STEP Matters Number 200 April 2019
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STEP Matters Number 200 April 2019 After 41 years of publication, STEP Matters has Time for Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to reached issue number 200. We decided to mark be World Heritage Listed the occasion by providing some stories about the Janine Kitson is working on this project heritage, both natural and cultural, of the with the Friends of Ku-ring-gai Environment bushland areas of northern Sydney. (FOKE) (see p 9). We asked some local experts to provide articles The Early Days in what is now Lane Cove and photos. We greatly appreciate the time they National Park have given us to share their knowledge and Tony Butteriss is president of the Friends enthusiasm for our heritage. of Lane Cove National Park. The Friends was founded 25 years ago and on 25 May Caring for Country they are celebrating this anniversary and the David Watts, Aboriginal Heritage Manager reopening of Jenkin’s Kitchen after its of the Aboriginal Heritage Office, explains renovation. It is believed to be the oldest the importance of learning from the past building in Ku-ring-gai (see p 10). (see p 2). Geology of the Sydney Basin Dr John Martyn discusses the influence of geology on our vegetation (see p 3). Coastal Sandstone Gallery Rainforest Robin Buchanan explains the evolution of the plants found in this vegetation community found in the steep gullies of northern Sydney (see p 4). Timber Getting in the Lane Cove Catchment Garigal National Park – Bantry Bay in the Ralph Hawkins is a local historian – timber Early Days for construction was essential in the Jill Green, president of STEP, is a keen development of the Sydney settlement walker around the Bantry Bay area (see p 5). (see p 11). Annie Wyatt’s Conservation Ethic and the Preservation of Blue Gum High Forest in National Trust St Ives Janine Kitson is a retired teacher with a Nancy Pallin is one of the leaders of the keen interest in the history of the long campaign to preserve this unique forest environment movement in Sydney (see p 6). (see p 12). Ahimsa: A story of Bushland Protection History of National Park Estates in Berowra Martin Fallding is president of the Friends Valley of Ahimsa (see p 7). Robin Buchanan lives on the edge of the Camps for Girls at West Head in the 1950s park and has worked actively for its conservation (see p 13). has been an Janet Fairlie-Cuninghame advocate and carer of bushland since her early days as a teacher (see p 8). We usually provide a summary of STEP events. There are no additions since the February issue. Details are on our website. STEP Inc Community-based Environmental Conservation since 1978 [email protected] PO Box 5136, Turramurra, NSW 2074 ABN 55 851 372 043 www.step.org.au Facebook: www.facebook.com/STEP.Inc.Sydney Twitter: @STEPSydney CARING FOR COUNTRY Throughout the twentieth century various individuals from the Australian Museum and David Watts elsewhere researched and tried to urge The Aboriginal heritage of northern Sydney governments and the wider population to value reminds us that these precious environments and protect the engravings. Some engravings around us have been valued and nurtured for were individually protected through this and thousands of years. It reminds us that people local activism, as well as the thousands that can adapt and survive significant changes in were deliberately and accidentally protected in climate. It also reminds us that some things the state and local government reserve system. can’t be replaced or regenerated. The role of individual Aboriginal people in these campaigns is still poorly researched. It could be said that Aboriginal history has only recently gained a greater following in some Then there are the rock shelters. Hawkesbury parts of the wider community. Modern Sandstone again provided a medium for Australian history as a whole is quite short and Aboriginal heritage to merge with the it is understandable that a young society would environment. What could be a spectacular choose to focus on the positives rather than natural landscape feature could also contain delve into what is uncomfortable. An the hand stencils of family members from unfortunate consequence is that when we seek thousands of years ago, or the painted image to learn more, the sources of information are of an important animal or its tracks. Even the fewer and less detailed. ones we have forgotten locally, like emus and koalas. The cataclysmic loss of life as a result of the smallpox epidemic in 1789 also meant a huge Then there are the shell middens that shine loss of traditional knowledge. The following along the now rapidly eroding foreshores of the decades of policies and attitudes that were estuaries and bays of this incredible landscape. unsympathetic towards Aboriginal people Places where families gathered year after year meant that the comprehensive environmental to share food and stories. The middens tell us knowledge of the custodians for every tree and what people gathered and brought back to eat. flower and hill and creek and bay would They inform us of environmental and cultural diminish. change over time with variations in species and quantity. They invite Aboriginal people to feel Much of the work to learn about and protect welcome and connected. Aboriginal heritage has focussed on the archaeology. The rock engravings found on Could it be said that the outsider’s interest in Hawkesbury Sandstone platforms among Aboriginal heritage and culture has been aimed Angophoras and Acacias have intrigued visitors in the wrong direction? and residents alike. What does it matter if we record the engraved What could they mean? Macropods and marine images of an animal if we have not recorded species, boomerangs and shields, human and the wisdom of how to protect that species or its deity figures are represented in different areas. habitat? Some were recorded and discussed in Is it even fair to try to capture that wisdom but academic journals from the mid-1800s, with not nurture the people who have developed names suitable to the era, such as Mankind. A and implemented it over such an incredible government surveyor recorded hundreds of period of the earth’s history? engraving sites in the sandstone country in the We cannot go back and reinvent the past, only late 1890s. learn from it. Some knowledge that has been lost cannot be recaptured. A rock engraving destroyed or faded away is gone forever. However, as the bush regenerators know, the seedlings that are given the right conditions today will become tomorrow’s resilient canopy. The climate is changing and the urban bushland is under increasing pressure. The many traditions of looking after one’s local area are more important than ever. Our thanks go to David Watts and the friendly team at the Aboriginal Heritage Office www.aboriginalheritage.org. David Watts with group on Sites Awareness walk, late 1990s 2 GEOLOGY OF THE SYDNEY BASIN This key event should be much more widely recognised and understood as its effects are Dr John Martyn mirrored in current climate change and Our local and regional environment owes so extinctions. Our local geological heritage much to its geological heritage. We live in the carries critically important environmental Sydney Basin, an epicontinental pile of messages for today. sedimentary rocks several kilometres thick that Plain old sandstones reveal fascinating was laid down in the Permian and Triassic stories periods between 300 and 200 million years ago, and our present landscape framework was Some of our local sandstones were sourced created by tectonic uplift and erosion of its from a long way off. Research on the strata. Hawkesbury Sandstone based on radiometric dating has matched grains of a mineral called Abundant life in a chilly sea zircon with the same mineral in igneous rocks We might think of our local landscapes in terms of the Transantarctic Mountains. Antarctica was of its multiple sandstone tablelands, spurs and joined to Australia at that time, and while still a gorges. Their rocks were mostly laid down by long way off, the scale of the river system fresh and brackish water in flood plains and implicated is well within that of many flowing estuaries, but the early history of the Sydney across present day continents. Basin incorporates a strong marine influence, Australia's membership of the supercontinents and you can find abundant shelly fossils in of Pangaea and subsequently Gondwana was numerous sites along the coast south of the beginning of a story that flows right through Wollongong. There's also much evidence that to the roots of our floral diversity. Clearly it the sea at the time was icy cold and peppered underpins our natural heritage. with drifting, melting icebergs, and you can still view their dropped erratic, morainic boulders Our sandstone's floral diversity nestling amongst the fossils in cliffs and rock Our sandstone landscapes are built largely platforms. The mineral glendonite found down from nutrient poor but iron- and quartz-rich there only forms today in icy-cold sea floor mud rocks that support an incredibly rich flora, many – it was named after its discovery site at of whose species benefit from the buffering Glendon on the Hunter River. The global action of iron against phosphorus toxicity. The climate conditions captured by this older floral diversities of sandstone heathlands and Sydney Basin suite is of national significance shrublands in places like Royal and Ku-ring-gai both to our scientific heritage and to a broader Chase are only surpassed in Australia by those understanding of the earth's history. of south-west WA, an internationally recognised A great extinction event biodiversity hotspot.