Merewether Beach Pty Ltd

Merewether Beach Pty Ltd: the name of the company to alienate the public parkland at Merewether says it all. Certainly the questions posed by Edward Duc (Newcastle Herald letters 15/08) should be answered publicly.

It may be too late to call the last Council to account but it’s not too late for the new Councillors and the existing State Government to stop the privatisation of public parkland.

Newcastle desperately needs investment money in its commercial areas but it doesn’t need commercial areas in its public parklands.

Residents will have to join with RAID : a coalition of community groups up and down the coast in their planned protest rally 19 October in Hyde Park Sydney against inappropriate development.

Doug Lithgow

Doug Lithgow receives The Dunphy Award

The Dunphy Award for the most outstanding environmental effort of an individual has been awarded to Doug Lithgow.

Doug has been working for the protection and improvement of the environment in the Newcastle-Hunter region for many years. He is the face of the Parks & Playgrounds Movement, which was brought to Newcastle in 1952 and has played a large role in a great number of environmental battles.

Some of the battles included the protection of Lake Macquarie and its foreshores, Blackbutt Reserve, the Newcastle East land formerly owned by the State Rail Authority, Sugarloaf reserve and the Glenrock State Recreation Area.

In 1987 Doug was honoured with the Newcastle University's Board of Environmental Studies Environmental Achievement Award.

Doug’s outstanding conservation efforts have also been recognised by Newcastle City Council who has presented him with the “Freeman of the City” award.

Most recently Doug’s tireless campaigning to preserve the heritage values of Nobby’s Headland has had a win with the Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett ruling against the proposal for a development at the historic lighthouse site, under the EPBC Act.

Doug Lithgow received the Award at the Jemby Rimjah Eco-lodge in the Blue Mountains.

Nobbys and Newcastle’s Coal River Precinct: Birthplace of a City

Nobbys (Whybaygamba), which was cutdown to half its height to form a base for the Nobbys lighthouse, and the convict built breakwater connecting Colliers Point, are distinctive Newcastle landmarks and unique colonial artefacts within the Coal River Precinct at the entrance to the Hunter River.

The integrity of the Nobbys Lighthouse must be preserved protected and promoted in a professional plan of management for the whole Coal River Precinct (SHR 1674)

The precinct is a nationally significant landscape and the birth site of Newcastle and of convict coal mining.

Recognition, protection and public access urgently needed.

Letter below to Premier of NSW re Nobbys Lighthouse decision and Coal River:

Friday, 30 May 2008

The Hon Morris Iemma MP
Premier of NSW and Minister for Citizenship
Governor Macquarie Tower
Level 40, No. 1 Farrer Place, SYDNEY NSW 2000

Dear Premier,

Nobbys and Newcastle’s Coal River Precinct: Birthplace of a City

Parks and Playgrounds Movement is pleased to report the decision of the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, the Hon Peter Garrett AM MP, to reject the development that would have adversely affected Newcastle’s unique Nobbys Lighthouse.

I feel sure you would agree that we must all take care that the historic Nobbys Lighthouse continues to stand proud and free as shown in the historic photograph below in any future adaptive reuse of the signalman’s cottages.

1902 view of Nobbys Lighthouse Newcastle: NSW State Library

We had been perturbed by the shelf company, Nobbys Lighthouse Pty Ltd, proposing to alienate the lighthouse in breach of commonwealth legislation and that the private Development Application was incorrectly assessed as a Crown Development.

Nobbys and Nobbys Lighthouse are the cultural symbols of Newcastle and should not have been dealt with in this way. The Lighthouse is an important aid to navigation and is the successor to the first light on the Australian coast, which was a beacon fuelled by coal mined by convict coalminers at Colliers Point beneath what is now Fort Scratchley. The lighthouse is of particular significance to Newcastle and is seen in the old and the new city Coat of Arms and in the Newcastle City Hall clock tower which is a representation of the ancient Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement have a continuing interest in this notable place dating from 1969 when we first proposed the statutory recognition of the area as a historic site. The proposal including Nobbys, the convict breakwater and the convict coal mines, Fort Scratchley and Shortland’s camp location. In 1999 we prepared a Prospectus for the Coal River Historic Site and a ten point plan for the Newcastle Lord Mayor, John Tate, to take to Canberra but were disappointed when the funding gained was not used to prepare the Masterplan as envisaged.

The lighthouse controversy and the intervention of the Commonwealth Minister has saved Nobbys lighthouse and given the Coal River Precinct the national focus it deserves and has highlighted the need for a guiding overall conservation plan.

We appeal to your Government to look with new clarity at Newcastle’s Coal River Precinct which is the birth place of our city and has made an immense contribution to the history and heritage of Australia. Furthermore we particularly ask that your Government favourably endorse the Department of Planning and the Newcastle City Council’s draft Conservation and Cultural Tourism Management Plan for the precinct.

We trust also that the redevelopment of the Port Corporation’s valuable waterfront land around the Pilot Station and Cornish Dock area will be coordinated and professionally managed as an integral part of the whole precinct and that public access be made to the Nobbys headland without further delay.

Yours Sincerely,


Doug Lithgow,
Freeman of the City of Newcastle
President Parks and Playgrounds Movement Inc.

Nobbys Development - Congratulations to Minister Garrett

Congratulations to Minister Garrett on his courageous decision to reject the Nobbys Lighthouse development at Newcastle, NSW.

This is the Minister's first decision as federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts in relation to built heritage and he has resisted pressure from local and state politicians, and developers to consider the Heritage impact statement (HIS) by independent international recognized heritage architects Clive Lucas and Stapleton pty Ltd. This report clearly states that there would be permanent and irreversible damage if this proposal was to go ahead.

Nobbys Lighthouse is a Commonwealth Heritage place and any change to the headland should be in accordance with section 26 of the Environmental, Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPB&C Act). The proponents had failed to refer their development to the Commonwealth until requested to do so in 2006.

Minister Garrett’s decision will encourage future protection of the cultural heritage values of the lighthouse. The Hunter Regional Committee of the National Trust supports that the headland be open to the public. The development that the Minister has rejected would have destroyed the most significant historic lighthouse on the eastern seaboard. Minister Garrett’s decision enables the public to potentially visit the site and understand its meaning.

Nobbys 'Whybaygamba' is an Aboriginal dreaming place, of special significance to the Aboriginal community, and important to the wider community and the history of Newcastle, and the nation.

Banging the Table for Nobbys?

Back in June 2007 I wrote to our State Member for Newcastle to seek her support for our Mater Hospital.

A representative from her office wrote back to say it was not in her electorate and to write instead to the Member for Wallsend.

Given the reported $50,000 in undisclosed donations from property developer Buildev (NH 14/4), and her recent ‘banging of the table’ for local developer Neil Slater’s redevelopment proposal for Nobbys I would like to know why she wasn’t prepared to ‘bang the table’ for our besieged Mater hospital?

And why, for that matter, couldn't our Region’s elected representatives come together, as they did so majestically in support of the restaurant and love nest for Nobbys, to support our public hospitals, transport, police and renewable clean energy future?

Is it that political donations have rendered those in the community as mere ‘non-developers’, as Wollongong MP Noreen Hay said in this week's ABC Four Corners program (14/4/08)?

Could it explain the divisive rhetoric that was this month placed into NSW State Parliamentary Hansard by Jodi McKay that all who opposed the Nobbys redevelopment ‘have done their best to delay and stop Newcastle's growth’?