Governments

Aerial firefighting is proving to be a game changer in tackling bushfires. Since the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, the NSW Rural Fire Service’s fleet of helicopters and fixed-wing planes has grown from 4 to 11. Warrimoo local Rod Walker is an Air Attack Supervisor who flies through smoke-filled skies to help keep our communities safe.

Southeast Asian rice paddies are one of the inspirations behind a stormwater treatment initiative at Glenbrook, designed to protect Knapsack Creek and ultimately, the Hawkesbury Nepean River.

Having been declared a natural disaster area five times in just four years, Blue Mountains City Council is reaching out to all sectors of the community to join in creating a Community Net Zero Strategy and Action Plan.

Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once famously said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Tracie McMahon shares her experience as a Bushcare volunteer with Remote Bushcare programs run by Blue Mountains City Council and by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Keith Brister is on a mission. He and his fellow Bushcare volunteers spent years “achieving the impossible”, protecting Blackheath’s stunning natural bushland, only to see the weeds return when COVID restrictions limited Bushcare. But Keith did not despair. Instead, he asked what else could be done, and set about doing it.

Planetary Health Initiative writer Hamish Dunlop talks to Amy St Lawrence from Blue Mountains City Council’s Healthy Waterways Team. Amy explains what she’s doing at her home to collect and use water. She also talks about how her rain garden reduces run-off during and after rainfall.

A beautiful dining table, a piano, a wooden canoe, bicycles and books – not what I expected to find at my local ‘tip’. Turning trash into treasure is just one way our Blue Mountains community is reducing materials going to landfill.

Tom Gleeson was just 11 when he joined his mum and 20 other Warrimoo residents in a community-based program called Sustainability Street. Locals of all ages met regularly in backyards, lounge rooms, a school hall & parks to learn about sustainable ways of living, working, thinking & acting.

Bullaburra resident, and long-time EV advocate Alan Wardrop, switched over to an EV Nissan Leaf two years ago and has no regrets. He took me through the mechanics of it all.