Arabic version: التخطيط لإنشاء حديقة غولغير الوطنية في غرب سيدني
According to ABC News, a new 1,100-hectare Gulguer National Park will be created west of Bringelly in Western Sydney. The park will link two existing conservation areas and include about 700 hectares of newly acquired land formerly used for farming and rural residential development.
The proposed park will be one of Western Sydney’s largest national parks and is more than three times the size of Centennial Parklands, which covers 369 hectares. It is intended to protect habitat for at least 28 threatened species, including the powerful owl, described as Australia’s largest nocturnal bird, and the southern greater glider.
NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said the area also contains large land snails that occur nowhere else on earth except through these areas. Gulguer is a Gundungurra word describing the whirlpool action of water during high flows in the Nepean River. The park’s establishment will preserve Aboriginal cultural heritage sites including rock art, shelters, axe grinding grooves, artefacts, and a traditional meeting and trading place.
The landscape includes steep gorges, an old Girl Guides camp, and remnants of the Silverdale Hill Climb car race circuit, which operated from the 1950s to the 1980s. Planned facilities include campgrounds, walking tracks and cycling tracks. The project is part of the Cumberland Plain Conservation Plan, which aims to offset urban development as about 73,000 new homes are earmarked for Western Sydney over the next three decades. The park is expected to open to the public within six months.
