WALLSEND: Council Briefed on Push for New ‘Link Road Forest’ National Park

2 December 2025

City of Newcastle councillors have been briefed on a community push to turn the 574‑hectare Link Road Forest on the city’s western fringe into a national park at a public meeting on Tuesday 2 December 2025.

The proposal centres on land at 144 Boundary Road Wallsend, known in planning documents as Eden Estates, which the NSW Government is progressing as a state-led rezoning for around 4,200 homes. This move will shift planning control from council to the state under its State Significant Rezoning policy.

Campaigners from ‘Link Road Forest Campaign Inc’ argue that instead of being cleared for housing, the mostly native forest should be acquired by the state and added to the national park estate as a key piece of the Hunter green corridor between Sugarloaf, Blue Gum Hills Regional Park, Blackbutt Reserve and Glenrock.

A council briefing note prepared for the session describes Link Road Forest as spanning both the City of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie City Council areas, with roughly 70% of the site inside Newcastle’s local government area.

Former Newcastle councillor and Link Road Forest Campaign convenor Ian McKenzie told councillors the group’s goal was “to have the land known as Link Road Forest, 574 hectares of it, acquired by the state government and made national park”, effectively ruling out the current rezoning push for residential development.

He said the bushland was ecologically significant native forest of high environmental value, forming part of a stepping‑stone wildlife corridor from the Sugarloaf range through to Blackbutt and Glenrock, and he warned the site drains into flood‑prone catchments impacting Wallsend and Cockle Creek.

McKenzie told councillors assessments had identified at least 17 threatened species and an endangered ecological community on the site, including the koala and critically endangered scrub turpentine. He said the current landowner had previously declined to allow council’s koala drone survey over the property, but had subsequently commissioned their own survey and “found a koala, maybe only one”, adding that small, isolated populations were still crucial to the species’ survival.

The campaign’s presentation also linked the local debate to national and international policy, pointing to Australia’s commitments to end native forest clearing by 2030 and recent NSW moves such as the Great Koala National Park. McKenzie argued that clearing the forest late in the decade for housing would cut across those objectives and that “roofs and roads” would only worsen downstream flooding.

Co‑presenter Helen Smith focused on health, social and economic arguments for creating a new national park on Newcastle’s western fringe. She told councillors “national parks are important sanctuaries where people can take time out, enjoy nature, get fit, relax and revitalise”, citing research that links time in nature to lower risks of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and depression.

She said access to bushland could help tackle loneliness and mental ill‑health, and that with Greater Newcastle’s population forecast to grow by more than a quarter by 2041, the forest would be an “invaluable asset” for surrounding suburbs including Glendale, Elermore Vale, Edgeworth, Wallsend and Cameron Park.

Smith also highlighted Aboriginal cultural heritage in the forest, including scar trees and grinding grooves, and floated the idea of a future visitor precinct with an Indigenous cultural centre, café, education space and links to an extended Richmond Vale Rail Trail. McKenzie said any future name for the reserve should be chosen by First Nations representatives and asked that council’s Aboriginal advisory committee be invited to consider an appropriate name, rather than retaining the working title “Link Road Forest”.

The campaign put five requests to councillors on the night. These included a formal council endorsement of the push for state acquisition and permanent conservation, and a short officer report on the social, environmental and economic benefits of a national park for Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the lower Hunter.

They also requested a companion report on how biodiversity offset funding from the Hunter Transmission Project could fund acquisition, and letters to Planning Minister Paul Scully and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe seeking a joint meeting with a council and community delegation. McKenzie also provided councillors with a written list of five recommendations to support their advocacy.

Councillors from across the chamber used the 10‑minute question time to back the thrust of the campaign. Labor’s Deahnna Richardson thanked the presenters for bringing emerging health research on nature exposure to council’s attention, while Greens councillor Siobhan Isherwood criticised the state planning portal’s description of the land as “vacant”, calling it a misrepresentation of its current value as bushland.

Deputy Lord Mayor and Greens councillor Charlotte McCabe who chaired the session, said strong community campaign was already underway, while Labor councillor Declan Clausen told McKenzie and Smith he “fully support[ed] the three asks that you put to us about what we should be doing as a council”.

Because the deadline for councillor‑initiated business for the year’s final meeting had passed, Clausen proposed using the briefing committee to recommend a motion in next week’s ordinary council meeting so the campaign’s requests could still be considered in 2025.

Chief executive Jeremy Bath told the meeting he would “take that on as an action of the council”, saying staff would prepare a separate report and bring it to the ordinary council meeting on Tuesday 9 December. McKenzie responded saying there were actually five [not three] recommendations in the campaign’s written material, joking that “we snuck a couple in”, drawing laughter from the chamber.

Ward four Labor councillor Elizabeth Adamczyk linked the briefing to past decisions, referencing the pre‑election “forest pledge” against further clearing of native bushland for housing and population growth in western suburbs such as Fletcher and Minmi. She also pointed to a September council memo outlining koala drone survey results and the landowner’s refusal to participate, saying it was news to her that a separate survey over the Eden Estates land had identified at least one koala.

Council has already moved in recent months to lock in stronger environmental protections over the broader Eden Estates area. In February it endorsed exhibition of its Local Strategic Planning Statement (LSPS) update and wrote to the NSW Planning Secretary seeking an investigation into whether any land north of Newcastle Link Road within Eden Estates should be removed from its designation as a Regionally Significant Growth Area because of high environmental value.

Then in September council adopted the updated LSPS, re‑categorising land south of Link Road to environmental and open space due to known high environmental value. It asked the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure and the Minister’s delegate to consider rezoning Eden Estates for conservation in perpetuity or returning planning powers to council.

On the same night council unanimously backed a motion on protecting koala populations, noting a four‑fold increase in koalas found displaced or dead around Minmi and Fletcher between 2023 and 2024 and calling for koala surveys to inform any state‑led planning at 144 Boundary Road. That resolution asked the NSW Government to use council’s koala drone data in its assessment of the Eden Estates project and to rezone land where koalas are found for environmental protection before any development is determined.

Tuesday’s briefing did not involve a vote on the national park proposal, but it cleared the way for councillors to consider a formal motion and officer advice at next week’s ordinary meeting. McKenzie told the chamber he expects the state‑led rezoning proposal to go on public exhibition around the middle of next year and said the campaign would spend the next six months mobilising residents across Newcastle and the lower Hunter ahead of that process.