of Stone
Stage 2
Proposal
Gardens of Stone
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♦ Newnes Plateau,
♦ the broken stone country to the west of the Plateau, and
♦ the Airly-Genowlan mesa to the north in the Capertee Valley.
The area embraces the last unprotected part of the 1934 Greater Blue Mountains National Park proposal compiled by Myles Dunphy for the National Parks and Primitive Areas Council.
It also includes the Blue Mountains Western Escarpment lands from Blackheath to Lithgow. Here's the GOS2 flyer.
An area within the proposal is now under imminent threat. Over 843 hectares
of public forest within this uniquely scenic and biodiverse area are now at risk
of exclusive occupation and destruction by open cut coal mining.
Read more about this threat here.
Johnson's Grass Trees
on Genowlan Mountain
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Spurred on by the threat of further damage, the Committee produced a 'Gardens of Stone' 40,000 hectare reserve proposal.
After 10 years of campaigning and a further park proposal by the Colong Foundation, the Gardens of Stone National Park was created on the 29th of November 1994, covering 11,780 hectares.
In December 1995 a further 3,600 hectares of the original proposal were added to the Wollemi National Park.
The Colong Foundation for Wilderness, the Blue Mountains Conservation Society
and the Colo Committee now advance a 40,000 hectare Stage Two
of the Gardens of Stone proposal, including all of the remaining
parts of Newnes Plateau and surrounding sandstone uplands.
State Conservation Area reserves allows for coal mining
as well as the protection of conservation values.
The proposal is fully detailed in the following PDFs. Note: these PDFs are large documents.
♦ Seeing The Gardens - July 2009 - 11MB PDF
♦ GOS2 Proposal - Illustrated - 29MB PDF
Upper Bungleboori Creek area
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Pagoda is a local name for a large tapering and often stepped or laminated sandstone formation.
Associated with these pagoda landforms are found large caves, mazes, ancient montane heathlands, endangered upland swamps, snowgums, grassy woodlands and moist gullies that contain tree ferns, stands of old growth forest and rainforest, and, in some places, slot canyons.
Cape Horne, Wolgan Valley
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Reservation of the remaining unprotected parts of the Gardens of Stone as a State Conservation Area is urgently required to rein in ongoing and accelerating environmental degradation.
Where are the Proposal areas?
The Reserve Proposal of 39,800 hectares is divided into six Divisions and stretches over 75 kilometres from near Medlow Bath to Mount Airly in the Capertee Valley.
Garden Of Stone 2 Proposal Map
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Genowlan Mountain (1,688 hectares) is a masterpiece in sandstone that rises more than 500 metres from the valley floor. Home to 'Three Hundred
Sisters' and a biodiversity hotspot, Genowlan Mountain has more than 340 plants and 75 mammals and birds.
Now the Mugii Murum-ban State Conservation Area.
Mount Airly (2,020 hectares) contains some of the State's best preserved oil shale ruins located in a spectacular setting with dramatic valley
views, and surrounded by cliffs of pagoda scenery. The ruins are a ghost town lost in time.
Now the Mugii Murum-ban State Conservation Area.
Baal Bone and Long Swamp (7,800 hectares) comprise massed pagoda 'villages' above the Long Swamp, a diverse swampy plain. They collectively form an evocative landscape of broken stone, reminiscent of Cambodia's forest of State Forest temples, while nearby indigenous cave art honours this landscape.
Wolgan Falls
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Wollangambe Wilderness (2,380 hectares) is a popular destination with bushwalkers and canyoners. The wilderness features Goochs Crater, wild headwater streams, wet sclerophyll forests, and scientifically important spring-fed swamps.
The Western Escarpment (4,000 hectares) is renowned for its outstanding ochre-coloured escarpments. Above them are rare plant communities, and below, fringing the escarpment, the dramatic valley scenery is enhanced by a wonderful blanket of forest. The area, which contains the first passes into the interior of the continent, is already appreciated for quiet family-based recreation and climbing.
Wolgan Snow Gum
(Eucalyptus gregsoniana)
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Pagoda Daisy
(Leucochrysum graminifolium)
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The environment groups' reserve proposal is an integrated plan of action to protect, manage and interpret the area's heritage.
The reserve proposal aims to protect and manage:- one of the most beautiful displays of sandstone geodiversity in Australia, comprising dramatically coloured sandstone escarpments and promontories, narrow canyons, cave overhangs, swamps and the complex arrays of rock pinnacles known as pagodas.
- one of the Blue Mountains' areas of highest plant diversity including ancient windswept montane heathlands, nationally endangered upland swamps, a unique species of snowgum (E. gregsoniana) and other high plateau woodlands representing the highest development of native vegetation on Sydney Basin sedimentary rocks, and poorly conserved grassy white box woodlands on slopes below the sandstone;
- fascinating oil shale mining ruins on spectacular Airly Mesa;
- outstanding Aboriginal cultural sites on and around Newnes Plateau;
- the nationally significant first three rugged mountain passes west to the interior of Australia;
- the most popular recreation-forest destination in the Mountains.
will greatly enhance the tourism in the central and western
Blue Mountains, including the Lithgow region.