These articles are from the Gecko Spring edition 2007 Issue 33 

Trackcare
By Soren Mortensen

Council supports a wide range of community initiatives, such as the Bushcare and Landcare programs. Now, community interest in walking tracks has lead the establishment of a pilot ‘Trackcare’ program. This program aims to support community involvement in looking after the many walking tracks on Council land, around 100km of them spread across the mountains. Council’s walking track team, Kieran and Will, are available to support Bushcare Groups with an interest in walking tracks in their reserve, as well as supporting new initiatives in this area. Trackcare work days have been run with the Burgess Falls Bushcare Group, and with the Lower Blue Mountains Rotary Club at Lennox Bridge, and also the climbing community at Bardens Lookout and Centennial Glen.   If your Bushcare Group is interested in running a Trackcare work day, please contact Council’s Bushland Management Officer, Soren Mortensen to discuss the proposal.

Trackcare at Burgess Falls
By Jill Rattray

Burgess Falls Bushcare Group commenced working at the lower end of Winbourne Road in Hazelbrook in July 2004, from the road edge to the falls.  Since then they have been battling Crofton Weed on the creekline and a mix of plants on the slopes from the road edge, including Coreopsis and Erigeron.  On the May and August workdays this year, the Burgess Falls group had the support of Council’s Track Team, in which they repaired a well-worn track and then re-opened an original piece of track which had become overgrown.  Ken Goodlet, a local historian, coordinates the group and has been interested in the track restoration from the group’s beginning. Ken has written a historical summary for us of the Burgess Falls track.

The History of the Burgess Falls Track
By Ken Goodlet

The first track in Hazelbrook was established in 1892, when the Hazelbrook Reserves Trust was formed, an organisation that functioned until 1989 and was responsible for the maintenance of the tracks in Hazelbrook.  These tracks were generally circular, starting and finishing at the station and taking in many of the dozen waterfalls in Hazelbrook.  The town was a tourist centre in the early years of the twentieth century, one of the main activities of tourists being walks along these circular routes.  One of the two main circular routes was a walk from the station down Winbourne Road, then down the Burgess Falls track which joins the Horseshoe Falls track, coming out at Oaklands Road and returning to the station.  It seems that this circular track was constructed by the Reserves Trust in the years 1918 to 1920.  The Burgess Falls section’s main attraction is the falls, named after Sapper Edward Allen Burgess, the eldest of three Burgess boys who went to World War I.  He was killed on the Western Front on 3 June 1917, aged 38, while rescuing his seriously injured officer, and buried in Strand Military Cemetery Ploegsteert Belgium.  His father, Hazelbrook shopkeeper Edward Burgess, organised a plaque in memory of his son that is still to be seen at the falls and the father was also involved in the building of Diggers Bridge which was constructed by volunteers at the falls and destroyed soon afterwards by flooding.  There were 150 local residents in attendance when the falls were named and a title board was unveiled by Edward’s brother Harold.  The names of Burgess Creek and Burgess Falls were gazetted in 1918.  The last link in the circular track was a section between Burgess Falls and Oaklands Falls which was built in 1919-1920.  The quality of the building of this beautiful circular track built by locals is apparent in its lasting up to the present, despite there having been very little maintenance in recent decades, a situation that may be changing thanks to some work by bushcare and track maintenance groups over recent weeks.