Have you noticed that the Blue Mountains are often referred to as Sydney surrounds in many tourism brochures and websites? If you are a local, like me, you probably don’t read many tourism brochures or review tourism websites such as www.visitnsw.com or www.sydney.visitorsbureau.com.au, but the trend is there.
From a tourism perspective, the Blue Mountains are routinely seen as an adjunct to Sydney and our unique identity is being systematically eroded.
Have you seen the brochure entitled North West Draft Sub regional Strategy? It is a NSW Government publication on a plan for Sydney’s future. It covers the Sydney sub regions of Baulkham Hills, Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury & Penrith. This document refers to a plan for 7,000 additional dwellings for the Blue Mountains between 2004 – 2031. The brochure is available from BMCC offices and our Council has been consulted on its content.
The Blue Mountains is now regarded as a sub region of Sydney.
7,000 additional dwellings? Where? What about the environmental impact? Employment, infrastructure, hospital care, transport? Who has been consulted on this? Have you read Frank Sartor’s document entitled “Improving the NSW Planning System”? There is no doubting that the process of assessing and approving/rejecting development applications requires improvement, but is centralising the process with a focus on output, rather than quality outcomes appropriate for an environmentally sensitive area such as the Blue Mountains?
The Blue Mountains is seen by the NSW State Government as just another development opportunity in its “one size fits all” suburban development plan.
Our Blue Mountains identity is being progressively eroded.
If you live in the Mountains because you love our way of life; you treasure our villages; you value our remarkable National Park and you want to support and grow our local economy, then insist that our independent identity be retained.
This is the Blue Mountains.
We are not Sydney surrounds or a sub region of Sydney. The Blue Mountains are unique & independent and our identity is priceless.
Write to your local Councillor today and tell them to protect our Blue Mountains identity
Tags: blue mountains, economy, Identity, tourism
March 20th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Well done on your advert in this weeks Gazette (just received this am)
Frank Sartor has a lot to answer to, and I am going to forward your advert to Alan Jones at 2gb Radion Station. He has been on various cases which some he has helped others they have ignored (Beacon Hill School) Rozelle Mental Health Unit to name many of Mr Sartors distruction of NSW> We love the mountains that is why we came here and you are so right with infastructure matters.
I was agasp to see Page 18 !!!! in the Gazette about loss of our money with risk management investing our hard earned rates. Why was this money not put into secure Bank Bills, someone is not doing the right thing putting it out at risk management also this means who is getting the fees for investing these funds!!!!!Surely this should have been headline news.
Well feel you are doing a great job good on you and will follow your website for updates. Phone number is 4782 2428.
We need more like you on Council……… Rozi Starkey
March 20th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Thanks Rozi. I appreciate your support.
I have just written to Council about the potential losses stemming from Council’s investment in CDOs and FRNS via Grange Securities. We need honest answers on this issue ASAP.
Janet
March 20th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I think this issue of Blue Mountains identity is a great one to debate from the perspective of what benefits an identity might give residents (or not). Janet is right - we are getting seen as the city, but not in every way. Why, for example, must we in the Upper Mountains pay long distance phone rates to Sydney when according to most government departments we are Sydney ? Most funding bodies see The Blue Mountains as Greater Western Sydney and not as a separate NSW Region, meaning we get lumped-into a larger, more competitive zone than we need be when seeking support for independent ventures and projects (to supplement our incomes in an what most see as an employment-starved “outer suburb”). Services for locals in cities like Orange and Bathurst are better all-round because they have their own identities as places at a distance to Sydney, they can access regional funding, and they are so far away they just expect to pay long distance to phone the city. Imagine placing The Blue Mountains another 2 hour’s drive away from Sydney - in an instant we’d have Harris Farm, ALDI, new release movies, Myer AND all our “other” businesses of local flavour. Perhaps we’d have no Leura Mall or Carrington, no “Faded Honeymoon Capital” atmosphere, no visitors, no commuters and a struggling country town mentality? I’d like to see us make better, more efficient use of the identity we have, through a Council which has enough balls to make a misguided development like The Edge negotiate fairly with the owners of The Savoy Cinema (an empty shell of a building in the heart of Katooma with a landfall high enough to house an IMAX screen) instead of building a monstrosity on the GWH attached to an empty crumbling Italianate Convent school. Those two buildings sum up the debate for me - two identities slammed together, never to suit or complement. If we could marry develpment with our unique identity I would not care about paying long distance rates to call the city. Could we re-invent the concept of “identity” by NOT copying the model of a city, or a country town, or anything else. Heck even Blaxland has an identity now, and all it took was a few strategically placed date palms to distract us from all the empty shops, which are now all full and thriving ! My choice for Lawson would be avenues of Jacarandas either side of the highway - word has it you can grow them there. Now that would be identity ….
March 21st, 2008 at 10:46 am
Bravo Michael! You have summed the situation up beautifully. Now we need to get the Council you describe and shape our identity once and for all.
Janet