[Forum] I have written to the NSW Government’s heritage decision makers, to ask that they consider the preservation of the last remaining significant women’s indigenous site in NSW under a Heritage listing, to protect it in perpetuity.
As pointed out by Dr Annie Ross, in her submission to the Land and Environment Court in 2015 on the proposed extension approval for the Calga sand quarry site containing this landscape, ‘the Women’s site at Calga was the most important women’s site in NSW, that there had been other significant sites, but they had all been destroyed, … and it must be conserved’. The NSW OEH has stated that ‘The Calga Aboriginal Cultural Landscape may be of state heritage significance as a symbolic and ritualised cultural landscape’.
There is a significant population of First Nations Darkinjung, Awabakal and Guring-gai people still living in the Central Coast region which demands that this cultural site is protected now and forever, to teach and protect the oldest culture on our life-giving planet. This is particularly the case at this time of the introduction of a new regional development plan for the region, which must prevent the repetition of past thefts of sovereign land. I look forward to their positive response on this matter.
Email, May 16 Doug Williamson, Wamberal