The anti-freeway fights that saved Sydney part two: A brave lawyer and slightly mad activists save the Wolli Valley

Sydneysider: A personal journey

Wolli Creek Regional Park is taking shape very, very, slowly in inner southwest Sydney. In fact, since the Carr Government announced, in 1998, that the valley’s wonderful open space and bushland would be consolidated as a park, a period twice as long as the Second World War has passed, and still the job hasn’t been finished. One precious section of bush is now under threat from the O’Farrell Government’s plan to duplicate the M5E tunnel.

So the Wolli fight continues as Sydney’s longest-running conservation battle. It all began in the late 1970s as a movement to save the valley from the threat of an eight lane freeway. The 1998 decision to put the M5 East underground and establish a regional park seems to have marked only its midpoint.

The intellectual underpinning for the struggle was provided by the remarkable Kyeemagh-Chullora Road Inquiry of 1979-80.

At the time, the Department of Main Roads (later the Roads and Traffic Authority) proposed to build two roads in inner south-west Sydney: a motorway up the Cooks River Valley and the F5 (now known as the M5) which was designed to ‘support growth’ – meaning future suburbs sprawling from East Hills to Bowral.

These were the days before environmental assessments (EAs). The two roads threatened to devastate open space and bushland along the way. There was a huge public outcry. Premier Neville Wran announced a commission of inquiry headed up by a young barrister named David Kirby.

By then, the first evidence of the counter-productive nature of freeways had emerging from the American experience and the DMR had been defeated in its attempt to bulldoze the F4 through the centre of Glebe. After that defeat they’d turned to the F5 as their next most favoured project.

In the best tradition of public enquiries, Kirby was determined to get to the fundamentals of the freeway issue. The community and experts from outside the DMR responded wholeheartedly and in opposition to the road.

It’s clear the DMR engineers felt the outcome was a foregone conclusion. It was unthinkable that the commissioner would recommend against their proposal, which was for an eight lane freeway built in two four lane
stages. In evidence, they made some extraordinarily unguarded and damaging admissions about the problems created by freeways. Asked why the DMR proposed to build the Wolli Creek section of the road first, one engineer blurted out that the Department felt it was important to destroy the valley as soon as possible because, with time, the community would value such areas more and more!

Kirby acknowledged the evil of induced traffic growth and reached the conclusion that the F5 would only generate more unnecessary road traffic and encourage Sydney to sprawl more rapidly to the south-west. He recommended that the road corridor through the Wolli Valley be abandoned on social, economic and environmental grounds. He also recommended that the Cooks River freeway should also be abandoned if not started within five years – a cunning ploy, because he knew the Cooks River option was the DMR’s least-favoured.

Opposition from the road transport industry emerged rapidly, and the Wran Government never implemented the recommendations of the Inquiry, but they stopped the DMR in its tracks for a decade and became a
rallying point for opposition to freeways in general, and a bulwark against the M5 in particular.

I came into the Wolli Valley struggle around 1986, at a time when the DMR, stymied by the Kirby Inquiry, was regrouping for another go at getting the F5 freeway through. The issue was attracting a core group of
activists with the skill and experience needed to rally community opposition.

The social composition of the area was important. The Wolli Valley was, and still is, one of those quirky places where old stone and weatherboard cottages butt up against 50s neo-lousy and Tuscan modern. There was a potent mix of the working class and the working intelligentsia – people with a mix of skills and an oppositionist spirit. That said, some of our key activists didn’t even reside in the valley – intrepid activists march towards the sound of the guns.

To defeat something like the F5 – driven by a powerful government department and big business – you need the sort of people that are a
conservative columnist’s worst nightmare. You need people who can write well, design good leaflets, explain complex issues and dream up novel tactics to keep the issue in the news. You need people who know about plants, animals and ecosystems; people who can lead guided walks; people with an interest in technology, planning, and local history.

We’re talking about teachers, lawyers, academics, public servants, park rangers, professionals, trade unionists; people who know how to run small businesses and community organisations; people with a lot of life skills.

And they have to be folk who think it’s okay, natural, honourable, to be “agin’ the government”. This isn’t a gig for good burghers. You need people who aren’t easily spooked or intimidated. Being slightly mad also helps.

To be continued…