I have to admit I didn’t know anything about the location of Westleigh until the Westleigh Park Master Plan development was announced by Hornsby Council. Westleigh is a small suburb on a ridge surrounded by Berowra Valley National Park and bushland along Waitara Creek and the biobanking site of Dog Pound Creek. The only road into Westleigh is Quarter Sessions Road with access via busy Duffy Avenue.

For the past two years Hornsby Council has been developing a plan for the development of the land known as Westleigh Park. This area of 36 ha was bought by council from Sydney Water in 2016. The water reservoir next to the park is still managed by Sydney Water. Currently council land has:

• a 26 ha area of bushland that is riddled with unauthorised mountain bike tracks – see STEP Matters Issue 217 for a story about what should be happening here
• a cleared area of 10 ha that was a land fill site and is predominately tufted grasses and unmaintained Kikuyu and weeds
• a Rural Fire Service building on the northern side so that land has been used for training

There has been community consultation and now it is expected that a final draft of the master plan will go before council soon.

The plan is for the creation of an extensive sporting field complex on the cleared land including three sporting fields, small areas for passive recreation and road access and parking areas. One of the fields may be synthetic which is inappropriate for an area so close to bushland. Preparation of the land for this development will be a major expensive exercise owing to contamination, its topography and need to control run-off into the nearby bushland.

Major traffic issue

One essential prerequisite for the creation of the park is improved road access. Council is expecting to get approval from Sydney Water to extend Sefton Road from Chilvers Road around the reservoir to Quarter Sessions Road. This will increase traffic significantly along Sefton Road through the industrial area of Thornleigh and the quiet suburban areas of Westleigh. A traffic study has forecast an extra 1,500 car movements a day at the Sefton and Chilvers Road intersection.

One possible solution for the problems the development will cause is to reduce the number of sporting fields and make the road only open for emergency access.

New alliance of community groups

A group of ten local community groups (including Westleigh Progress Association, Friends of Berowra Valley, Protecting Your Suburban Environment and STEP) have formed a new alliance called Save Westleigh Park to keep both residents and businesses updated on council's current ill-planned schemes, as well as the significant impacts the development will have.

Council's community engagement with Westleigh residents has been poor. A recent council-run public meeting about the traffic impacts was only attended by 11 residents with seven apologies, as the meeting was by council invitation only. Yet obviously the traffic impacts are much wider than just those residents. Click here for the latest traffic study.

Action

Make your concerns about this proposed enormous regional sporting complex and its significant lasting impacts known through the traffic petition and the save Westleigh Park petition.

Early in 2021 the owner of the Eden Gardens nursery complex on Lane Cove Road in Macquarie Park submitted a DA for an 18 storey office tower right on the edge of Lane Cove National Park. Ryde Council knocked back the application mainly for reasons of visual impact, traffic and height relative to surrounding areas.

The next stage would be a hearing before the North Sydney Planning Panel. In the meantime discussions were held with council and the panel trying to persuade the proponent to modify the plan to no avail.

The hearing was suddenly announced to be in December 2022. After all that time the applicant has not been able to obtain concurrence from the Rural Fire Service, Transport NSW and an Aboriginal Heritage Impacts Permit.

It was inevitable that the panel would refuse the application. Their determination summarised the situation that:

An acceptable redevelopment proposal of the site is more likely to be developed with close cooperation between the applicant and council. Such a dynamic has been lacking to date, as evidenced by the disagreements documented in the assessment report.

The next step will be a Land and Environment Court hearing in March. We hope the plans are considerably modified before that takes place.

In November 2022 the Friends of Lane Cove National Park alerted us to the news that Naamaroo was on the market. This area of land, 6.2 ha, is next to Lane Cove National Park with an entrance in Lady Game Drive. It has been owned by the Uniting Church and has been used as a convention centre and children’s recreation camp.

Letters to the NPWS and the Uniting Church calling for the bushland (at least) to be added to the national park were dismissed. Given the interesting history of the site, it was very appropriate to add the site to the national park.

Tony Butteriss, President of Friends of Lane Cove National Park, undertook detailed research into the history of the site as documented in the December issue of their magazine Regenavitis.

In summary, the Naamaroo land was part of the Moore Estate that gifted 238 acres from the estate in 1938 to establish Lane Cove National Park. The trustees of the estate retained control over the land. Later part of this Moore Estate was gifted to the Congregational Church (now the Uniting Church). There is a record of sub-division and transfer made in 1961. This land became the Naamaroo property.

The property has been bought by The King’s School for $14 million.

The land is zoned as RE2 or private recreation, one of the objectives of which is to protect and enhance the natural environment for recreational purposes. While this zoning places an emphasis on caring for the environment there is scope for development. However we have been advised by Kings that the existing uses will continue and the property will be available for general community use as currently applies.

The letter from The King’s School states:

As a new member of the Lindfield community, we look forward to getting to know all interested locals and hearing what makes Naamaroo special to you. As a school acquiring the property from a church, there may be some differences in the way the site is operated, and we want to partner with the community to ensure any change minimises impacts to nearby residents and local road users.

There is little doubt that this area was once part of the national park and we hope that the bushland will be cared for in the same manner as a national park.

Manly Warringah War Memorial Park Is an area of 375 ha that covers the Manly Dam, its catchment area and the immediate bushland area below the dam. The Save Manly Dam Catchment Committee has worked for many years on looking after the bush in the catchment and restoring the Mermaid Pool below the dam that was a rubbish dump site.

Manly Dam was given heritage status because of the area's long history going back to the 1890s when the dam was built to be the major water source for Manly. The preservation of the dam's catchment is one of the reasons that we are so lucky to still have this amazing area of quality bushland that supports high biodiversity including many threatened species so close to the centre of Sydney. Areas like this are rare so that the highest possible level of protection should be applied.

The local community through the Save Manly Dam Catchment Committee has demonstrated their strong support for the area with many hours put into removing rubbish at the Mermaid Pool and volunteer bushcare works. It is an excellent site for citizen science projects.

The park has a long history of use by the Gayamaygal people, with evidence of engraving sites, and the bushland vegetation provided bush tucker and material for a huge range of tools like rope, fishing nets, medicine, shields and canoes.

Manly Dam is an example of rare concrete-walled gravity dam that pioneered wall strengthening methods and technology and was a world first for its time. It no longer provides its original use as a water supply and now is a valuable recreation area.

At the declaration ceremony the Environment Minister and local member, James Griffin, claimed that heritage listing will help protect this treasured area and its stories for generations of Sydneysiders to continue enjoying into the future. But will it?

Beaches link tunnel proposal

The Beaches Link tunnels proposal is a massively expensive road project that is yet to receive funding commitments. It will greatly encourage the use of private cars and goes against the NSW Government’s commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

This video demonstrates the damage that the project will do to the catchment of the Manly Dam caused by the widening of Wakehurst Parkway. Bushland and flying fox habitat along Burnt Creek will be destroyed.

This article in STEP Matters Issue 209 provides more information on the environmental damage the project will cause.

There has not been any serious consideration of alternatives such as improved bus lanes or a metro to Chatswood from the Northern Beaches Hospital.