Richmond Road Upgrade Comments

(Images from the TfNSW Review of Environmental Factors Report showing the proposed flyover between the M7 and Richmond Rd)

DSMG has been working towards solutions to minimise impacts of Transport for NSW's Richmond Road Upgrade Project on the BNI. We have expressed our concerns strongly, and sought to find ways to bring some benefits to the site. For many months our concerns were meeting a disrespectful and ignorant response, but just before Christmas things began shifting. The project's Review of Environmental Factors was made available to the public by TfNSW in late-November (see the TfNSW Project page here). We will keep updating on this website, but here is our submission to the REF process.

DSMG welcome's your responses, ideas and concerns about the road widening, flyover and traffic changes and we will advocate Dharug community and BNI's interests strongly going forward.

RESPONSE TO THE REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

Blacktown Native Institution and the Richmond Road Upgrade project

“Business-as-usual is not acceptable”

7 February 2025

1.     Dharug Strategic Management Group was created by Dharug community to receive and hold title for the core area of the Blacktown Native Institution at Oakhurst when it was returned to Dharug care in October 2018. This was the first Country returned to the custodians of Dharug Nura since the early-colonial period. Other areas of the Blacktown Native Institution are on titles held by government agencies and Blacktown City Council. The BNI is listed on the State Heritage Register.

2.     The return of the BNI to Dharug care in 2018 remains the only land returned to Dharug care by the NSW Government since the early colonial period. This greatly amplified the site’s significance to Dharug people and the REF fails to address the project’s impacts on cultural values, environmental quality, heritage significance and future use. These impacts will have multi-generational implications and DSMG is committed to finding safe, culturally respectful and sustainable outcomes acceptable to the Dharug communities to avoiding, mitigating and addressing those community concerns in a collaborative and accountable manner.

3.     DSMG has responsibility to Dharug community to ensure that our stewardship of the BNI secures its protection, care, healing and use as a Dharug place into the future. Our accountability to community drives all our work at and with the BNI.

4.     As residents and custodians of Dharug Nura, Dharug community understands and accepts the need for action to resolve the consequences of decades of poor planning and delivery of urban, commercial, industrial and infrastructure development in the area, and welcomes government programs aimed at reducing congestion, improving travel times, improving traffic flow and  safety for road users, pedestrians and wildlife and building connectivity between the communities in the north‑west – all of which are stated outcomes of the Richmond Road Upgrade Project.

HOWEVER, 

3.     The current design of the project imposes unacceptable short- and long-term impacts, planning and use constraints, and imposes avoidable damage to the heritage-listed Blacktown Native Institution site. The current design – like so much so-called ‘development’ across Dharug Nura, represents a continuation of the disrespect shown to Dharug cultural landscapes, our values and efforts to heal and care for our Country. Along with the deeply flawed consultation and assessment process to date, it represents another moment of a business-as-usual approach that treats Dharug Nura, culture and community as unimportant, and available to be sacrificed to a project-by-project development process that imposes disconnection, loss and trauma on Nura, community and the future.

4.     As custodians of a place with a history reaching back through thousands of generations of Dharug people, we speak with cultural authority when we say that flawed consultative processes in the development and design of this project have imposed another layer of trauma and damage on this Country and our community, and have missed opportunities to develop co-design solutions to address the issues the project aims to address that would have enhanced and amplified the understanding and significance of the BNI.

5.     DSMG approached initial discussion of the project with optimism and generosity. We acknowledged the need for the project, but were shocked and disappointed at the antagonistic, dismissive and disrespectful responses offered to our initial concerns and feedback. We welcome the very recent shift in TfNSW’s approach to addressing our concerns for the BNI, but still feel there is a deep and distressing lack of understanding of the nature of Nura, the significance of the BNI and the impacts of the project. We restate our commitment to collaborative, respectful processes to create solutions to the issues we identify in this submission.

6.     In this response to the project Review of Environmental Factors (REF), DSMG offers a high-level overview of concerns in response to the REF and look forward to working to (a) find ways to avoid, ameliorate, mitigate and compensate negative impacts on the BNI, and (b) identify and pursue opportunities to deliver on the Dharug community’s aspirations for the BNI to be managed as a place for Dharug truth-telling and healing, and as a window for the region’s diverse communities to recognise, respect and protect the Dharug cultural landscapes and environments from further avoidable damage and degradation.

7.     The BNI site extends beyond the title held by DSMG and includes an area for which TfNSW has custodial responsibility to protect the heritage values (Lot 1 DP1043661). Around Bells Creek this title area includes areas of particular significance to Dharug women which will be overwhelmingly impacted by the project. This will result in severe and lasting distress to Dharug community members. This title also includes areas that hosted the men’s camp during the period that the BNI was operating on the site and Dharug community has always anticipated celebrating and incorporating this area into the BNI heritage plans. As custodian of the site’s heritage values, TfNSW has not acted in good faith to protect the site. The project clearly requires destruction of areas within the SHR-listed curtilage on titles held by TfNSW. The methodology and conclusions of the Kelleher Nightingale Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment Report (REF Appendix E) provides a completely inadequate foundation for understanding the cultural values associated with the BNI and its surrounding cultural landscape.

8.     DSMG unequivocally rejects the notion that the Site Specific Exemption 1 which allows “carrying out of road work or traffic control work, within the meaning of the Roads Act 1993, in connection with the Rooty Hill Road, Richmond Hill Road and / or the proposed Castlreagh (sic) Freeway” is a respectful foundation for proceeding with the projects damage to Nura within the SHR-listed area. Reduction of the site’s value and significance to “archaeological relics or deposits” is another example of the erasure of Dharug cultural values and experience.

9.     We also reject the tokenism implied in some of the REF’s language. To point to just two examples, the REF acknowledges that:

The proposal lies on the unceded Traditional Lands of the Dharug peoples. The proposal area, including Bells Creek and its tributaries were used by Aboriginal people living in the region. Aboriginal people inhabited the area, living in groups of extended families tied to specific regions (REF p9).

(a) By using the past tense, the REF suggests Dharug people are no longer ‘inhabiting’ the area. If TfNSW, or the State of NSW, truly acknowledged that Dharug Nura was unceded, the discussion about infrastructure development would proceed on a very different basis. Tokenistic language reflects poor understanding of its implications. (b) Similarly, the “Acknowledgment of Country” that opens the report (REF p2) amplifies that poor understanding – forgetting that Lachlan Macquarie ordered the bodies of First Nations people men who killed when resisting colonial ‘occupation’ of Nura to be hanged up on trees in conspicuous situations (including along Richmond Road), to “strike the Survivors with the greater terror”. By occupying the “traditional Songlines, trade routes and ceremonial paths in Country that our nation’s First Peoples followed for tens of thousands of years”, TfNSW reinforces its power to use Dharug cultural landscapes, ceremonial and significant places and stories as if tens of thousands of years of possession, stewardship and care do not matter when measured against the engineering imperatives of transport infrastructure project.

THEREFORE, 

10.    DSMG raises the following as issues of concern in response to the REF and we look forward to further discussions to clarify on how DSMG, the Dharug community and TfNSW can avoid, ameliorate, mitigate and compensate negative impacts of the project on the BNI, and pursue opportunities to deliver on the Dharug community’s aspirations for the BNI to be managed as a place for Dharug truth-telling and healing.

(a)     Dharug Cultural Values and the BNIAs noted above, the BNI site includes all the land listed on the SHR, not only the land held by DSMG. The area to the north of Bells Creek towards Marsden Park (Lot 60 DP1055132 and Lot 1 DP1043661) have cultural significance to Dharug people as an area where people camped (Men’s Camp) to watch over the children in the BNI. Community hopes to commemorate this devotion through public art and landscaping in the future management of the area. The project affects the surrounding cultural landscape, including the areas around Bells Creek on both sides of Richmond Road whose cultural value to Dharug women is not addressed.We also recognise the importance of this area for its historic links to the Colebee and Nurragingy Land Grant (SHR01877) (also under the ownership of TfNSW and whose cultural values are further threatened by future development of the Castlereagh Freeway).The cultural values embedded in the BNI are well-documented in the Conservation Management Plan (GML 2024) and Dharug oral history. The wider cultural landscape, which encompasses deep Dharug history and colonial history as well as more recent changes, remains readable from the BNI in ways which foster understanding of and belonging to Country in ways that will heal and unify our diverse regional community. Threatening those values divides, diminishes and devalues our community.

(b)     Visual and shadow impacts of the proposed flyover bridgeThe flyover will not only dominate the visual landscape at the intersection of Richmond Rd and Rooty Hill Rd North, but will create significant overshadowing of the site, with implications for access to solar power in the area of the site that the Dharug community has long identified as the preferred location for a Dharug Culture Centre,In reviewing the REF, we were unable to locate any shadow diagrams showing the impact of overshadowing on our property, or assessment of the implications for solar power potential across the site. Given our expressed ambition has been to pursue sustainable building outcomes when we are able to erect a Dharug Culture Centre, this is a matter of concern.

(c)     Water values and the woman’s area – impacts of the new bridge proposed for Bells CreekThe project will cause MAJOR IMPACTS in this area, amplifying the damage done in the 1980s when the sewer main was trenched through the area, and when the creek was channelised, removing the chain of ponds and taking water from the landscape and piping it underground except in high-flow events. The area is currently central to the internationally funded culturally-led ecological restoration program underway, with one of the monitoring sites set up between the current fence line and the waterhole.Alterations proposed to Bells Creek raise deep concerns about damage to the area identified throughout the Dharug community as a Women’s area where children were born, where women camped to watch over children in the BNI and where our oral history confirms continuous presence on Nura for many generations.While the casuarina and eucalypts in this area (including on the SHR-listed title managed by TfNSW are deeply valued, it is not just the trees but the whole area that is considered culturally significant. Construction impacts including tree removals will be a sources of lasting distress to community members and the BNI herself.We have concerns about the impacts on areas along Bells Creek on both sides of Richmond Road that have ongoing cultural value to Dharug women, particularly in relation to the design and location of the proposed open channel on the north side of Richmond Road and the implications of increased stormwater on flow and flooding in Bells Creek and across the BNI site.Being faced with a ‘concept design’ which imposes such a burden on this important place without any consultation or consideration – including the FAILURE of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment prepared by Kelleher Nightingale to identify this area’s cultural values – has been quite traumatic for our community members. We note with concern that document effectively reduces the Dharug history of struggle and negotiation to protect the BNI and return it to Dharug care for healing is reduced to a single sentence: “Members of the contemporary Aboriginal community continue to experience connection with the area through cultural and family associations” (p24) and quickly moves on to archaeological concerns that reduces our cultural concerns to being represented by “relics”!The absence of any discussion of the historical (beyond the generic ‘historical account in Ch 3), rather than archaeological significance of the site – including, for example, the community values embodied in the ‘men’s camp’ on the slope going towards Marsden Park, and connections to the wider landscape, including the Colebee and Nurragingy Land Grant and the failure to reference any of the work done on these issues in various iterations of the Conservation Management Plan reinforces the sense that this project has been conceptualised as having no need to accommodate an already rich and crowded cultural landscape.

(d)     Environmental values and healing Country – impacts of the project on DSMG’s culturally-led ecological restoration program at the BNIDSMG is currently investing in excess of $150,000 of international grant funds in a program aimed at evaluating the BNI’s capacity for regeneration and using a culture-led program to foster ecological restoration. The Project will have major impacts on that project, introducing disruption to access to monitoring sites, causing dust, changes in water quality and quantity across the site, removing key seed bank sources and disrupting bird and animals whose roles in healing Nura are important.

(e)     Impacts on wildlife and landscape connectivityWhile the BNI is often characterised as an empty paddock or vacant rural land, it remains a rich place for important creatures. It hosts diverse birdlife, particularly after flood events, it hosts two mobs of kangaroos on an almost daily basis and a variety of reptiles, amphibians and insects. These creatures all rely on existing patterns of landscape connectivity, particularly the woodland pathway between the BNI and Shanes Park.We are deeply concerned about the impact that the proposed ‘Ancillary facility for construction’ proposed at the northern edge of the SHR curtilage will have on connectivity. We also note the future threat to this important wildlife corridor posed by the planned Castlereagh Freeway and urge consideration of design alternatives that preserve this crucial link into the distant future.

(f)      Loss of future use and enjoyment of the BNI, including constraints on delivery of the Landscape Masterplan and Conservation Management PlanSince securing the return of the BNI to Dharug care in 2018, DSMG has invested substantial funds and effort into pursuing the Dharug community vision of the BNI as a Dharug place of truth-telling and healing. This vision has long anticipated the delivery of a landscape design that restores woodland, grasslands and wetlands across the site, commemorates and heals the site’s traumatic colonial history, celebrates its deep Dharug histories, and introduces a substantial Dharug Culture Centre that would foster arts, culture, enterprise and education as well as providing a keeping place for Dharug materials. The vision was to buffer the site from existing road noise using an earth wall vegetated with substantial trees, and building a boomerang-shaped centre into that wall to embrace and view out over the site.When we first outlined that vision to the project team in 2023 we were dismissed because we had no DA approved for our vision, and were told there was no obligation for the project to respond to ‘vague possibilities’. Our efforts to suggest co-design solutions at the earliest opportunity fell not just on deaf ears, but on disrespectful and dismissive attitudes.DSMG remains committed to delivering the community’s vision, and looks forward to a more respectful and collaborative response to our concerns and explorations of ways forward.The Urban Design Concept and Landscape Character and Visual Impact Assessment Report (REF Appendix E) characterises the BNI as offering “scenic views across rural grassland” which should be maintained, without any reference to existing Landscape Masterplans, the existing Conservation Management Plan and processes that anticipate environmental healing and restoration of the BNI. In addition to its disrespectful dismissal of community vision of the BNI as something other than a relic of the colonial creation of “rural grassland”, this approach fails to understand the need for privacy for various community uses of the site for cultural and ceremonial purposes in the future.

(g)     Noise impactsWe note that the flyover will introduce a new source of traffic noise intruding onto the site in ways that influence amenity and useability of the area envisioned as the site for the Dharug Culture Centre. We also raise our concerns about significantly increased intrusion of traffic noise into the Women’s area and other areas that we have aimed to restore as more peaceful areas for ceremony.

(h)     Safe and sustainable permanent access to the site for DSMG and community programs, events and ceremoniesIt is acknowledged in the REF that the project will remove current access to the BNI from Richmond Road. At the outset we proposed incorporation of permanent access to the BNI off Rooty Hill Rd N at the signal-controlled intersection with the M7 slip road. We have strong support from Blacktown City Council to develop this proposal. Our suggestion also included recognition that creation of a bus bay to enhance safety and useability of the current northbound bus stop as part of that proposed redevelopment would greatly enhance pedestrian, passenger and driver safety and benefit both the BNI and our neighbours. Again, the initial response was simply dismissive and offered a ‘like for like’ solution of a driveway in a location between that intersection and the intersection with Richmond Rd where we have already seen our boundary fence damaged by vehicles losing control twice in two years, and where safety will always be compromised.We welcome more recent expressions of willingness to consider cooperation with Dharug community, DSMG and Blacktown Council, to find a safe, sustainable and permanent access, including possible repurposing the existing cycleway bridge across Bells Creek as a crossing to the BNI across the drainage channel from Rooty Hill Rd N. We remain concerned that an unsafe and inadequate ‘temporary’ access driveway is at risk of becoming a long term ‘permanent’ solution and that a safe, sustainable and effective long-term redesign of the signal-controlled intersection of Rooty Hill Rd N and the M7 Slip Rd to provide a safe bust stop and safe traffic access to the BNI will be seen as outside the scope of the Richmond Road Upgrade Project.

(i)      Loss of trust in TfNSW as a reliable partner in future management of the BNI, other SHR-listed properties on Dharug Nura and the Dharug cultural landscape generally.Finally, we note that the process failure in consultation with DSMG as a property owner, and as cultural custodians of the BNI and the group responsible to the Dharug community for the care of the BNI was not simply a failure to implement TfNSW mandated policies and practices. It was an offensive and traumatic threat to the integrity and future of the most significant Dharug place and the only place returned to Dharug care since the early-colonial period. This loss of trust in TfNSW policies and practices means that the task of winning Dharug community endorsement and support for any proposed strategies to avoid, ameliorate, mitigate and compensate negative impacts on the BNI, and co-design proposals for the interface between the project and the BNI will be harder to secure.

(j)      Future management of the BNI SHR site. DSMG has supported development of a comprehensive Conservation Management Plan for the BNI as well as landscape management planning for the site. Fragmented title across the site reduces DSMG’s capacity to deliver on the community vision for the site as a place of truth-telling and healing and we hope that completion of the Richmond Road Upgrade Project will see TfNSW title for land within the SHR curtilage to be returned to Dharug care and ownership to facilitate its care and management into the future.

SUMMARY AND RESPONSES

This submission restates DSMG’s recognition of the need for the project to address congestion and safety issues arising from previous poor planning and delivery of transport, infrastructure and urban development in the region.

It also restates DSMG’s commitment to finding collaborative and respectful solutions that will avoid, ameliorate, mitigate and compensate negative impacts identified in the submission and will have multi-generational implications for Dharug people and Nura. We reiterate that current design of the project imposes unacceptable short- and long-term impacts, planning and use constraints, and imposes avoidable damage to the heritage-listed Blacktown Native Institution site that are not adequately addressed in the REF Report.

Consultation and communication with the Dharug community has been poor and inconsistent with the TfNSW guidelines and policies for respectful engagement with Aboriginal custodians. This has raised serious concerns for DSMG concerning how commitments and undertakings intended to address issues raised in this submission will be executed and how rhetorical acknowledgement of Nura and custodians will translate into accountability and protection of cultural and environmental values at the BNI.

We anticipate completion of the project will result in return of additional lands within and beyond the SHR curtilage to Dharug care and ownership.

The following table provides a summary of our concerns and recommended action to ensure collaborative and respectful responses to those concerns to avoid, ameliorate, mitigate and compensate negative impacts of the project, including reconsideration of some design elements to ensure avoidable negative impact are not imposed on the BNI and future generations.

Submission themes	Detail	Recommended Mitigation Measures and TfNSW Responses
Impacts on cultural values at the BNI site	-    Cultural assessment does not include intangible heritage and cultural values -    BNI well documented for cultural values in Conservation Management Plan -    Proximity to Land Grants and camping areas -    Only piece of land owned by Dharug people and commitment from TfNSW should prioritise outcomes proposed by DSMG and the broader Dharug community	-       Fund DSMG to commission independent cultural values assessment for this project -       This assessment should take into consideration the Conservation Management Plan undertaken by GML 2024 -       Recommendations from this cultural values assessment should inform updates to the project and TfNSW will report to DSMG to demonstrate how recommendations have been addressed
Visual, amenity, shadow, privacy, noise impacts of flyover	-    Significant overshadowing of the site -    Lack of privacy with elevated bridge -    Noise generated from elevated roadway -    Landscape character impact has been rated as high for the BNI site -    Lack of overshadowing diagrams to show the impact of the flyover structure	-       Incorporate further landscape screening to increase privacy and reduce visual impacts -       Include appropriate screening facing BNI site to new access flyover bridge in close negotiation with Dharug -       Overshadowing diagrams are required to assess the impact of the proposed flyover on the BNI site particularly in relation to solar gain issues for future Culture Centre
Water and women values to Bells Creek	-    Significant values associated with Bells Creek -    Loss of trees proposed for new bridge -    Impact on ecological and cultural integrity of the area -    Concern regarding open channel proposed for area adjacent to Richmond Road and the impact it will have on Bells Creek	-       Fund DSMG to commission independent cultural values assessment for this project -       This assessment should take into consideration the Conservation Management Plan undertaken by GML 2024 -       Review length, width and location of flyover bridge to reduce impact on creek
Lack of safe and permanent access	-    Need to find a safe permanent access that considers the increase in traffic and future access to the site -    Concern regarding lack of negotiation and commitment regarding alternative access to the site	-       Include safe access off Rooty Hill Road N at the signal-controlled intersection with the permanent M7 slip road -       Commission independent assessment of the proposed signal-controlled access through this intersection
Loss of trust in TFNSW	-    Expectation that DSMG run community engagement -    Lack of transparency -    REF made public before issues resolved -    Concern regarding engagement expected to take place over the holiday period	-       Commission independent Aboriginal engagement consultant to undertake broader engagement with the community -       Develop formal partnership with DSMG to engage with subcommittee on a regular basis to negotiate mutually agreed outcomes -       Clear reporting and accountability processes to be agreed and delivered, secured by MOU or similar
Impacts on future plans for the site	-    Ecological restoration program -    Wildlife safety and movement -    Landscape connectivity -    Cultural centre site impacted by overshadowing -    Impact of overshadowing on future solar power -    Visual impact assessment has not considered future development plans and identifies BNI site as open rural grassland	-       Review visual and landscape character impact assessment to include proposed plans for BNI