Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In continuing my speech on the address-in-reply, I have been speaking about my electorate of Parramatta and two of the great underdeveloped talents of the area, particularly its tourism assets and its open space. In relation to both, the river itself is an asset which is well and truly due for reconsideration. While most of the heritage assets in Parramatta are within walking distance from the river, you still cannot walk along the river from one to another. The ferry service that runs from Circular Quay to Parramatta is unreliable and under threat, even though vessels of some sort have been plying the route to Parramatta and carrying passengers for some 200 years. We in Parramatta insist on an improved tourist connection between Homebush and Parramatta. There are tourist stops down the river, but the ferry does not stop there. It does not stop at the armoury at Newington, for example; it does not go from Homebush, the Olympic Park site, to Parramatta. We have better restaurants in Parramatta than areas downstream of Newington, Ermington and Rhodes, where upmarket residential developments are being put in. But there is no evening service to take people to Parramatta for dinner, or to the Riverside Theatre, and return. The river connects us, and for 200 years we have been a river city. We are well and truly overdue for a review of the extraordinary connection that the river provides for us.

I have been talking so far about some of the elements that are missing, but one cannot talk about tourism in Parramatta without talking about what is there. There are already small commercial tour operators, ghost tours, provedores and many individual attractions, such as Old Government House, where much of the history of early Australian government took place. Elizabeth Macarthur Farm is there, as is Hambledon Cottage, the female convict factory, the girls orphanage, the site of the Government Farm and the first Australian town planned street and subdivision.  There is also the old King’s School—the original site and the new one—the oldest ongoing private school in the country; and the Lancer Barracks, which is the oldest working barracks in the country. It is an extraordinary place in a river setting and it is well overdue for substantial work over the next decade to position it, as it should be, as one of Australia’s premier tourist destinations.

The second underdeveloped talent I would like to talk about is open spaces and, in particular, our creeks. If you had a machete—and I do not suggest that people go out and get one!—you could actually walk along the creeks from Parramatta to Blacktown, from Parramatta to the Castle Hill centre, from Parramatta to Merrylands and the Holroyd Centre, and from Parramatta to Homebush. There are great green corridors that snake through our suburbs. A colleague of mine who worked for the Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust said there are 30 creeks within the catchment area. I have only identified 22 so far but, as I said, there are another eight. I am going to name them, because it is quite remarkable: Toongabbie, Coopers, Brickfield, Ponds, Vineyard, Quarry Branch, Finlaysons, Domain, Hunts, Darling Mills, Caddies, Saw Mill, Ashlar, Blacktown, Breakfast, First Ponds, Girraween, Grantham, Greystanes, Lalor, Turner and Quarry.

These creeks are extraordinary community assets, but, because they used to be flood lands and we really were not comfortable with them and did not really like the bushland, we built our cities with our backs to them. We did not appreciate them and we could not develop what was flood land so we put public assets on them. So now we have a really interesting situation in our community, with great, green, largely unused corridors that run past the back of many of our public spaces. They run past the back ovals of our schools, our sports fields, our community centres and our childcare centres, which are now quite often built on those parks. Our public housing estates are built with their backs to them, as are our industrial areas which employ so many of our citizens, and many of our biggest corporate citizens are built on the banks of these creeks, with their backs to them.

We built our cities well and truly facing the wrong way, and all we need to do to appreciate the potential of these wonderful creeks is turn around and see what extraordinary assets they are, and recognise that, untapped as they are, overgrown as they are—and sometimes drained almost out of existence—they do actually connect the places where we work, study and live. They are significant corridors that flow through our communities, linking our homes to our schools to our parks to our workplaces and, because so many of our railway stations and shopping centres were built on the connections between the tributaries of our creeks, to our train stations and to our shopping centres. If you go down to these creeks, you will quite often find that people have developed informal pathways or shortcuts between some of our community centres, the places where we gather. Some of the creeks have been channelled almost out of existence and they are largely concrete drains, but even those still have green space on either side. Others, particularly Toongabbie Creek and Darling Mills Creek, are really splendid. They are particularly extraordinary if you imagine them as they could be rather than as they are now, as great as some sections are.

Over the next little while, it would be fabulous to see our community turn around and face these wonderful assets for a moment and imagine how our community could look in 10 or 15 years if we restored those creeks to the status that they had in the early days of settlement, when they really were the lifeline and the method of travel between the different centres.

When Parramatta City Council surveyed its residents recently, it found that one of the most sought-after attributes for their city was open space to exercise, walk and cycle. National surveys also reflect that, particularly among women, who are looking for free, outdoor, safe places to exercise by themselves and with their children. We have them in Parramatta. We actually have more creeks than most because we are in the upper catchment of a major river, but they are in fact down at the back of people’s yards.

There are many people in my community who are strongly attached to the creeks: I have identified 22 creeks and I have also identified 22 Bushcare groups, formal groups that work regularly along their banks. And that is not counting the many schools that back onto the creeks that also have their own environmental programs. Catherine McAuley College do great work in the wetlands behind their school, so too do the students from Northmead High School. But imagine if we could all walk or cycle along or beside these creeks from Parramatta to Blacktown, to Castle Hill, to Merrylands and to Homebush. What if we revegetated them with native plants and then extended those wildlife corridors into surrounding gardens and parks?

Vineyard Creek in Rydalmere is perhaps one of the best examples because it is small but quite significant. Part of Vineyard Creek runs from Kissing Point Road south to the Parramatta River over no more than a kilometre. In that kilometre it passes the back of Macquarie Boys High School and the University of Western Sydney. It crosses Victoria Road, with its bus routes. It goes past Rydalmere railway station and then past several factories in the industrial estate of Rydalmere before it crosses the Parramatta River cycleway on the bank of the river, which is the major piece of cycling infrastructure between Homebush and Parramatta. While it is not used this way at the moment, it is a significant potential link between Pennant Hills Road and the cycleway to Parramatta and a number of significant community assets in between.

Vineyard Creek is one of the creeks in the area where flood mitigation work and development of housing estates upstream have dramatically altered the creek. A committed group of people who formed the Vineyard Creek Reserve Park Committee have worked hard to keep the creek clean, yet it remains a very good example of an unused natural corridor where the community could have both a useful walking and cycling track and improved native vegetation and a healthier creek. It is also a good example of the complexities of finding solutions. The banks are owned by the state government departments for education and health, the University of Western Sydney, the State Rail Authority, Parramatta council, some private businesses and a number of private residences who own the land down to where the banks of the creek used to be prior to flood mitigation work which rechannelled the creek. It is very complicated but it has incredible potential.

We need to balance the protection of native vegetation with community space and cyclepaths. My experts tell me that creeks need about one-third native vegetation, one-third vegetation with bike paths or walking tracks, and one-third parks and playgrounds. Some, like Darling Mills Creek, are in remarkable shape and would not be appropriate for either bike paths or playgrounds, but others that have been channelled already may be suitable for more developed bike paths and walking tracks. There are parts that host remnants of bushland that clearly need protecting. There are convict ruins around Toongabbie Creek and Indigenous artefacts and paintings that need to be preserved. I am aware of some unofficial walking tracks that link through some of our creeks to Lake Parramatta and of some unofficial mountain bike tracks through sensitive bushland areas. I do not know whether the one-third, one-third, one-third balance is right and I have no doubt that debate would ensue. One of the things about creeks is that our roads do not cross them all that often, so even where it is not possible or not appropriate to put a bike path within the banks of the creeks, roads tend to snake along them. So they still form corridors through our community that link our major centres.

There is also a proven model for refurbishments of the concrete drains. The Total Environment Centre of New South Wales has a methodology, and Fairfield council has done good work in recreating creek and native vegetation where there were once concrete drains in their local government area. The Rudd government has committed $1.2 million to linking bike paths and creek refurbishments between Parramatta and Blacktown, and this is an important step in reinstating the extraordinary green corridors that snake through our community. Much of the analysis of the region is done. The Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust was created for flood mitigation but worked on broader issues later. There was a multi-use recreational pathway concept plan, put together by the Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust, which has now been abolished, there is a green corridor strategy also put together by the Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust, and the Total Environment Centre has produced a methodology for the restoration of degraded rivers and streams. Parramatta council and the 22 local Bushcare groups and local schools have done a lot of work.

This one sits beneath the surface because it is extremely difficult. There are four councils, for a start, and no single local person, state government, federal government or community can achieve it on its own. Just imagine what our community would be like if we lived along these creeks and they were not behind us but were part of our community—if it was possible to kick a soccer ball around, cycle from home to the workplace, walk with your child in a pram down to the local playground or have a barbecue with mates beside the creek. They are an extraordinary asset. We have open water in Parramatta, yet Lake Parramatta with its open water and Parramatta Park with its cycling track are linked by a creek which you currently cannot walk along. Imagine the Parramatta triathlon linking Parramatta Park and Lake Parramatta. The potential is all there and is quite extraordinary. The refurbishment of the green corridors and Parramatta’s tourism development are related, because so much of Parramatta’s history took place along the river. I look forward to a time when these natural assets are well and truly put back into the service of our community.

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