The lower Georges River, on Dharawal and Dharug lands, was a place of fishing grounds, swimming holes and picnics in the early twentieth century. But this all changed after World War II, when rapidly expanding industry and increasing population fell heaviest on this river, polluting its waters and destroying its bush. Local people campaigned to defend their river. They battled municipal councils, who were themselves struggling against an explosion of garbage as population and economy changed. In these blues (an Australian term for conflict), it was mangroves and swamps that became the focus of the fight. Mangroves were expanding because of increasing pollution and early climate change. Councils wanted to solve their garbage problems by bulldozing mangroves and bushland, dumping garbage and, eventually, building playing fields. So they attacked mangroves as useless swamps that harboured disease. Residents defended mangroves by mobilising ecological science to show that these plants nurtured immature fish and protected the river’s health. These suburban resident action campaigns have been ignored by histories of the Australian environmental movement, which have instead focused on campaigns to save distant ‘wilderness’ or inner-city built environments. The Georges River environmental conflicts may have been less theatrical, but they were fought out just as bitterly. And local Georges River campaigners – men, women and often children – were just as tenacious. They struggled to ‘keep bushland in our suburbs’, laying the foundation for today’s widespread urban environmental consciousness. Cover: Ruth Staples was a courageous Georges River campaigner who lived all her life around Lime Kiln Bay at Oatley West. She kept on fighting to regenerate the river until her death, aged 90, in 2020.
Author(s): Heather Goodall
Series: World Forest History Series
Publisher: ANU Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 328
City: Canberra
Usage and Spelling
List of Maps
Map 1.1: A city river.
Map 2.1: The Picnic River: pleasure grounds, parks and golf courses to 1950.
Map 2.2: Locations of military sites along the Georges River.
Map 2.3: Mangrove expansion on Salt Pan Creek, 1930–86.
Map 3.1: County of Cumberland Plan section showing proposed green belt from Royal National Park to Georges River.
Map 3.2: Sewerage infrastructure, southern Sydney, 1961.
Map 4.1: Georges River National Park, 1961–67.
Map 5.1: Oyster farming areas in Georges River estuary, 1945–78.
Map 8.1: Locations of the five resident environmental campaigns discussed in the following chapters.
Map 9.1: Little Salt Pan Creek.
Map 10.1: Lugarno and the Moon bays.
Map 10.2: Mangrove expansion at Half Moon Bay.
Map 11.1: Lime Kiln Bay and neighbouring waterways.
Map 11.2: Mangrove expansion at Lime Kiln Bay.
Map 12.1: Oatley Bay, Renown and Poulton creeks.
Map 13.1: Towra Point and Botany Bay.
Map 15.1: Saving Lime Kiln Bay.
List of Figures
Figure 1.1: Within a Georges River mangrove stand, low tide.
Figure 1.2: Mangrove pneumatophores, the upright roots allow the plant to bring in oxygen.
Figure 1.3: Georges River saltmarsh at Mill Creek (Guragurang), 2009.
Figure 1.4: Looking downwards, showing inundated roots of saltmarsh.
Figure 1.5: Georges River seagrasses: Zostera capricorni (foreground) and Posidonia australis (at rear).
Figure 2.1: The 1920s entrance to East Hills Park.
Figure 2.2: Swimmers and picnics at East Hills Park, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.3: Rowboat picnic group at East Hills Park, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.4: Sunday school picnics at East Hills Park, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.5: Buses at East Hills Park, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.6: Refreshments at East Hills Park, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.7: Parkesvale, 1906.
Figure 2.8: Hollywood Park on Prospect Creek, north of Milperra, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.9: The Vale of Ah Park, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.10: Lambeth Street Wharf Pleasure Grounds, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.11: Lessons at the Oatley Pleasure Grounds pool, 1928.
Figure 2.12: Flying fox at Cuttings Pleasure Ground on Salt Pan Creek, c. 1920s.
Figure 2.13: Younger members of Anderson family, Salt Pan Creek, 1925.
Figure 2.14: Bocce at Horsley Park, 1952.
Figure 2.15: Panorama view of Holsworthy military camp and training ground, 1914–18.
Figure 2.16: German internees in 1916 on pick and shovel work.
Figure 2.17: National servicemen march past at their passing out parade at Holsworthy, 1954.
Figure 3.1: Levingston family golf course, undated c. 1940.
Figure 3.2: Herne Bay Military Hospital, 1944.
Figure 3.3: 1945 poster for the coming County of Cumberland Plan, showing the inner city as crowded and polluted – and dangerous.
Figure 3.4: Clothes lines at rear of flats, Herne Bay hostel, June 1946.
Figure 3.5: ‘Wet Day at the Herne Bay Hostel’, 1950.
Figure 3.6: Herne Bay hostel nursery school, 1947.
Figure 4.1: Family picnic at the old East Hills Park, 1920s.
Figure 4.2: Esme Clisby, Eileen Birch, Joy Cornwell, East Hills activist reunion 2006.
Figure 4.3: Eileen Stills, Carol Jacobsen, Alf Stills, Alan Parnell, East Hills activist reunion 2006.
Figure 4.4: Alf Stills, East Hills activist reunion 2006.
Figure 4.5: Eileen Stills, East Hills activist reunion 2006.
Figure 4.6: George Jacobsen with his racing dogs, in the backyard of his East Hills home, undated c. 1960.
Figure 4.7: Sally Smith with her children, Janny, John and Judy, 1963, soon after moving from the Herne Bay hostel to Green Valley.
Figure 5.1: Gwawley Bay oyster farming workers in 1958.
Figure 5.2: Oyster farmers Reg and Ken Humbley and Norm Pilgrim, Woolooware Bay, 1966.
Figure 5.3: Cover image, Australian Fisheries Newsletter, July 1966.
Figure 6.1: ‘Georges River is POISONED’, Propeller, 26 September 1963, front page.
Figure 7.1: An unidentified Sydney municipal rubbish tip.
Figure 7.2: The impact of ‘reclamation’, seen here at Homebush Bay on the Parramatta River, c. 1950s.
Figure 7.3: Duck Creek, Granville, 1939, ‘reclamation’ to turn creek into playing field.
Figure 7.4: Goal posts erected after swamp ‘clearance’.
Figure 7.5: Aerial photograph of Kelso Swamp, 1 May 1951, showing extent of the wetlands in that year.
Figure 7.6: Aerial photograph of remains of Kelso Swamp, 1 January 1970.
Figure 8.1: Bill White, Vietnam War conscientious objector.
Figure 8.2: Green bans banner, carried by Builders Labourers’ Federation activists, Bob Pringle (left) and Jack Mundey (right) in the 1973 May Day March.
Figure 9.1: Padstow Heights residents, Mrs J. Pethyridge and daughter, 1973, showing mangrove views.
Figure 10.1: Speedboats on the Georges River.
Figure 10.2: Dr Don Francois, first director of New South Wales Fisheries.
Figure 10.3: Aerial photograph of the Moon bays and Lugarno, 1 January 1970.
Figure 10.4: Recent aerial photograph, looking from Illawong in the lower foreground towards Botany Bay and the coast.
Figure 11.1: Ruth Staples at Thredbo, 1966.
Figure 11.2: Lime Kiln Bay Preservation Committee founding activists Ruth Staples and Dave and Tricia Koffel.
Figure 11.3: LKBPC election flyer: ‘Don’t Rubbish Our Bush’, September 1974.
Figure 11.4: ‘Oatley is Our Suburb’, David Thorp election flyer, September 1974.
Figure 12.1: Save Poulton Park Campaign Committee stickers.
Figure 12.2: Cover, Bad Luck, Dead Duck: The Report of INSPECT 1970, by Roger Gifford and Peter Ellyard.
Figure 12.3: Boat trip, organised by Evol Knight, allowing oyster farmers and Poulton Creek campaigners to view river problems together.
Figure 13.1: Bernie Clarke in 1975 demonstrating how dredging was damaging the foreshore of the ‘important estuaries of south Botany Bay’.
Figure 13.2: Bernie Clarke with migratory wading birds at Towra Point in 1990.
Figure 13.3: Bernie Clarke showing Towra Point mangroves to local primary school students, 1989.
Figure 15.1: Ruth Staples, bank regenerator, 2009.
Figure 15.2: Australia Day, Burrawang Reach, Georges River National Park, 2005.
Figure 15.3: The Towra team in 2005.
Figure 15.4: Mangrove sunrise, Cabbage Tree Bay.
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Part I: Introducing the Picnic River
1. A City River and its Bush
2. The Picnic River: Pleasure Grounds and Waste Lands
Part II: Initial Shock
3. Hope, Fear and Planning
4. A Tale of Two National Parks
Part III: Death of the Picnic River
5. Outlooks and Oysters
6. Sewers, Sociality and Mangrove Swamps
7. Garbage: ‘Reclamations’ and Casualties
Part IV: The ‘Mangrovites’ Fight Back
8. Change and the Picnic River
9. View from the Heights: Little Salt Pan Creek
10. Fishers, Boats and Dredges: Great Moon Bay
11. Politics, Picnics and Playing Fields: Lime Kiln Bay
12. Mud, ‘Mangrovites’ and Oatley Bay
13. Atoms and Airports: Towra Point
Part V: Conclusions
14. Reflections, 1945–80
15. Afterword: Disasters, Regenerations and Ambiguities
Bibliography
Index
