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Towra
Point Nature Reserve
Back in the 1960s there was little interest in mangrove
areas or wetlands other than among the scientific
community members on the Fauna Protection Panel (FPP)
— particularly by Allen Strom and CSIRO’s
Harry Frith. Graeme Goodrick on the initiative of
the FPP scholarship program in 1966 undertook a survey
of NSW Coastal Wetlands and showed that in that decade
some 60 per cent of these wetlands had been drained
or otherwise destroyed.
Towra was seen as a crucial unit for maintenance
of migratory waders moving up and down the eastern
Australian seaboard.
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Towra Point from Ramsgate.
Photo by Allan Fox.
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Because of pressure from fisheries interests (oysters particularly)
and difficulties of access from the Cronulla dunes area
across tidal samphire flats, a prime area of maritime wetland
still remained, remarkably sitting centrally in Botany Bay
—this, in spite of it once being a sheep station grant
belonging to Thomas Holt, where he introduced Buffalo Grass
to Australia. Later, parts of the wetland were channelled
to cultivate pearl oysters, a project which failed.
In 1971, Sydney was plagued by train strikes. As Chief Wildlife
Officer in the young National Parks and Wildlife Service
(NPWS), I decided during an August strike not to mix it
with the traffic chaos and instead, to leave my Caringbah
home and head into the swamps. At high tide, the 2km samphire
flats in places were knee deep before I finally reached
the old dry dunes marking ancient shorelines built on bay
sand bars. They had a cover of Coast Banksia, Swamp Mahoganies,
acacias and the Port Jackson Beech (Monotoca elliptica).
Remarkably, the only sign of the nearby city ferment was
the occasional aircraft noise. Among these low
dunes, in 1971, there was still a small fresh-water lagoon
(since breeched from the west and tidal) from which Cook
obtained some water and apparently saw pelicans and, it
is suggested, magpie geese.
Towra Beach is an active white sand beach open to the nor-easters
but protected by broad sea-grass meadows and backed by shore
Oaks. Around the western and eastern sides, dense stands
of fine Grey
Mangroves (Avicennia marina) reach around to Woolooware
and Weeney Bays respectively. Tucked in behind the eastern
mangroves are the depressions marking the site of the ill-fated
pearl farm. A large population of Black Swans, Chestnut
and Grey Teal and bickering Black Duck floated on mangrove-locked
Weeney Bay. Waders do not turn up until October.
The result of this four-day sojourn was a detailed report
and proposal for a Towra Point Nature Reserve, which drew
ridicule from other Service colleagues as being an impossible
dream being such ‘prime development country’ in
light of the booming Sylvania Waters. Certain of the lands
needed purchase. A little wait until that farsighted politician
Tom Uren became Federal Minister for Urban Affairs and,
along with some ‘gentle’ pressure from one of
his colleagues (Tony Mulvihill, friend of Allen Strom) on
the NSW Labour Council, and very significant Federal funds
were found to acquire the lands, though owners of some sand
resources would not sell.
Importantly however, this was also the time when sound ecological
research, such as that of Lesley Clarke and Nola Hannon,
was beginning to bear fruit and feed a unique period of
environmental conservation. It established the ground rules
for an approach to conservation which would not depend upon
a random train strike.
ALLAN FOX is a former National Parks and
Wildlife Service (NPWS) officer and he has a
wealth of experience in the development of
national parks and reserves. He will be NPA's
unofficial 'historian' on national parks in the
lead-up to NPA's 50th Anniversary. Read on ...
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Nadgee
- just in time
ALLAN FOX continues his 'looking back'
series with a story of a coveted map
and a grand result …
Back in 1954, NSW coastal heathlands were largely
under destructive attack from the mining of rutile,
ilmenite and zircon found in ancient strand lines.
The Sim Committee formed by Minister Lewis after pressure
from the Fauna Protection Panel (FPP) to resolve land-use
conflict, nature reserves v sand mining, was still
ten years off.
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Salt (Nadgee) Lake's northern shore
towards the entrance barrier. Photo by A. Fox
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So, in February 1954, when Charles Witheford sought the
help of fellow Sydney Bushwalkers member, Allen Strom, and
myself to check out a wonderful area of heaths and forests
south of Eden, we jumped at it.
With ten-day rucksacs we commenced the walk south from
Wonboyne, then a fishing village connected by bush track
to a bouldery, dusty Princes Highway. Our object that day
was to cross the Coast Range and to follow an old stock
track to Nadgee house ruins, 24kms away.
En route we discovered that Charles had spent six months
preparing a detailed map of the area from aerial photography.
His interest was clearly not merely as a humble bushwalker.
Later, by campfires he began talking about the riches of
the place as a potential tourist resort, not only a hotel
but a network of all weather roads and even a private airfield
on the wonderful heath between Salt (now Nadgee) Lake and
the Nadgee estuary.
As the days passed, Charles jealously guarded his map from
our growing interest in it, particularly as the centrepiece
for a Faunal Reserve proposal. The only other maps available
were a Parish Map showing only an inaccurate coastline,
the Mt. Nadgha trig. and geometry of the Nadgee Pastoral
Lease and a surveyed road; the 1:250 000 sheet showed some
confusing hatching and general course of the Nadgee River.
Those 10 days spent criss-crossing the 20,000+ hectares
of very beautiful heathland, woodland, forest and wetland
— albeit too often burned by random pastoralist-burns
by the occupier Jim Palmer — were some of the most
delightful of my life.
Looking back now after dozens of Nadgee experiences (as
planner, geographer, photographer and fire researcher) I
have never found it a more diverse environment as on that
first tour of discovery.
In 1954, and as the 1948 aerial photo runs show, the great
mosaic of fire-induced ages of vegetation across the habitat
was never again to be more diverse. This characteristic
was accentuated by the shapes and size of those 11 heaths
from Cape Howe to the Merrica River entrance.
The northern, smaller heaths that remained unburned for
decades, were smothered beneath very dense and tall Heath
Oaks except on the very edge of the sea cliffs. Their diversity
was only a fraction of those
heaths further south. The whole complex of heaths formed
a remarkable ecological laboratory, a prime criteria for
Faunal Reserve (Nature Reserve) status.
By May, 1954, a detailed proposal for a 26,000 acre Faunal
Reserve including a precise resources map created over an
accurate base drafted from detail lifted from a portrait
of Charles studying his map I took early in the walk, had
been submitted to the Department of Lands. Extensive official
inspection of the pastoral lease was undertaken, the first
in the lease history, to ascertain if the lease conditions
had been maintained. Mines, Forestry, State Planning, Agriculture
and others finally all concurred and the way was clear for
the proclamation of Nadgee Faunal Reserve No.6, the gem
of the Nature Reserve system.
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Strom subsequently invited the Undersecretary for
Lands, the Surveyor General, Charles and the other
Departments involved to a 'thank you' afternoon tea.
I can still see Charles standing spellbound in front
of a large detailed and annotated wall map of Nadgee.
He was uttering: “it took me six months to create
my small effort and you fellows have produced this
whopper! What I could have done with this!”
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Nadgee River estuary - closed condition
Photo by A. Fox
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Without Charles’s involuntary help, neither
this map nor Nadgee Nature Reserve would have happened.
But yet there were still many more battles ahead to finally
achieve an area with rational boundaries and with no alienation.
Allan Fox
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