Wentworth Falls Retail Shutdowns including Conservation Hut

June 16, 2022

For 18 years retail unit 2/32 Station Street here was the home of much loved ‘Lamdha Books’. Now it exists only online.

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 national quarantine protocols by the Australian Government and by various state health ministers to vet the infectiousness of thousands of incoming foreigners.

So once the pandemic was allowed by our governments to spread within Australia as a contagion, the governments imposed blanket socio-economic lockdowns that endured for two long years [officially 23 March 2020 through to 18 February 2022]. It totalled 23 continuous months.

Upper Central Blue Mountains village of Wentworth Falls during this lockdown blitz copped a dearth of tourist visitation, just as the rest of the Mountains did.

Tourism was banned, travel was banned, walking outdoors without an essential or emergency reason was banned. The big brother penalties were a $5000 on-the-spot fine. Many people were intimidated into staying home for 23 months.

COVID Nazi Regime

But by the end of the lockdown impost three out of four pandemic lockdown fines were overdue payment, with more than 46,000 NSW residents refusing to donate $42 million to the NSW Government ‘s coffers. Most in Victoria who copped fines refused to pay as well.

[Postscript: “The NSW government was forced on Tuesday to cancel 33,000 fines, worth an estimated $30m, for breaches of Covid-era public health orders after conceding they were too vague.” SOURCE: ^https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/29/nsw-government-under-pressure-to-scrap-further-29000-covid-fines-after-court-ruling]

Yet as a direct and logical consequence of the lockdown blitzes, many retail businesses did not survive. It is patently financially unviable for a business renting a retail premises and paying the same high rent, unadjusted for the pandemic lockdowns, to survive as a business even at break-even when denied little or no customer trade.

These are the Wenty Falls local entrepreneurial victims of government ineptitude and heartlessness disconnect from Blue Mountains local business retail and tourism.

Lamdha Books…gone

Michael and Morag Loosli first opened the bookshop back in 2005.

The name ‘Lamdha’? Well, if it was spelt ‘lambda’ then it would be the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, used in physics to representation of wavelength.

Lamdha Books was local retail bookseller shop, which included specialising in selling second-hand and antiquarian books. Nature Trail’s Tour Director recalls that it was the only bookshop in the Blue Mountains that offered a collection of books on Blue Mountains history written by local authors.

Whilst Lamdha Books has closed its ‘bricks and mortar’ shop it operates online, with all stock on its website: https://lamdhabooks.com.au/. Lambda Books also subscribes to two book websites: Books & Collectibles (sic) and ABE Books.

The good old days – popular among Mountains’ readers and book lovers

Lamdha Books continues online to specialise in selling second-hand and antiquarian books, largely within the realms of literature, the arts, history, and the humanities.

[Postscript: What has replaced Lamdha Books is a new bookstore since 8th August 2022, called Wyrdbooks. It is a completely different genre – sci-fi, fantasy and horror books.

Further along Station Street these are the following local small retailers no long there, making for a less appealing pedestrian and shopping experience at Wentworth Falls village.

‘The Falls Take Away’…gone

Wentworth Falls Supermarket …gone

Conservation Hut’s future?

Meanwhile, Café 92 at famous Conservation Hut on Fletcher Street has also gone due to the combined NPWS bushfire disaster and the NSW Government imposed pandemic lockdowns.

This is currently what greets diners and hikers alike.

The NSW Parks Service (NPWS) visitors has closed the entire precinct off – the hut, the car park, The Fletcher Street turnaround, public toilets, lookout area are all closed during the construction work.

Many hiking tracks in the area are also closed.

Darwin’s Walk has been closed due to various landslips since February 2020.

The nearest public toilets are a 2.5 km walk to the Wentworth Falls Railway Station, so good luck holding on! Welcome to the Blue Mountains. This is all post-bushfires and post pandemic, so what else can government to undermine visitation to the Blue Mountains World Heritage?

In its infinite wisdom, The NSW Parks Service reckoned the unique site needed an overhaul, which it didn’t. The building was architecturally designed in mud brick featuring outdoor seating, a water heated floor for winter and cathedral ceilings.

There were already a number of picnic tables, and the toilets had nothing wrong with them.

But the bureaucrats in NSW Parks Service want to make Blue Mountains lookout precincts all look like ugly over-developed Echo Point lookout in Katoomba. They’re bulldozing the surrounding bushland in order to double the size of the car park and encourage busloads of selfie crowds needing a ten minute toilet/photo stop.

Overdeveloped Echo Point – purely mass tourism targeted. Pre-2019 (bushfires/pandemic lockdowns) the day bus tourists in their hundreds would be denied access by their Sydney operators to shop locally.

The Conservation Hut lookout precinct “upgrade” is emulating Echo Point and nearby Jamison Lookout and Wentworth Falls Lookout, killing the native trees in order to provide more and wider pathways, many more picnic tables and a clear uninterrupted open viewing deck for group selfies of Mount Solitary and the Jamison Valley.

NSW Parks Service Blue Mountains Branch Director David Crust says:

“Each site will offer an improved visitor experience once the $3.2 million works are completed. We want all visitors to be able to enjoy our beautiful national park and these works will upgrade visitor facilities, increase carpark capacity and importantly, ensure accessible access. The works at the Conservation Hut precinct will include a new carpark layout with additional spaces, including a new accessible parking space. Additional accessible parking spaces are also provided at the Wentworth Falls picnic area. The existing toilet block will be replaced with new facilities that include an accessible toilet and changeroom facilities for canyoners. Visitors will also be able to enjoy upgraded picnic facilities, pathways and a new fully accessible 65m² elevated viewing platform which will offer sweeping views of the Jamison Valley.”

[SOURCE: Park Service press release 28th April 2022.]

“Accessible toilet and changeroom facilities for canyoners”? Seriously? What, wheelchair-bound canyoners through Empress Canyon? Do the bureaucrats have plans to pave Empress Canyon for such accessibility as well? What about a waterproof travelator?

Empress Canyon future accessibility vision thing

Also, “a new fully accessible 65m² elevated viewing platform which will offer sweeping views of the Jamison Valley“? That doesn’t include chainsawing the mature native Eucalyptus trees to achieve get the uninterrupted sweeping views vision thing.

Go to another webpage on the same NSW Parks Service website and it reads:

“The Greater Blue Mountains Area was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000 in recognition of its significant natural values. It possesses unique plants and animals that relate an extraordinary story of the evolution of Australia’s distinctive eucalypt vegetation and its associated communities.”

Nice, but hypocritical to the actions of the NSW Parks Service or what? It’s akin to killing the distinctive Eucalypt vegetation and its associated communities blocking selfie views to celebrate what’s left.

Recall the NSW Parks Service as recently as late 2019 allowed about 80% of The Greater Blue Mountains Area to be incinerated. It regularly drops incendiaries indiscriminately by helicopter into remote wilderness parts of this world heritage area, and spreads lethal 1080 bait to eradicate wild dogs but this includes the native top-order predator Dingoes and endangered Tigerquolls.

Some custodian? The fox is in charge of the hen house.

They peddle that this clear-felling is all about improving “accessibility” – but it’s all about encouraging mass tourism – spreading the visitation love away from normally overcrowded Echo Point. Instead of quality visitation, it is all about quantity visitation, as if more must be a superior outcome for departmental performance metrics.

They will probably pebblecrete it all as well, just like how Blue Mountains {city} Council did in Station Street in Wentworth Falls and in Katoomba Street in Katoomba. Both unnecessary footpath tarting-up projects only served to deny customer access to the shops for months and so compounded sending many local small retailers to the wall. Notably, government hasn’t tarted up the footpath outside the entrance of Woolworths or Big-W in Katoomba.

What government did also unnecessarily was to splurge $540,000 on constructing a brutalist toilet block by the artificial Wentworth Falls lake. There was nothing wrong with the old one.

At Conservation Hut, it is not an “upgrade” but an urbanisation of the bushland amenity, making it look just like every other mass tourism lookout. They’re currently inflicting the same sameness at Govetts Leap (currently closed for “upgrade”) and Evans Lookout (currently closed for “upgrade”). That means that there are not many lookouts open currently, and we’re supposedly post-lockdown.

What an ignorant ‘one-size-fits-all’ mindset all about invasive mass tourism?

On Google Maps, the NSW Parks Services has already renamed Conservation Hut as the National Park Visitors Centre. See below.

What is the NSW Park Service up to here? Is it set to duplicate its visitor Heritage Centre at Govetts Leap? Is the cafe to be demolished to make way for a new usage? What about the other vital tenant, the Blue Mountains Conservation Society (ConSoc)? ConSoc has utilised this site for its headquarters, administration office, and for member meetings for decades.

Originally a simple tea room in 1930 for hikers returning from the surrounding hiking tracks, the property was the owned by the local council. Conservation Society members subsequently renovated the building and made it into a kiosk in 1963,

According to the Conservation Society’s website:

‘As well as being a venue for light refreshments, the old Hut was used as an information and education centre. Displays were presented on aspects of the Blue Mountains ecology and local conservation issues. The Hut took on a museum type atmosphere with its varied displays. The Hut was the headquarters for the planning and execution of the environmental protection campaigns waged by the Society in the first three decades of its existence. Monthly public meetings were held in the Hut, where conservation matters were discussed, and members were addressed by a guest speaker.’

Nature Trail’s Tour Director used to be an active member. Logically, the hut took on the affectionate name of ‘Conservation Hut‘.

In the 1980s, the Hut and its surrounding land was transferred from local council to the NSW Parks Service, which ten years later in 1990 decided to demolish the building and construct a much bigger one. History repeats.

So the site is currently closed, which means that the Conservation Society cannot use the building, its historic home base. Did NSW Parks Service bureaucrats consult with the Conservation Society?