding bigger roads

[Photo by Editor, 20090531, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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The rural amenity of this highway village is to be lobotomised into a mono-design urban landscape taking on the same monotonous blandness as any other expressway in the country. The government euphemises this as:

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“to achieve greater consistency in the design of the Blue Mountains area to achieve a simple and unified design of the highway and its elements.”

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The fundamental basis for the government’s conversion of this regional highway into a national trucking expressway route is simply “to improve travel times” for trucks, so that more and larger trucks are encouraged to use the route.

The Bullaburrra section is to cost taxpayers $80 million and will see 3.6 hectares of native bushland destroyed on the basis that the vegetation “is already dissected and fragmented“.  So it seems that moral relativism allows for wedge development just like a little bit of corruption doesn’t hurt anyone.

But as if the twisted morality isn’t bad enough.  It is the greenwashing that really twists the knife in.  The RTA-come-RMS in its Review of Environmental Effects maintains that the expressway development aims:

“to protect the natural systems and ecology of the corridor”

..

[Source:  ‘The Great Western Highway Upgrade – Bullaburra East, Review of Environmental Effects’, Vol.2, July 2009, Roads and Traffic Authority, New South Wales Government, p.2.]

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However, the expressway development will simply result in the heart of rural Bullaburra being ripped out and the amenity reduced to a trucking siding adopting a benale concrete landscape akin to the bland urban character of an upper Blaxland, and mirroring what has happened to nearby lobotomised Lawson.

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“It’s just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can’t leave behind something as primitive as government sponsored execution.”

~ Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, when introducing a bill that would end the death penalty on the Federal level.

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Progress of Hate

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Under Australia’s Federal Auslink Policy the national freight thinking is road-centric and all about replacing real trains with road trains.  Behind this trucking expressway scheme is a powerful and influential trucking lobby group who donate generously to the political parties that control the New South Wales Government, and various politicians including retired Blue Mountains MP Bob Debus, who has long been a driver of this trucking expressway.

The New South Wales Government department behind this scheme is the RTA-come-RMS (Roads and Maritime Services).  In 2007, the then General Manager – Environmental Branch, Ms Erica Adamson, claimed that to retain the Angophora consequential loss of tree roots and pruning would instigate the decline of the tree.  “For road construction and safety reasons the tree will have to be removed…to maintain sight lines (for speeding trucks).”

“It’s called progress” they say.  For the Blue Mountains it is being inflicted at any cost – economic, social, environmental.

The idea of ‘progress‘ is an economic one that was borne out of Western 18th Century hard-nosed Industrial Revolution and perhaps extending back to the 16th Century Enlightenment of Europe and perhaps even back to when the Iron Age triumphed so aggressively and effectively over the Bronze Age.

Perhaps progress remains subjective only with the progressor who doggedly in his pursuit rough shods over others in the process.  Perhaps the idea of progress is a myth.  Is the human condition better off as a result?  Are we advancing as a society by rough shodding over others and over what is left of Ecology and Nature?   The philosophy of ‘^Deep Ecology‘ posits otherwise.

Progress of Hate

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.  If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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Related reading on this website:

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[1]   >Threats from Road Making – articles

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[2]   >Bushphobia – a case of deluded convenience

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The pergola entrance to the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre

..using Old Growth ‘Tasmanian Oak’?

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^Old Growth?

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The new Blue Mountains Cultural Centre opened at 30 Parke Street, Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney on Saturday 17th November 2012.

The Blue Mountains Cultural Centre is a very large complex for the town of Katoomba and the sparsely populated region.

It features:

• an art gallery
• state-of-the-art library
• an extensive scenic viewing platform towards the Jamison Valley (and World Heritage wilderness beyond)
• seminar room
• multi-purpose workshop
• coffee shop
• gift shop
• meeting rooms
• an interpretative centre for the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

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It is a “purpose built cultural precinct; a place that simultaneously celebrates our unique sense of place, and allows us to explore what it means to live here, and share those understandings with those who visit our home.”

[Source:  ‘Grand Opening – Blue Mountains Cultural Centre’, (special feature), Blue Mountains Gazette, 20121114, p.2]

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The Jamison Valley Wilderness

Contains natural stands of giant old growth Turpentines (Syncarpia glomulifera)

and old growth Mountain Blue Gums (Eucalyptus deanei)

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Planning for the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre commenced way back in 1998 and there was much local community consultation in the planning process including with local Aboriginal people.

The building was commissioned by the local Blue Mountains Council and funded mainly by the New South Wales Government by more than $6 million.  The Cultural Centre was designed by architects Hassell & Scott Carver Architects and built by Richard Crookes Constructions.

The Cultural Centre, now built, is positioned on the top (roof) level of a building which has, in the main, been constructed for a new relocated Coles supermarket and shopping arcade.

Blue Mountains Cultural Centre entrance

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While the now operational purposes of the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre promise to have considerable merit, there are two notable drawbacks associated with the recent construction of this building, which should not be forgotten to history.

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1.    The Entrance Pergola appears to be of  ‘Tasmanian Oak‘

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A ‘Tassie Oak’ comparison..

Tasmanian Oak in Tasmania

A new ten inch (wide) ‘Tasmanian Oak’ post inside Oatlands’ restored mill, Tasmania

It was probably from local Messmate/Stringybark (Eucalyptus obliqua), treated but not stained

(Photo by Editor, September 2009,  Photo Free in Public Domain)

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The name ‘Tasmanian Oak‘ was originally used by early European timber workers who believed the eucalypts showed the same strength as English Oak.  When sourced from Tasmania, the wood is called Tasmanian Oak.  When sourced from Victoria, the wood is called ‘Victorian Ash‘ or ‘Mountain Ash‘.

This uniquely Australian hardwood timber is light-coloured, ranging from straw to light reddish brown.  It continues to be used in the building trade for panelling, flooring, furniture, framing, doors, stairs, external structures, joinery, reconstituted board and even as pulp for paper.

As the tallest flowering plant in the world, Eucalyptus regnans grow up to 100 metres tall.  Whereas Eucalyptus delegatensis and Eucalyptus obliqua do not reach these heights; instead reaching about 70m with the tallest trees achieving 90 metres, which is no less considerable.

Read More about >Tasmanian Oak

[Source:  Tasmanian Government, ^http://www.tastimber.tas.gov.au/species/pdfs/A4_ESB_Tasoak.pdf]

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Nevertheless, all these species comprise timber logged from native old growth forests, not plantations.  Such forests are rare and fast disappearing due to excessive logging practices – their dependent ecosystems, flora and fauna included.

The Pygmy Possum (Genus Cercartetus)

Once prolific, but now threatened across the Blue Mountains heathland escarpment

due to misguided escarpment Government Arson labelled as ‘Hazard Reduction’

To the Rural Fire Service anything natural is phobically deemed to be a ‘hazard’.

[Source: ^http://www.warra.com/warra/research_projects/research_project_WRA116.html]

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So logging and use of this native old growth timber is unsustainable, despite Australian timber industry certification claims, which are proven dubious.

Tasmanian Oak/Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans)

Its original distribution mainly from Tasmania

To a lesser extent variants come from the high rainfall areas of East Gippsland, Dandenong Ranges to Black Spur Range and the Otway Ranges.

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A likely justification for the use of Tasmanian Oak for the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre’s entrance pergola is that Tasmanian Oak being a strong hardwood timber is load-bearing with few knots.  While steel or another composite material could have been used, it is probable that the Tasmanian Oak was inadertently chosen for its aesthetic appeal, ignoring sustainability criteria.

Tasmanian Oak, like many Australian native hardwood timbers, is durable, termite and borer resistant, and fire resistant which makes its suitable for such an external structure, plus it is readily available and so a comparatively affordable building material.  The timber has few knots because it is sourced from old growth trees, perhaps aged over one hundred years, and so the trunk is very tall and straight between the tree’s base and the branch canopy.

The Blue Mountains are dominated by Eucalypt forests, which contain flammable natural eucalyptus oil. Although the Cultural Centre is wholly within the township of Katoomba some distance from native forests, compliance with the Building Code of Australia would have mandated the building material options for the pergola, including the requirement that the external structure be of fire resistant material.  Since the Cultural Centre is situated within the least risk buffer zone of a designated Bushfire Prone Area, the choice of building material would also have would been mandated under the Australian Standard AS 3959 ‘Construction of Buildings in Bushfire Prone Areas’ and with local council’s Blue Mountains Local Environment Plan 2005 – Regulation 86 : ‘Bush fire constructions standards’.

Under AS 3959, the construction of new buildings, the use of timber as an extrenal building material is permitted in the lower risk levels provided the timber species must comply with minimum crierian for Fire Retardant Treated Timber.   The following timber species have been tested and found to meet the required parameters without having to be subjected to fire retardant treatment:

• Blackbutt
• Merbau
• Red Ironbark
• River Red Gum
• Silvertop Ash
• Spotted Gum
• Turpentine

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[Source:  The Australian Timber Database, ^http://www.timber.net.au/index.php/timber-in-bushfire-prone-areas.html]

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The above hardwoods are all threatened species and are disappearing fast; all Australian bar Merbau which is being depleted from old growth Indonesian rainforests.

The timber used in the Cultural Centre’s timber pergola is arguably of Tasmanian Oak, which is known variously by the common names Mountain Ash, Victorian Ash, Swamp Gum, or Stringy Gum.

It is a species of Eucalyptus native to southeastern Australia, in Tasmania and Victoria. Historically, it has been known to attain heights over 100 metres (330 ft) and is one of the tallest tree species in the world.  In native forests, the two species (Mountain Ash & Alpine Ash) that are combined to produce Victorian Ash are known to be two of the world’s largest trees, occasionally growing to over 100m in height.

Yet all these Australian native hardwood timbers are increasingly becoming scarcer as they are logged for such fire-resistant application.   

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The Building Standard for Fire Retardant Treated Timber is driving deforestation of Australian Old Growth Forests.

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These old growth timbers are the dominant canaopy species for wet eucalypt forests restricted to cool, deep soiled, mostly mountainous areas to 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) altitude with high rainfall of over 1,200 millimetres (47 in) per year. The trees grow very quickly, at more than a metre a year, and can reach 65 metres (213 ft) in 50 years, with an average life-span of 400 years.

Eucalyptus regnans is the tallest of all flowering plants, and possibly the tallest of all plants, although no living specimens can make that claim.The tallest measured living specimen, named Centurion, stands 101 metres tall in Tasmania.

Before the discovery of Centurion, the tallest known specimen was Icarus Dream, which was rediscovered in Tasmania in January, 2005 and is 97 metres (318 ft) high. It was first measured by surveyors at 98.8 metres (324 ft) in 1962 but the documentation had been lost.  Sixteen living trees in Tasmania have been reliably measured in excess of 90 metres (300 ft).

Historically, the tallest individual is claimed to be the Ferguson Tree, at 132.6 metres (435 ft), found in the Watts River region of Victoria in 1871 or 1872.

Eucalyptus regnans

(marketed as ‘Tasmanian Oak’)

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The fallen logs continue supporting a rich variety of life for centuries more on the forest floor.   These restricted mountain ash forests provide vital yet shrinking habitat for many of Australia’s threatened species of fauna.

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2.  Construction created considerable land fill

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It was observed throughout the construction phase of the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, that daily large skips of builders waste from the site were loaded alongside in Parke Street.

These commercial skips were consistently yellow in colour and the same size – about six meters long and two meters wide (12 cubic metre capacity).  Typically there were two such skips positioned and loaded with builders’ waste from the construction site each weekday.  This was observed over the course of a year up until August 2012.  They were loaded by bobcat-style machinery with all types of mixed rubbish – concrete, unwanted insulation, scrap metal, rubble, empty cans, you name it.  There was no separation of waste observed for recycling.  It would all have been trucked to landfill – possibly to either the nearby Katoomba or Blaxland waste management facilities, or else off-Mountain somewhere.

Commercial skip used to cart away builders’ waste from the construction site

(Approximate scale)

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A conservative estimate of the land fill volume generated from the Cultural Centre construction site, which also included the Coles shopping complex, over the course of the year would be 12 cubic metres x 2 skips x 5 days x 42 weeks (generously allowing for 10 non work weeks out of 52) =  over 5,000 cubic metres of land fill!

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Cultural Centre’s Green Credentials

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The above two environmental impacts are far from encouraging for this high profile community-serving 21st Century building, and within a World Heritage Area to boot.

The interpretative concept is one that is meant to inspire locals and visitors alike.  So these two impacts are concerning and perhaps need to be clarified in the public literature produced by the Blue Mountains Council which commissioned the Cultural Centre.

The public impression promoted by the Blue Mountains Council is that the Cultural Centre is a eco-friendly building deserving praise.

<<It has free wi-fi and features a range of green initiatives including double-glazed windows, solar panels, rainwater harvesting, and low-energy LED lights in the gallery.>>

[Source:  ‘Grand Opening – Blue Mountains Cultural Centre’, (special feature), Blue Mountains Gazette, 20121114, p.3]

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<<The Blue Mountains Cultural Centre has a range of green (building) features that ensure that its impacts on the World Heritage environment is kept to a minimum.

Some of the features include:

• A fully insulated roof, double-brick air cavity walls and double-glazed windows assist to insulate the building.
• Extensive rainwater collection, harvested by the Centre and the Carrington Hotel and stored onsite, in an underground 50,000 litre tank
• On the roof there are 54, 10kW solar panels to reduce the Centre’s reliance on traditional energy sources.

• The ‘green roof’ treats a portion of the Cultural Centre’s water run-off (with the aid of a UV disinfection system) that is then used for irrigation and toilet flushing.
• The Centre is lit with a combination of efficient, long-life lighting sources and lighting zoning to allow separate switching and dimming of areas adjacent to windows.
• The City Art Gallery uses LED lighting technology to significantly reduce power consumption.
• The building orientation itself is designed to provide protection to the open courtyard areas from the prevailing westerly winds and exposure to northern sunlight.

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With these initiatives in place, the Cultural Centre aims to reduce water consumption by 5.5 million litres each year and reduce energy usage of 1.8 million kWh/year — enough energy to power 246 homes in the region.>>

[Source:  Blue Mountains Cultural Centre website, ^http://bluemountainsculturalcentre.com.au/about-us/history/environmental-design-aspects/]

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A core part of the Blue Mountains Council’s 25 Year Vision for the Blue Mountains region focussed on ‘Looking After the Environment‘:

<<We value our surrounding bushland and the World Heritage National Park.

Recognising that the Blue Mountains natural environment is dynamic and changing, we look after and enjoy the healthy creeks and waterways, diverse flora and fauna and clean air.

 

Living in harmony with the environment, we care for the ecosystems and habitats that support life in the bush and in our backyards.

 

We conserve energy and the natural resources we use and reduce environmental impacts by living sustainably.>>

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[Source: ‘Towards a More Sustainable Blue Mountains – A 25 Year Vision for the City, Blue Mountains Council ,2000-2025, ^http://www.sustainablebluemountains.net.au/our-city-vision/city-vision-publications/]

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Ed:  Such are noble goals however outsourced, but if they are dismissed just as  ^’Greenwashing’  :the community message quicky becomes recognised as hollow spin and then any hard earned credibility risks being quickly lost.

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