Sure,we have bushwalks and city-walks. We have the occasional pretty village – Sofala or Carcoar. But you can’t walk between,much less include half-a-dozen in a six-day loop,with or without donkey. We don’t do villages. What we do,with so much wealth and choice,is just two things:developer high-rise and developer sprawl. That’s it. Two building-modes and both – in the absence of anything resembling planning – are developer-driven. The latest instance is Lendlease’s egregious despoliation of Mount Gilead – now rebadged Figtree Hill.
It’s five minutes from Campbelltown centre,if centre is the word,since Campbelltown itself is now enveloped by Sydney’s featureless 60-kilometre sprawl. Sixty? Make that eighty. Once Lendlease,Lang Walker and the rest have their way,it’ll be roof-to-roof all the way to Wilton.
Cars streak along the Appin Road well over the 80km/h speed limit (). To them,the land in question is a blip of green in Sydney’s relentless ex-urban sprawl. They probably don’t know it’s also Sydney’s last koala habitat,home to one of the few chlamydia-free and growing populations of this beloved species we’ve driven. I’ve never seen koala roadkill. Hope I never will. But it happens here.
But that’s not all it is. It was named Mount Gilead in 1810,for its astonishing,Biblical fertility. It’s still the landscape of Macquarie,with its convict-built stone granaries,homesteads and barns judged to have “”. There are creeks and rivers,glorious lily-covered dams,original sclerophyll forest and snaking,hand-built canals. It’s astonishing. And it’s walkable. This is a place you could still do anAntoinette.
The sandstone homestead – low-slung and colonnaded – was built by Thomas Rose in the 1820s. Outbuildings include a rare stone tower-windmill,a stone granary with gun-slots (this was a frontier post) and outbuildings with possible design input from Francis Greenway. All stone was quarried on the property,which now belongs to the Macarthur-Onslow family.
Lately,controversially,it has been cut into three. The smallest parcel,142 hectares,stays with the house. Beside it,a 182 hectare parcel has been sold to Lendlease for a 1700-house development and already they’re reducing the grand paddock trees to piles of rubbish. For the rest,some 15,100 dwellings are planned.
And that’s just the tip of the Greater Macarthur Growth Area iceberg. Altogether – when you add Lendlease’s new 1800-lot Bingara Grove “community” and (the first of 3600) at Wilton,just the other side of Appin,not to mention for Wilton Town Centre and the rest – some. Already,it’s where.
For his trouble,and a “significant donation”,Lang Walker himself (having also destroyed Parramatta with the $2.7 billion Parramatta Square development) is rewarded with the farcically named University of Western Sydney.
Urban transformation it is,but not in a good way. This is some of our most fertile land. In 1804,after thousands of years of Dharug and Dharawal management,Captain Henry Waterhouse described it in a letter to John Macarthur as “a beautiful park,totally divested of underwood,interspersed with plains,with rich luxuriant grass”.
There were homesteads here – Beulah,Sugarloaf,Kilbride,Glen Lorne,Camden Park House as well as Mount Gilead – all in walking distance. And villages – Camden,Menangle,Appin. We’ve failed to protect them. The villages have long since succumbed to Sydney’s relentless sprawl and most of the houses have been repurposed. Beulah is empty and suffering. Kilbride is now a nursing home surrounded by a battery of aged care units so ghastly you hope some animal rights activists will go and bust the people outta there. Sugarloaf is an equestrian centre and Glen Lorne,across Appin Road,burnt down in the 1980s. Mount Gilead will have its 142 hectares,enough to admire but not enough to sustain it as a farm. So who will pay for its upkeep?
As to koalas,the is a good one,deploying dog-proof exclusion fences and an Appin Road underpass to link the Nepean and Georges Rivers. Already,though,locals say Lendlease is trying to skimp on the conditions and fudge the biodiversity offsets. Who will police these requirements down the track? And will it really save this growing koala population from thousands ofws on every side?
The best way to save koalas,and the irreplaceable heritage of Mount Gilead,would be not to rezone this lovely farm in the first place. Cookie-cutter greenfield sprawl 80 kilometres from the city centre without a whisper of public transport is a madness so last-century we shouldn’t countenance it.
Better a string of tight,new,rail-linked and genuinely urban townships and villages than this asphalting over the food lands. Then,around the pastures,we could create a walk like the Cévennes or the Camino. The forests and fine wines,creeks and colonnades,marsupials and sandstone could create a nature-culture mix so charming people would yearn to come.
I know I would.
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