Planes will start to take off and land at Badgerys Creek in less than a decade.
It will mean the first view of Australia for first time visitors will be Western Sydney.
With that in mind, IAN BAILEY, a director of NSW Bush Carers and long time local resident, has written the letter below to eight local councils urging them to take action so there’s more in store for those landing at Badgerys Creek than just an endless urban sprawl from Penrith to Campbelltown and from Liverpool to Blacktown:
“Tourism generates and will continue to generate substantial income for the region, for the State of NSW and Australia.
Within a decade, there will be an international airport at Badgerys Creek where millions of tourists will move through each year bringing billions of dollars with them.
What will they want to see in Australia?
Why will they come a few thousand kilometres to the east coast of this continent when they could save the time and money and holiday or learn a profession in comfort in the Northern hemisphere?
They will come to see our unique landscape.
They will come to experience first-hand our extraordinary flora and fauna, isolated and developed over millions of years on an island continent.
They will come to see eucalypt forests, mallee scrub, spinifex and sandy beaches.
They will be looking for kangaroos, koalas and kookaburras.
Lucky ones may even find a platypus in the wild.
But what will they see as they touch down at Western Sydney Airport?
They will see oceans of grey tin roofs of the new suburbs. Dust and desert. Ashphalt and concrete.
Why are we allowing builders to remove every vestige of our bush heritage?
Why are we allowing developers to squeeze every last nondescript house into each acre of land?
Councils are at the leading edge of development and can drive the planning and design of an LGA.
In those plans, we must have green space, parks, native bush reserves and free-running creeks.
Why not actually fence off groves of remnant Cumberland Plain, long connecting corridors of bush along the creeks and rivers?
Why can’t we identify significant gum trees and stands of casaurinas that must never be removed?
Destroying a 200-250 year old tree is to destroy a part of our heritage forever.
And we are doing that every day in the South West of Sydney.
The destruction of our native bush must stop now.
Visiting tourists will want to experience the landscape that only Australia can present.’’
