Councillors
Newcastle City Council
Council Chambers
King Street,
NEWCASTLE

Dear Councillors,

Re: Nobbys and Nobbys Lighthouse a National Icon
Nobbys NSW Controlled Action EPBC Act 1999- development impacting Commonwealth Heritage values

Nobbys and Nobbys Lighthouse is Newcastle’s most important historic landmark and together with the convict built Macquarie Pier 1818 connection to the mainland forms a nationally significant historic landscape that has allowed the formation of the Nobbys beach and the development of Australia’s most important coal export port.

The Parks and Playgrounds Movement has resolved to object to the Newcastle Port Corporation's plans which would virtually privatise Nobbys Headland and construct new buildings that adversely impact on the historic Commonwealth Heritage Listed lighthouse; and furthermore the Movement requests that the NSW Government arrange the transfer of the headland and Lighthouse from the Port Corporation to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which has the statutory power to conserve the heritage character of Newcastle's distinctive headland and provide safe access for the people of NSW.

Peak bodies of the Conservation Movement of NSW including the National Trust of Australia (NSW), The Nature Conservation Council of NSW and the Total Environment Centre recognise that Nobbys lighthouse and Nobbys Headland is important to Newcastle, NSW and the nation and that the headland and its history should be professionally recorded and that the former Nobbys Island should be conserved within the National Park estate as an integral part of State Heritage Registered Coal River Precinct SHR1674. Many lighthouses in NSW are managed by the NSW National Parks Service and the Parks Service would be better equipped to conserve the site now that the Port Corporation has automated its signal station at Nobbys.

The Newcastle Port Authority has been a poor manager of the heritage values of Nobbys and together with the Nobbys Lighthouse Pty Ltd has developed their proposed development in breach of s.26 of the Commonwealth EPBC Act and contrary to the Port Corporation’s own published call for Expressions of Interest 5th May 2003. The Chief Executive Officer of the Newcastle Ports Corporation from 1996 to 2002 was the ICAC exposed con-man and fraudster Mr Glen Oakley who degraded the convict built breakwater and together with Hunter’s Ark Pty Ltd in 1997 proposed the alienation of the area. In 1998 the Corporation proposed a destructive heliport for Nobbys and closed the headland from the public with an electric gate. The Port Authority has resisted the preparation of a conservation plan for more than twenty years and is not an appropriate body to be managing this heritage site. See letter to Heritage Branch Department of Planning 3rd July 1989.

Nobbys Lighthouse is a unique Commonwealth Heritage Place within the Coal River Precinct SHR 1674 and should stand proud and free as a heritage sentinel on Nobbys Headland. The Lighthouse is the oldest surviving operational lighthouse on the coast and replaces the earlier coal-fired beacon on Signal Hill which was extinguished on the 31st of December 1857 when Nobbys Lighthouse became operational.

You have been a party to the proponent’s breach of s26 of the Commonwealth EPBC Act 1999 by recklessly continuing with the determination of the development even though you were informed by the Parks and Playgrounds Movement Inc. in writing of the Commonwealth Heritage status of the Nobbys Lighthouse. The legislation provides for substantial penalties for those in breach of s26 of the Act.

Nobbys Headland was formerly an Island called Whybaygamba by the Aboriginal people and is the location of the dreamtime story of the immensely large kangaroo that occasionally shakes himself causing the island to tremble and large pieces to fall. Nobbys was marked as ‘Coal Island’ by Ensign Barrallier on his survey plan of the first coal mining settlement in1801. The permanent settlement named Newcastle was established 30th March 1804 by Lt. Charles Menzies following the Vinegar hill insurrection at Castle Hill in Sydney.

Colonel Barney had convicts dig two chambers at the base of Nobbys in 1853 and the Examiner of Mines Mr William Keene in his illustration drawn in 1854 shows their location at each side of the famous Nobbys Dyke and has labelled them “Chambers excavating for blowing up Nobbys”. Shipmasters and inhabitants of Newcastle petitioned the Governor General, Charles Fitzroy in November 1853 requesting that the “remarkable promontory (formerly an island,) called Nobby’s”- “be preserved for the purposes of shelter for shipping and for the erection of a lighthouse thereon”.

Nobbys was not blown-up by gunpowder but it was cut down from 62metres to 28metres for the erection of the present Nobbys lighthouse.

Nobbys Island and Nobbys Lighthouse is of great significance to the people of New South Wales and to the nation and the currently proposed unsympathetic development impacting on the Commonwealth Heritage Place should be rejected by the NSW Government and the former Island transferred to the NSW NP&WS as an Historic Site and any development proposed should be in accordance with a publicly acceptable Conservation Plan of Management for the whole Coal River Precinct.

The Movement trusts that the Councillors of the Newcastle City Council will respect Newcastle’s heritage and support the establishment of a lawful Conservation Plan of Management that protects the Coal River Precinct which is the birthplace of our City.

Yours sincerely,

Doug Lithgow,
President Parks and Playgrounds Movement