Caring for Country | Australian native plants | Gardening Australia

Costa heads to the Blue Mountains to meet a community caring for a very special gully.

At the headwaters of the Katoomba Falls Creek is a 30-hectare bushland reserve on the traditional lands of the Gundungurra and Dharug peoples.
Senior Gundungurra elder Aunty Sharyn Halls has a strong connection to this gully. In 1891 “this is where we actually settled, and it became an Aboriginal mission.” In the beginning there were 8 Aboriginal families and the community continued to grow – until the land was destroyed for development of a racetrack.

Gundungurra elder David King says although there was a community living here, “in some people’s eyes they didn’t exist, so they just came in and flattened the whole place”, demolishing the delicate environment. In 2002 the land was handed back to the community and with the support of local Aboriginal people like Aunty Sharyn, David worked with Garguree Swampcare to restore the land back to its original state.

As the site centrepiece, it was vital to get the swamp functioning again to then bring the rest of site back to life, including remnant rainforest heath and open woodlands.

Volunteers come from all over the Blue Mountains area to help with regenerating the site through planting and weeding. Any revegetation project comes with the challenge of tackling weeds, and here are brought in from parks and gardens through the waterways, wind, and birds.
Key species being reintroduced are tea trees, gahnias, and dianellas, which all have traditional Aboriginal uses and help regenerate and hold onto the soil.

Aunty Sharyn says “the restoration work we do here is extremely important – it’s about sharing our story, a place, but it’s also about bringing back to people the connection we have with everything that happens here. Each plant that we put in has its own story and its own lifecycle, and you can feel the past as well as the present.”

Whist the gully is a beautiful space combined with a successful revegetation project, David looks even deeper. “As you bring back what is your natural country, the country where the stories were, a lot of the people then remember. That’s one key driver for me, is to try and get a bit of bush back where they remember.”

Featured Plants
JAPANESE HONEYSUCKLE Lonicera japonica
MONBRETIA Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora
BROAD-LEAFED PRIVET Ligustrum lucidum
TEA TREE Leptospermum sp.
GAHNIA Gahnia sp.
DIANELLA Dianella sp.


Filmed on Dharug & Gundungurra Country



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