Save Sydney Park: Adopt a Tree, held at The Corner Gallery in Stanmore from November 11 to 13, featured the work of photojournalist Lorrie Graham, sculptor Gabrielle Bates, and Head of Drawing at the National Art School, Maryanne Coutts.
“You can help save Sydney Park by adopting a tree today” was the key message conveyed by the exhibition and reinforced by speakers at the launch of the Adopt a Tree campaign on November 27.
The WestCONnex Action Group (WAG) is urging people to adopt a tree from the hundreds of Sydney Park trees earmarked to be destroyed by the NSW Government to make way for the $17 billion WestConnex tollway.
WAG activist Jaqui Sykes said the group hoped people would build a relationship with their chosen tree and want to protect it, in turn fostering broad public concern.
“What we hope, of course, is that when the chainsaws start to arrive, people will come out and go, ‘Don’t you touch my tree!’”
Sykes said those willing to adopt a tree could do so online at www.westconnexactiongroup.org.au/adopt or in person at Sydney Park.
She also said people should visit their adopted tree, picnic under it with family and pets, take photos with it, and get the word out that their tree, and hundreds of others, are at risk.
So far concerned citizens have adopted 200 trees.
Campaign in pictures
Lorrie Graham’s exhibition photos highlighted pivotal moments in the 18-month campaign to save Sydney Park and its surrounds from WestConnex.
She recalled the “complete horror” expressed by people at the entry gates to the Small World Festival when they’d learned how badly Sydney Park would be affected by the proposed motorway.
Graham and her husband had been outside the festival gathering signatures for a petition to save Newtown from the road’s impact when they’d seen the reactions.
“We realised that the trees were speaking to people … and [also] how important Sydney Park is to the area and to the inner west. It’s the only major lung it has. It is the people’s park—and they’re protective of it—and they love it. If you go there, you know how much it is used.”
Other significant moments from the campaign depicted in Graham’s photos included:
- An event where people wrapped the trees earmarked for destruction with blue ribbon so that one in every five trees said “Stop WestConnex”.
- Demonstrations against the Baird government’s forced amalgamation of councils.
- Setting up a permanent camp to stop WestConnex cutting down trees at the northern end of Euston Road.
Graham said the permanent camp had been in place for several months and had worked well as a deterrent. “By [us] camping there, they’ve only cut down three trees. So we’ve managed to save a lot of trees!”
She also said the riot police had been present when WAG activists visited the drilling sites for stage three of WestConnex. “[Journalist and activist] Wendy Bacon got arrested by the riot police and some very heavy-handed stuff was going on.”
Graham confessed that her own strong feeling towards the trees in Sydney Park had not wavered. “I feel incredibly protective of them. I’m appalled that this government can put out an environmental statement saying that they’re going to build on the canopy of the city and then, on the other hand, critically be destroying huge avenues of established trees.
“Nothing about this project adds up. Because they’re talking medium density being the way they’re wanting people to live, but they don’t actually understand the importance of a huge, beautiful park like Sydney Park to the residents and the community.”
WAG’s printed information for its Adopt a Tree campaign says: “Premier Mike Baird wants to destroy hundreds of Sydney Park trees and take 14,000 square metres of the park for WestCONnex. The tollway will also leave Sydney Park next to a monstrous spaghetti interchange, unfiltered pollution stacks and six-lane highways choking with traffic.”
“The interchange is at the southern end of the park where there was a huge landfill tip,” Graham said. “But it is exactly the same size of the park. That’s a massive amount of cars and fumes and smokestacks.”
Sykes questioned the government’s plan to put some “green space” under the gigantic flyovers and unfiltered pollution stacks of the St Peters interchange.
“So we can go and have picnics under four tiers of traffic? Good spot isn’t it?”
Graham said it was impossible to get answers about WestConnex from the NSW Government. “They just make these very big statements. They won’t answer questions. It’s a very undemocratic process. The only people that are actually going to benefit from WestConnex are developers. It’s not even motorists that are going to benefit because the roads are tollways.”
One of Graham’s last images in the exhibition featured Glenys and her dog Gwen, who are devotees of Sydney Park.
“If they didn’t have the park, they’d be beside themselves,” Graham said. “As would a lot of people with dogs. You know on one side of Euston Road is high-density living, so people really need that park.”
Sykes said the Corner Gallery had donated space for the exhibition before information had been released showing Stanmore would be affected by WestConnex.
Under new plans announced on November 10, the tollway’s Camperdown interchange will be scrapped, and the M4–M5 Link tunnel widened and moved further west—bringing it closer to Stanmore.
The exhibition had been helpful in getting the word out to residents about this significant new development so close to their suburb, she said.
Visual artist Maryanne Coutts said she had been drawing portraits of trees since 2015 but had more recently turned her attention to “the trees in a beautiful park near where I live that are earmarked to be cut down so that a freeway can be built.
“As I only draw the tree, the gaps left by the ribbons that have been tied around these fated trees hint at their embattled state.”
