Reserve design for the Gardens of Stone State Conservation Area was rushed and environment groups still have many concerns.
The heritage values of the Gardens of Stone SCA are the attraction for visitors and tourists. To some extent the reserve has not been restored to good health, although the 2,200ha pine forest is largely removed, an outstanding achievement by the NPWS. Visitors still see environmental degradation, rather than a world-class environmental restoration program integrated with nature-focused visitor management. Centennial Coal is not closing and rehabilitating its disused roads or maintaining existing roads. Old mining infrastructure is scattered across Newnes Plateau.
The narrow focus on a tourism growth objective has resulted in locating a downhill bike park where it degrades Lithgow’s Gardens of Stone gateway at State Mine Gully, while a theme park proposal at Lost City has been shelved. The reserve’s most used gateway, Old Bells Line of Road, passes a large ugly quarry.
Lithgow shall lose its tourism opportunities, despite its pro-tourism stance. Tourists won't come to see degradation.
To secure the projected revenue and employment benefits, the location of a bike park off-park in State Mine Gully, and vehicle access management adjusted to make Lithgow a gateway to the reserve are great ideas, but delivery is horrific.
In bike track construction the gateway pagoda landscapes there are proposed as source of large flat plates that can be used for rock armouring [and] jumps[!] The off-camber rock slabs can be [fixed by building a] small rock wall (less than 500mm high) backfilled ... to create the bench for the trail ... to ‘fix’ the rock retaining wall in place – use concrete/mortar, steel rods and adhesives to pin into the rock slab. This "uglification" harms Lithgow's pagoda cachet. In 2014 a Planning Assessment Commission said these internationally significant pagodas should be protected at the highest level. Now these geodiversity values are to be quarried for a bike track.
On July 8, the Western Planning Panel deferred determination of the proposed State Mine Gully bike track till August. The Panel requires Lithgow Council to consult with the Aboriginal Land Council, to address the impact of large-scale events, review the inadequate Biodiversity Assessment Report (BDAR), consider whether referral under EPBC is required, and probably obtain neighbour agreement to this proposal.
What conservation groups said in 2022 is that reserve management should put nature first and its as relevant today as then.
A map of the park and proposed accommodation options - now reduced to sites 2, 3 and 4
