Project Benefits
Katoomba will fulfill its potential as the uber-cool vintage town above the clouds – liveable, walkable, arty and spectacular. Beneficiaries include the local people and businesses, visitors, wildlife, national park, water catchment, climate and city council.
To be specific, the new tree-lined boulevard will:
1. Connect the historic town with the ancient bush, cliff-top tracks and world-famous views of the Three Sisters. Connect people to each other and their homes, schools, parks, playgrounds, shops and services. The missing link.
2. Bring back the buzz with wide level pavement, beautiful spaces and street furniture for walking, wheeling and relaxing. Street life.
3. Be our common ground, accessible and free to all with shared stewardship of the public domain, its gardens, art and stories. Social equity and inclusion.
4. Tell the stories embedded in the landscape and built heritage through street art, interpretive signage and performance. Local art and heritage.
5. Respect the big story that we are on Gundungurra and Darug Country on the way to the most visited First Nations sacred site in Australia. Acknowledge Country.
6. inspire the creatives to draw, paint, sculpt, write, recite and sing about Lurline Street and Katoomba town. Artists Online for Treeline Lurline will be officially launched in October 2022. Blue Mountains City of the Arts.
7. Free the trees, earth and sky with undergrounded power lines, pervious paving, deep trenching and gardens. Benchmark street design.
8. Calm the cars with a street designed around people and trees. Traffic safety.
9. Cool the summer air and dapple the light. Personal and planetary health.
10. Slow tourism, inviting visitors to explore the drama and panoramas of our historic mountain town, drop in to the galleries, cafes and speciality shops, meander through the streets and stories to the cloud and light show hanging off the cliff-tops. Cultural tourism.
11. Turn visitor day trips into overnight adventures which on average yield four times the benefit to the local economy of whistle-stop tourism. Sustainable prosperity.
12. Support local businesses in the arts, culture, aboriginal heritage, hospitality, active transport and adventure – and the chain of supply. Creative prosperity.
13. Be the unburnt, unflooded, socially distanced place when disaster has torched the bush, washed away the walking tracks or tossed pestilence into the air. The culture and beauty of Lurline Street and K Town are still open for business and daily life. Resilient prosperity.
14. Shelter other species with a corridor of big trees and gardens for them to roost, nest, dig worms, sip nectar and move about safely. Wildlife corridor.
15. Water the trees and protect the waterways with stormwater harvesting and polishing to hold moisture in the soil and prevent sediment, oil, excessive nutrients and heavy metals polluting the national park and Sydney water catchment. Watershed health.
16. Be a carbon sink. Climate change mitigation.
17. Protect from bushfire with well-watered fire-retardant trees and plantings that will absorb radiant heat, ember attacks and fire-driven winds. Underground power removes the current risk of electrical ignition. Bushfire shelter belt.
18. Set the standard for how streets can and should be, popping a feather in the City Council’s cap for best practice urban design and planetary health. Responsible government.
19. Save ratepayers’ money with stormwater management and new high quality paving that will end the maintenance treadmill of unblocking drains and patching pavement. Affordable government.
20. Be our legacy for future generations. The school children who walk past the new saplings will be the old people who sit under the spectacular arched canopy. Inter-generational gift.
Artist Wendy Lenthan with Jason Benedet beside their NADO Disability Services mosaic, Hinkler Park, June 2017. Credit: Blue Mountains Gazette
Sunday in Hinkler Memorial Park, March 2022
Unblocking drains in Lurline Street, March 2022.
Patched pavement after the drain is unblocked. March 2022.
The battalion of poles and wires.
Street tree and pavement fail.
