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  When you first meet Sherlie McMillan you’re instantly bowled over by her disarming warmth, infectious laughter and wicked sense of humour.   During the last Covid restrictions, when only 10 were allowed into the Rotary meeting room at the Blackheath Golf and Community Club, Sherlie’s laughter rang out from ‘the naughty table’ that met outside in the dining room. …

  In March this year, Japanese journalist Harumi Hayakawa wrote a piece for the Japanese publication Asahi Weekly in which she explained why the terrifying Australian fires of December 2019 actually made her like the Blue Mountains even more.     In her article she described the many ways the community came together during and after the fires and how, …

Annabel Pettit shares her inspiring conversation with Barbara Armitage, former Mayor of Waverley, about her passionate dedication to family, community and creativity.

  In May 2020, in the early months of the pandemic, I spent time with Bob Burnett in his home at Mount Victoria. He and Peter Buckwell, his neighbour, were nightly companions and supporting each other through the Lockdown. As we’ve seen over the last few years, life has a way of up-ending everyone’s plans. As it turned out, by …

  Annabel Pettit interviews Blackheathen/Bathurstian Vaughan Jones at the Headspace Garden in Katoomba (Photo: Annabel Pettit, Vaughan Jones, Alex Young)   Vaughan Jones is a young local Blackheathen, very much born and raised. We caught up in the permaculture garden behind Headspace Katoomba, which he played an integral role in designing and planting. Sitting down on the wooden stumps that …

Annabel Pettit speaks with Blackheathen Jeffrey Crompton (above) about the podcast he started during Lockdown: Jeffrey and Mick were raised in a Sydney that had never known any lockout laws, where you could walk into the Riverwood Hotel on any given night and be unsurprised to catch Split Enz or The Church earning their stripes on the city’s vibrant pub …

Hamish Dunlop interviews Deborah Wells in the Blackheath Campbell Rhododendron Gardens. She shares how a group of passionate and dedicated volunteers have created a community space that is a haven for all species, and how they've helped it recover from drought, fire, flood and pandemic.

The Blue Mountains Pluriversity and its Permaculture Institute are offering free permaculture classes for young people (aged 16-24) in Lithgow.

Phil Hopkins Nineteen years ago we moved to Cleopatra St in Blackheath with our young twin boys. We couldn’t believe our luck when we discovered Santa lived just around the corner on Hat Hill Rd. Every festive season our children joined the throngs to check out his Christmas lights display and to collect a bag of lollies! We’ve since moved, …

To grow a long-term productive and abundant veggie garden you need to make sure your soil is rich and alive and continually fed and replenished. This supports plant growth and allows for repeated cropping within a healthy ecosystem. One way to do this is to encourage more worms to be part of that system. Charles Darwin said: “It may be …