…somewhere backing Australia’s World Heritage ecological values…
The Habitat Advocate has sadly learned about a governmental threat to evict this much loved and valued local community volunteer-run nursery business in Katoomba in the Australian Blue Mountains region, successfully operating onsite since 1999.
This author learned about this from off the grapevine, else we should have otherwise learned about this news development from reading our local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper. Yet, that valued weekly newspaper informing locals about Blue Mountains goings-on has been denied us for some years. The paper has not been distributed to our Katoomba Falls Creek residential precinct since long before COVID – like for the past 5 years or so!
An unviable newspaper business model for these times? One notes that the newspaper’s distribution statistics have been removed from this newspaper’s print masthead for some time (Read a harbinger of the Gazette’s pending closure)
Moving on… a few weeks back a Blue Mountains friend informed us about this news of the nursery, then kindly dropped around his copy of the Gazette issue dated Wednesday 15th January 2025.
This is the front page article with the legendary Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service (‘Wildplant Rescue’) on the front page we read:
‘Eviction day looms for Wildplant Rescue nursery’
15th January 2025, by Jennie Curtin, BMG journalist)
[SOURCE: Blue Mountains Gazette (BMG) newspaper, Page 1, Wednesday 15th January 2015. Photo by Jennie Curtin]
‘Time is running out for the Wildplant Rescue nursery at Katoomba.
The volunteers have been told they have until the end of April to find a new home, after the owner, the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), cited maintenance costs and fire safety issues. (Author: aka the landlord’s wanton neglect of this bushland site for decades, and a rubbish slack ulterior motive excuse to flog off the site for profit to a developer for housing – truth telling!)
The department wants to sell the site, which used to be adjoined to the now-closed and re-purposed Clairvaux Children’s Home adjacent and which is in need of repair, restoration and safety features.
The NSW Government department’s old notorious ‘Clairvaux Childrens Home’ (1969-1990) situated at adjacent 41 Violet Street Katoomba. It became a ‘home of horrors’ for violated young boys. It was eventually shut down in criminal disgrace. Since the 1990s it has been ‘occupied’ by the Katoomba Christian Convention (KCC). God knows why – It’s a place of Evil. [Recent photo by author]
The entire Clairvaux Community Services site has long been neglected by the NSW Government for decades. Dozens of abandoned and vandalised buildings by ACRC snuggled in nativve bushland, now warrant demolition. They contain asbestos interior fabrication wall lining from the 1970s.
Adjacent to Wildplant Rescue’s pro-bono tenancy is this other unrelated tenant of DCJ’s Calirvaux Community Centre site. The photos shows one of dozens of outbuildings situated on the DCJ’s Clairvaux Community Services’ 8 hectare bush site in outer Katoomba – but long vacated, (evicted by DJC?) so since abandoned, left derelict and since vandalised. [Recent photo by author]
The cost of setting up elsewhere is beyond the means of the volunteer-run nursery, which rescues local native species from building sites and propagates them as well as other rare and difficult natives. It sells the plants to home gardeners as well as council, landscapers and Bushcare organisations, providing the income to keep going.
The volunteers are desperately hoping the department changes its mind and gives them a permanent lease on their small section of the site. The only alternative, said president Verity Harris, is to find a benefactor with deep pockets. “If there’s a good millionaire out there with a plot of land …” she said hopefully.
The group had talks with council about a possible site during the planning of the old Katoomba golf course precinct. But a spokeswoman for council said “a plant nursery is not a permissible use on this site under the current zoning, and an amendment to the LEP would be required to include this and other additional uses. That would be a lengthy process including making a submission to the state government and further public consultation.”
The DCJ said it recognised the important service the nursery provides in protecting threatened species but a land condition audit of the site in 2020 found that it was not fit for purpose and was not safe for long-term use because of its fire zone.
DCJ:
“Tenants of the site were notified of the need to vacate the site in 2021 and since then almost all have relocated. DCJ has not provided formal notification to the nursery to leave the site whilst we continue to assist them to find a new home.”
The nursery has operated at the site since 1998. Although it receives no funding, Ms Harris acknowledged that DCJ did not charge them for rent or for water and electricity.
One of the difficulties with an unknown future is that no forward decisions can be made. The group recently spent money on new benches for the plants but don’t want to install them in case they have to take them down. There is also a greenhouse which is lying unassembled for the same reason. “The uncertainty is really quite crippling,” Ms Harris said. Volunteer Frances Scarano said the group only propagates native plants from the Mountains to ensure genetic purity. “We extend the diversity” of plants grown in Mountains gardens as well as giving wildlife more food and shelter sources,” she said.’
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service – a portion of its professional Native Plant Nursery, juxtaposed to native habitat surrounding the site. An ideal position. [Recent photo by author]
There’s a local Blue Mountains community story in this.
The above news item conveys more than a harbinger of pending closure; rather it tells publicly (about time, frankly) of an existential threat to the future of the Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service (Wildplant Rescue) not just from its current site, but because it has nowhere else to go, from its very existence – termination of the whole not-for profit business, of its local volunteers and of its support base membership – the lot facing oblivion!
[NOTE: An “existential threat” refers to a danger that could lead to the complete destruction or a permanent and severe degradation of something. It’s a threat to the very being or future potential of something – aka Wildplant Rescue in this case.]
Wildplant Rescue continues to be a long-established successful not-for-profit local business very popular in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of Australia and founded and run by its volunteers, and with a strong long-standing membership backing.
We reckon this eviction threat to Katoomba’s much loved native nursery is yet another example of the distant NSW Government’s bureaucratic insular mindset and its ongoing anti-social culture of destroying local small businesses for the greed of selling off public land (native bushland) that it controls on a entrusted custodial basis on behalf of the community. This eviction threat is bureaucracy selfishly seeking to profit from more bushland asset sales for inevitable housing development. It is not good government.
This closure threat to this unique endemic native plant nursery is unnecessary, unfair, contrary to the departmental landlord (DCJ’s) community focuses, and down right politically motivated by the incumbent NSW Minns Government bureaucracy and his politicians. The NSW Government’s eviction threat is wrong and unjustifiable. It’s threatened eviction of Wildplant Rescue is for non-genuine grounds. Yet hypocritically, the incumbent NSW Minns Labor Government publicly has stated:
“Landlords could be fined for making up a “non-genuine reason” for punting a tenant under NSW laws to scrap no-grounds evictions”.
This has been an election policy of Labor Chriss Minns before the NSW state election on 25th March 2023. Subsequently, as Premier, Minns is overseeing his own government department, DCJ as landlord using non-genuine reasons for punting Wildplant Rescue as tenant at the Clairvaux Community Centre site.
DCJ’s Eviction Threat Facts:
(from our research)
Wildplant Rescue has been an active nursery business tenant at the site since 1998, so for a continuous 27 years;
DCJ has/does not charge(d) Wildplant Rescue for rent, for water nor electricity. Yet this has been a mutual agreement between landlord DCJ and tenant – since DCJ has from the outset acknowledged that Wildplant Rescue is a local not-for-profit organisation providing a highly valued community service – rescuing Blue Mountains native plants from development sites, propagation local native plants (including threatened species) and participating in key roles in the local Blue Mountains bush regeneration industry. Further, DCJ has over the years seconded the community support of Wildplant Rescue to ’employ’ youth offenders under undergoing criminal rehabilitation within the community, and WildPlant has obliged (although its petty cash box went missing a few times – subsequent measures are that no cash it kept on premises such that so little of it ever was);
DCJ for decades has chosen not to maintain its Clairvaux site in outer Katoomba. It is this systemic bureaucratic failure by DCJ which underlies how now the dilapidated state of the buildings across its owned Clairvaux property site in outer Katoomba has been continually neglected and allowed to deteriorate by DCJ. (See our recent ACRC photo gallery below);
That DCJ’s outsourced site audit in 2020 reported that many buildings were not fit for purpose, remains wholly the responsibility of the DCJ as ongoing landlord for its systemic neglect of the buildings across the site. It is no way any fault of the long standing good tenant, Wildplant Rescue;
The site is dominated by bushland, so it is in a bushfire zone, but then this is an ideal site for a native plant nursery – juxtaposed next to native bushland. It is not an appropriate site for social housing, which would necessitate many hectares of intact native bushland to be first bulldozed, and considerable environmental harm and cost to DCJ;
DCJ’s eviction reasons to Wildplant Rescue are on spurious, non-genuine and unreasonable grounds. So much for Labor Chris Minns’ no grounds eviction ban election promise.
On 24 October 2024 the NSW Parliament passed the (NSW) Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill 2024. The legislation is now the (NSW) Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2024. Relevant to Wildplant Rescue’s tenancy eviction threat, despite it being a business tenancy and not a residential tenancy, we raise pertinent sections of this new (NSW) Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2024. Why should not the same principles apply to a not-for-profit tenant? That analytical article is pending on this website. We thank readers for their patience. We believe that no other website of journalist is covering this details issue as we are. We seek the truth in such topics always.
Aboriginal Cultural and Resource Centre derelict – photo gallery:
And who seriously, would turn on the ACRC’s private fire hydrant and leave it running for weeks…months to waste precious drinking water?
We took a video of this upon our visit to the DCJ’s Clairvaux Community Centre site on Sunday 30th March 2025.
DCJ’s eviction threat of Wildplant Rescue is a conjured bureaucratic notion for an impractical social housing estate white elephant in bushland some 2km outside Katoomba
It’s all a political ruse!
Wildplant Rescue’s nursery site occupies a very small parcel of rural bushland covering less than half a hectare. The nursery is situated on a western boundary off Oak Street Katoomba as part of the quite sizeable 8 hectare DCJ Clairvaux bushland site.
The Clairvaux site is geographically located within The Gully Water Catchment on the western edge of the regional township of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains region of Australia. The nursery site is within native Eucalypt bushland and is some distance from Katoomba’s high street, which is more than 2 km away and an uphill walk.
A location map of Wildplant Rescue relative from Katoomba township’s (high) Street – about a 3km uphill walk to Katoomba Train Station one- way. Wildplant Rescue lies within The Gully Water Catchment. [Source: Google Maps, recently]
So, the Clairvaux site location is not exactly convenient to shops nor amenities and the only public transport an hourly bus service into town along Oak Street. So the site suits being a place to propagate native plants, which is what Wildplant Rescue does and has been doing successfully on a shoestring budget consistently since 1999, so now twenty-six continuous years.
A recent walk around of Wildplant Rescue’s current site by this author:
Yet management has known about this eviction threat since before May 2020…
Let the truth be known – the founder of The Habitat Advocate and as Editor of this website, Steven Ridd, is a local of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains since 2001, so far, here for 24 years and going nowhere.
Consistent with the conservation tenets of The Habitat Advocate organisation, Steven had been a committed and active member of Wildplant Rescue on and off since 2009, having first initiating contact with committee member Alison Hatfield back in April 2008. Steven’s association included volunteering in various capacities and then joining the management committee. It was an on-and-off participation as work and family priorities permitted such volunteering contributions, as many juggle with.
The road to Wildplant Rescue…
Arriving at Wildplant Rescue’s unique, genuine nursery – plentiful with local endemic Upper Blue Mountains native plants…an emblematic not for profit charged to truthfully sustain planetary health by example [Recent photo by author].
Back on Thursday 26th February 2009, Steven attended his first meeting of Wildplant Rescue’s Management Committee Meeting, as a guest. Minutes of that Management Committee Meeting of Thursday 26th February 2009 are provided below.
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue is a community group and nothing herein is personally private, but only about this community-based not-for-profit organisation. It’s website is appropriately in the public domain. The Habitat Advocate Editor, Steven, remained a member of Wildplant Rescue on and off for more than a decade.
However, Steven’s association with Wildplant Rescue abruptly ended upon him initiating his email letter of membership resignation from Wildplant Rescue to the management committee on 1st July 2020. His reasons are twofold, as follows:
ACTION 1: Previously, on 24 June 2020, this author, at the time continuing to be on the Wildplant Rescue Management Committee had responded in an email to the committee thus:
“EVICTION THREAT
Importantly as well, Wildplant Management Committee needs to immediately respond to the notification of the imminent threat of eviction from its ‘lease’ at Clairvaux Community Centre 14 Oak Street Katoomba as warned by the NSW Department of Community & Justice (so-called) on 7th May 2020, per Verity’s email.
It would be responsible to inform the membership of this threat ASAP.
Kind regards,
Steven”
However, the management committee decided NOT to follow Steven’s advice to issue a “broadcast’ email of this existential threat to the membership.. “until they had more definite information from the DCJ.”
(2) Two days later on 26th June 2020, Steven added in another email to the management committee:
“I re-emphasise that waiting for a governmental department formal response in writing may just well be an eviction notice.
This will place Wildplant Rescue in an invidious position with little wriggle room to negotiate or to seek a delay to consider options.
I have recommended to the Wildplant Committee they need to seek legal advice and to utilise the current government grant funding to finance such legal advice so as to be on the front foot, rather than waiting for the inevitable so to speak.
I do not see a reason for keeping this critical news from the Wildplant membership, who may well be able to assist the Committee somehow, or at least given an opportunity to do so.
As volunteer representatives of Wildplant Rescue, the committee should not feel compelled to take on this burden of the threat of eviction themselves and with it the likely folding of Wildplant with it, given no alternative site has been so far found viable. I wish to add…as a committee member my dissent in not informing the membership of this predicament. They would be shocked to learn and if it were to eventuate without their knowledge, hold the committee to account and condemnation. I am prepared to be a whistle-blower on this to the membership by July 14. Surely the committee can come up with a responsible announcement to the membership that is informative without being alarmist.
I have the future viability of the Wildplant organisation and spirit foremost in my mind; whereas committee members can come and go.”
Steven Ridd as Founder, Conservation Consultant, and Editor of this website realised the existential threat by the governmental landlord to the very viability and future of Wildplant Rescue. For the Management Committee members not to alert the membership and fight the government eviction went against the craw – against the very raison d’etre of The Habitat Advocate – publicly challenging ‘Government Greenwashing‘.
Waiting for government…
(3) So, on 27th June 2020, Steven emailed his broadcast email to the 66 active members of Wildplant Rescue thus:
“Hello Wildplant Membership,
As a current voluntary member of Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service and serving on the management committee, I wish to express my repeated concerns since receiving an email from the President on May 8th 2020 about a serious risk to the viability of our organisation. I have tried my darndest multiple times within the committee communication that the broader Wildplant membership be made aware of this situation, but I have been unsuccessful, and only accused of “bullying” by the President, which I totally reject.
I refer you to the President of Wildplant Committee to explain. My commitment and heart is with the conservation spirit and viability of Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service Inc.”
Sincerely, Steven Ridd”
(4) After then receiving a threatening email response from the president alleging “data breach” of Steven’s broadcast emailing to the members, Steven reflected upon his membership of Wildplant Rescue and on 1st July 2020 emailed the committee stating he would not be renewing his membership. (All email correspondences are retained on file).
So that episode is approaching five years ago now. Yet sadly, the same threat of governmental eviction by the same NSW Department of Communities and Justice still looms dark over Wildplant Rescue’s very existence.
(5) This disturbing experience has affected us. So we write this truth telling to share…
This nursery’s landlord? …NSW Department of Communities and Justice – seriously?
As mentioned above, the Clairvaux Community Centre overall property site is owned by the New South Wales (state) Government (through its delegated and so-called ‘Department of Communities and Justice‘ (DCJ).
We remind readers that the ‘NSW Government’ essentially translates to being the authorised custodian on behalf of the citizens of New South Wales. Australia is a democracy. Assets of this state government are indeed the assets of the State and thus belong to this states citizens.
Eviction for social housing out ‘woop woop’..?
This much valued Blue Mountains community run not-for-profit venture frankly threatens to unjustifiably cause its permanent demise. Bloody why?!
Yet the current incumbent NSW Minns Labour Government’s Department of Communities and Justice has threatened designs on the site to flog it off for ‘social’ housing development.
What a ridiculous notion! The site is over 2km from Katoomba’s high street, so not exactly accessible for social housing such as like dilapidated northern Lurline is adjacent to Katoomba High Street.
The site is not suited to planned housing development and certainly not for government so-called ‘social housing‘ concept.
There are more sites in town near shops and the railway station far more suited for such government-funded social housing. Whereas Wildplant Rescue is located over 2 km from town so every resident would need a car for starters. It would require considerable costly demolition of many buildings, the killing hundred of native trees and bulldozing bushland to replace it with a conurbation of unneeded new housing – so another white elephant for the Blue Mountains.
The DCJ claims that the centre tenanted by the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre has significant accessibility and bushfire safety non-compliance issues that are not able to be remedied under the property’s existing land zoning.
“The Department of Communities and Justice is committed to funding Aboriginal community controlled organisations to provide programs and services for the local Aboriginal community,” a spokesperson told the Gazette.
“DCJ recognises and appreciates the important work that the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre undertakes in the community, and has been working with the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre to assist in sourcing and transitioning to a more appropriate property.
“DCJ remains committed to working collaboratively with the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Cultural Resource Centre to assist them in their goal of providing services to their local community.”
At the Blue Mountains council meeting, the mayoral minute was supported unanimously. The council intends to write to the Department of Communities and Justice; Stronger Community Ministers; the Minister and Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs; and Trish Doyle, state member for the Blue Mountains, advocating for investment in the renovations required so the NGOs can continue to operate from the DCJ’s Clairvaux Community Centre.
Since 1999 our nursery has been located at the Clairvaux Centre, which is Govt property in the portfolio of the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) The property was surplus to their requirements since the children’s homes closed in 1988. It was abandoned and derelict until Katoomba Neighbourhood Centre (KNC) got a licence from DCJ in 1998 to use the site for community groups. We moved in in 1999. KNC withdrew from the licence in 2009 and since then we have just remained on site developing the nursery, being totally ignored by the DCJ until they suddenly appeared in 2020 threatening eviction. While departmental decisions were still ongoing, we secured an official short term licence (lease) to continue operating on site for a further 15 months. This lease expired in September 2024. We have sent several requests for this term to be extended but now we have been verbally informed we will definitely be evicted soon, probably at the end of April.
The situation….
The DCJ have advised they wish to divest themselves of this property since they have determined that we are not a community organisation they can support and so they wish us to vacate by April this year. They tell us they have already offered the property to BMCC who have declined to accept without substantial accompanying funds to upgrade the premises, fair enough. KNC did massive work to upgrade the site for all the community groups to move in. Since then the residents of Clairvaux have done their best to keep the place operational but it definitely is in need of a major upgrade.
BMCC have indicated that we could be included in the Planetary Health Initiative on the old Katoomba Golf Course, but all we have so far are words, no action, and now we are running out of time! Moving a nursery is a huge endeavour and would take so much of our time and resources that without major assistance we may not be capable of achieving this!
Why bother to save us?….
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how valuable our nursery is to the whole Blue Mountains community. We are a unique nursery growing and supplying real local natives which are mostly not available anywhere else. By supplying genetically sound local plants for thirty years to gardeners, council and bush regenerators, we have helped to connect our community to the bush and increase indigenous biodiversity. We also provide an opportunity for all our volunteers to find companionship in worthwhile and fulfilling volunteer work. We work with local schools and join in all the local environmental education events.
(Given all that, one wonders how we don’t fall under the auspices of the Department of “Communities”?)
It is a fact that we receive no regular support or funding from any source at all for this important work! We have been serving the community and our environment since 1995 by our own efforts only.
In 2015, the NSW Parliament’s Member for Blue Mountains Trish Doyle MP, wrote a letter to the Minister for Communities on our behalf asking for the Minister’s help to find a permanent home for us.
We had a meeting with representatives from the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) yesterday and they have allayed our fears of sudden eviction by stating that we will not be just ‘thrown out on the street’ come the end of April, but that we MUST relocate from the site “as soon as an alternative is found”. They have assured us they are still working hard to find a solution. (So this is the same situation since at least 2009!)
I hope the DCJ and the Minister may have more influence than us to come up with an alternative site, since in the more than 20 years we ourselves have been looking none has so far been identified. If no other site at all is identified we may still be forced to close.
So the situation is still grim for us as no other locations can be identified at this stage. If you have any solid ideas or any sphere of influence to help us find our forever home, (or have a spare billionaire in your pocket?) then please send us an email to bmwrskat3@gmail
And please keep sharing our petition and watch here for updates
We are all hoping for a miracle!
Yet, this is government hypocrisy, since directly across Oak Street from where Wildplant Rescue’s nursery has been for 26 years at number 14, is Blue Mountains Council’s bankrupted golf course.
Who plays golf in 2025?
In the process this same DCJ department has given no consideration to the future of this long-standing successful not-for-profit nursery business. Wildplant Rescue since 1999 continues to It provide a much valued native plant service to the local community.
The Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service nursery and its office building occupies just a relatively small portion of the overall old ‘Clairvaux’ site situated on the southwestern bushland outskirts of Katoomba township site.
The nursery is amongst a few other community-focused small business tenants. However, over the years many of the former tenants have long departed and many of the remaining buildings are long abandoned and have been left to become derelict and vandalised. There is no indication that the governmental landlord (DCJ) maintains the site or the buildings.
A brief history of this ‘Clairvaux’ site – ‘Home’ of Horrors:
The overall old ‘Clairvaux’ site is an asymmetrical odd squarish shape between Oak Street and Cliff Drive bounded by Hall Street (street access), Cedar Street, Violet Street, Ficus Street and Cliff Drive. See recent aerial photo map below.
It is estimated that the overall area approximates 80,000 m2 ( 8 hectares). [NOTE: 113 Cliff Drive, Katoomba, NSW 2780 has a land size of 69,662 m² (^SOURCE) – so this raises the question that entire land parcel ownership between Oak Street and Cliff Drive remains is unclear. Was a portion sold off?]
The overall site (shown below) is characterised as being half remnant bushland and half sports fields and from researching Google Maps and onsite ground-truthing also dotted with about two dozen dispersed dwellings.
The original building of the fibro-cement/asbestos clad NSW Government ‘Clairvaux Children’s Home‘ would seem to date back to the 1960s. Various other brick and tiled dwellings of different but consistent style seem to date to the 1970s. Many of the 1970s dwellings appear unkempt, else abandoned, derelict and indeed a few have been vandalised and left open to the elements. There is also signs of illegal squatting.
There are currently multiple tenants, dominated by the Katoomba Christian Convention (KCC) over about three quarters of the site.
Clairvaux Children’s Home had been established at this site outside Katoomba NSW by the then NSW Government’s Child Welfare Department in 1969. At the time, other state institutions like Mittagong, Brush Farm and Werrington Park were becoming overcrowded, so Clairvaux was opened (outside remote Katoomba) to house another 24 ‘wards of the state‘.
In the beginning, the Home provided accommodation for boys who were described as having “intellectual disabilities”. However, over the years, regrettably paedophilia rape stories emerged about the boys’ mistreatment and horrific sexual abuse. Clairvaux Children’s Home had been allowed by the NSW Government to become an “offending institution”…
Clairvaux Children’s Home in 1969
“Clairvaux Childrens Home was ultimately closed in 1990, remembered only by the boys (now men) who lived there. In 2014, the grand old building was repurposed into the Clairvaux Community Centre and now serves as the operations centre for a wide range of community-based charities.”
“Clairvaux Children’s Home was established at Katoomba NSW by the Child Welfare Department in 1969. At the time, other state institutions like Mittagong, Brush Farm and Werrington Park were becoming overcrowded, so Clairvaux was opened to house another 24 wards of the state.
In the beginning, the Home provided accommodation for boys who were described as having intellectual disabilities. Clairvaux was closed in 1990, remembered only by the boys (now men) who lived there. In 2014, the grand old building was repurposed into the Clairvaux Community Centre and now serves as the operations centre for a wide range of community-based charities.
But what happened behind closed doors between 1969 and 1990 was disturbing, to say the least — but you won’t hear about it in the news. The boys’ complaints were brushed off by their houseparents and other members of staff on-site.
As wards of the state, they had nowhere else to turn. They lived out of sight of the community. They didn’t have a voice. In this article, we share the story of one individual who suffered at the hands of a cleaner who worked at Clairvaux.
Active paedophiles roamed the grounds
Image: Care Leavers Association
A former resident of Clairvaux (who remains unnamed for privacy) was only six-years-old when he arrived at Clairvaux as a state ward. For the next 10 years, he was sexually abused weekly by a cleaner named “Darryl” who the victim remembered had red hair — a recognisable, memorable feature.
The victim was often sexually abused in Darryl’s work shed, located near the Home’s pool.
Darryl subjected the child to anal penetration every single time.
Believing that someone would help him or at least send Darryl away, the victim told his houseparents, Mr and Mrs Brady, about what was happening to him. Rather than reporting Darryl to the police, they ignored the complaints and the cleaner continued to work there… and continued to abuse the vulnerable child.
The victim then tried to report the abuse to the woman who cooked in the kitchen. She at least sent the child to be checked over by the nurse but again, nothing was done to help him.
With nowhere left to turn, the victim ran away many times but was caught every time.
Eventually, the Department removed him from Clairvaux and sent him to Reiby Youth Justice Centre, followed by Mt Penang Training School. This was a common practice for boys who were considered “difficult to manage”.
Reiby and Mt Penang are known for their harsh discipline and rampant sexual abuse. For this particular victim, moving to Reiby and Mt Penang was not a “light at the end of the tunnel”. Safety was not a luxury enjoyed by the boys who lived there.
If you were abused at Clairvaux, we want to hear your story
So little information is known about Clairvaux and the boys who lived there. Their stories have been lost in time — many are too scared to come forward and tell their stories. This is not uncommon; around 60% of survivors never disclose their experiences with abuse. Many are ashamed and fear they will not be believed.
There are many grown men who still haven’t spoken about their abuse by Darryl the red-haired cleaner, other on-site staff or by their own houseparents.
At Kelso Lawyers, we want to hear your story. Our specialist lawyers have helped hundreds of survivors achieve compensation across Australia. We will lend a sympathetic ear and most importantly, we will believe every word you say.
From here, we will make the compensation application process as simple and stress-free as possible. It is our goal to ensure you achieve the best possible outcome and achieve your own personal breakthrough.”
The home buildings have been abandoned ever since. They are situated off Cedar Street, at a quite separate location to the Wildplant Rescue nursery which is accessed off Hall Street over 250m around the corner.
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service is wholly a community service. It is the first of its kind in Australia, conceived and founded by local Blackheath village residents Mikla Lewis and Naturalist Wyn Jones in January 1993 to be a community driven, not-for-profit organisation, based in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales to help protect and promote the natural values of the Blue Mountains. It operates to rescue and re-home wild native plants, and to propagate these in its substantial dedicated in order to supply a range of locally endemic plants to local community bushcare groups, landscapers and to the local Blue Mountains Council for ongoing native habitat rehabilitation projects.
Copy on an early newsletter to members ‘Wildplant Press:
The Blue Mountains region, despite being mostly world heritage listed in 2000 continues to come under housing land use development pressures from hundreds of building permits issued every year, with most of the development affecting unspoiled native vegetation.
“Block by block, the bushland nature of the Blue Mountains urban area was being slowly but steadily lost, replaced by exotic gardens which deprive native wildlife of food and habit and create huge weed problems in surrounding bushland and National Park. As the group evolved, the original idea of rescuing native plants developed into a bigger plan. The group became aware of the importance of protecting wildplant and wildlife communities in the Blue Mountains on a broader scale than solely rescuing condemned wildplants. The collection of seeds and cuttings for propagation and on-selling to the local community was added to the concept. The facilities at Mount Tomah Botanic Garden were used for propagation of rescued seeds and cuttings, which were then cared for by group members in their own gardens.”
Indeed, the website of Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service was made possible by the Federal Government’s Stronger Communities Grant.
As well as engaging dozens of local community volunteers, the nursery also employs disabled young people as well as youth offenders undergoing rehabilitation and community re-adjustment through various governmental programmes. These would all cease if the DCJ bean counters get their way.
So what the hell is the Minns Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) thinking by destroying a community project – seriously?
DCJ’s website motto: “We work with children, young people, adults, families and communities to support vibrant, sustainable and inclusive communities.”
Is this seriously hypocritical or what? DCJ’s threat to shut down this community nursery.
What a hotch-potch of disconnected public service functions the DCJ is! It combines a legal justice type portfolio with community services. Cop this disparate mixed bag of its portfolios in DCJ’s Executive Structure:
Social Housing
Disaster Welfare
Courts and Tribunals
Victims Services
Child Protection
Disability
Seniors
Women’s Safety
Youth Justice
High Cost Emergency Arrangements
Law Reform
Volunteering
Sentencing
Disease Testing
Jury Service
Domestic Violence
Anti-Discrimination
Custodial Services (Prisons)
Legal Services
Public Defenders Office
Solicitor General
Aboriginal Outcomes
IT Services
Financial Performance and Transformation
Compliance
Anti-Slavery
Infrastructure and Assets
It’s a miscellaneous bucket list, and may as well be badged ‘Other’.
The last one here is managed by Katherine Tollner. She’d be the one going after WildPlant Rescue in cahoots with Financial Performance and Transformation’s Bronwyn Roy and Social Housing’s (Homes NSW) Rebecca Pinkstone. And how is Wildplant Rescue not recognised given that DCJ has a Volunteering programme?
Combined, DCJ’s has a bloated army of staff currently numbering 24,000 with a annual spend of $17 billion according to its 2024 annual report! That is 13% of the NSW Government’s annual spend of $130 billion according to the Audit Office of New South Wales website. It spends more than it earns. Its accumulated debt is $137 billion, with official forecast annual interest payments on debt to be (conservatively) $8.6 billion for 2027-28. So, Macquarie Street under the Liberal-National Coalition or Labor/Greens spends half of DCJ’s budget on interest repayments.
Well, Macquarie Street knows how to spend taxpayers’ money like proverbial drunken sailors. It has programme sub-departments to conjure up new programmes to ensure it spends all it gets annually, so its budget doesn’t fall in subsequent years. [NOTE: One is familiar with the NSW governmental bureaucracy, having contracted as a management accountant for multiple NSW Government departments for over a decade].
In the case of the building that houses Wildplant Rescue’s administrative office and other separate outbuildings on the old Clairvaux site, the DCJ has neglected building maintenance and proper upkeep for many decades.
DCJ’s current so-called Executive Director for its Infrastructure and Assets portfolio since Sep 2019 (less lockdowns), Katherine Tollner, has three months governmental experience in a property portfolio as Executive Director Property, Fleet & Procurement at NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (Jul 2019 – Sep 2019).
The NSW Minns Labor Ministry includes this Department Communities and Justice, so-called (DCJ). But under Premier Minns, it is a mish mash mega department of unrelated portfolios as follows:
Attorney General: The Hon. Michael Daley SC, MP
Minister for Families and Communities, Minister for Disability Inclusion: The Hon. Kate Washington MP
Minister for Youth Justice: The Hon. Jihad Dib MP
Minister for Corrections: The Hon. Anoulack Chanthivong MP
Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness, Minister for Youth: The Hon. Rose Jackson MP
Minister for Veterans: The Hon. David Harris MP
Minister for Seniors, Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault: The Hon. Jodie Harrison MP
So not one minister is accountable. Which one is in charge of the eviction threat? This mega department is supposed to be about ‘communities’ as its name suggests.
The three non-government organisations that are the tenants at the Clairvaux Community Centre are:
Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service, the native plant nursery
The Blue Mountains Aboriginal Culture and Resource Centre (ACRC), which has been at Clairvaux for 27 years and claims “to provide crucial support services to the local First Nations community”
Leura Day Options, a disability support service provided by Greystanes Disability Service
These are each COMMUNITY based services. Hello!
It’s website About Us page reads:
“We work with children, young people, adults, families and communities to support vibrant, sustainable and inclusive communities.”
“DCJ is the lead agency in the Communities and Justice portfolio, which aims to create safe, just, inclusive and resilient communities through its services. DCJ enables services to work together to support everyone’s right to access justice and other help for families, and strengthen the promotion of early intervention and inclusion, with benefits for the whole community. Our purpose is to help create a safe, just, resilient and inclusive NSW in which everyone has the opportunity to realise their potential.”
At Clairvaux COMMUNITY Centre, the tenants facing eviction are a COMMUNITY nursery, an Aboriginal COMMUNITY centre and a disability support centre for disabled members of the local COMMUNITY.
What hypocrisy! The DCJ is also supposed to be about justice, as the name suggest – but it seems it’s more like ‘injustice’.
Council’s Centre for “Planetary Health” – seriously again?
In 2022, Blue Mountains councillors voted unanimously to oppose the eviction of the community groups that use Clairvaux by the DCJ! The mayor will support Trish Doyle’s appeal to the Minister to reconsider.
That same year, the Blue Mountains Council purchased the adjacent defunct Katoomba Golf Clubhouse situated on 30 hectares of public land (long controlled by Council), Council decided to re-branded it a ‘Centre for Planetary Health‘…whatever that means.
We point out that Blue Mountains Council had over previous decades, owned the public land of the Katoomba Golf Course, in its entrusted capacity as a custodian on behalf of the citizens of the Blue Mountains local government area it represents in trust. But the various golf course club operators had gone bankrupt and ‘sympathetically connected’ councillors had bailed them out using ratepayer funds. Say no more.
During the time of 2022, as part of Council’s community consultation outreach invitation, Steven responded to Council in writing proposing that a small portion (1/2 hectare) of the old golf course site be considered by Council allocated to Wildplant Rescue’s nursery, given the imminent threat of the nursery’s eviction from its current site. The current nursery site directly across the street from the old golf course at 14 Oak Street covers about that size.
This relocation literally just across the street, would be the most convenient option for Wildplant Rescue out of other flagged site options considered, if eviction became imminent and unavoidable. Other considered options had been Planet Ark’s former site in Wentworth Falls (north side) off 321 Blaxland Road and the original proposed site for the nursery at the old and disused Blackheath Tip (2 hectare) site off Ridgewell Road, situated about 600 metres along the road from the Great Western Highway, just east of the locked road gate for the Hanging Rock Parking Area. See map below.
Blackheath’s former tip site, contaminated with asbestos and still abandoned by Blue Mountains (city) Council
Blue Mountains Council’s old Blackheath Tip site along Ridgewells Road
Recall the lead newspaper article above:
‘The group had talks with council about a possible site during the planning of the old Katoomba golf course precinct. But a spokeswoman for council said:
“a plant nursery is not a permissible use on this site under the current zoning, and an amendment to the LEP would be required to include this and other additional uses. That would be a lengthy process including making a submission to the state government and further public consultation.”….
In 2022, Blue Mountains City Council has voiced its concern over the threat of eviction for three community non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the Clairvaux Centre in Katoomba.
At the council meeting of February 22, Labor mayor Mark Greenhill introduced a minute that detailed how the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) intends to end the lease of the Clairvaux Centre-based NGOs because of renovation costs.
“We need to stand up for those affected NGOS, they operate significant community support services to the Blue Mountains,” said Cr Greenhill. “When I heard about this I was horrified.”
Ward 1 Labor councillor, Suzie van Opdorp, who has an association with the Clairvaux Centre that extends back to the 1980s, also voiced her concerns over the eviction threat.
“These groups are feeling very anxious about their future,” she said. “As anyone would know who has lived and worked in the Mountains, there’s a scarcity of affordable office space for community organisations … These groups are really going to struggle if they’re put out to the open market to look for accommodation – some of them may not survive. It’s clear the facility is worth a lot of money. Our state government has gone about selling lots of publicly owned assets, and I can imagine it would be very tempting to sell this off.”
Ward 2 Greens councillor Brent Hoare and Ward 1 Greens councillor Sarah Redshaw also expressed their disappointment with the proposed eviction, Cr Hoare accusing the state government of “demolition by neglect”.
Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) have finally answered our questions regarding our suggested involvement in the Planetary Health Initiative on the old Katoomba Golf Course.
BMCC have now clearly stated that this is not a viable option for us because of zoning and other issues which would take years of process to remedy, if at all. They have also confirmed they have no other suitable site available within their portfolio to which the nursery could be relocated. Despite expressing their concern and saying they really value our contribution to the community, they say they can do nothing more to help us.
Yet local Blue Mountains Council has its new ‘Centre for Planetary Health‘ notion situated immediately across the road from Wildplant Rescue’s current site!
It’s Autumn in the Greater Blue Mountains, and the New South Wales Government’s bush arsonists are out in full swing deliberately setting fire to native habitat at every opportunity. Governmental ‘Habitat Reduction Season‘!
Is this pastime not comparable with the antiquated British imported tradition of the ‘Duck Season‘ – killing NATIVE ducks that is – just for sport. It’s the very same time of year!
“Capital climes for rough shooting old sport, what! Live on peg, we ought to bag a few dozen before tea.”
On Monday 25th March 2024, the NSW Government’s National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) published a media release about its continuing “hazard” reduction burns across the Blue Mountains National Park. It read as follows (main extracts):
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has announced plans for an 850-hectare hazard reduction burn in the Glenbrook area of Blue Mountains National Park, set to commence on 26 March, weather conditions permitting. This preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires and protect surrounding communities.
Scheduled to unfold over consecutive days, the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park. The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.
…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW. These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.
The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.”
Our comments to this bush arson justification spin doctoring:
The above is bush arson propaganda by contracted consultants with Communications Degrees, justifying the perpetual decimation of Australia’s native habitat since the first day of colonisation and usurpation of the continent since 1788. Nothing has changed or is likely to. Surviving intact wilderness has become reduced to mere islands. Just go to Google Maps [See our extract map below]
“850 hectares” is an area equivalent to about 30km x 30km (√ 850ha). In relative terms, that’s three times the size of Sydney’s CBD, a native habitat area capacity for many fauna;
“preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires” – this is because when wildfires do occur the NSW Government invariably fails to (A) detect, (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions promptly whilst small and controllable. It has an attitude that native habitat has a lower value than human habitat. In contrast, the urban Fire and Rescue Service is tasked to (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions involving human property immediately, and unlike their unpaid volunteer Rural Fire Service (RFS) counterparts, they get paid to do it;
“protect surrounding communities” – this means human communities that have been built encroaching more and more into and usurping native habitat. These human “communities” are the only focus of the NPWS and its support RFS. Under this culture, wildlife communities matter not, irrespective of any threatened species impacted/killed. This attitude belies an antiquated anthropocentric mentality. Neither the NPWS nor the RFS employ an Ecologist. They just don’t care about protecting Ecology – in this case forest ecology;
“the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park“. That’s right, the NPWS as delegated custodial organisation ‘manager’ of the Blue Mountains National Park treats native habitat and its dependent fauna within such national parks in NSW (one of some 800) instead as “fuel loads” to be reduced to sterile urban park status. NPWS should be relegated to managing urban parks like Hyde Park in Sydney’s CBD;
“The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.” – “crucial” for whom? An expanding Sydney human housing sprawl? So the NSW Government’s volunteer and under-resourced RFS has less forested native habitat risk and so less work to do in the event of wildfires because year-on-year there is less forested native habitat left. Perpetuation that long term strategy, there will eventually be little or no native habitat left across NSW. So down the track a future NSW Government may well decide that the RFS is therefore no longer needed and so make the organisation redundant. Sydney that has been deliberately morphed by successive governments (state and federal) into the ‘Greater Sydney Region‘ has, on paper, swallowed whole the ‘Blue Mountains Region‘ (see NSW Planning map below) , presuming its world heritage status is now just outer-upper western Sydney parkland for the rezoning offing. Allowing the 2019 megafires to incinerate 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, clearly has achieved the NSW Government’s intended devaluation of the UNESCO recognised “Outstanding Universal Value” of all the Eucalypts, and is wholly consistent with a usurpation agenda for an even Greater Sydney megalopolis.
“The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” The spin doctoring clearly by outsourced consultants with Communication Degrees is palpable here. It’s more repetition of contrived persuasive terms: “planned hazard reduction burns”, underscore the “ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety”. Ask the residents of Mount Wilson who lost their homes by RFS reckless arson in 2019 on this point! “taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads”, “the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires”, “ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” What so burning the natural landscapes to protect them? Seriously? In truth it is all about avoiding bad publicity when the RFS lights a high risk fire on 14th December 2014 causing homes to be incinerated like at Mount Wilson. “The state coroner has confirmed that a bushfire that destroyed homes in Mt Wilson, Mt Tomah, Berambing and Bilpin in December 2019 was caused after a planned RFS backburn jumped Mt Wilson Road.” [SOURCE: ‘Bushfire inquiry: Mt Wilson backburn to blame‘, BMG, 2nd April 2024]
RFS MOUNT WILSON ARSON: Sam Ramaci, like several of his neighbours, claims a back-burn lit by the RFS on December 14, 2019, was responsible for the destruction of his cool room, tractor and the property that was to fund his retirement. “If they hadn’t started the back-burn, my house would be still standing,” he said. (The NSW Government has refused to compensate him and others (nor even apologise) for the reckless misjudgment of its RFS – a NSW Government agency. Who can afford a class action? [Go to Video Link]
The Mount Wilson fire was the sixth backburn to escape along the southern containment line that was intended to protect the upper Blue Mountains from the Gospers Mountain Fire.
What sane person would join the Rural Fire Starters?
Bush arsonists have a psychological compulsion to set fire to see fire . It’s a ritual – they’re eyes light up. “Behold, The Fiery Cross !...”
NPWS is beholden to NSW Planning
A headline environmental protection agency that is supposed to be caring for national parks reporting to a state land use planning authority (aka Development). Is this a warped governmental portfolio conflict of interest of what? Liberal-Labor-Liberal…? Same Same.
The Regional Map of NSW according to the NSW Government’s Department of Planning and Environment fiefdom in 2024. Note that the Blue Mountains Region no longer exists, but has become annexed by the ever expanding ‘Greater Sydney Region’ in the mindset of Macquarie Street’s urban expansionism campaign. Mount Victoria a Sydney suburb now? Lookout Broken Hill!
Deforestation of Australia since colonisation and its usurpation from 1788. Remnant native forests and their native habitat have been decimated to ecologically unsustainable islands. The entire pre-colonial eastern seaboard of the continent was originally blanketed by native forests unbroken, extending about 600km inland. [SOURCE Google Maps – satellite view, April 2024]
It’s no wonder that Australia continues its record of perpetuating the world’s worst rate of wildlife extinctions. It’s akin to countries like Madagascar. It’s all hell bent on serving the Human Plague Order, currently 8.1 Billion! and in 2024 growing (and demanding more) by $75 million p.a. The current population of Australia is 26,654,200 as of Monday, April 29, 2024. Compare Australia’s Federation census of 1901 counted 3,773,801 people across Australia. [Check: Census Bureau Projects U.S. and World Populations on New Year’s Day; and ^https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/]
But wait there’s more bush arson planned…
An update last Friday, 26th April 2024 (just days ago), the NSW Government’s environmental department website again posted a media release advising of its further planned “Hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park” for the weekend.
It read as follows:
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) with assistance from the NSW Rural Fire Service is conducting a hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park starting Sunday 28 April, weather permitting.
Staff from Metro South West and Blue Mountains regions undertaking the Pisgah Ridge hazard reduction burn near Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains National Park The hazard reduction burn will focus on an area south of Woodford, in the mid-mountains, and cover a total area of about 400 hectares. The burn aims to reduce fuel hazards and assist in the protection of property in the surrounding Woodford, Hazelbrook and Linden areas.
Fire trails around the burn area, including Bedford Creek, will be closed to the public, along with the Murphy’s Glen camping and day use area. The campground will be reopen when it is safe to do so.
Smoke may be seen in the area for up to a week after the initial operation.
The burn is one of many hazard reduction operations undertaken by NPWS each year, many with the assistance of the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) and Fire and Rescue NSW.
All burns around the state are coordinated with the NSW RFS to ensure the impact on the community is assessed at a regional level.
People with known health conditions can sign up to receive air quality reports, forecasts and alerts via email or SMS from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. For health information relating to smoke from bushfires and hazard reduction burns, visit NSW Health or Asthma Australia.
More information on hazard reduction activities is available at NSW Rural Fire Service and the NSW Government’s Hazards Near Me website and app.”
Asthma sufferers? – NSW Government care factor?
Carbon emissions? – NSW Government care factor?
10th December 2019: NPWS world heritage Eucalyptus woodsmoke enveloping Sydney from what started as an abandoned pile burn off Army Road near Gospers Mountain in the distant Wollemi NP two months prior on 26th October 2019. She’ll be right, eh NPWS boss David Crust?
The RFS is one of the planet’s highest emitters of airborne carbon particulates by way of causing mass wood-smoke by repeatedly lighting bushfires and ignoring wildfires. Wood smoke we feel is a tad more polluting than humans exhaling carbon dioxide. But then how many humans on the planet?
Yet the climate change cult remains quiet on this more serious global problem. Why so selective about a lesser pollutant in the hysterical ideology that has morphed from ‘Global Warming‘ (Wallace Smith Broecker’s term of 1975) to ‘The Greenhouse Effect‘ (Mike Hulme’s term in 1994) to ‘Climate Change Scientology‘ (U.S. National Academies of 2014) to currently ‘Climate Crisis‘ actually predating the former (U.S Vice President Al Gore of 2007).
The RFS and NPWS press on regardless – as it’s not carbon dioxide, so all good!
Here’s the latest bush arson schedule to further set fire to the still unburnt native habitat of the Blue Mountains:
RFS:“It’s ok love, it’s good for the bush. She’ll be right.”
It’s an age old mentality of the fox charged to look after the chickens. Both the NPWS and RFS have a cultural attitude that the national parks are NOT to be protected, despite the NPWS delegated to so-called manage NATIONAL parks across New South Wales (NSW). That is despite the Rural Fire Service (RFS) charged with putting out wildfires.
That perverted culture is conditioned to regard native habitat only as a ‘fuel’ that burns and so NOT habitat but a ‘hazard’ to be controlled and burned to prevent it burning. If there is no habitat left, then the meathead rationale, no hazard, so job done! Of recent times the spin doctors in government seconded as contractors with Communications Degrees (aka the art of spin) have softened the community sell of these ‘hazard reductions’ to ‘prescribed burns” to justify and take some noble authority from on high that the BUSH WAS ORDERED TO BE BURNED, WE HAVE NO CHOICE !
All their fire trucks are filled with more flammable liquids light a bushfire than water to put it out. ‘RFS’ should stand for for Rural Fire Starters.
Blue Mountains World Heritage?
Eventually the bush grows back but with a vastly different flora community make up. The biodiversity is gone. The wildlife don’t come back from the dead.
One of countless Koalas tragically burned to death in her native habitat during the Blue Mountains megafires of 2019. They won’t come back. [This website is not suitable for children to view]
This native Koala would have looked something like this:
National parks throughout Australia over the 236 years since colonisation and its continent-wide deforestation, land use destruction and introduced bushfires, have consistently and hatefully made Australia’s ecological landscape very very quiet and devoid of wildlife.
The 2019 mega bushfires of NSW that the NPWS and RFS let get out of control over months, wiped out 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, including rare remnant koala communities and hosts of other at-risk wildlife and their special native habitat that NPWS has no clue of the statistical losses. NPWS does not manage, it mismanages, else just oversees politically drive projects like multi-million dollar tourists track upgrades to benefit humans. The NSW State Government tasked to look after UNESCO world heritage on behalf of the Australia Government?
This habitat reduction regime is to burn the remaining 20% that didn’t cop the 2019 wildfire megablaze. They call this “stewardship”? All trust in the NSW Government to protect world heritage has long gone out the window.
The ‘NPWS’ is a misnomer
‘NPWS” is an abbreviation for the National Parks and Wildlife Service in the state of New South Wales.
Logo of the NPWS
The problem is that this government bureaucracy is supposed to be the governmental (public) custodian for national parks is misleading:
NPWS is not national, rather it is only a NSW governmental sub-department. Governmental ‘management’ of national parks is not national, rather each state and territory has its own national parks, and the Australian Government is not involved – so a bizarre and misleading naming tradition;
NPWS does NOT look after wildlife. Native habitat in these ‘national parks’ is supposed to be protected. Yet every year vast selected areas are burnt deliberately else left to burn on a grand scale, so killing wildlife and destroying their habitat.
As a consequence, the NPWS deserves to be more appropriately renamed as ‘NSW Parks Service‘ just like in Victoria, the Victorian Government calls its equivalent ‘Parks Victoria‘.
On the relevant NSW Government’s website pertaining to its NPWS, it explains that the NPWS is part of a sub-department called ‘Environment and Heritage, which in turn:
“Environment and Heritage is part of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Our vision is for a thriving, sustainable and resilient New South Wales.Environment and Heritage works with communities, businesses and governments to protect, preserve and strengthen the quality of our natural environment and heritage. We do this through active stewardship that supports a healthy New South Wales.We are committed to creating thriving environments, communities and economies that benefit the people of New South Wales.”
The three most trendy feel-good terms above include: “thriving”, “resilient” , active stewardship”. Pure motherhoodism by the contracted young spin doctors with a Communications Degree. So where are the published wildlife regional extinction stats before and after the Blue Mountains 2019 megablaze?
Recall Tathra Sunday 18 March 2018, the consequence of the RFS deliberately lighting a bushfire on a 38 degree Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) gusty day upwind of this coastal village. [Read Our Article: ‘Bushfire Scenario Was Not Rocket Science‘
[8] ‘Impact of the 2019-20 Mega-Fires on the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, New South Wales‘, 20221129, by P Smith and J Smith, Issue Vol. 144 (2022), Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, ^https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/LIN/article/view/17079
Illegal poachers caught in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area on 15th June 2013
[Photo by bushwalker Darren Drew in Tigersnake Canyon, Wollemi National Park, at a time when 500 runners were participating in a marathon in the area]
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<< Two men were reported to be illegally hunting in NSW’s biggest natural tourist attraction, the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
Blackheath bushwalker Darren Trew said he came across the hunters on a canyoning trip with friends on Saturday June 15. Over that weekend 500 runners from across the state had converged in that same region to participate in the second Glow Worm Tunnel Marathon, near Newnes. Mr Trew, who saw the men with their weapons, reported the matter to Lithgow Police, to the Game Council and to the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Mr Trew:
“It’s madness. It was quite a shock to discover after 20 or more years of bushwalking. It’s quite disturbing, they said they were hunting deer and I told them they were not allowed to be here with rifles, it’s illegal, I called the police and they walked away.”
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Photo by High & Wild
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Mr Trew’s group took a photo of the men and said later that day about 20 people turned up to enjoy Tigersnake Canyon.
Glow Worm Tunnel Marathon race director Sean Greenhill of the Wentworth Falls based Mountain Sports said he was very concerned by the reports.
“It’s extremely disturbing to think that two men with rifles were hunting in a national park only a couple of kilometres from where 500 runners were conducting a legitimate activity in the same park — odds are small but the potential implications are horrifying. Mountain Sports doesn’t support hunting in any national park — why create such a dangerous precedent?”
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“Unfortunately, some hunters have heard “you can now hunt in national parks” and assume it’s a free-for-all. With the Game Council promoting NSW as ‘the place to hunt’, this is only going to get worse.”
~ National Parks Association of NSW spokesman, Justin McKee
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National Parks Association of NSW spokesman, Justin McKee:
“The incident highlights that Premier Barry O’Farrell’s promise that safety will be paramount does not definitely rule out the risk of illegal hunting in highly visited areas, including those where hunting is not allowed like the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
Hunting in national parks is bad policy, it’s bad for tourism, public safety and the environment. It ruins the international reputation of our national parks brand that has taken 50 years to build up. Unfortunately, some hunters have heard ‘you can now hunt in national parks’ and assume it’s a free-for-all.”
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A spokesman for Environment Minister Robyn Parker said the minister didn’t normally comment on operational issues but “obviously hunting in national parks is illegal and an investigation is ongoing”… [Ed: There is no public report that they caught, so it was a free-for-all that day]
Weekend Warriors all camoued up and ready to hunt!
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Game Council NSW ‘Code of Practice’ (so-called)
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<< Ethical, safe and responsible hunting
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Awareness of relevant legislation
It is the responsibility of the holder of a NSW Game Hunting Licence to be aware of and comply with all relevant legisation relating to hunting, animal welfare and the use of firearms.
Safe handling of firearms
Where firearms are used, the rules for safe handling set out in the NSW Firearms Safety Awareness handbook, published by or under the authority of the Commissioner of Police, must be complied with at all times.
Permission required to enter land
A NSW Game Hunting Licence does not automatically authorise the holder of a licence to hunt on any land. The holder of a Game Hunting Licence must not hunt on any land without the express authority of the occupier of the land.
Target identification and safety
A game animal must not be fired at unless it can be clearly seen and identified, and the shot taken poses no discernible risk of injury to any person or damage to any property.
Obligation to avoid suffering
An animal being hunted must not be inflicted with unnecessary pain. To achieve the aim of delivering a humane death to a hunted animal:
it must be targeted so that a humane kill is likely;
it must be shot within the reasonably accepted killing range of the firearm and ammunition or bow being used; and
the firearm, ammunition, or bow and arrow, must be such as can be reasonable expected to humanely kill and animal of the target species.
Lactating female with dependent young
If a lactating female is killed, every reasonable effort must be made to locate and kill any dependent young.
Wounded animals
If an animal is wounded, the hunter must take all reasonable steps to locate it so that it can be killed quickly and humanely.
Use of dogs
Dogs and other animals may be used to assist hunters, but only if:
their use is not in contravention to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1979; and
their use is with the permission of the occupier of the land concerned. >>
Game Council Code of Practice:“Use of (pig) dogs: Dogs and other animals may be used to assist hunters, but only if:
their use is not in contravention to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1979; and
their use is with the permission of the occupier of the land concerned.”
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May 2012: NSW Government allows hunting in national parks
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National Park’s chief custodian Environment Minister Robyn Parker, with NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and Primary Industries Minister Katrina Hodgkinson announcing that shooting will be legal in national parks.
[Source: Photo by Craig Greenhill, The Daily Telegraph]
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<< Hunting will be seen in 79 of the state’s national parks as part of a deal struck by the government (with the Christian Democrats and the Shooters and Fishers Party) last night in exchange for the sale of the state electricity generators.
New South Wales Premier, Barry O’Farrell: “We promised to revitalise the state’s economy, we promised to put additional funding into infrastructure… and the decision was based on the public interest and political realites.”
Despite O’Farrell’s pre-election promise that he would not open up national parks to shooters as hunting reserves, the Premier said that he has not broken his promise.
“There is a big difference between hunting reserves and restricted shooters under the direction of the Minster of the Environment assisting National Parks and Wildlife staff with the culling of feral animals.”
O’Farrell’s famous last words:
“Shooting will be safely and professionally run by the Game Council.”
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In exchange for the hunting deal Premier O’Farrell will now be able to sell off the state’s generators as recommended by the State’s Commission of Enquiry…>>
ABC radio interview by radio presenter Adam Spencer with Premier Barry O’Farrell, 20120531:
Listen to ABC radio interview
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[Ed:So a month later on 27th June 2012, the NSW Coalition Government, the Shooters and Fishers Party and the Christian Democratic Party voted in changes to legislation that allows amateur, recreational hunting to occur in NSW National Parks.]
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Blue Mountains protest campaign against the NSW Government’s local representative, Roza Sage MP, and her undemocratic support for hunting in national parks across New South Wales.
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Two weeks later, on Sunday 15th July 2012, about 400 people rallied in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains to protest against Barry O’Farrell’s decision and to tell local Blue Mountains MP Roza Sage that they oppose the Government’s decision to allow hunting in our National Parks.
Kangaroo shot with arrow in Kosciuszko National Park
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Conservation Hunting
Protected native kangaroo in the Kosciuszko National Park
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This kangaroo was discovered, still alive, two days ago near Log Bridge Creek picnic and camping ground on the Blowering Foreshore inside the Kosciuszko National Park, with the arrow right through its upper body.
<< An illegal hunter shot a kangaroo with an arrow and left it wounded near a camping area in the Kosciuszko National Park.
The roo was discovered yesterday near the Log Bridge Creek picnic and camping area on the Blowering Foreshore and was put down by parks officers.
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service regional manager Dave Darlington:
“This roo spent an unknown time with an arrow pierced fully through its body and the cruelty and atrocity of this act is horrific. This is a senseless and disgusting act and we hope to prosecute the person responsible to the furthest limits of our legislation.”
Anyone with information is urged to phone NPWS on (02) 6947 7000 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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Harming protected wildlife carries penalties of $11,000 an incident and up to six months jail while having a bow and arrow in a National Park also carries a fine of up to $3,300.
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The National Parks and Wildlife Service had to euthanise a kangaroo.
National Parks and Wildlife Service does drug deal with hunters
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<< A National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger was stood down for allegedly letting hunters into the Paroo-Darling National Park in the state’s far west in exchange for drugs.
The government confirmed there had been 12 investigations of illegal hunting in national parks in the past year.
The state government is soon to decide whether to press ahead with its plans to allow shooting in national parks. Allowing hunting in national parks was agreed to in a deal between the government and the Shooters Party so the Shooters would pass the $5 billion sale of the ports through the upper house. Premier Barry O’Farrell is expected to take a risk assessment on the hunting plan to cabinet in the next fortnight at the same time as a review by former senior public servant Steve Dunn on the structure of the shooting regulator, the Game Council.
The Dunn report was ordered after the acting chief executive of the Game Council was allegedly caught illegally shooting on the eve of the intended opening of national parks to shooters. Mr Dunn’s report will recommend that all shooting advocates and members of the Shooters Party no longer serve on the board of the Game Council, because of a clear conflict between the roles of advocate and regulator. [Ed: Download the Dunn Report at the end of this article]
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..there had been 12 investigations of illegal hunting in national parks in the past year.
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Shooters Party MP Robert Borsak is a clear example, having previously served as Game Council chairman under the Labor government.
There are fears that since the legislation allowing shooters to be part of controlled shooting operations in national parks has passed, many people believe they are allowed in there now.>>
Illegal hunters trespassing on private land in metro Sydney
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<< Hunters using guns and crossbows have been illegally entering private properties in metropolitan Sydney, forcing ecologists to abandon night-time observation of frogs and owls for fear of being shot.
Incidents have occurred in the past fortnight in north-west Sydney, just a few kilometres from housing, according to UBM Ecological Consultants’ Judith Rawling. The situation has become dangerous for her staff, she said, and she attributed the surge in illegal hunting to publicity over the looming introduction of hunting in national parks.
Local environment planning drafts for the Hills Shire have been released, prompting residents of bush blocks to apply for subdivisions.
”Before you put in a [development application] you have to put in a flora and fauna survey … That’s why we are coming across these shooters. This is really dangerous,” she said.
Game Council NSW was unavailable for comment.
Greens MP and firearms spokesman David Shoebridge:
“If local councils, the police and Game Council can’t control illegal hunting in the Hills Shire, there is no way on earth they will be able to regulate amateur hunting in far-flung national parks.”
Hunters shoot at a farmer near Game Council headquarters
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May 2013:
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<< Orange police are looking for two men who shot at a Springside farmer yesterday morning when he caught them illegally hunting on his property. [Ed: Springside is a community just south of Orange in central western New South Wales, where the Game Council of NSW has its headquarters].
The 43-year-old landowner was bailed up at gunpoint and ordered to drop his mobile phone which he was using to take a photograph of the offenders’ number plate. One of the gunmen smashed the phone and fired a warning shot at the man’s feet.
The farmer had challenged the men after he found them on his property hunting kangaroos. [Ed: Conservation Hunting?]
Canobolas Local Area Command Inspector Dave Harvey said the two men were less than four metres away from the farmer when they shot at him.
A command post was set up at Springside shortly before 10am where five police, detectives and the forensics special group combed through bushland in the Canobolas State Forest for two hours looking for the men. One of the men was wearing a grey top and black tracksuit pants. He is described as Caucasian, about 180cm tall, thin build with short dark hair and is between 17 and 24 years old. They were driving a white Subaru Outback.
June 2013:
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<< Orange police have charged an 18-year-old man over last month’s shooting at Springside. The man is believed to be one of two people who shot at a farmer while illegally shooting on his property on May 21 at around 9.30am.
The alleged shooter was arrested in Orange’s central business district at around 11.50pm yesterday. Yesterday afternoon police obtained a search warrant for his Moad Street apartment where they found a number of items which police believe may be associated with the gun used in the shooting. Canobolas Local Area Command Acting Inspector Brenden Turner said police had not located the firearm. >>
<< The state government’s plan to allow hunting in national parks is in turmoil after the acting head of the Game Council was stood down on suspicion of illegal hunting.
The council is the body that will issue shooting licences under the scheme. Its acting chief executive, Greg McFarland was suspended on Tuesday night – along with a colleague – by the Primary Industries Minister, Katrina Hodgkinson, after Fairfax Media learnt of a police investigation into an incident near Mount Hope in central west NSW.
Game Council’s acting chief executive, Greg McFarland
is currently the subject of continuing investigations
[Source: ‘Game Council to be abolished’, 20130704, by Sean Nicholls, Sydney Morning Herald State Political Editor
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/game-council-to-be-abolished-20130704-2pdte.html]
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<< Rural crime investigators confirmed they are looking into claims of illegal hunting and trespass and the inhumane killing of a feral goat. They plan to interview Mr McFarland…
At the centre of the investigation is a Game Council vehicle that was seen being driven through a national park without permission before allegedly breaking a fence and entering the privately-owned Karwarn cattle station in pursuit of a male goat with ”trophy horns”.
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The Hunting Party
(Photo by Louie Eroglu)
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According to photographs taken by the owner of the 25,000-acre property, Diane Noble, the goat was shot in the gut – an act that contravenes the council’s own guidelines on humane, ”single shot” kills. Hunters sometimes avoid shooting a goat in the head to ensure the skull and horns can be hung as a trophy.
The incident happened on December 28 at the Noble’s Karwarn station, 110 kilometres south of Cobar. According to Ms Noble, the pair were confronted by a group of hunters who had paid to shoot at Karwarn. To access Karwarn, the pair had to drive through the Yathong Nature Reserve, run by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. A parks source confirmed they did not have appropriate permission to do so.
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“If local councils, the police and Game Council can’t control illegal hunting in the Hills Shire, there is no way on earth they will be able to regulate amateur hunting in far-flung national parks.”
~ Greens MP and firearms spokesman David Shoebridge
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..The suspensions call into question the O’Farrell government’s insistence that shooting will be safely and professionally run by the Game Council, which will issue licences and monitor compliance when shooting begins on March 1. Critics said the government must now reconsider its deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party to put the council in charge or abandon hunting in national parks altogether.
Steve Turner, the assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, which represents park rangers, said: ”How can anyone have faith that hunting in national parks will be run safely? Imagine what’s going to happen when the rogues get going.”
The scandal comes a month after a risk assessment written by Premier Barry O’Farrell’s own department emerged, warning of a ”major risk” that bushwalkers and parks staff will be killed or seriously injured.
Ms Noble said she did not want to prejudice the investigation but was angered by the apparent conduct. ”The Game Council is supposed to promote ethical hunting. They shot the goat through the guts and that’s not ethical,” she said. ”The animal should be shot once in the head or the heart and lungs for a quick kill.” >>
July 2013: Time to Wind Up the Game Council racket
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Dunn’s Review into the Governance of the Game Council was commissioned by the Government after an internal investigation into allegations that a senior member of the Council had been involved in the inhumane killings of the goat in Western NSW.
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<<On Thursday 4 July 2013 the NSW Government announced it will implement the key changes to Game Council NSW recommended by the independent Governance Review of the Game Council of NSW by Steve Dunn, popularly referred to as The Dunn Report.
The changes are designed to improve the functions previously carried out by Game Council NSW and also acknowledge hunting as a legitimate recreational activity.
The report found that Game Council NSW had an ‘inherent conflict associated with its functions to both represent the interests of hunters, and to regulate their activities’.
Therefore the NSW Government said it will immediately take the following actions:
Transfer the licensing, regulatory, enforcement, education and policy functions into the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI); and
Establish an advisory Game Board that will undertake stakeholder engagement and representation, advocate hunting, advise on research priorities and commission research, and provide independent advice to Government.
The Director General of NSW Trade & Investment, Mr Mark Paterson AO, will become the Division Head of the Game Council Division in the interim to oversee the integration of functions into DPI.
The NSW Government also announced it will immediately suspend hunting in all 400 State forests, pending the transfer of functions and the outcome of a risk assessment. This means that individuals with written permission to hunt on declared public land areas such as State forests and Crown Lands must no longer do so and must abide by the suspension until further advised.
Game Council and the Forestry Corporation of NSW will be contacting licence holders who have booked Written Permissions as soon as possible. Advice is also being sought from the NSW Government on the status of licensing arrangements.
Game Bird Management regulatory functions will continue to be undertaken by the Office of Environment and Heritage in 2013 and will transfer to DPI in 2014.
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Game Council NSW Media Statement
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<<On Thursday 4th July 2013, the Minister for Primary Industries announced the dissolution of Game Council NSW as a result of recommendations made following the NSW Government’s governance review.
The NSW Government has suspended hunting in all NSW State forests, pending a new risk assessment. All issued Written Permissions are now invalid. Game Council and the Forestry Corporation of NSW will attempt to call all licence holders with bookings to confirm cancellation of their permits in the coming week.
Game Council is committed to working with the NSW Government as the report recommendations are implemented and will also be working closely with NSW game hunting licence holders to minimise the impact of interim arrangements. >>
..Minister for Primary Industries (DPI), Katrina Hodgkinson MP said nominees for the board would be ministerially appointed based on merit and all existing 21 staff under the current Games Council would be transfered to the new structure under the DPI.
She said key in her decision to support Steve Dunn’s report recommendations was its finding that “more than a decade after it was established the Game Council has no overarching governance framework; lacks a strategic planning framework; lacks some of the skills, tools and resources to ensure effective compliance with its regulatory framework; has no internal regulatory compliance program, has no approved enterprise-wide risk management framework and has an inadequate policy framework”.
“I can’t just stand by and allow that to continue – I take full responsibility for the changes,” Ms Hodgkinson said.
She said one of her primary concerns was for staff employed in the area of compliance and their safety, but she also saw the need to restore confidence in the public in this area. >>
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COMMENT by ‘Dickytiger’ 20130705:
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“Good move. The Game Council was just a Shooters Party lurk, looking after their mates.
Hunting feral animals is vital, but it doesn’t require a crony bureaucracy to do it.”
<< Amateur hunting in NSW forests will be suspended until at least October following the damning findings of a review into the Game Council of NSW.
As a result of the review, by retired public servant Steve Dunn, the Game Council of NSW will be abolished and responsibility for licensing of amateur hunters transferred to the Department of Primary Industries, the state government announced on Thursday.
The concerns raised in the review have led the government to announce the suspension of all amateur hunting in state forests until governance issues identified within the council are resolved.
In a simultaneous announcement, Environment Minister Robyn Parker revealed the introduction of amateur hunting to national parks will proceed in October, but on a trial basis in 12 parks. Pending the results, hunting may be rolled out in up to 75 parks and reserves as previously announced by the government under a deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party.
Ms Parker said the rules for shooting in national parks would be significantly different to those in place for state forests. Shooters would be closely supervised by National Parks and Wildlife staff in all areas where shooting takes place, which will be closed to visitors for the duration. Shooting will not take place during school holidays.
Additionally, no one under 18 would be allowed to participate, and use of bows or black powder muskets would be prohibited.
The Dunn report, released on Thursday, slams governance the Game Council, which it says is ‘‘deeply embedded in politics’’.
In a scathing assessment, Mr Dunn says public safety ‘‘does not receive a high level of attention’’ in planning documents prepared by the organisation, which is responsible for overseeing licensing of amateur shooters in NSW.
He says the council has been unable to resolve the ‘‘inherent conflict of interest’’ between representing the interests of hunters and regulating their activities in NSW.
The report says the council has ‘‘achieved significant results’’ since its establishment in 2002. But they have been achieved ‘‘at the taking of governance risks not normally associated with government bodies.’’
It concludes: ‘‘Allowing the Game Council to continue on its current path is not an option.’’
The review was ordered by Mr O’Farrell in March after an investigation found alleged illegal hunting by two Game Council senior employees on a property in outback NSW.
.. The IAB report also identified ‘‘possible breaches of Game Council policies and procedures, information which raises questions about governance procedures within the Game Council’’.
Sensitivity over the allegations were heightened by the decision by Mr O’Farrell to open NSW national parks to amateur hunting.
The decision was part of a deal between the government and the Shooters and Fishers Party, which holds the balance of power in the upper house, over passage of electricity privatisation legislation.
Mr Dunn’s report notes that the Game Council was established in 2002 because of the ‘‘influence and power’’ of the Shooter and Fishers Party. He says this power has resulted in the creation of an organisation lacking in accountability.
Shooters and Fishers Party MP Robert Brown is a former Game Council chairman.
More than a decade after the Game Council was established, a strategic plan has yet to be finalised and made public, Mr Dunn notes. His report recommends the 18-member Game Council be replaced by a NSW Game Board of not more than eight members.
It would be subject to control of the department and be responsible for representing the interests of hunters, promoting feral animal control and providing policy advice to government.
However, licensing, education and law enforcement functions – currently the chief role of the Game Council – would be handed to a government department, along with policy and legislation functions. Reaction is being sought from Game Council chief executive Brian Boyle and the Shooters and Fishers Party. >>
Hunting on NSW public land will be banned for at least the next two months and the Game Council will be disbanded. Yet the NSW Government is going ahead with its plan to allow volunteer hunters in national parks as part of a pest control program.
It’s a bold decision, which the Shooters and Hunters Party says even it had no idea was coming. This decision stems from the results of the Government commissioned Dunn Review into the governance of the Game Council. >>
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Dunn’s Scathing Review
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Dunn’s Review into the Governance of the Game Council was commissioned by the Government after an internal investigation into allegations that a senior member of the Council had been involved in the inhumane killings of a goat in Western NSW.
The final report acknowledged the Council had achieved many things in its years of operation but for the most part the report was undeniably shocking leaving the Government no choice but to take action.
Its author Steve Dunn questions how things got so bad. He found the Council has no overarching governance framework, lacks the skills and resources to ensure effective compliance and found breaches of record keeping and privacy legislation. The Game Council is a statutory body established under the Game and Feral Animal Control Act – and it should be subject to the control and direction of the Minister for Primaries Industries.
But Premier of NSW, Barry O’Farrell, says the Council strayed.
“Essentially it made the point that the Game Council was both the promoter and the operator in relation to hunting activities across NSW as well as the regulator,” he said. “That posed an unacceptable risk to the Government.”
The review found the Game Council has its fingers deep in the political pie, with the slices getting bigger thanks to the influence and power of the Shooters and Fishers Party in the NSW Legislative Council.
Steve Dunn wrote, “the Game Council has no parent and no siblings, no one wants to adopt it and no one really wants a close relationship with it, because of the politics.”
Shooters Party MP, Robert Brown, says he hasn’t yet had time to fully consider the O’Farrell Government’s announcement. But he says he’s personally disappointed the Game Council has been abolished and will be seeking a meeting with the Premier before he forms the Party’s response.
The Game Council will be replaced by an advisory board of no more than eight members, which will each be selected on merit, rather than being appointed by various organisations. The board will be in charge of advocacy. The regulatory aspect of the Council will now go to Department of Primary Industries.
Minister Katrina Hodgkinson says no Games Council jobs will be lost in the transition and, until that situation is fixed, shooting in state forests has been put on hold.
“It’s a hard thing to have to go through and accept a report which is so critical of an organisation. But we’ve got an opportunity now to make things right and make things good. We’ll be transferring the operations of the Game Council over into the Department of Primary Industries, which does have excellent governance.”
The temporary shooting stoppage will affect 400 state forests and 2 crown lands. However the Government is going ahead with its pest control program National Parks.
A trial in 12 parks will commence in October. The Environment Minister Robyn Parker says it will be regulated and managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, and there will be strict controls and supervision.
The Minister acknowledged the 20,000 hunters in NSW that assist the Government with pest animal control in NSW.
“These hunters have played an important role in pest eradication.”
The Game Council and the Shooters and Fishers Party have been contacted for comment.
A one time candidate of the Shooters and Fishers Party says he’s always had concerns about the way the Game Council has been run. Jim Pirie is from Mudgee in New South Wales and has over 60 years of hunting experience under his belt, he was also a one-time candidate of the Shooters and Fishers Party. These days he’s the owner of a gun shop in town and he’s also the Treasurer of the Cudgegong Valley Hunters Club.
He spoke with the ABC’s Angela Owens frankly about his concerns over opening National Parks up to hunters and the growing power base of the Game Council.
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“Unfortunately the architects of all this are very egotistical, arrogant men and they won’t take advice from anybody,” he said. “It’s either their way or the highway.”
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“(Someone) stood up at a hunting organisation meeting one day and said there was no nepotism, no cronyism in the Game Council, well that was a joke.
“They appointed the people that they wanted and this at the end of the day was to the determent of the organisation.” >>
<< Daniel Boone was a man, Yes, a big man! With an eye like an eagle And as tall as a mountain was he!
Daniel Boone was a man, Yes, a big man! He was brave, he was fearless And as tough as a mighty oak tree!
From the coonskin cap on the top of ol’ Dan To the heel of his rawhide shoe; The rippin’est, roarin’est, fightin’est man The frontier ever knew!
Daniel Boone was a man, Yes, a big man! And he fought for America To make all Americans free!
What a Boone! What a doer! What a dream come-er-true-er was he!
Daniel Boone was a man! Yes, a big man! With a whoop and a holler he c’d mow down a forest of trees!
Daniel Boone was a man! Yes, a big man! If he frowned at a river In July all the water would freeze!
But a peaceable, pioneer fella was Dan When he smiled all the ice would thaw! The singin’est, laughin’est, happiest man The frontier ever saw!
Daniel Boone was a man! Yes, a big man! With a dream of a country that’d Always forever be free!
What a Boone! What a do-er! What a dream-come-er-true-er was he! >>
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[Source: ‘DANIEL BOONE’, lyrics by Vera Matson, music by Lionel Newman, Twentieth Century Music Corporation, 1964, New York, NY, USA, ^http://www.danielboonetv.com/themesong.html]
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The Game Council’s Cowboy Days Are Over
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<< The cowboy days are over for the recreational shooting of feral animals in NSW. A damning exposé of what the hunting regulator, the Game Council of NSW, has been up to over the past decade- written by a senior public servant who grew up in rural England, familiar with gun safety – makes astonishing reading.
Steve Dunn describes a politically untouchable posse of gun wielding vigilantes, who enthusiastically set themselves the goal of stopping illegal hunting – despite this actually being the job of police. Dunn says the Game Council was acting beyond its statutory role, and with an inherent conflict of interest. Ultimately they posed an unacceptable risk to the government. The Game Council has now been disbanded by the O’Farrell government.
Boring paper pushing, policy making, analytical or investigations skills weren’t seen as important to this bunch of Wild West public servants. The top job prerequisite to become a game council officer was to be a hunter, and to promote hunting.
Left to their own devices by successive ministers, the game council roamed forest frontiers from its head office in Orange, apparently unconcerned about issues of public safety, promoting their own novel concept of ”conservation hunting”, and cloaked from government oversight.
The Game Council’s website last week boasted of a surge of dead animals last financial year: a ”staggering” 1.23 million animals killed on private land by its hunters, and 21,000 shot on public land. And that these figures meant a 70 per cent increase in its key performance indicator.
But Dunn says the council was confused about its role under the Act. It wasn’t supposed to be tallying carcasses, but instead developing plans for hunter safety, public land access, licensing, education, compliance of licensed hunters and research.
The council considered themselves to be outsiders to other government agencies, who reported the renegades to be combative, assertive, and too aligned with the interests of the hunters they were supposed to be regulating.
The review described a pariah that no other government department could love. If agencies are generally organised into clusters, with small agencies needing both a parent and siblings to survive, the game council was an orphan.
”The Game Gouncil has no parent and no siblings, no one wants to adopt it, and no one really wants a close relationship with it – because of politics,” Dunn wrote.
Established in 2002 under the Labor government, the council had its roots ”deeply embedded in politics”, and arose because of the importance of the Shooters & Fishers Party to the government of the day in the upper house when governments needed to get legislation passed.
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The council complained it had an image problem in the wider community. But Dunn’s report considers it was a problem of the council’s own making.
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Carrying private firearms in agency vehicles and hunting on the job are not a good look for public servants. Was it appropriate for the hunting regulator to be handing out promotional stress balls that say ”Stressed? Go conservation hunting”?
In the fallout from the Dunn Review, the Game Council’s regulatory, enforcement, licensing and policy roles have now been transferred to the department of primary industries. A separate advisory Game Board will be formed to represent hunters and advocate hunting.
As the government prepares to allow licensed volunteer shooters to be involved in supervised National Parks and Wildlife Service culls of feral animals in 12 national parks in October, the cowboys that once reigned are out. Strict guidelines for the culls, which will only be held when parks are closed to the public, stipulate: no night shooting, no dogs, no bows and arrows – and no shooting from horses. >>
<< New South Wales Shooters MP Robert Borsak says there has been a culture war over gun control in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre, but he believes people are starting to “get over it.” Mr Borsak believes semi automatic weapons, which were banned in the wake of the 1996 massacre, should be put back in the hands of hunters and recreational shooters. >>
A controversial plan to allow hunting in 79 national parks including the Paroo-Darling National Park in far west NSW near White Cliffs has been delayed indefinitely, 20130220, ABC, ^http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/02/20/3694440.htm
“Now Lizzy… A rifle in the wrong hands can be you know, really dangerous.“
[Character, Mick Taylor, in the 2005 Australian film, Wolf Creek, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean]
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“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures“
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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Strange Truths of the NSW Game Council
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Established in 2002 under the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 introduced by the Carr Labor Government
Annual budget of $3.8 million, of which $2.5 million comes directly from New South Wales taxpayers
Received more than $12 million in NSW Government funding since 2002, including $2.7 million in 2011, despite NSW Government promises that it would become self-funded
16,000 recreational amateur hunters are registered with the Game Council of NSW
Licenses amateur hunters to use firearms, dogs, and bows to hunt in 400 State forests and Crown land areas
In the 12 months to 30 April 2012 the Council estimated licensed hunters took 15,663 animals, mostly rabbits, from public land. This represents a public expenditure of $159 per feral animal killed on public lands. [Ed: Imported Gourmet Farmed Cervena New Zealand Red Venison Striploin retails for a premium of AUD$108 per kilo, so $159 for a feral rabbit is far from ‘economical hunting’]
Since being established there has not been any assessment of the effectiveness of recreational hunting in controlling feral animals in a single State Forest.
It head Daniel Boon man has been found to have trophy hunted an endangered African elephant for sport and personal gratification
The NSW Game Council is a political minority interest group that has become a law unto itself
The political wing of the NSW Game Council is the NSW State Shooters and Fishers Party (perhaps as Sinn Fein is to the IRA).
In May 2009, Robert Brown MP of the Shooters Party lobbies for the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009 to be passed into legislation in New South Wales, so that many of Australia’s native fauna across NSW (including National Parks) would be condemned as ‘game animals’ just like in colonial times. The Bill is rejected.
In June 2010, NSW State Shooters and Fishers Party MP Roy Smith, dies suddenly aged 56, and is replaced by wildlife trophy hunter, Robert Borsak, holding the balance of power in the NSW Upper House.
In April 2011, The Shooters and Fishers Party presents its “shopping list” of ‘game demands’ to the freshly elected O’Farrell NSW Liberal Coalition Government, in return for the Party’s legislative support in the Upper House. Demands include introducing recreational shooting in NSW national parks and for shooting to be encouraged as a school sport (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Dunblane and Sandy Hook aside).
In June 2011, sure enough, with the Shooters Party’s supporting O’Farrell’s public sector wages cuts, the government has opened up more than 140 State Forests for recreational hunting for an unprecedented 10 years.
In July 2011 Shooters’ Party proposes its Firearms Amendment Bill 2011 to allow firearms and ammunition in National Parks, children to have ready access to air rifles without a need for a permit, allows a person to own purchase air rifles without restrictions, and to ease safety regulations on shooting clubs and firearms sellers. The Bill is rejected.
In June 2012, the O’Farrell Government does another deal with the Shooters Party allow shooting in national parks and other reserves, in exchange for support for State energy privatisation support. Amendments are made to the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002.
In November 2012, the O’Farrell Government does another deal with the Shooters Party to allow duck shooting licences in return for their support to privatise two major ports. Now the power over issuing duck shooting licences shifts from the National Parks and Wildlife Service to the pro-hunting Games Council. Amendments are made to the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 and the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974. This is one step short of reintroducing Open Season Duck Hunting in NSW, long banned by the Carr Government in 1995.
In September 2012, illegal shooting of kangaroos in the Deua National Park camp is reported, which was subsequently verified by the Office of Environment and Heritage which reported: “After it was reported to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the investigating park Ranger sighted two kangaroos that had been shot. One animal was euthanised. The matter is under investigation by NPWS and NSW Police.”
Recently, the Shooters and Fishers Party announced that they plan to introduce legislation to repeal the Native Vegetation Act 2003, the law that controls broadscale land clearing and regulates logging activities on private land.
Robert Borsak, NSW Shooters & Fishers Party
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“Hunting is ingrained in human consciousness and genetics by at least 1.5 million years of evolution, according to the latest scientific evidence, and in the modern perspective, fishing is one of the nation’s most popular pursuits.” ~ Robert Borsak – NSW Shooters & Fishers Party, 2012.
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“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
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~ Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
<<We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm.
There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that!
Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that.
If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.>>
[Quote from character Colonel Walter E. Kurtz out of the epic Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now of 1979, directed by Frances Ford Coppola. Watch extract: ^http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLFdJLSho8]
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“The joy of killing! The joy of seeing killing done – these are traits of the human race at large.”
~ Mark Twain, ‘Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World’ (1897), American Publishing Co., Hartford.
B-Double truck plying the Great Western Highway
New South Wales, Australia
(Photo by Editor 20121005, free in public domain, click image to enlarge)
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It’s all about trucks, bigger trucks, more trucks.
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An Innocuous Announcement
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The government of the State of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia late last month announced its plans to rename New South Wales’ major roads, highways, freeways and tollways under an alpha-numeric rebranding, akin to the British road numbering system.
Its ‘Alpha Numeric Route Marker Project‘ will affect more than 60 routes across NSW identified for the upgrade at a forecast cost of around $20 million. The delegated agency, the NSW Roads and Maritime Services (the rebranded ‘Roads and Traffic Authority’), is to roll out this new system of highway route numbering between March and December 2013.
[Source: ‘Have Your Say’, Bang the Table Pty Ltd (ACN 127 001 236) – a public relations consultancy outsourced by the NSW Government to deal with communities (voters) ^http://haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/road-route-markers]
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The new system will include a combination of letters and numbers between 1 and 99.
Well, in the case of the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains (formerly called the Western Road) it will lose its historically familiar name and be rebranded the rather clinical and characterless ‘A32‘.
Instead of people travelling along the famous Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains, they will simply follow the rather nondescript ‘A32‘, which will sound no different to the ‘A31‘ or the ‘A33‘, wherever they are?
Clinical and characterless trunk routing in the UK
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Removing the ‘Great Western Highway‘ name will erase its historical meaning to travellers – the oldest highway into inland Australia. The highway journey itself will supplanted by getting from A to B, as fast as possible. The Blue Mountains used to be a destination, but is steadily being transformed into a route from Sydney on the A32 to other destinations further west. So much for the tourism upon which so many Blue Mountains folk so vitally depend.
Grose Valley, Blue Mountains
(Photo by Editor 20060625, free in public domain)
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..What Blue Mountains? Where? Oh! Was that them?
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As the highway is widened and transformed into a trucking expressway, the Blue Mountains from the highway is looking urban just like Sydney. The Blue Mountains as a destination is steadly fading into another fast transit route into and out of Sydney, like the F3.
It is quite contradictory for the NSW Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, to promise that the road routes will retain their regular name, along with their new alpha-numeric designation. Why spend $20 million to rebrand the regular road naming with alpha-numeric road naming, only to retain the regular naming? The current road naming already displays the route number, as evidenced by the Route ‘32‘ symbol on the current Great Western Highway sign below. So why change it?
Great Western Highway across the Blue Mountains
(National Trucking Route 32)
(Photo by Editor 20121005, free in public domain)
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But the alpha numeric road renaming is clearly more than just renaming. It is ‘road rebranding‘ as a first phase of the government’s ‘road reclassification‘ strategy. It is one thing to upgrade a regional highway like the Great Western Highway; it is quite blue sky to reclassify it into a ‘Route of National Significance‘.
The alpha numeric road renaming is a precursor to reclassifying the Great Western Highway as an ‘A’ grade route of national significance, which is what the Hume Freeway is. Reclassification sets the precedent for the highway over the Mountains to bve upgraded to the likes of the Hume, if goivernmenyt so wishes. Both will be deemed A’ grade routes of national significance. It is a one size fits all approach from the urbane big brother in Macquarie Street.
This announced road renaming will follow a policy trend interstate in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia and so will be consistent with these adjoining states. NSW will mirror the road numbering system in Britain which has established ‘trunk roads‘ as designated long distance trucking routes interconnecting cities, ports and airports.
This road rebranding is about facilitating national trucking linehaul across state borders. It is all about encouraging more road freight across the country. For line-haul trucking, the aim is getting from A to B, as fast as possible. The slower the road journey, the higher the freight cost.
British Motorways: conceived, designed and built principly for road freight
[Source: ‘FTA man joins DfT for lorry charge development’, 20121004, by Chris Tindall, ^http://www.commercialmotor.com/latest-news/fta-s-ch, accessed 20121005]
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But the NSW Government’s official selling point is that its alpha numeric road rebranding is all so that motorists have “a better way to navigate NSW roads”. “It will be a more intuitive way for road users to navigate around NSW. These changes will help simplify journeys, making them safe, efficient and enjoyable.”
According to the RTA-RMS, the upgrade of the Great Western Highway is to ‘improve road safety’, ‘improve road freight efficiency’, ‘cater for the mix of through, local and tourist traffic and ‘be sensitive to the area’s natural environment, heritage and local communities.’ [Source: ^http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/roadprojects/projects/great_western_hway/index.html]
However, one suspects given the RTA-RMS’s arrogant track record of its expressway bulldozing through roadside vegetation and local communities, that the primary mission is one-eyed to ‘improve road freight efficiency’. The other aims are merely for RTA-RMS public relations tricky appeasement, freeing up the expressway engineers to proceed business-as-usual.
Great Western Highway bulldozed out to four lanes at Katoomba
(Photo by The Habitat Advocate 20090501, free in public domain)
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The NSW Government persuasive language is that the alpha numeric rebranding is to ‘standardise the system’, to end the confusion between states, to identify road corridors ‘in order of their importance‘ and so ‘make it easier for motorists to know if they are travelling on a motorway or a route of national or state significance as they plan their trip.’ In any case the Government’s additional quip is that well road signs in NSW have not been reviewed for 30 years, so that is a valid reason to do so.
Trunk Route 32 starts from industrial areas and is designed purely to route trucking
The Route numbering designation has nothing to do with ordinary motorists; such association is political spin.
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But why do ordinary motorists need to know whether a road has national or state significance? The route numbers are already there on the current road signs across the State.
The NSW Opposition has dismissed this project as a ‘colossal waste of money that won’t save motorists a single minute in travel time or improve road conditions and safety.’ At the same time the NSW Opposition claims ‘motorists of this State want new roads, less congestion and better road conditions..‘ [Source: ‘New road names a colossal waste of money’, 20120927, by John Robertson, Robert Furolo, ^http://www.nswalp.com/media/news/new-road-names-a-colossal-waste-of-money/]
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Alpha-Numeric Renaming – a precursor to more Trucking Expressways
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Could there indeed be another reason for embarking on a $20 million road rebranding project? Is the rebranding in fact a precursor to legislating for B-double trucks to ply regional roads where they are currently prohibited?
It is one thing to upgrade a regional highway like the Great Western Highway; it is quite ‘blue sky’ to reclassifying a regional highway like the Great Western Highway into a ‘Route of National Significance‘.
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Ed:
This road re-branding is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ edict for uniformity. It serves to abet trucking lobbyists, to befit centralist bureaucrats, while de-personalising local communities in the process. It is a strategic precursor to rolling out more Trucking Expressways. It reeks of rancid Babyboomerism – the self-entitlement, the moral relativism, the utilitarianism, oil-dependent industries…all cultural throwbacks to the exploitative 20th Century. Die off, history beckons!
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Such reclassification facilitates central government roughshodding of legitimate local community concerns about the adverse and permanent impacts. When the RTA-RMS wants to bulldoze its trucking expressways through local communities, the legal reclassification overrides concerns about the impacts on environment, amenity, land values, equity and access. It is a prejudiced arrogant policy undermining local democratic rights.
The scheme is inherited from the recent NSW Government centralist planning policy that designated projects of State Significance and Projects of National Signifiance. In 2005, the NSW Government conceived its autocratic State Environmental Planning Policy (Major Projects) then in March 2006 imposed its ‘NSW Major Projects Assessment System‘ upon the people of NSW. It was all to ‘remove unnecessary red tape’, ‘clarify the assessment of major projects’, and ‘help NSW remain Australia’s economic powerhouse.’ [Ed: Sometimes spin can be so poetic]
It became known as Part 3A – a new part of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EP&A Act) that simply overruled all other parts. Easy!
Under this planning policy and amended planning legislation, if the NSW Government deemed an infrastructure project to be of ‘State Significance’, then local council objections would be automatically overruled and community protests discarded. The State’s Planning Minister would have ultimate say supposedly in the State’s interest to allow the project to proceed and to roughshod all social impacts and all environmental impacts. It was a return to autocracy, just like in the days of kings and queens ruling over serfs and peasants.
But now for a road to be deemed a ‘Route of National Significance’ (i.e. get the ‘A’ branding), well, local communities will have even less of a voice.
The policy is absolute Putinesk (neo-‘Stalinist’).
Goodbye Bullaburra – set to be the next victim of the Trucking Expressway
(Photo by Editor 20120103, free in public domain, this is a photo for the historical record)
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This alpha numeric road renaming is ‘road rebranding‘ and the first phase of the government’s ‘road reclassification‘ strategy. It is part of a broader road centric freight agenda that ignores the demonstrable long-term and future-resilient benefits of rail freight nationally.
Reclassifying the Great Western Highway into the A32 Road of National Significance achieves more than upgrading the regional highway to a four-lane trucking expressway, all so that thousands of B-doubles can nudge 90kph on cruise control. The Road of National Significance is national trucking route policy. It will see the 1950’s conceived National Route 32 from Sydney 1154km to Cockburn on the South Australian Border and extend well beyond to Adelaide, Perth and Darwin.
It is 1950s mindset applied in 2013. It is all about facilitating interstate freight by 25 metre long B-Double trucks.
Trunk Route 32, somewhat further west The distance sign heading east from the NSW/SA Border at Cockburn
This is now the western terminus of National Route 32 following the implementation of alpha-numeric route marking in South Australia, Jan 2005.
[Source: ^http://www.ozroads.com.au/NSW/RouteNumbering/National%20Routes/32/nr32.htm]
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Meanwhile, hectare after hectare of Blue Mountains native vegetation is bulldozed to make way for the ‘Trucking Expressway‘.
Wentworth Falls bushland amenity disappearing for the Trucking Expressway
(Photo by Editor 20120201, free in pubic domain, click image to enlarge)
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Meanwhile, Australian wildlife slaughtered as roadkill is perpetuated and ignored by the RTA-RMS to make way for the ‘Trucking Expressway‘.
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Meanwhile, just because the road is wider and faster, humans are not exempt from becoming ‘roadkill’ either.
All we need do is look at Britain, its road-freight centric policy and its consequential trucking carnage legacy.
Trucking Expressways kill local communities in more ways than one
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Meanwhile, the ongoing trucking carnage legacy continues along already upgraded sections of the Great Western Highway:
[Source: “Frightening” figures released’, by journalist Krystyna Pollard, 20110914, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), p.7]
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[Source: ‘Gone too soon’, by journalist Damien Madigan, 20110914, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), p.1]
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[Source: ‘Highway mayhem’, by journalist Shane Desiatnik, 20110803, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), p.1]
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Linehaul Trucking and pedestrians don’t mixTrucking Economics does not overrule!
[Source: Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper]
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Speeding B-Double overturned at Lapstone on an already widened 4-laned section of the converted Trucking Expressway
[Source Blue Mountains Gazette, 20110729]
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What is preventing B-Triples bidding for access to Roads of National Significance?
The fire tragedy afflicted Australia’s legendary ‘Conservation Cradle’
A scorched Grose Valley from Evan’s Lookout, looking north up Govett’s Gorge
(Photo by Editor taken 20061209, free in public domain. Free Large Image)
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A heritage tragedy unfolds
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A simple lighting stike ignited remote bushland in rugged terrain within the Blue Mountains National Park, over 5km north of the township of Blackheath on 20061113.
Innocuously, the ignition started off on hilly Burra Korain Ridge,It was far from settlement but during relatively calm weather and low temperature, so it was not suppressed but ‘monitored’..then the wind picked up.
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It and a second ignition west were allowed to continue burning for days until they eventually coalesced with compounded backburning into a firestorm some ten days later down in the Grose Valley. On 20061122, the prized Grose Valley and its iconic and precious Blue Gum Forest were incinerated under a pyrocumulus cloud of towering wood smoke that could be seen from the Sydney coast a hundred kilometres away. Some 14,070 hectares of National Park habitat was burnt. The tragedy did not so much as ‘strike‘ from the lighting itself, but as Blue Mountains residents we saw it ‘unfold‘ over many days and nights under the trusteeship of Bushfire Management.
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..ten days later
The pyrocumulus cloud of a screaming, dying Grose Valley precious to many, including wildlife
The Grose Valley and its Blue Gum Forest and wildlife burning to death on 20061122
A greenhouse gas estimate was not taken.
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Community shock, sadness and overwhelming sense of loss
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How was this allowed to happen?
In the days that followed, many Blue Mountains residents and especially the many conservationists familiar with the Grose Valley and Blue Gum Forest over many years became deeply shocked at learning about the loss of this magnificent sacred preserved forest – its tall 300+ year old rare Blue Gums (Eucalytus deanii).
Without knowledge of personal accounts, one respects that the dramatic scenes of the smoke and fire inflicted personal trauma with many, given so many people’s long and established personal knowledge, affinity, love, awe and respect for..
‘The Blue Gum‘
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The Habitat Advocate reaches out to these people (doesn’t matter the fact that years have passed) and we choose to express the view of a need to tell truths and to seek some sense of learned maturity from it all. For the Grose Valley contained many tracks, many walks and many special places if one knew where to look. Popes Glen and from Govetts Leap down under Bridal Veil following the popular Rodriguez Pass to Junction Rock then Acacia Flat and the Blue Gum Forest in the heart of the Grose. Many special places includes Beauchamp Falls, Docker Buttress, Pulpit Rock, Lockley Pylon, Anvil Rock lookout, Perrys Lookdown, Hanging Rock, Pierces Pass, Asgard Swamp, and the inaccessible Henson Glen and David Crevasse gorge.
To this editor, the return in 2007 to a previously sacred special, but incinerated Neates Glen was emptying in spirit. There was heartfelt shock and dismay by many local conservationists familiar with the iconic Blue Gum Forest who became deeply saddened by the tragedy.
Neates Glen, as it was But since incinerated, not by the wildife, but by deliberately lit ‘backburning’
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Phone calls and emails were exchanged with many locals wanting to know the extent of the damage and whether ‘the Blue Gum‘ could recover. The original fire had been fanned westward from Burra Korain Head spotting along the Blackheath Walls escarpment, but then decended and burnt through Perrys Lookdown, Docker Buttress and down and through the Blue Gum. Deliberately lit backburns had descended and burnt out Pierces Pass (Hungerfords Track) through rainforest into the Grose and everyone had seen the pyrocumulus mushroom cloud towering 6000 feet above the Grose on the 22nd.
There was an immense sense of loss. The relatively small Blue Gum Forest, perhaps just several hectares, was unique by its ecological location, by its grand age and by its irreplaceability. The sense of loss was perhaps more pronounced amongst the more mature conservationists, now lesser in number, who knew its original saviours of the 1930s – Alan Rigby, Myles Dunphy and other dedicated bushwalkers who had championed to save it from logging 81 years ago.
The conservation heritage of The Blue Gum Forest dates back to Australia’s earliest conservation campaign from 1931For this reason ‘The Blue Gum Forest’ has been passionately respected as Australia’s ‘Cradle of Conservation’
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The region is home to threatened or rare species of conservation significance living within the rugged gorges and tablelands, like the spotted-tailed quoll, the koala, the yellow-bellied glider, the long-nosed potoroo, the green and golden bell frog and the Blue Mountains water skink. Many would have perished in the inferno, unable to escape. The Grose is a very quiet and sterile place now, with only birds. But to the firefighters, these were not human lives or property.
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Deafening silence from the ‘Firies’ naturally attractedcommunity enquiry and suspicion
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The day after the firestorm that enveloped the Grose Valley, the wind subsided and from 20061123 through to the final mopping up date of 20061203, the 2006 Grose Bushfire and its many ember spotfires came under bushfire management control and were ultimately extinguished or else considered to be ‘benign‘.
It is important to note that during the entire bushfire event from 20061113 through to 20061203, only NSW Rural Fire Service ‘Major Fire Updates’ on its website and headline journalism appeared in the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper. Initially, the community, conservationists and ‘firies’ were respectfully passive. In the immediate aftermath of the fire from 20061204 through to the weekly issue of the Blue Mountains Gazette on 20061129, the local community, conservationists and ‘firies’ were letter silent in the paper. It was a combination of shock, preoccupation with the emergency and respectful anticipation of communication from the bushfire authorities.
One can assume here that given the scale of the tragedy, many in the Blue Mountains community were respectfully patient in anticipation of an assured announcement from Bushfire Management or some communication process. But none eventuated.
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Injustice
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The following weekly issue of the Gazette was published on 20061129, but no communication from Bushfire Management. Only dismissive bureaucratic statements came from Parks and Wildlife’s Regional Director Geoff Luscombe with a tone suggesting minimal damage and business-as-usual.
This was the article:
6th Dec: ‘Park managers take stock as smoke clears’
‘Hundreds of fire-fighters are celebrating a return to normality this week after cooler weather and an intense two-week campaign by volunteers and professionals brought a fire in the Grose Valley under control.
According to the Rural Fire Service this good weather, combined with a thorough mop-up operation and ongoing infra-red monitoring, means flare-ups are unlikely.However the 15,000 hectare burnt area – including the iconic Blue Gum Forest – is likely to remain closed for the “foreseeable future” due to safety concerns and regeneration.
Geoff Luscombe, regional manager of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), said the fact that only part of the Grose Valley burnt meant many animals had been able to seek refuge.
“Many of the Australian plants and animal species have learnt not only to survive fire but to exploit it,” he said. However he confirmed fears that the fire had burnt Blue Gum Forest – a Mecca for bushwalkers and conservationists in the heart of the Grose Valley.
“Blue gums aren’t a particularly fire-tolerant species,” he said. “Fire last burnt through Blue Gum in 1994. The effects of this fire we don’t know yet and we may not know for many months to come.”
A botanist has been sent to inspect the area and there could be ongoing monitoring.Mr Luscombe did not wish to comment on how the fire was handled due to a lengthy absence, but Inspector Jack Tolhurst from the Blue Mountains District Rural Fire Service has warded off any potential criticism.
“I think at the moment we should be looking at the positive,” said Inspector Tolhurst. “The fire is contained . . . It’s been a very long campaign but at the end of the day we haven’t lost any property or lives and half the Grose Valley at least remains intact.”
A fire that broke out near Zig-Zag Railway last week has also been contained. [Ed. According to inside reports, Zig Zag Railway Station was accidentally firebombed by an aerial helicopter attempting backburning].
“We’ve had a lot of help from a wide range of people. We’ve had wonderful support from the community . . . it was a wonderful effort from everyone.”
Meanwhile the hard work has only just begun for another group of dedicated volunteers.Blue Mountains WIRES are expecting to rescue a number of fire-affected native animals in coming months as they wander into residential areas for food and water.
“The arboreal animals – possums and gliders – they come to grief,” said chairperson Greg Keightly. “Birds suffer heat stress and smoke inhalation. They’re going to be flying around bewildered.”
He said residents who see native wildlife in urban areas should keep pets inside, provide water off the ground in a place safe from predators, and avoid the temptation to feed wildlife.
“Things come up for months after fires,” said Mr Keightley.“Do ring us (4754-2946) if you thing something is injured or doing it tough,” he said.
The national park south of the Great Western Highway, and the lookout at Govetts Leap, are open to visitors.For information on closures call 4787-8877 or visit www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au’
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Mismanagement?
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So the silence from the firies, from Bushfire Management and from the New South Wales Government ultimately responsible and accountable, was deafening. It was as if the entire Firie fraternity had gone to ground in a code of silence behind closed doors.
So naturally the community response was that something smelt fishy. This communication intransigence was a public relations blunder by Bushfire Management, to its detriment.
Then filtered out accounts of crazy operational mismanagement during the bushfire and of bush arson by the firies behind the roadblocks beyond the public gaze.
Rumours circulated that the initial ignition had been left for burn in the critical first few days of 13th November and 14th November up on Burra Korrain Ridge because it wasn’t right next to a road so that fire trucks could get to it. The fire had even been abandonned. Then the wind picked up and it spread. Airborne firefighting was not called in until a Section 44 incident declaration was effected on 15th November.
A second fire nearby to the west near Hartley Vale, purported also lit by dry lightning on 14th Nov, had attracted broadscale backburning from the Hartley Vale Road. But the backburn got out of control, ripped up the valley fanned by winds and crossed over the Darling Causeway on to the Blackheath Escarpment and the Upper Grose to join up with the first blaze. The onground evidence shows that this was a hazard reduction burn starting from alongside the Hartley Vale Road just east of the village of Hartley Vale.
Then came the account of senior bushfire management at the Rural Fire Service headquarters at Homebush ordering a ‘headburning’ a new 10km fire front along the south of the Bells Line of Road into the Grose Valley. Perhaps the NSW Government had stepped in demanding action. Perhaps RFS headquarters response was a series of overreactions, albeit too late and to be seen to be now ‘acting’ was only compounding the fire risk to the Grose . Apparently, the RFS Commissioner had even touted imposing a massive defacto hazard reduction north of the Bells Line of Road right though the vast wilderness of the Wollemi National Park, to somehow head off another fire on 20th November some 80km away north of Wiseman’s Ferry, but that strategy was rejected in a heated operational debate. [“The Wollemi National Park is part of the World Heritage Area and covers 488,620 hectares. Important values of the park include the spectacular wild and rugged scenery, its geological heritage values, its diversity of natural environments, the occurrence of many threatened or restricted native plant and animal species including the Wollemi pine and the broad-headed snake, significant plant communities, the presence of a range of important Aboriginal sites and the park’s historic places which are recognised for their regional and national significance.” – Wollemi NP Plan of Management, April 2001]
Even the Zig Zag tourist railway station was apparently accidently firebombed by an overzealous airborne firefighter starting backburning en mass
Then came the account of Blackheath residents who had their houses subjected to the risk of a deliberately lit backburn during the course of the bushfire. Despite the out of control wildfire being many miles to the north west of Blackheath, a broadscale backburn (some say is was really a ‘defacto hazard reduction‘) was lit along the fire trail below the electricity transmission line near Govetts Leap lookout. But it got out of control briefly and threatened to burn houses in Connaught Road. Indeed the entire Blackheath Escarpment fire from Hat Hill Road south through Govetts Leap Lookout and Ebans Head was started deliberately as a ‘strategic’ backburn.
Blackheath Escarpment completely burnt (top) for hectares, looking south from Hat Hill Road
(Photo by editor 20061209, free in public domain, click image to enlarge)
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The rural property east of Hartley Vale where on 20070207 there was clear evidence of hazard reduction (HR)commencing only from the south side Hartley Vale Road, opposite.Eucalypts were burned only at the base, but further up the hill the tree crowns had been burned.The HR had quickly got out of control and then crossed over the Darling Causeway.
(Photo by editor 20070207, free in public domain, click image to enlarge)
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Once two weeks had passed since the dramatic firestorm and with only silence emanating from Bushfire Management and the NSW Government, local people had had enough and they wanted answers.
Some 143 local yet disparate conservationists via ‘jungle drums’ met up, discussed the issue, united informally and agreed to go public. They informally formed the ‘Grose Fire Group‘ and contributed to a fighting fund some $1700 odd and became vocal. Two weeks after the Grose Valley Firestorm the Grose Fire Group managed a full page open letter in the local Blue Mountains Gazette on 20061206 on page 13. It was directed to the ultimate authority responsible and accountable for the Grose Fire Tragedy, the NSW Government. The Premier at the time was Labor’s Morris Iemma MP. The NSW Member for the NSW Seat of Blue Mountains as well as NSW Minister for Environment at the time was Bob Debus MP.
Those who valued the Blue Gum Forest challenged those responsible for its protection. The tragedy certainly stirred and polarised the Blue Mountains community. Conservationists naturally wanted answers, an enquiry, a review of bushfire prevention and management from:
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service under the direction of Regional Director Geoff Luscombe
NSW Rural Fire Service under the direction of Commissioner Phil Koperberg
Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee aligned with Blue Mountains City Council and chaired by Councillor Chris Van Der Kley.
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‘Grose Valley Fire – World Heritage takes a hit’
“The Blue Gum Forest, birth-place of the modern conservation movement, was badly damaged by the Grose fire on Wednesday the 22nd of November. If this precious forest was a row of houses, then there would automatically be a major investigation into how the fire was fought. The fact that this major loss of our natural heritage is only now becoming known is testimony to the prevailing attitudes of those controlled the media spin during this recent fire event,” said Keith Muir director of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness.
“Until today the overall perception from the media was that this fire was a good one. No houses or lives lost”, Mr Muir said.
“There where no media updates on the struggle to save Blue Gum. No the reports of success in saving fire sensitive rare plants and rainforests along the escarpment edge. All the media reports spoke of bushland burnt; not on the success of any strategy to minimise the impact on the World Heritage listed national park, while saving lives and property”, he said.
“The Blue Mountains National Park Fire Management Strategy 2004 sets out all the necessary actions to protect the natural environment, as well as life and property. Yet for some reason it appears at this stage that the fire was not fought according to that agreed Strategy, as far as its provisions on natural heritage were concerned”, said Mr Muir.
“Increased fire is a major threat to World Heritage values of the Greater Blue Mountains national parks. Unless we develop and implement better strategies to defend the bush, as well as lives and property, then climate change will make this threat much worse,” Mr Muir said.
“The fire management strategies and techniques undertaken during the fire need to be re-examined to ensure the diversity of the Blue Mountains forests is protected into the future,” he said.
“Future fire management requires the feedback that only an inquiry into the Grose Valley Fire can achieve. Such an inquiry should not be taken as a criticism of those involved in fighting fire. It is an opportunity to ensure that everyone stays on fully board with future efforts to minimise fire damages,” Mr Muir said.’
What exacerbated the conflict was not some much that the bushfire had got out of control and had raged through the precious Grose Valley per se, but it was more the defensive, aloof reaction by ‘Firies’ which escalated into a barrage of defensive and vocal acrimony against any form of criticism of the firefighters.
In the face of such palatable denial by the Firies,of any accountability the initial shock and sadness within the local community within days quickly manifested into outrage and anger, and even to blame and accusations.
Most conservationists however felt a right to question and seek specific answers from Bushfire Management about the Grose Fires, for lessons to be learned, for fundamental changes to be made to bushfire management policy, bushfire fighting resourcing and practices, all simply so that such a tragedy should not be repeated.
But the key problem was that the ‘Firies‘ adopted an ‘in denial’ approach to a community suffering loss. Many Firies denied that they had done anything wrong and rejected any criticism by conservationists. Some Firies vented their anger in the local media attacking anyone who dared criticise. Clearly, Bushfiore Management’s debriefing and review of the bushfire in its immediate aftermath was poorly managed.
Underlying the conflict was the Firies urban fire fighting mandate to ‘protect lives and property” – that is human ones, not forests, not wildlife. Whereas what emerged with many in the Blue Mountains community was the implicit expectation that the World Heritage Area is an important natural asset to be protected, including from devastating bushfire.
The Grose Valley Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area
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Hence, it was a conflict between differing cultural value systems. It was about recognition of the value of the natural assets of the Blue Gum Forest and the Grose Valley within the Bue Mountains National Park within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
The iconic Blue Gum Forest
(Acacia Flat, before the pyrocumulus firestorm of 22nd November 2006)
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The iconic Blue Gum Forest
(The aftermath)
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20 Sep: (2 months prior)…‘Fire crews prepare’
[Source: ‘Fire crews prepare’, Blue Mountains Gazette, 20060926]
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‘With warmer days just around the corner and continuing dry weather the Blue Mountains Region National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is again undertaking rigorous preparation for the coming fire season.
“Every year around this time the NPWS run a number of fire preparedness days to ensure staff and fire-fighting equipment are fully prepared for the season ahead,” said Minister for Environment Mr Bob Debus.
NSW Labor Minister for Environment Mr Bob Debus MP
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“Fire preparedness days require fire-fighting staff to check their personal protective equipment, inspect fire-fighting pumps and vehicles and ensure that communication equipment and procedures are in place and working before the fire season begins.”
Mr Debus said a number of exercises, including four-wheel drive and tanker driving, first aid scenarios, entrapment and burnovers, were also employed to re-familiarise staff with all aspects of fighting fires.
“Burnovers, where fire-fighters are trapped in a vehicle as fire passes over it, is one of the worst case scenarios a fire-fighter can face so pre-season practice is critical to ensure that their response is second nature”, he said. “Local fire-fighters have also undergone stringent fitness assessments to make sure they are prepared for the physical demands of fire-fighting – like being winched from a helicopter into remote areas with heavy equipment, to work long hours under very hot and dry conditions wearing considerable layers of protective clothing”, Mr Debus explained.
Mr Debus said that fire preparedness and fitness assessment days worked in conjunction with a number of other initiatives as part of a year-long readiness campaign for the approaching summer.
“Over the past 12 months, NPWS officers have conducted more than 150 hazard reduction burns on national park land across NSW.”
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“Nineteen hazard reduction burns have been conducted in the Blue Mountains region covering nmore than 4500 ha” ~Bob Debus MP
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Mr Debus said that while fire-fighting authorities are preparing themselves to be as ready as possible for flare ups and major fires, home-owners in fire prone areas of teh Blue Mountains should also be readying themselves for the approaching season. “Now is the time to start cleaning gutters, ember proof houses and sheds, prepare fire breaks and clear grass and fuel away from structures”, he said.’
‘Residents in the historic Hawkesbury River village of St Albans prepared for the worst as raging bushfires neared. Their predicament came with a fresh fire outbreak in a remote corner of Wollemi National Park, 73 kilometres north of Windsor about 2pm. A Rural Fire Service spokesman said the blaze had destroyed 450 hectares by 3pm. It was being fanned by a string of north-westerly winds and had jumped Putty Road, causing its closure to traffic between Singeleton and Richmond. Winds of up to 80kmh forecast for the early hours of tomorrow are expected to drive the fire towards St Albans. About 45 Rural Fire Service volunteers with 10 tankers have been deployed to protect the small community as residents tried to safeguard their homes from floating embers. At least two helicopters were in the air to assist the operation.
Wildfire, spot fires and back burning across the Blackheath plateau
(Photo by Rural Fire Service)
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Blue Mountains:
‘Meanwhile a spokesman for the RFS, Andrew Shade, told (the Sydney Morning Herald) firefighters were waiting to see if changing winds would affect the Blue Mountains fires, which jumped containment lines overnight. “The fire is across about 7000 hectares; we’ve got 18 aircraft working the fire, including two sky cranes, [and] 400 personnel at the fire on about 60 trucks.”
..Other fires continue to burn across the state, with a number of fires across 7000 hectares in the Hunter Valley burning in remote and inaccessible areas. Two other fires, near Forbes and Bathurst respectively, are both contained but the RFS has expressed concerns over the weather and its ability to cause a change in the nature of the the two blazes. Firefighters set up a containment line to protect the outskirts of Blackheath in the Blue Mountains.
Rural Fire Service Commissioner Phil Koperberg said today winds gusting up to 80kmh were predicted for about 3am tomorrow – a time when firefighting planes are unable to fly. At a news conference in Katoomba, Mr Koperberg described the present threat to Blue Mountain towns as “fairly serious … not grave”. However, he urged residents to clean fuel away from their homes as a precaution. This afternoon the most intense efforts were along a containment line at the northern end of Hat Hill Road at Anvil Rock. If that line was breached, the outskirts of Blackheath could be under threat, he said. Firefighters expected wind changes in the area between 4pm and 6pm today. The Bells Line of Road remains closed and the Blue Mountains National Park will remain closed until further notice.
The Great Western Highway and the Darling Causeway were open but drivers were advised to proceed with caution, with smoke likely to affect the roads. A total fire ban now applies in all but the north-east corner of the state as temperatures in the high 30s (Celsius), the strong winds and low humidity combine to produce potentially savage conditions…’
‘Thick smoke continues to drift across the Blue Mountains as the largest firefighting and backburning operation in the region since January 2003 enters its second week.
Hundreds of RFS volunteers, NSW Fire Brigades, SES and NPWS personnel, a number of remote firefighting units and 16 waterbombing aircraft are enlisted under a Section 44 declaration with a mission of containing and then attacking bushfires burning in the Grose Valley. The fires are believed to have been ignited by lightning on Monday, November 13 and at the time of going to press had burnt out 3800 hectares of bushland and private parkland in the valley below Blackheath, Mt Victoria, Bell and Mt Tomah.
No homes were under threat on Tuesday morning, but the RFS almost doubled its resources in the Blue Mountains on Monday night following unfavourable weather conditions.
The NSW FireBrigades also deployed extra fire engines and firefighters ot the Blue Mountains on Tuesday.
The large Blue Mountains bushfire broke its containment lines at Anvil Rock about 11 pm on Monday. Earlier, a comprehensive backburning operation involving 300 firefighters commenced on Saturday night between Blackheath and Mt Victoria to protect the townships if conditions worsened. A second phase began along Bells Line of Road between the Darling Causeway and Mt Tomah on Monday morning, continuing to Pierces Pass picnic area to the south.
The backburning activities can cause heavy smoke to linger in residential areas and residents are advised to close windows and doors. An emergency operations centre is active in Katoomba under the control of Local Emergency Operating Controller and Blue Mountains Police Local Area Commander Patrick Paroz, with the RFS as the lead combat agency.
Blue Mountains RFS community safety officer Eric Berry said remote area firefighting units will continue to attack the fire at the fringe and a fleet of 16 aircraft based in Medlow Bath airfield will operate to contain the fire.
“14 medium to heavy capacity helicopters have been operating 24/7 since last Tuesday [Ed: This contradicts the official RFS Section 44 Incident Controllers Report – Wednesday 15th not Tuesday 14th] and we now have three air crane helicopters on the job,” Inspector Eric Berry said. “This is a massive operation, certainly the biggest in the last three years. “It involves up to 300 RFS, NSW Fire Brigades, NPWS, police and SES personnel and volunteers at any one time, sourced from all over eastern NSW as well as every Blue Mountains RFS brigade. “Then there are the support services chipping in like the Salvation Army, who have been supplying breakfast at 5.30 am on a daily basis for the firefighters.”
Inspector Berry said RFS community information meetings last weekend were very successful in seven upper Mountains towns. “More than 200 residents attended one of the meetings held at Blackheath Golf Club, giving us an opportunity to explain what is going on in plain English. “More meetings may occur, but in the meantime residents should phone the RFS information line for updates. “We are getting nearly 6000 hits on our website per day and are updating the site at regular intervals.”
The Gazette visited the Medlow Bath Airfield last Friday, which continues to be a hive of activity. Six helicopters, including a giant sky crane chopper, took off and landed several times inside an hour, collecting water loads from nearby dams and dropping them into and ahead of the flames. Kev Adams, an RFS volunteer from Gloucester, described the conditions the pilots had to deal with early last week as wild.
“I came down from Gloucester last Wednesday and we went up in a chopper and the wind was blowing at about 41 knots. “We hit a pocket of turbulence and I hit my head on the ceiling even though I was strapped in, that’s how wild the wind was. “Hopefully we’ll be able to head home soon.”
Inspector Eric Berry said good progress has been made, but the weather ahead could test the containment lines.’
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Ed: Additional reporting in the online version of this article:
‘Severe weather is expected for the Blue Mountains this afternoon between 2.00pm and 5.00pm. A Total Fire Ban has been declared for a number of areas across the state today, including the Blue Mountains. Temperatures in the Blue Mountains are expected to reach 31 degrees with west-north-west winds gusting up to 45km/h.
Fire behaviour yesterday was subdued due to mild conditions and the main front extinguishing in very low fuel levels. Advantage was taken of these conditions to consolidate containment lines. The fire has now been burning for fourteen days and burnt nearly 15,000 hectares.
The amount of smoke is likely to increase today. Aircraft and ground crews will be actively patrolling the fire for reactivation of fire edges. Infrared hot spot technology is being used in an attempt to identify stumps and roots that are still smouldering near the edges. Crews can then locate the hotspots and extinguish them.
The Bells Line of Road between the Darling Causeway and Mount Tomah has been re-opened but may be closed intermittently. Mount Banks and Pierces Pass trails and tracks are closed to the public. Residents in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury should remain vigilant.’
Volunteers back burn along Bells Line of Road as smoke from the fire front can be seen overhead
(Photo by Wade Laube)
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‘A major bushfire burning out of control in the Blue Mountains again broke containment lines overnight ahead of forecast rugged day for fire fighters. Two separate blazes have blackened more than 8,000 hectares of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, with the larger of the two burning on a massive front about four kilometres north of the township of Blackheath.
Wind gusts of up to 70kph are forecast to push through that area, around Grose Valley, about 4am (AEDT) today. Blustery conditions expected for most of the day with temperatures in the low 30s (Celsius).
Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Phil Koperberg has said the towns of Mt Tomah and Mt Wilson would be vulnerable to a wind change. An RFS spokesman said crews had been working on a 35km containment line through the night but the bigger fire had now broken its eastern containment lines. He said crews were prepared for the “tricky” conditions expected early today, with wind gusts expected to pick up as the day gets warmer. Waterbombing aircraft cannot take off until first light but no property is currently under direct threat.
Meanwhile, a new bushfire burning in the Wiseman’s Ferry area is not posing any immediate threat to the village of St Albans, 90km north-west of Sydney. However, the RFS spokesman said that could also change depending on today’s winds. A total fire ban has been declared for much of the state today, including the Greater Sydney and Greater Hunter areas, the Illawarra and far south coast, southern and central ranges, the upper and lower central west plains and the eastern Riverina.’
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23 Nov: “Massive fire back-burn effort’
[Source: ‘Massive fire back-burn effort’, Mx (free Sydney commuter newspaper), by Matt Sun, 20061123, page 1]
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‘Hundreds of firefighters are today hoping a massive 30km containment line will stop the Blue Mountains bushfire in its tracks. [Ed: Bit late, this is the day after that pyrocumulus firestorm]
About 200 Rural Fire Service and NSW Fire Brigade firefighters worked overnight on a back-burn between Blackheath and Wentworth Falls. Firefighters were on standby until temperatures dropped and winds died. They were sent in to light the back-burn as soon as conditions calmed down. Crews spent this morning back burning on the Bells Line of Road and hoping to create containment lines near the village of (Mt) Tomah if winds subside.
The RFS said 400 firefighters started work on the blaze this morning. The weather bureau forecast a maximum temperature of 27C, 45kph gusting winds and 17% humidity this afternoon.
Two fires, both ignited by lightning 10 days ago, joined up this week and have now destroyed 14,500 ha. An RFS spokeswoman said the fire was burning 2.5 km south of Mt Tomah and 7km north of Wentworth Falls…Crews and 15 aircraft will remain on standby to extinguish any spot fires that pass over teh containment line. Fire-bombing helicopters Elvis and Shania were likely to be sent to other fires burning across NSW.
The RFS today said Blue Mountains townships were not in immediate danger but should remain alert. But experts warned the extreme weather conditions would return next week, with the mercury reaching the mid 30s.’
The above photo shot taken by the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper’s lead journalist, achieved front page on 20061129. The caption read: “Assessing the aftermath: Medlow Bath RFS crew member Noah Taylor and team leader Michael Anderson near Evans Lookout last Friday.”
This same photo was re-used by the Blue Mountains Gazette a year later on 20071024 (page 7) to support an article by the Rural Fire Service incident controller in charge of co-ordinating the fire-fighting of the 2006 Grose Fire, Mal Cronstedt, who responded to an article in the paper on this subject by The Habitat Advocate dated 20071010.
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‘Hundreds of weary but determined firefighters are steadily gaining the upper hand over a Grose Valley bushfire that has burned about 15,000 hectares since November 13.
Daylight waterbombing by a fleet of choppers based at Medlow Bath airfield, increasing access by remote area firefighting units, successful backburns along the northern and southern escarpments and milder than predicted weather conditions since Saturday have limited the spread of the fire.
At the time of going to press, 130 RFS, NSW Fire Brigades and NPWS firefighters and nine helicopters were conducting backburns, mopping up buffer zones and cutting in access trails to the fire’s fringes. The active front of the fire was within containment lines yesterday morning, allowing the Bells Line of Road and Mt Tomah Botanical Gardens to re-open.
A small fire that started at Mitchells Lookout in Mt Victoria on November 23 is extinguished and investigations are continuing into its cause.
Blue Mountains RFS is warning residents to remain vigilant by continuing to prepare their homes for fire if conditions worsen and to immediately report any suspicious activity to CrimeStoppers by calling 1800-333-000.
The milder conditions are a welcome relief from the heat and 100 km/h wind gusts that put residents of Hazelbrook, Linden, Faulconbridge and Winmalee on high alert last Wednesday afternoon.
An explosion within the fire, which witnesses described as causing a mushroom-like cloud to develop, ignited spotfires four kilometres north of Lake Woodford and five kilometres north of Hazelbrook. Many residents headed home early from work to clear gutters and roofs and two Winmalee schools opted to close for 24 hours as a precaution. Eighteen water-bombing aircraft attacked the spotfires, extinguishing one within hours and the second by Thursday evening.
For daily fire updates and advice, go to www.bluemountains.rfs.nsw.gov.au, phone a dedicated 24-hour hotline manned by local volunteers on 1800-264-525 or visit your local RFS station, staffed by volunteer station officers.
“These people are the unsung heroes of the RFS,” Blue Mountains RFS public liaison and education officer Paul McGrath said.
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Overwhelming grief shunned by government hush, galvanised an immense sense of environmental injustice :
It was time to challenge (with due civility) the unaccountable bastards in authority…the NSW Government:
An extract of a full page letter in the Blue Mountains Gazette 20061206 on page 13 It was commissioned by 143 concerned Blue Mountains residentsIt was addressed not to the ‘firies’, but to the NSW Government.
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Pulpit Rock on the left of the Grose Valley, before the firestorm
It is easy to see why the Blue Mountains, with their Eucalytus tree oil suspended in the atmosphere, get their famous name.
(Photo by Chris Ellis)
This article was initially published by Tigerquoll 20090622 onCanDoBetter.net under the article title ‘Rees’ ‘red hot go’ hunting in our National Parks‘. It has been modified somewhat.
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New South Wales Premier Rees is set to pass into law a ‘Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009‘ to permit recreational hunters shooting everything and anything in protected National Parks across NSW, including native wildlife.
Controlling feral animals is a science, not a sport. Rees’ passion for sport is compromised by influential cronies and naivety. Problem is: Rees has no knowledge, experience in or aptitude for science. His inaugural “red hot go” says it all and threatens to be his legacy.
Be clear, the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009, Schedule 3, Part 2 lists the following Australian native fauna as free ‘game‘, including:
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If the proposed legislation is genuinely and solely to control feral animals, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) as delegated custodian of National Parks in New South Wales, must first answer these questions:
Why are native animals included amongst the ferals?
What action in fact has the NPWS undertaken over the last 20 years to control ferals in National Parks across NSW?
Which measures have been successful at dealing with the target species and which have not?
Which measures have caused a detrimental impact on non-target species?
What interstate or overseas model/case study does NPWS rely upon to justify why shooting is the preferred method of control?
What standard of identification test is imposed on would be feral shooters?
What standard of marksmanship is required and what NPWS-approval system would be in place?
What monitoring is to be conducted of these shooters and by whom?
What happens to the carcasses to prevent disease?
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If NPWS was serious about controlling feral animals in National Parks, it would have a permanent programme to specifically deal with the key threatening processes that involve ferals, namely to target:
Competition and grazing by the feral European rabbit
Competition and habitat degradation by feral goats
Environmental degradation caused by feral deer
Predation by feral cats
Predation by the European Red Fox
Predation, habitat degradation, competition and disease transmission by feral pigs.
These feral species need to be the primary target of eradication. Professional contract shooting may be an option, but it is not for ‘weekend warrriors‘. The solution must be science-based not sport-based.
According to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy:
“Australia has the worst mammal extinction record in the world – 27 mammals have become extinct in the last 200 years. No other country or continent has such a tragic record of mammal extinctions.”
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In June 2009 the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill was introduced into the NSW Upper House by Shooters Party MP Robert Brown, that would pave the way for hunting in national parks, private game reserves, the hunting of native species and the growth of recreational shooting on public and private lands (Sydney Morning Herald, page 6, 12 June 2009). Lee called on the Environment Minister Carmel Tebbutt to reject outright a new bill from the Shooters Party.
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The NSW Government has withdrawn its support for the bill, but it is still before the NSW Parliament!
Overview of the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009:
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The object of this Bill is to amend the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 (the Act) as follows:
To enable the Minister responsible for national park estate land to make that land available for the hunting of game animals by licensed game hunters
To expand the list of game animals that may be hunted in accordance with the Act and, in the case of any native game animals that are listed, to impose special requirements in relation to the hunting of those animals by licensed game hunters
To provide for the operation of private game reserves under the authority of a licence granted by the (NSW) Game Council
To make it an offence to approach persons who are lawfully hunting on declared public hunting land or to interfere with persons lawfully hunting game animals
To make a number of other amendments of an administrative, minor or consequential nature..
Support from the Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters Inc (CLASS):
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‘For too long large areas of bushland has been locked away (aka protected from exploitation) as National Parks, State Forests etc. In many of those parks and forests invasive plants, such as blackberries, bracken, lantana, etc have grown unchecked, resulting in a great unbalance among local flora leading to reduced biodiversity among fauna. Permitting conservation hunting in those areas will help restore the balance, while permitting controlled harvesting of native and introduced species for food, trophies or fur/leather….the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009 will go a long way to utilising the inherent value of sustainable resources which would otherwise be wasted.’
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Hunters will be allowed to shoot animals in national parks for the first time under a deal offered to the Shooters’ Party by the NSW Government. The Herald understands the deal would modify a private member’s bill introduced by a member of the Shooters’ Party, Robert Brown, to allow hunting in 13 national parks if the Shooters’ Party removed demands for enclosed game reserves or safari parks from its draft legislation.
”We have had discussions with senior Labor people,” Mr Brown said. ”I’m not going to confirm or deny that we’re any closer to a resolution … My bottom line is the whole bill must be passed or we continue to withdraw our support for the Government.”
The Shooters’ Party has been holding the Government to ransom since introducing the bill in June and yesterday voted against the Government on all legislation in the upper house. Negotiations on the bill had broken down with the Premier’s chief of staff, Graeme Wedderburn – who Mr Brown described as ”tits on a bull” – but resumed in September, less than a week after John Robertson took over the environment portfolio. The Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal, one of Mr Robertson’s factional allies, took part in negotiations.
According to Mr Brown, the pair offered a memorandum of understanding that would allow hunting in national parks along the Queensland and South Australian borders. But he said the proposed parks were too far away.
”The closest one to Sydney was 10 hours’ drive,” he said. ”That [offer] was there to f— us, as far as I’m concerned.”
The Greens’ spokeswoman on animal welfare, Lee Rhiannon, said the deal was intended to allow free passage of Government legislation through the upper house but may cost Labor seats at the next election – including that of the former environment minister Carmel Tebbutt.
”We’re about to come into the busiest legislation time of the year. They’re going to have to pass 30 bills in a week,” she said. ”If they don’t have the Shooters’ on side, they’ll actually have to talk to other people. [But] as well as being ethically wrong and environmentally damaging, they will be inflicting enormous pain and damage to their own party … For Tebbutt and [Verity] Firth, they could well be putting an expiry date on their political careers.”
The acting executive officer of the National Parks Association of NSW, Bev Smiles, said her office had received an overwhelming amount of correspondence criticising the bill.
”We were hoping the Shooters were having some other face-saving deals with 12-year-olds and airguns,” Ms Smiles said, with reference to another bill the party is introducing.
”[But] with a new Minister for the Environment having an upper house position rather than an electorate, it’s all political. This particular deal has probably created more response from a broader cross-section of the community than any other issue I’ve been involved in.”
Neither Mr Robertson nor Ms Tebbutt would comment on the deal. Mr Brown said he would continue to frustrate government policy until his bill was passed in its entirety.
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‘Greens oppose recreational hunting in national parks’
A new bill that would open the state’s national parks and reserves to recreational hunters who could be licensed to shoot native animals and birds has been condemned by the NSW Greens, the Liberal Party and environmental groups.
The NSW Shooters Party has introduced the private members bill to Parliament. It allows for private game reserves to be set up for professional safari hunters, overturning NSW laws that prevent the enclosing of animals on land solely for hunting purposes. A Shooters Party MP, Robert Brown, said the bill would not allow the hunting of threatened species and, in the case of native waterfowl, licensed game hunters would be required to pass an official identification test of the ducks.
But the Opposition’s environment spokeswoman, Catherine Cusack, attacked the bill, saying key elements were unacceptable. “We totally reject the idea of shooting in national parks and the concept of shooting native animals in national parks is repugnant to almost anyone.”
Among the birds and animals that could be hunted are the Australian wood duck, the chestnut teal and grey teal ducks, galahs, corellas and eastern grey, western grey and red kangaroos. The Shooters Party hopes to gain the Government’s support for the bill but the Environment Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, is already signalling she will oppose key provisions in it, including allowing recreational hunters into national parks and the hunting of native animals. Her spokeswoman said the Government would consider the bill’s merits but it did not support “the hunting of native animals or hunting in national parks“.
Mr Brown said the bill drew on many of the recommendations of a government-backed review of existing laws undertaken with staff from the NSW Department of Primary Industries and the Game Council.
He said that under his bill, the environment minister would be responsible for declaring any national park or reserve open to hunters. He told the Herald that opening national parks to recreational hunters to shoot feral animals would save the Government significant amounts of money and the hunting of native animals and birds in parks would require ministerial approval.
The Greens leader, Lee Rhiannon, called on Ms Tebbutt to reject the entire bill, not only the provisions concerning national parks. “Opposing shooting in national parks may well be a tactic Labor is using to divert attention from the fact it will support other equally regressive changes being pushed by the Shooters Party,” Ms Rhiannon said.
The Greens are also concerned about provisions in the bill that would make it an offence to approach anyone or interfere with anyone “lawfully hunting game animals” on any land that had been declared public hunting land.
A deal with the Shooters’ Party that would allow hunting in national parks is unlikely, the NSW Government says. The Government withdrew its support for the proposal last month, prompting the Shooters to retract their support for legislation to privatise NSW Lotteries management. Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said today the national parks proposal was all but dead in the water.
“The Government has been considering these issues for some time and has taken a policy position that they don’t want that type of shooting activity in national parks,” Mr Macdonald told reporters in Sydney.
“I wouldn’t say it is likely to change, but there again, there’s nothing in life that’s immutable.”
Kangaroos illegally shot through SE Forests National Park
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Game and Feral Animal Control Repeal Bill 2010 – lapsed
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On 23rd June 2010, then NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon introduced a private members bill to the NSW Parliament, ‘Game and Feral Animal Control Repeal Bill 2010’, designed to repeal the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 and its regulations, to abolish the Game Council and to prohibit hunting for sporting or recreational purposes on national park estate land, Crown land and State forests. However although the Repeal Bill reached a second reading stage, the then Labor Premier Kristine Keneally suspended (proroged (suspended) the sitting of the NSW Parliament ahead of an election, and the Bill lapsed on 2nd September 201o.
It needs to be reinstated forthwith!
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Overview of Bill
The objects of this Bill are as follows:
To repeal the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 and the regulations made under that Act
To expressly abolish the Game Council and provide for the transfer of its assets, rights and liabilities to the Crown
To prohibit hunting for sporting or recreational purposes on national park estate land, Crown land and State forests
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‘Greens’ Bill abolishes Game Council, ends hunting in State Forests, NP‘
Greens MP Lee Rhiannon was last night given urgent leave by the NSW Upper House to introduce her private members bill to abolish the NSW Game Council and prohibit recreational hunting in national parks, state forests and public land.
The Game and Feral Animal Control Repeal Bill 2010 is now available.
“Feral animals are a significant environmental problem in Australia but the Games Council, set up as a favour by the Labor Party to the Shooters Party to shore up their vote, is a bankrupt vehicle for managing invasive species,” Ms Rhiannon said. “The more than $11 million in public funding and millions in loans spent propping up the Gaming Council since 2002 would be better spent developing an evidenced based, strategic plan using professionals to tackle invasive species.
“The Game Council was set up to be self funding, yet the Auditor General has noted its ongoing financial difficulties, with the government being forced to prop it up with loans and additional recurrent funding to manage ongoing debt problems.
“Former Premier Bob Carr’s establishment of the Game Council in 2002 was an act of unashamed capitulation to the gun and hunting lobbies, legitimising recreational animal cruelty while risking an increase in feral animal populations.
“The Greens Bill also prohibits recreational hunting in state forests, national parks and Crown Land.
“As part of the deal making between Labor and the Shooters Party, NSW’s state forests have been lately opened up to recreational shooters, risking public safety. “There is still currently a Shooters Party private members bill before parliament which if passed would broaden where recreational shooters can hunt to include national parks.
“The NSW government has agreed to various demands by the Shooters Party for changes to gun ownership laws in recent years and there is no guarantee that shooting in national parks will not be next on the list. “In the interests of the environment and good government NSW Labor should support the Greens’ bill to abolish the Game Council and ensure the professional and scientific management of invasive species in NSW,” Ms Rhiannon said.
In only the last eight years, the Bengal Tiger population has decreased by over 61% and is now frighteningly close to extinction with only 1,400 of the cats left. Habitat loss and poaching are to blame for their decline. Nagarhole Tiger Reserve is home to the highest density of these tigers in all of India, attracting a heavy and constant flow of poachers. Forest officers tasked with protecting the National Park’s tiger population (and other wildlife) from the poachers are now impeded by a devastating combination of muddy monsoon conditions and a complete lack of defense.
Comments:
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Arvind Telkar (20100717): “Poaching is one of the heinous crimes, which must be dealt with a very severe punishment. The law should be changed in such a manner, that he must think hundred times before aiming any wild animal.”
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Franklin Joel (20100717): “Thank you very much for sharing,I am sharing this on my wall. Please do something to Stop Poaching, My eyes are wet seeing these pictures..The Hon. court should pronounce the highest punishment to these people….”
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Anne Maher (20100719): “Absolute tragedy. Decisions made by idiots. They must be in on the corrupt poaching activities to leave the Wildlife rangers and the Tigers so unprotected. Spare us from brainless individuals.”
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Amay (20100903): “What cruel people they are the biggest criminals i hav ever seen in my life how badly these people hav cut the tigers they truly deserve a capital punishment.”
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Zachary (20101118): “What the hell is wrong with these people?! why don’t they do something to stop this? I don’t give a damn if they think that certain parts have special healing or good luck charms, this is wrong! This is just digusting.”
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An effective tool against poachers
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An effective but under-resourced force against poachers
You have stood there for centuries
arms gaunt reaching the sky
your roots in candence
with the heart beat of the soil
High on the hill, you missed
the faller’s axe and saw
But they destroyed the others
down the slope
and on the valley floor
Now you and I
bleed in sorrow and in silence
for what once had been
while the rapists still
stride across
and desecrate the land.
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~ by Australian poet Jack Davis AO.
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The New South Wales Government’s fettish for building expressways to solve the State’s transportation problems – ignores the benefits of rail solutions, ignores the amenity and heritage rights of local communities and is destroying natural heritage. The NSW Government’s Road and Traffic Authority is arrogantly bulldozing its way through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, destroying everything in its path. Its four lane expressway is primarily about encouraging larger and faster trucks through the Blue Mountains.
One of the oldest trees in the Blue Mountains still growing alongside the highway is a mature smooth barked apple tree (Angophora costata) situated in the hamlet of Bullaburra. The tree is a magnificent surviving remnant of an angophora forest that once dominated the locality. A qualified level 5 arborist with expertise in Australian native trees in the area has extimated the tree to be well over 200 years old and possibly more than 300 years old. This means the tree predates colonial settlement in Australia, when only Aboriginal Australians (Gundungurra and Dharug peoples) roamed the region.
The RTA has targeted the tree to be killed so that it can convert the highway into a B-Double truck expressway. The expressway under construction through the Blue Mountains feeds traffic into a heavily congested Sydney, so the billions spent to save a few minutes in the journey is lost on reaching Sydney. When the fuel price reaches $3 a litre, the cost of road freight will make road-carted produce and commodities uncompetitive. The arrogant NSW Government has no respect for natural heritage, for local communities and is backward in its 20th Century road-centric thinking.
Bullaburra’s Angophora [Photo by editor 28th December 2006 – photo free on public domain (click to enlarge).
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Decades of complacency and naivety, or do residents of bucolic Bullaburra simply deserve rights to quiet enjoyment and their buena vista? The RTA highway juggernaut is at the door. It won’t just ‘bisect’ the community [‘Anger at RTA‘ BMG 1-Oct-08]; it will permanently segregate it, raze its rural amenity and degrade it into a noisy truck side stop. Bullaburra is set to receive the same utility vision imposed on Blaxland and so many other Mountains communities.
I too attended the August township meeting at Bullaburra’s Progress Association hall, not as a Bullaburra resident, nonetheless as a Mountains resident. At the packed meeting, Bullabarrans unanimously endorsed an alternative plan asking the RTA to accommodate local linkages across what will become another four-lane barrier dividing a local community. Personal experience in dealing with the RTA at Leura, Medlow Bath and Katoomba affirms it doesn’t listen or care. It has just plundered the rare 1820s convict road at Leura, hardly pausing its schedule.
The RTA’s massive budget is only limited by political will. It stands to be key recipient of the new Building Australia Fund of $22,000,000,000 then claims it can’t afford community bridges. Be clear, the RTA’s mandate for ‘progress’ is to build more expressways. Driven by road lobbyists, the RTA is extending greater Sydney’s swelling suburbia like Roman legions extended empire. ‘Few understand how much transport influences land use patterns. Transport leads land use. Once an expressway or railway is built, it is easy to change the zoning and development laws to increase the population along the corridor.’ [Frank Sartor, SMH 29-Sep-08, p11]. RTA performance is measured by it maximising road ‘ride quality’ and minimising ‘travel times.’
The RTA juggernaut will remain unstoppable so long as local townships rely upon single-handed last ditch battles. Our elected Blue Mountains councillors should be standing up for the people of Bullaburra and important natural heritage.
[by editor, first published in the Blue Mountains Gazette (BMG), 8 Oct 2008]
Great Western Highway at nearby Leura, 20th December 2006
Photo by Ivan Jeray.
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Conservation Hunting
