Andy Macqueen
You might say that the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area can be traced back to the energy and vision of one man - bushwalker and conservationist Myles Dunphy. In the 1920s Myles and his mates from the Mountain Trails Club spent their holidays exploring and mapping the remoter parts of the Blue Mountains, and came to the conclusion that something had to be done to preserve them for future generations.
As early as 1923 Myles was working on a scheme to create a national park over a large part of the mountains. A meticulous researcher and map-maker, (see page 6) he gradually put his ideas on paper. However, he needed more clout before putting the proposal to the Lands Department. Together with other bushwalkers, in 1932 he set up the National Parks and Primitive areas council.
The aim of the Council was to promote the establishment of national parks under central government control. At the head of their agenda was the Blue Mountains National Park, the details of which were submitted to the Surveyor General that same year. The purpose of the proposed park was the (preservation of scenery and areas of natural bushland, for conservation of wildlife and for the furtherance of all kinds of recreation not destructive to the essentials of the proposal).
Stretching almost from Kandos in the north to Mittagong in the south, the
park had at its core the Grose Valley and Blue Gum Forest, which was making
headlines at the time as a result of the successful efforts by bushwalkers
(including Dunphy) to preserve it.
Local government representatives, who could see the tourist benefits, supported
the park. In 1934 the Katoomba Daily published a four-page broadsheet
advertising the scheme at length. The stage seemed set for the park to become a
reality.
But the slow wheels of government, complicated by the intervention of war, meant that nothing happened till 1959 - 25 years later - when the Blue Mountains National park was declared under the Crown Lands Act.
At first it was only a very small version of Dunphy¹s vision, but over the years it was greatly extended, and new national parks were added - Kanangra-Boyd in 1969, Wollemi in 1979 and Nattai in 1991. The vision has
become reality, though under the banner of four national parks, not one. Of course, there has been the great bonus that the Wollemi National park extends far to the north of the original proposal.
The World Heritage Area includes that extra part, as well as other adjacent national parks.
The fact that large portions of the World Heritage Area are declared
wilderness can also be attributed partly to Dunphy. It was his view that
undeveloped parts of the proposed park should be designated as ‘primitive
areas’ - a term which he preferred to ’Wilderness area’, the term being
promoted at the time in the USA. One of these primitive areas was to be in the
Grose Valley. Today, we await the government’s decision on the declaration of
Grose Wilderness, proposed by Confederation in 1996.
It is thanks to Myles Dunphy and the many conservationists who have followed
that so much of the new World Heritage Area is today in a wild state. Without
their vision, today we would have less public land; more roads, powerlines,
pipelines and pine forests; a dam on the Colo; a coal mine in the Wolgan; a
limestone mine at Church Creek... the list goes on.
What we would not have is such a magnificent expanse of undisturbed eucalypt
forest.
References:
Dunphy, M., et al, Blue Mountains National Park Special Supplement,
Katoomba Daily, 24-8-1934.
Macqueen, Andy, Back from the Brink‹Blue Gum Forest and the Grose
Wilderness, Andy Macqueen 1997.
Mosley, Geoff, Battle for the Bush‹the Blue Mountains, the Australian Alps
and the Origins of the Wilderness Movement, Colong Foundation/Envirobook,
1999.