Blue Mountains environmental history

No joy from O'Farrell

letter to Blue Mountains Gazette 2 March 2011

Some of us can remember what the Blue Mountains was like a generation ago and what has been achieved during this time and now, and properly so, taken for granted.

The election of the Carr Labor government in 1995 saw the national parks boundaries rationalised and dramatically changed as part of the beginning of the long campaign to get World Heritage listing which came five years later.

This was a time when subdivided blocks of land were on the ridges from Mount Victoria, Blackheath, Katoomba and Leura in full view of our world famous lookouts. Subdivided and inappropriately zoned blocks were across all of our now pristine wilderness areas all the way to Glenbrook and Lapstone and in most cases in the now national parks.

One of the boundaries of the national park actually went down the middle of the second sister of the world famous Three Sisters at Echo Point.

Going way back during the early 1980s, our national parks were managed by a committee of dedicated volunteers with almost no staff to back up the huge job of managing the environment.

Administrations were set up and the processes put into place, mainly through the National Parks and Wildlife Service, to begin the long and difficult task of managing our environment.

During this time our environment was polluted to the point where almost no creek or water stream was safe and we had weed infestation and the like across our entire community.

Large amounts of funding were invested to ensure the proper management structures and support staff were in place to do the necessary repairs.

Today and into the future there is still a lot of work to do.

My clear recollection of the Liberal government from 1988 to 1995 was that they were famous for huge cutbacks made to the administration of our national parks to the,point where it almost went back to the volunteer days.

I have read the policy speech delivered by Barry O'Farrell recently at Penrith and found nothing that the Blue Mountains community can find any joy in. As a matter of fact it asked more questions than it gave details of anything.

Jim Angel, Katoomba.