Our sad euthanasia demise of our rural ‘Shaggy’ – our harmless verge May Bush (Spiraea cantoniensis), which some hateful vindictive ‘anonymous’ incoming ex-Sydney local has targeted as urban improper and complained to Council that it be killed as ‘un-urban’.  Sydney urban invaders of this rural bush streetscape bullying imposing their urban dogma yet again.  Go back to high-rised mass immigration Sydney as you are not welcome in the Australian Blue Mountains.

 

 

 

 

‘Shaggy’ our verge May Bush is shown on the right of the pole, when ‘Shaggy’ was still a blooming youngtser of Mountains character.  Note the unusual reverse juxtaposition of the footpath and the verge.

We had planted this verge (nature strip) out in 2002 from what had been neglected for decades as Council’s unkempt grass lawn that they required us to mow it for bloody Council on their behalf.  Bugger that for a joke!  So the invasive grass went to Mars and we redesigned it mostly Native, landscaped it, kept it neat and tidy and had it maintained regularly to be safely clear of the overhead powerlines over the past 25 years.  It just made sense.  Council didn’t communicate a tuppenny shite. This verge design initiative provided the only shade and coolness in our street from the damaging hot summer afternoon sun (westerly left of photo) so car owners parking have long valued it. 

 

Then some anonymous pedant from ‘big smoke’ concrete Sydney complained about wheel chair access.  In our bushy area? What crap!   Then someone anonymous chose to vandalise our May Bush when we weren’t home.  

 

 

Give the brushcutting right angled military cut right on next door’s boundary.  Mmm, we suspect these new hissy-fitting newcomers adjacent from high-rise Sydney.  They’re threatened us previously with laser trimming to the boundary like the prior pollarding witch did. 

 

So, Council demanded we kill our verge May Bush ‘Shaggy’ plus cut back our mature native lemon-scented tea tree, to somehow provide wheelchair access along our footpath. 

 

 

 

All ignoring the bloody elephant in the footpath mind you….  Try getting a wheelchair around this obstacle… 

 

 

Our entire old 1870s heritage residential precinct is has bugger all footpaths, and frankly it’s just the way us locals like it – rural and bushy!    We’ve never seen a wheelchair in our street or neighbourhood dudes!

So we complained about this bureacratic pedant urbanisation to our local Ward 1 Councillors – Cr Sarah Redshaw, Cr Suzie Van Opdorp and Cr Suzanne Jamieson.  Fat lot of good that did!   Their all Labor hacks!  Think Labor’s mass immigration driving housing unaffordability and more Hong Kong congestion downunder.

 

 

The killing of our May Bush cost us nearly $1000 out of pocket, including the removal stump griding and buying two replacement camilias to keep the anonymous verge police happy.

 

But now our verge it has just been decimated by ignorants of Asplundh who deserve to live in concrete treeless Penrith/Glendenning relying instead upon airconditioning.  So passive solar design, eh!  Go the fake Greens (socialist Reds!)  

 

 

 

The large bush on the right was our ‘Shaggy’ – our May Bush.  Being a northern hemisphere shrub it flowered in Spring with is May in the northern hemisphere.  But in Australia in the southern hemisphere it flowers also in spring in October.   The flowers were small white and when it was in full bloom every late October the appearance was like a giant fizzgig.

 

 

 

But then some anonymous urbane local newcomer to our leafy Blue Mountains (likely from inner concrete inner Sydney) complained to Blue Mountains Council that our May Bush was over-generous to the 1.2 metre (military standard?) rural footpath.

Obviously that pedant owns a pet rock and a chainsaw – a botanophobic!   Given recent damage problems in our street, we shall be installing half a dozen high definition colour infrared battery CCTV cameras strategically in our street shortly, and not the cheap Chinese ones. 

Compare the 2000 purchase of this (low-base) property’s scene some 26 years ago when we had just bought the property:

 

The land value would not be what it is in 2026.  So Council would not be since reaping the value-adding spoils from its rate hikes from then being $772.55 annually to in 2026 being $2285.34 – a 300% lazy gain.  Blue Mountains Council has for time immemorial exploited its local ratepayers, especially its NAZI1957 forced evictions of the poor locals out of the The Gully.  A shameful record that Blue Mountains Council continues to culturally shun its complicity and guilt. 

Some old locals never forget.

 

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POSTSCRIPT:

 

OUR REPLY TO COUNCIL’S NAZI VERGE GESTAPO:

 

Attention:  Mr Bhabuk Gajurel
Program Leader Inspections & Maintenance
Transport and Public Access (department)
Blue Mountains Council
2-6 Civic Place
KATOOMBA NSW 2780

Saturday 11th July 2026

 

Dear Mr Gajurel,

 

RE:  “Pedestrian Hazard” Claim by Council – Verge in front of 5 Kundibar St, Katoomba NSW 2780 – my complaint CSR 665885

 

I refer to you following up my request that you and your manager Nicole Hume attend onsite inspection with your colleague Chris on Wednesday 17^th June 2026.   Pity you did not notify  me of the timing and just turned up unannounced, and without Nicole Hume.

I appreciate your follow up email notification 30 June 2026 to me about this verge matter now being permanently closed by Council. (.JPG copy attached)  I presume that your email is also a follow up to you conducting a second following onsite inspection of this subject verge outside my property after I had acted upon Council’s request to remove the May Bush and trim the two limbs of the Tea Tree as agreed.  If so, again I was not contacted and not aware of any second onsite visit to inspect the vegetation trimming/removal.

I personally trimmed the Tea Tree and also contracted Greg Roberts Trees to remove the May Bush to the stump ground level and then a second contractor to stump grind the remaining vegetation of the May Bush verge section to below ground level.  I attach the relevant photos for Council’s reference.  These were your agreed actions for me to undertake when you first visited.

 

I make the following comments to this matter:

1. We have done the verge trimming as Council has requested of us.
2. I disagree that such trimming was necessary from the outset. My residence is in a semi-bushland setting, and such military pollard trimming demand by Council I consider to be absurdly pedantic given the rural streetscape of our old residential precinct. 
3. This residential precinct, labelled ‘North’s Estate’ dates from the 1870s and is the oldest residential subdivision in the Blue Mountains LGA. It is designated by the NSW Government as a Heritage Conservation Area.   
4. Public access silo mentality
5. Our property is one of few in this North’s Estate precinct seeming lucky to have a footpath at all! Are we not bordering environmental wilderness World Heritage?  We are not bloody military precinct or inner Sydney treeless “CITY”?  We are not Glenmore Park nor Pyrmont! 
6. You state in our conversations that our property was singularly targeted out by some anonymous complainant for verge trimming. May be I should try that method on someone whom I might have a personal vendetta with?  And we’ve experienced a few bad apples round these parts of late.  Such is the immoral manner in which Blue Mountains Council seems to have heaved in this petty one-sided matter.  
7. You have stated in your letter of 8^th May 2026 for us to trim our verge to some fabricated military type right angled precision (1.2m wide by 2m high) . Yet, whilst your letter dictated the footpath’s minimum clearance dimensions (above) you provided no by-law or basis for such.  Did you just make this ruling arbitrarily in your head? 
8. Council’s process in this matter has been a case of unwarranted ‘big brother’ bullying from on high in my opinion and its written order is anonymous so therefore baseless and unjustified.
9. The verge is Council property so your written threat of for Council to have otherwise do so and charge us the fee was intimidating and invalid. 
10. It is hypocritical that Council neglects the verges it technically has community custodial responsibility for, yet ignores their maintenance – typically many such verges are traditionally grassed lawns, yet Council does not mow them, rather its expects residents adjoining to do Council’s job and at the residents’ time and expense. Council’s verge ‘trimming’ in our semi-bushland residential precinct holds an ongoing neglectful history of grass lawn mowing of its verges/nature strips.  Other nearby residents have similarly complained.  Our verge has not once been mowed by Council since we moved here in 2001.
11. Such Council neglect over the years became an incentive for us to remove the unmaintained grassed verge lawn completely. At our own time and cost we replaced the grass with a mixed native garden bed mostly of locally indigenous native species and with local sandstone landscaping. It has been since maintenance free!  No cost to anyone else including Council.  It has positively added new privacy,  car parking shade, plus the native birds frequent the trees within.
12. The verge vegetation work ordered by Council has cost us personally about $1000 out of pocket for the May Bush removal associated stump grinding and purchase of replacement shrubs for this verge section.
13. We have chosen two white Camillias (Camellia sasanqua) to replace the May Bush and English Boxes, if this so pleases our beloved Council. May be we could receive a Council rates rebate from Blue Mountain Council promptly for this amount as compensation.
14. Following your letter of 8^th May 2026 to us, on 6^th June 2026 we first observed that someone unknown had edge trimmed a deep vertical corner section of the May Bush from top to ground. A large vertical chunk (30cm square section) was cut exactly at the border of our adjoining neighbours of 3 Kundibar Street. We received no warning or notice of this.  But the trimming created a public safety hazard since May Bushes cannot be trimmed like say English Box trees since it only leaves very  sharp inner branch pointy ends that pose an injury risk to passing pedestrians (unlike the soft small leaves of the May Bush exterior).  Clearly we have a vandal in our midst.
15. We have lived at this address since 2001. Council knows me personally on its record from many past correspondences – mostly regrettable in my experience, especially in relation to this precinct, Katoomba Falls Creek Valley (The Gully).
16. Your initial written letter ‘out-of-the-blue’ to my letterbox dated 8^th May 2026 to us was a shock, inappropriate and threatening about Council’s order for us to do pruning work itself then sending me some open ended bill charge with consequential ‘Big Brother’ legal action had I not done it myself. Such poor communication to a ratepaying resident perhaps cannot get worse. In my view you need remedial training in customer service courtesy skills, and your comment that my letter was one of 20 or more standard/roneoed letters to others suggests a lazy one-size-fits-all approach, indeed is Council heading to an AI outsourcing approach to communicate with its customer ratepayers now?
17. I pointed out to you and your colleague Chris on your initial onsite inspection that Council has for many years ignored repairing its footpath on the corner of Kundibar and Warriga Streets (photo attached). So Council’s personal targeting of our verge claiming fabricated and false concerns about public safety and access is completely hypocritical.
18. Our Council ‘Rates and Charges’ back in 2001 were annually $772.55. They have over the years snowballed to a current $2285.34 p.a. So without tempting some AI algorithm, I reckon that our average annual rates would approximate $1500.  So over our 26 years to date Council has reaped about $40k out of us.  Frankly, I don’t think we’re getting our money’s worth.  Likely that figure wouldn’t even pay for Council’s consultants or legal fees for one month.
19. I am disappointed that Council and particularly the three Ward 1 councillors, to whom I escalated this matter to, have been wholly silent in response. What is the point of serving on Council or becoming a representative for your local constituents if you do nothing when constituent raises a local matter of concern?
20. Yes, I am a Conservation Activist. I have published this article on the Internet: https://habitatadvocate.com.au/blue-mountains-council-threatening-letter-is-bureaucratic-ignorant-bullying/
21. I suggest that Council needs to apologise to us over this unnecessary petty drama and pull its head in.
22. I reserve the right after all this, to go similarly public again on this matter as a follow up. It may encourage other Blue Mountains residents to also express their own views about such bullying treatment as they see fit. In time the due negative publicly could implicate Blue Mountains Council appropriately well more than this petty verge matter it raised from some anonymous source.

 

 

 

Blue Mountains Council threatening letter is bureaucratic ignorant bullying