June 5, 2020: Mount Gibraltar Stone Stairway

In the midst of all the craziness this week a dear friend named Sarah Cains sent me a link to a very nice article she wrote about the renovation of the wonderful stone stairway on Mount Gibraltar. You can find the full article on the WinZero website at the following link… For The Walker Who Seeks

I am very proud to say that my mother and her hardy band of volunteers known as the Mount Gibraltar Bushcare and Landcare group (MGBL) were instrumental in raising the money and coordinating the restoration of this delightful experience. And I can highly recommend a jaunt up the stairs and back down again (or vice versa) to anyone living in or visiting the Southern Highlands of NSW.

If you haven’t been up or down them before you are in for a treat. It is a charming and invigorating experience and a great way to connect with the history of Mount Gibraltar and the beauty of the Endangered Ecological Community it fosters.

I remember, as a kid, playing war games on The Gib with my mates back in the days when the quarries were still operating. We would hear the occasional siren warning of a pending detonation which added greatly to the realism of our imaginary battles. Back then the entire mountain was a tangle of weeds such as ivy, holly, privet and pine trees. This was great for camouflage and sneaking up on our imaginary enemies but it was choking the life out of the native bushland. 

This is what the whole of Mount Gibraltar looked like when I was a kid.

These days it is picture perfect with lovely dappled light filtering through the gum trees and with hardly a weed to be seen thanks to the tireless work and perseverance of the MGBL team.

This is what the Mount Gibraltar ecosystem looks like now

So if you do make the effort to hike up and down the stairs or around some of the many wonderful trails through the Mount Gibraltar reserve, remember to say a little silent thank you to the MGBL volunteers for their twenty-six years of humble hard work restoring the ecosystem of an entire mountain to its former glory.

(For anyone new to the delights of Mount Gibraltar, the stone stairway can be accessed from the top at the Bowral lookout carpark, or from the bottom at the end of Cliff St, Bowral.)