This is a very big tree – one of hundreds of big trees that will be removed to widen Campbell Street & Euston Road for the WestConnex Motorway
The trees in Euston Road are big, much bigger than the street trees we are used to seeing in what until recently, was Marrickville municipality. Stand here and all you can here is birdsong, especially Fig birds.
Every tree you see is to be removed. Just past the grass is the lower pond filled with water birds. It appears that the land taken by WestConnex will come very close to this pond.
We have just returned from the ‘Save Sydney Park Festival’ organised by the WestConnex Action Group & Reclaim the Streets. We also visited the Camp of residents who have stayed in the park for the past 13 days. It has not been without drama though. At 3am on 20th September, police evicted the camp & the WestConnex Authority came & fenced off the campsite. The Camp moved further up the park & re-pitched their tents. Today a lone security guard sat in the fenced off area protecting the trees from the community for the WestConnex Authority. Taxpayers’ dollars at work. It’s the community which wants to save the trees.
The Camp of the WestConnex Action Group & supporters
The WestConnex Authority is preparing to chop down hundreds of trees along Campbell Street & Euston Road St Peters. If this wasn’t bad enough, they also intend to encroach 12-metres into Sydney Park itself & remove many mature trees, shrubs & gardens.
The WestConnex Action Group ( http://www.westconnexactiongroup.org.au ) says that, “The State Government is cutting down more than 350 trees & taking 14,000 square metres of Sydney Park to build their dirty toll road.”
The WestConnex Action Group has spent a significant number of people hours tying blue fabric around each tree to be removed. There is blue everywhere you look. Hundreds of decades old trees will be felled. Even worse is the blue fabric around massive trees inside Sydney Park. It is also reasonable to think that any tree within 10-metres of the work zone would also be at risk of dying if their roots extend into the work zone, so perhaps more precious trees will be casualties of this motorway.
Sydney Park may seem like a big park, but we don;t have much green space in the area & to lose any is terrible. Sydney Park is only across the road from the boundary of the old Marrickville Municipality. The old Marrickville municipality has the least green space in Australia. Therefore, Sydney Park is used a lot by this community, plus the community of the City of Sydney municipality & the numerous visitors who travel significant distance to spend time in the park. No wonder. It is a beautiful park that just keeps on improving every year.
So for the WestConnex Authority to take a whopping 14,000 square metres of Sydney Park in an area with very little green space is a huge loss.
Campbell Street & Euston Road St Peters will be widened into 6 lanes taking traffic from the St Peters Interchange (colloquially known as the Spaghetti Junction) to Alexandria, Mascot & Newtown then into surrounding roads originally built for horses with carts. The traffic bottle necks are going to be very frustrating to drivers & for the local community who are going to be hit with far more traffic than they have ever experienced, plus associated air pollution & health issues from the pollution.
The St Peters Interchange itself is massive & one wonders why it needs to be so large. Looking at the plans it looks to be three-quarters the size of Sydney Park.
An article published three days ago in the Telegraph, (which I am unable to access again to give you the link) said that 85,000 square metres of new parkland will be created under & around the St Peters Interchange. The new parkland will come with two ventilation stacks. The first public space is due to be opened in 2019 & the second in 2023.
Now I don’t know about you, but we will be very unlikely to choose to spend our time outdoors under a freeway spaghetti junction with particulate matter dropping down on us from the vehicles traveling above & pollution from the two ventilation stacks. It won’t matter how green the grass is.
It seems that the WestConnex Authority has carte blanche to seize public green space for this motorway. Just a couple of weeks ago they levelled 1.4 hectares of critically endangered REMNANT Cooks River Castlereagh Ironbark forest in Wolli Creek for a TEMPORARY car park. Unbelievable! See – http://bit.ly/2cpNw1i This action is a big fat “we just don’t care about the environment” by the WestConnex Authority, aka the NSW government.
The WestConnex Authority tried it on for historic Ashfield Park wanting to destroy heritage trees & take away community green space, again for a car park. See – http://bit.ly/2dkCivB Thankfully the community won & Ashfield Park was saved. Hopefully Sydney Park can also be saved.
My question to the NSW Government is – why do you choose to rob the Inner West community of green space? Why not purchase the industrial buildings across the road from Sydney Park to provide the space needed to widen the road? They certainly did not hesitate to force people out of their homes, so why not the same equity for industrial properties? Or why not build better public transport?
We looked around, spoke to numerous people & heard the anger, dismay & the concern for the park, the trees & the wildlife. Then we cycled around for a good look at what is proposed to be lost to road. Of concern is the wildlife – the Bell frogs, the Tawny frogmouths & number other birds & all the other creatures that live in the trees to be removed. The area subsumed comes mighty close to the bottom pond, which is also of concern. Hopefully my photos will show what is to be lost more effectively than my words.
Everywhere I looked I saw big trees and blue ribbons indicating that these trees were to be chopped down. All the trees in the centre of the photograph are also in the area to be claimed by the WestConnex Authority.
The signs say it clearly. We cannot forget about the wildlife.
Some of the signs in the Camp.
More signs
A sign in Campbell Street eloquently expresses community anger
Local graffiti is another visible sign of community anger.
The Town and Country Hotel at St Peter’s -immortalised in the Duncan song by Slim Dusty & also a casualty of WestConnex. PS. In the Sun-Herald today, 2nd October 2016, there is an article titled, ‘Legal row leaves pub with no beer.’ In a nutshell, the Town and Country Hotel “fought off the threat from an extension to WestConnex….” So I was wrong. This iconic pub survives.
SAVING OUR TREES - Marrickville municipality 
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October 2, 2016 at 12:49 am
ArchitectGJA
Sydney could take a lesson from other cities where road projects have destroyed neighbourhoods only to suffer buyer’s remorse as people (government) come to their senses years later. Two instances come to mind in San Francisco – the elevated Embarcadero Freeway which was wedged up against the historic Ferry Building and created a ghastly wasteland at ground level below. This was demolished after the Loma Prieta earthquake and a vibrant waterfront has returned/emerged.
Another is the Geary Boulevard expansion to take traffic from downtown to the west. This area had been a Japanese community, those residents being relocated to camps during World War II. After the war, the neighbourhood then had an expansion of African American families and became a thriving jazz music area until it was deemed “blighted” by the late 1950s and primed for redevelopment. This, done through eminent domain, demolished 2500 Victorian homes, almost 1000 businesses and relocated 4,700 African American families. I have heard the lament of loss of the fabric of cities over and over again and not just from those who suffered the loss personally, but from people who see that some “improvements” come at far too great a cost.
Now Sydney is making the same type of mistake made by others 50 or more years ago. Is a toll motorway to help the well-heeled zip through the city worth the sacrifice made by thousands of residents? Is it worth the cost to the environment? Hardly, this seems more of an ego driven project by sad people attempting to compensate for something seriously lacking within.