Stories From: Education

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.

The garden is the first line of defence in a bushfire, but that doesn’t mean sacrificing liveable spaces for the rest of the year. Landscape architect Sue Bell explains how we can balance good garden design with sound bushfire principles.

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.”

On my visits to the Central Mountains Men's Shed in Lawson, two things stood out to me: here were a group of men who gained skills, fulfilment and pride from their work at the Shed, and here were a group of men with strong bonds and friendship.

Lithgow features as a backdrop on ABC TV’s The Messenger, as the fictional town of Moledale. This is the story of one of our prized buildings and the community that built, maintained and restored it to become the Maldhan Ngurr Ngurra Lithgow Transformation Hub.

For seven years, Blaxland Preschool Kindergarten has been delivering an innovative nature-based program that encourages adventure & risk-taking. Inspired by Scandinavian Forest Kindergartens, Bush Preschool is offered to children one day a fortnight.

Belle Butler visited Lawson Public School during Nude Food Week - an annual event that encourages families to pack school lunches without single-use packaging. The event promotes minimising plastic waste and opting for healthy food choices.

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.

In this series of events to restore the songlines of the Seven Sisters across Australia, seven song women from Uluru visited the Blue Mountains to return ancestral knowledge to over 40 women and children who came from east coast mobs living in an area ranging from Queensland to the South Coast.

Lawson writer and publisher Sharon Baldwin has written a series of children’s books based on the unique subject matter of permaculture. Read her story here.