The National Trust has Classified 23 urban conservation areas in Ku-ring-gai LGA for their social, historic, landscape and architectural significance. These occur on the ridgetops  where the richer soils and higher rainfall supported Sydney’s only Blue Gum High Forest. The trees of the forest still characterise this unique Sydney landscape.

Ku-ring-gai’s Blue Gum High Forest and its many surviving remnant trees form a rare Sydney landscape. The Forest’s Sydney Blue Gums, Blackbutts and Ironbarks are among Sydney’s largest and most majestic trees.  The many urban conservation areas that occur throughout this leafy landscape have architecturally significant, attractive early twentieth century houses with large, well kept gardens and, in some cases, large landscaped grounds that blend into and enhance the forest landscape creating a total context that is of the highest aesthetic quality.

Ku-ring-gai is named after the original Guringai Aboriginal Language Group who inhabited the area from Port Jackson north across Broken Bay and beyond Brisbane Water. The area was originally settled by timber getters, orchardists and farmers and supplied much of the timber for early Sydney. In 1805 the botanist George Caley described the North Shore timber as being very suitable for building Sydney town. Blackbutt was used for general construction work, Sydney Blue Gum for beams, floorboards, wheel-rims and ship-building. Red Mahogany was used for furniture and ship framing, Turpentine was used for wharves and construction work, Grey Ironbark and Red Bloodwood for fencing and Forest Oak for cabinet-making and shingles. Since the cessation of this extensive logging in the 1800s there has been considerable regrowth with a major canopy of trees re-established. In the 1900s almost all of Ku-ring-gai was designated for residential development as opposed to commercial and industrial developments, and very few blocks of flats were permitted before 1940. This has allowed the tree stands to recover much of their former glory. In 1930 Ku-ring-gai Council publicised a new “commandment” – ‘Thou shalt preserve those trees’ referring to the ‘Spires that Speak to the Soul’.

The Blue Gum High Forest is a critically endangered ecological community which was originally rare in the Sydney Area with only 11,000 hectares (3%) of the Cumberland Plain’s 374,000 hectares. Massive clearing has now left only 99 hectares of relatively intact plant community (0.9% of what originally occurred – 0.03% of the Cumberland Plain vegetation).

Residents and resident groups in the Ku-ring-gai area have had a long and caring concern for the protection of the Blue Gum High Forest and its trees which have been held in high esteem. Annie Wyatt, one of the founders of the National Trust also founded the Ku-ring-gai Tree Lovers’ Civic League in 1927 and became its first President. The Tree Lovers’ Civic League flourished for 45 years. Mr and Mrs I. B. Wyatt, Snr, were amongst a small group of residents who in 1934 formed the Dalrymple-Hay Forest Preservation Committee to raise funds and assist the Municipality of Ku-ring-gai in purchasing 4.7 hectares of Pymble/St Ives Blue Gum High Forest. This committee continued until 1972 and the area is now the Dalrymple Hay Nature Reserve of 11 hectares. In more recent years the Blue Gum High Forest Group formed to try to preserve this endangered ecological community for all time and have had some success in getting additions to the Dalrymple Hay Nature Reserve.

The majority of the housing and landscaping of the grounds of the properties in the Urban Conservation Areas are intact and still demonstrate the special qualities that make this area distinctive and historically important. Blue Gum High Forest is critically endangered and only ever occurred in this part of the Sydney Region. The Urban Conservation Areas are distinctly linked to this rare vegetation type and the scale of their architectural and landscape qualities is the context of NSW.

Statement of Risk:

Degree of Risk:           Immediate Risk – no solution agreed

Threats/Risks:             Destruction

Fate/outcome:             Suffering

Urban consolidation is being concentrated in the original ridgeline, Blue  Gum High Forest area and within the Trust’s Urban Conservation Areas. This development is being assessed and approved prior to consideration of approval by the State Government of statutory listing of Urban Conservation Areas proposed by Ku-ring-gai Council on their Local Environmental Plan. The risk of destruction is immediate and there is no agreed solution.

Desired Outcome / Vision

Development within the area (particularly urban consolidation) should proceed on an orderly basis balancing the needs for more accommodation with the conservation and protection of the area’s scenic, landscape, social and architectural significance. All bushland remnants of the Blue Gum High Forest should be transferred to the care and management of the National Parks Service as Nature Reserves or private owners should enter into conservation agreements with the National Parks Service. Development should have particular regard to appropriate design which protects individual trees or tree stands of the Blue Gum High Forest community.

Bibliography:

Taken for Granted, Doug Benson & Jocelyn Howell, Kangaroo Press, 1990

The Natural Vegetation of the Sydney 1:100 000 map sheet, Cunninghamia Volume 3(4) Doug Benson & Jocelyn Howell, National Herbarium of NSW 1994

Ours in Trust, a personal history of the National Trust of Australia (NSW), Ivor Forsyth Wyatt, The National Trust of Australia (NSW) 1984, updated 2005

Blue Gum High Forest Group, South Turammurra Environment Protection (STEP) Inc Website, http://www.step.org.au/bghf_group.html, 2007