Vindicated! The year-long ‘audit’/’compliance review’ by Service NSW (New South Wales Minns Labor Government) into the $15,214 pandemic compensatory grant paid to my business Nature Trail has just been finalised by Service NSW on 3 May 2024, without any penalty of debt obligation upon me being imposed. The matter is closed. See the email below by Tina Dougherty, Director, SNSW Business […]
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In the Trenches – as our new struggling business venture cops a dearth of visitation trade due to government lockdown, red tape, imposed overheads et al. back-to-back since 2019; what more can government bureaucratic bubble incompetence, mismanagement and intimidation inflict upon us? Just check this latest threat to us from 7th May 2024…and we’re not even trading! We’re just a […]
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Since Monday 15th April 2024, Nature Trail has received an out-of-the-blue threatening phone call from Kimberley Warren supposedly at Transport for NSW’s “Point to Point Commissioner”, a threatening email from same, and subsequently two fake emails from staff at this ridiculously named Point to Point Commissioner. Here are copies of those incoming correspondences: Threatening Phone Call 1: Received from […]
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Today, Monday 15th April 2024, Nature Trail’s Tour Director, Steve, received an out-of-the blue phone call to our base at 1:38pm from someone called Kimberley Warren. She claimed to be from the NSW Government’s Department of Transport sub-department, bureaucratically entitled ‘Point to Point Transport Commission‘. The woman on the phone quickly threatened us with a $110,000 fine because she had […]
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Below is the magical Megalong Road that takes one down into the ‘Megalong’…meaning “valley below the rock“. When you arrive at the valley’s floor, you can then look back up to the escarpment and appreciate this naming by its ancient Aboriginal custodians. For this particular reconnoitre trip to what we call ‘Megalong Glen‘ back on Friday 14th January 2022, […]
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Blue Mountains {city} Council seems focused on pedestrian safety of late, finally. This is a positive development for the benefit of improving the safety of locals and visitors alike. So, we note new speed humps in Katoomba town centre area. However, none of which are actual speed humps that require vehicles to slow down without experiencing the most minor of […]
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The following article is now part of Nature Trail’s blog campaign against Service NSW in its immoral and illegal debt collection scam. This is our internal link to that campaign: https://naturetrail.com.au/blog-category/government-indian-givers/ Service NSW seems unconscionably hell-bent on federal Centrelink’s notorious 2016 Robodebt method of clawing back its 2021 ‘COVID Lockdown Micro Business Grant‘ funding – two years hence in […]
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‘Stuart Robert’s refusal to take the blame for robodebt isn’t just offensive, it’s terrifying‘, by Katharine Murphy, The Guardian, Sat 4 Mar 2023, SOURCE: ^https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2023/mar/04/stuart-roberts-refusal-to-take-the-blame-for-robodebt-isnt-just-offensive-its-terrifying ‘The former minister’s casual abdication of responsibility risks a culture where our politicians are no longer able to defend the public interest. Truth has endured a blustery week. We’ve heard that one of the world’s most […]
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Leura Village is a famous hub for visitors to the Blue Mountains to quality shop and dine and to enjoy the village’s relaxed country leafy charm. A vital asset is Leura Garage Café Restaurant Bar which for over a decade since first opening in 2011 has been one of the Blue Mountains most popular eateries. Yet, on January 25 in […]
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Since Wednesday 9th November 2022, Wolgan Road has been closed due to heavy rainfall along the road pass below the Wolgan Valley Lookout, causing a number of landslips making the main road access in and out of Wolgan Valley impassable. That was more than two months ago. The Wolgan Valley is situated just about 30km north of the western Blue […]
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Our drive through of Lithgow’s Main Street today reveals that Lithgow’s local small business retail has become a ghost town. Lithgow tourism is all but dead and buried in most part due to Lithgow’s Council’s Lithgow Tourism’s incompetence and lack of interest. Lithgow retail along its Main Street is following a close second. A few years ago, we did alert […]
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One reads with encouragement in the local Blue Mountains Gazette on 26th October 2022 that Blue Mountains Tourism is staging a Blue Mountains Tourism Exchange ’22 on 6th December in a few weeks’ time to showcase Blue Mountains local tourist attractions and operators. This initiative comes post the government-mandated socio-economic lockdowns of all visitations and economic activity out of the […]
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Bushfire disaster destroying the Blue Mountains World heritage ecology by government neglect then decreeing a blanket shut down of all visitation was just the start from 10th November 2019. It was the worst carbon particulate pollution event in New South Wales history, perhaps for millennia. This was immediately followed the China coronavirus global pandemic and the abject failures of […]
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The village of Mt Victoria is struggling to survive post bushfires, floods and coronavirus pandemic and desperately needs new highway tourism signs to encourage people to stop and visit the village. Blue Mountains City Council Ward 1 Liberal Cr Kevin Schreiber expressed concerns for the village of Mt Victoria back in March at the council meeting. He understood only about […]
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For perhaps the past decade or so our family, friends and neighbours around Katoomba have specially selected to travel to dine at the rustic Ambermere Inn. This historic and restored colonial inn is situated at the highway hamlet of Little Hartley, which is just a 20km drive from Katoomba westward and descending 600 metres down the Pass of Victoria off the […]
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Leading Blue Mountains environmentalist Keith Muir has called the shutdown of the Blue Mountains National Park a gross “overreaction” by the Parks Service, akin to closing all beaches along the 2000km New South Wales coastline after a fatal shark attack such as at Little Bay on 16th February 2022. That didn’t happen. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) management […]
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Yesterday the New South Wales Parks Service decided to blanketly close the entire Blue Mountains National Park of some 2690 km2 indefinitely. The huge area extends pretty much from Bilpin to Kanangra and from Warragamba Dam to Mount Victoria. The reason for the blacket closure is simply the likelihood of well, rain. What? Rain in the Blue Mountains? Who would […]
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Tragically again, two more people have been killed by a landslip in the Jamison Valley just south of the village of Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains. Yesterday, Monday 4th April 2022, a group of tourists (a family of five from Britain) embarked on an unguided day hike along the Wentworth Pass loop track. They likely followed the UK-based website […]
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Popes Glen Bushland Reserve is located on the eastern bushland outskirts of the village of Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, which is situated about 110km due west of Sydney’s CBD. This reserve re-opened in March 2022 after more than two years of being closed off to the travelling public by a New South Wales state government emergency decree. This governmental […]
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Following the predictable Christmas 2021 social gatherings and subsequent New Year’s Eve partying, the number of the China SARS Corona Virus 2019* cases in the Blue Mountains in early January 2022 has now snowballed to more than 600 cases, up from almost none in late 2019. Nationally, it’s worse. Why so? Government policy, and government has no solutions to support local tourism in […]
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Pre-pandemic, back on Saturday 26th November 2017, Nature Trail delivered one of its hiking tours around the bush tracks of Mount Victoria, having a great lunch for our group of seven at Petalura Eatery at 26 Station Street. We all happily sat around the table below. The gourmet pies in particular were a treat and we thank Paulina for her friendly […]
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Blue Mountain’s Council Mayor Mark Greenhill has presided over perpetual hiking track closures since February 2020, and it’s nearly two years on. Leura Cascades was closed in February 2020 during a known and predictable La Niña period heavy rainfall weather pattern which deluged the east coast of New South Wales including the Blue Mountains region. Substandard stormwater drainage brought on a […]
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The government pandemic lockdown has taken another tourist business victim in the Blue Mountains – Blue Mountains Explorer Bus. Managing director of the company which owns and operates domestic tour and coach company Fantastic Aussie Tours, Jason Cronshaw, said his fleet is not sustainable without international visitors. Yet international visitors have been banned by the Australian Government since March 2020, and […]
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As at 19th July 2021, tourism in the Blue Mountains is dead. Why? Because of the abject failure of the Australian Government’s quarantine policy and implementation to prevent the China virus pandemic entering our shores since December 2019. It had been detected as early as March 2019 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China. By September 2019 it […]
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The disconnect between government and local small business is stark, perhaps most tangibly in the Blue Mountains between Council and tourist reliant retailers of the upper Blue Mountains. Retailers need to beware of visits from smiling council PR staff, but don’t mention the word ‘COMPENSATION’. Blue Mountains business retailers endure inflated rents due to the ever-increasing Council rates imposed […]
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Locals be wary of politicians doing the rounds spruiking empathy for struggling business owners, garnering ideas to help, offering empty promises of recovery, jobs, ‘funding stimulus packages’, ‘evidence based solutions’, ‘SWOT analysis’ and community outreach. They’re just talkfests that swallow community input and spirit, waste taxpayers’ money, invariable end up going nowhere besides some internal report that never sees the […]
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