To link a 150km network of trails in a Continuous Illawarra Escarpment Trail route sanctioned by landowners, stakeholders and government.
This trail, stretching from Bundeena in the north to Berry in the south, would create a walking and running trail of international significance that connects with both the Manly to Bondi Sydney Harbour Walk and The Great North Walk to provide an unparalleled Great North-South Walk
The Continuous Illawarra Trail Project began as a response to increasing (or increasingly indicated) restrictions on use of the Upper and Lower Escarpment fire trails. Signs restricting access and threatening prosecution were installed as Wollongong Coal sort approval to expand its operations under the water catchment. These increased restrictions raised the ire of the trail running community. The 6km section of the trail in question is frequently used by runners, walkers, and MTB Riders to access Brokers Nose and areas of the Illawarra Escarpment State Conservation Area to the north and south.
The Seacliff Coasters is a group of 400+ people with an interest in Trail and Endurance Running. In 2020 we published a change.org petition. This petition gathered 1400 signatures in 2 weeks that expressed the community’s objections to the restrictions imposed by the mine proposal and its impact on public access and the amenity of the trail.
Our principal concern (ignoring the inevitable impact on climate and water security) was that the National Parks and Wildlife plan to unify the Illawarra State Conservation Area and to tie together and formalise a popular set of trails would be doomed. The Seacliff Coasters are fiercely protective of the environment to which we belong. We want the spectacular environment of the Illawarra escarpment protected from overdevelopment. We reject any increase in extractive industry. We believe the social, environmental and economic value of the escarpment is being undermined (quite literally) by its continued division into small disconnected pockets of land. Moreover we believe that a Continuous Illawarra Escarpment Trail will allow us to celebrate, and promote the remarkable environment in which we live and play.
The Seacliff Coasters have since connected with other stakeholder groups from the southern half of the route who have been campaigning for many years to make such a trail a reality. We look forward to working with those groups in order to make our collective dream a reality. The trail is called different things by different people but the vision is synonymous - the trails are there, all we need to do is secure public access and ensure the route is protected for future generations.
News & Stories
News about the project and stories about us and our relationship to the Illawarra Escarpment
Lands Edges Foundation.
The Lands Edge Foundation argues for a continuous trail.
Fossils & Fluids
Thoughts on IPC Ruling
Continuous Illawarra Escarpment Trail.
WIN News with Ryan Park,Coasters & NPA.
Escarpment Walking Track Partnership.
WIN News with Neville Fredericks.
The Coaster's Battle for Brokers
Fighting for the value of our local environment.
Opposing Russell Vale.
ABC Story on Russell Vale Expansion.
Lands Edges Foundation.
The Lands Edge Foundation argues for a continuous trail.
Fossils & Fluids
Thoughts on the Russel Vale Expansion IPC Ruling and what it means for a Continuous Illawarra Escarpment Trail
The IPC decision on the Russel Vale Colliery Expansion under the escarpment was handed down in December of 2020 and there was very little engagement with any of the points raised by the Seacliff Coasters trail running comunity that were presented to the panel. Persoanlly, it was the disregard for public access and amenity in any level of detail that hurt most of all. They were simply not interested in enagaging with anyting but procedural or logistical detail of the mine itself while perhaps also providing the public with a sense that the social contract had been upheld. We’d had our say. The overwhelming opposition to the expansion on the basis of climate impact was also largely ignored. In some ways I can understand that ignorance at bureacratic level. The company had met its obligations and this wasn’t the place for moral arguments on the basis of environmental or climate concern at a genral level. The Coasters’ argument was very specific however. While we argued the mine expansion should not proceed in the interests of protecting our water and local environment we also made particular requests round conditions of public access, amenity and witness. Basically we wanted public passage on the already established fire trails that Wollonong Coal is required to keep clear and in good condition (in the service of public safety). We argued that these sections of mostly protected bushland should be continuous and that a sanctioned route would demonstrate good faith in assuming that these areas will eventually be connected and protected. These points were briefly diregarded with the unsubtantiated and unverified claim that the trails we were discussing are within the ‘special catchment area’ with restricted access regardless of the Coal Mining lease or expansion. Essentially the IPC could approve mining under the catchment special area and all that that involves in terms of industrial architecture and passsage through catchment areas but were in no place to approve our passage through a mining lease that inlcuded part of that catchment. We doubt that the areas in which we run do any more than border the special areas of the catchment but they definitely do cross the mining lease as the only means of connecting areas of the Illawarra State Conservation Area that the mining lease.
Date: 02/04/2021
Category: Opinion
Continuous Illawarra Escarpment Trail.
WIN News with Ryan Park,Coasters & NPA.
Escarpment Walking Track Partnership.
WIN News with Neville Fredericks.
The Coaster's Battle for Brokers.
Fighting for the value of our local environment.
Lets get the obvious bit out of the way. I spend a lot of my time running. I run long distances at a time and on average about 100kms a week. The weird thing about this is not so much that I run somewhat obsessively but that a substantial number of other locals do to.
About four years ago I started a facebook group so that my ultra-running mate Simon Tibbs and I had an outlet for our obsession with what then was a pretty marginal activity. We didn’t imagine much of an audience beyond our little circle of freinds. Three years later that group consists of 350 runners with a good portion of those active and local. It is now a pretty rare day that I head out for a long run up the escarpment without running into other members of that group we called The Seacliff Coasters.
One of the interesting things about this group is that it is incredibly diverse. We would have very close to a 50/50 split of female to male runners and we have runners of all ages and abilities - from elite podium toppers, to age category contenders, all the way to those who run trails just to be immersed in nature. Ultra-running as a sport has become an interesting space in that regard. There is very little dividing the top women and the top men. As races get up past the 200 mile length women come further to the fore. Our trail running heroes aren’t divided into genders as they tend to be in so many other sports.
In fact ultra-running seems to hate distinctions. When you are running through the bush together for many hours even the most introverted amongst us tend to chat and that chat tends to extend into conversations that transcend the limits of the everyday. You get to know people on quite a different level to that you would if you met anywhere else. You also depend on each other because you are often out in the wilderness together. ‘Racing’ ultra runners will often wait for their nearest competitor so they’ve got someone to run with. We face each other as we face our limits. It is intense and intimate. It is human. All of these things mean ultra-running breeds a certain depth of community that is a little different to the other activities I’ve been involved with. In this sense ultra-running, and somewhat oddly given its solitary nature, is somewhat of an antidote to the most dangerous curse of modern life; individualism.
If ultra-running tends to breakdown the differences between us then its not too much of stretch to say the same is true for the relation between us and the environment we run through. We spend a lot of time on our trails and in the bush. We get to know that environment in the same way we get to know each other; deeply and intimately. We get to know the ebb and flow of the seasons and the thirst and thrive of those longer cycles of dry and wet.
Lately we’ve noticed the impact of Covid-19 on our bushland as more and more people get out into the wild for the mental and physical relief from isolation that it affords or just to make the most of the opportunity that being at home more often has presented. It is kind of weird to think our local bush is suffering the impact of a human virus - but it is. Suddenly we have more time for it, more time for each other; human and non-human. Despite the noticeable impact of increased use, it can only be a good thing that more people are making the most of it. More people are getting the chance to build an intimate connection with their local environment, to feel those ebbs and flows, to learn to listen and see the extraordinary value it offers. The bush will adapt, we will adapt.
As endurance trail runners we develop an intense sense of ‘ownership’ of the natural spaces we spend so much time in - but its not ownership in the sense of real estate or property. Its an ownership in the sense of custodianship. It the sense of our lives not being distinct from the life and lives of the environment through which we move. We feel the health of the land and the health of our bodies and minds are connected and reflect each other. When we are tired of modern life we go into the bush to recover. When the bush is tired, we understand its need to rest and recover because it’s our need as well. The wilderness we share is a part of our community.
If this year has taught us anything it should have been that we need to learn to live differently. We are one organism, our health, our lives, are intimately and intensely connected and interdependent. We are all more than simply individual, more than simply human.
It is with this in mind that we local trail runners are fighting to ensure that the remaining escarpment bushland is preserved in a continuous Illawarra Escarpment Reserve and Trail Network. It turns out this was always part of National Parks and Wildlife’s Management Plan for the escarpment. While most of that trail network and reserve are already there and well used, there are historical anomalies that mean we, as a community, can’t be assured access and ownership of our wilderness backyard. As the NPWS plan of management states; ‘the distribution of the park along the escarpment is discontinuous, which could affect the long-term viability of the park to maintain its full range of values’.
We trail runners want all the communities that live along the escarpment to be able to make use of it. We want the opportunity for all of us to experience the escarpment’s social, economic and environmental value - and to understand that its well-being is intertwined with our own and those of our commmunities.
We can’t maximise the long term economic value of the escarpment if it is off limits to the people who live along it. We can’t maxmise the social value the escarpment holds for community, health, and well being, if its use goes completely unregulated and its environmental value is compromised. The best way to ensure the environmental value of the escarpment, is to encourage ‘stakeholders’ to take responsibilty for it, to allow people to celebrate that value socially and economically and to encourage a mutual belonging; this belongs to me, I am responsible for it, I belong to this ground.
A continuous Illawarra Escaprment reserve and trail might be the big green banner that unites our home between the mountains and the sea, a banner that ties us together and shows us a way of living together, sustainably, and moving toward a bright, healthy and wealthy economic, social and environmental future.
Date: February 2021
Category: Opinion
Opposing Russell Vale.
ABC Story on Russell Vale Expansion.
Resources
Publications and Documents pertaining to the development of a Continuous Illawarra Escarpment Trail
