Stories From: Climate

Blue Mountains waterways are some of the most beautiful, iconic and highly valued in Australia. They also supply drinking water to over five million people. ​​What is Council doing to protect our waterways? Find out here.

John Campbell with his Tesla Charger and LG Chem Battery “Alexa, play ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers.” I’m visiting John Campbell, the President of the Rotary Club of Blackheath, and it’s my first time experiencing what’s described as a ‘smart home’. From the music John asks Alexa to play on demand, to the changing coloured lights in the lounge 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, …

After devastation, the restorative forces of nature begin the process of healing. On the 22nd December 2019, Australia’s biggest forest fire, which had already destroyed an area seven times the size of Singapore, raced up the gully below Clarence St and burnt to within 10m of Eva and Bill Johnstone’s property, just above Pope’s Glen in Blackheath. It burnt all …

It’s almost five months since the ‘megafire’ burnt through the native section of Blackheath’s Campbell Rhododendron Gardens on the 21st December 2019, leaving Blackheathens with a charred landscape and a charred psyche.     The Fires were followed by flooding rains in early February which removed much of the top soil. Stones were left suspended on tiny sandstone towers … …

Love Makes a Way is the largest faith-based civil disobedience movement in Australia’s history. Its focus is on getting the kids off Nauru.

  Lester Ives looks every part the bushman. He is gentle and softly spoken, yet something in his tall, lean frame reminds me of the eucalyptus trees he climbs for a living, in his work as an arborist. Maybe it’s the way he moves, each shift of his body the continuation of an earlier gesture, like a tree in wind. Behind …

Set in one of the most coveted locations in the Blue Mountains, overlooking the magnificent Kanimbla Valley, Mountains Christian College is very conscious of its environmental impact. It was the first school in Blackheath to say no to plastic straws, and in November last year it installed a 99.84kW solar system. That’s 384 solar panels covering 627 square metres and …

Mark Liebman, Sarah Laborde and Harry Twenty seven years ago, a young auditor at Ernst & Young in Sydney, one of the “Big 4” accounting firms, came across a newly published report, “Blueprint for a Green Economy.” Prepared for the UK Environment Department, the report claimed that environmental problems had their roots in “economic failures.” This struck such a chord …