Barry O’Keefe: committed to bushland conservation.

Former Mayor of Mosman, the late Barry O’Keefe (20 May 1933 – 24 April 2014), told some wonderful stories about working with the Bradley Sisters in an interview he gave for Mosman Library’s Mosman Faces website.

The Mosman Parks & Bushland Association is indebted to Barry O'Keefe for his support and advice to the Association from its earliest days.

Excerpts from the transcript of Barry O’Keefe’s interview by Mosman Library are reproduced here:

The reason that I came into the council [in December 1968] was – I’d moved to Clifton Gardens in January 1965. I’d met up with the Bradley sisters, became involved in bushland regeneration, which was close to my heart and then in 1967/68 there was a building erected by a man called Earl Cameron down at 17 Raglan Street.

It was almost on the Point, a quite fine house had been demolished – well that was not good, but it wasn’t all bad, but the building that was erected there was very high, very prominent. It started off three storeys higher than it is now and it was found that it exceeded what was allowed under schedule 7 of the Local Government Act, but what really got me into the Council was going on the ferry each morning I would see the spoil that had been just tipped down the foreshore, massacring the trees and turning it into, really, a rubble dump. And I kept railing against this and saying, ‘they shouldn’t allow this to happen’, and some people on the ferry said, ‘well why don’t you do something about it?’

So I thought about it, discussed it with my wife, and decided to stand for the council and I did. The principle purpose being, because of that building and what I thought was slackness on the part of the council. And a policy decision to ensure that we had proper planning that didn’t permit that sort of thing to happen, so I ran for the council and topped the poll, which became a habit thereafter and I was independent of all the others.

So that’s how I came to come into the council and bushland and control of development were my principle policy areas.

The Bradleys lived in Iluka Road, Joan and Eileen. They were both spinsters. Joan was a Science graduate. Eileen was an Arts graduate. They were very different characters, Joan was very mannish, whenever you saw her in the bush she would have her shorts on and a knife, and a cigarette in her mouth and she was absolutely fearless when it came to protecting the bushland, and she had a whole group of us who were working, weeding Morella Road and various places like that to get rid of the lantana and she and Eileen had been concerned about the habitat for the blue wren.

That’s how they became interested in bushland. And then they devised a method for restoring bushland, not going in and razing it and burning – slash and burn, which was then the accepted norm – but rather working from the good to the bad so that you allowed the good to expand gradually. It was slow but it was very effective and she got me interested in that.

And then I thought – well, we should try and get the National Trust involved. I wasn’t president of the National Trust at that time, this was back in the ’60s, early ’70s, and I didn’t become president of the National Trust until 1991. But their method had been adopted by the National Trust recognising that it was a long-term thing not a year-by-year thing and the association between the National Trust and Mosman had always been good. There’s a high percentage of Mosman people who are members of the National Trust.

So Joan and Eileen were the fons et origo of that, the National Trust then came in and of course when I became president of the National Trust I made sure that the association between Mosman and the National Trust remained.

There was a very strong push to turn the Bradley Bushland Reserve into tennis courts.

That was resisted and then in 1983 when we were coming up for an election I can see that there was going to be a change in the composition of the council and that unless the Bradley bushland – well, it wasn’t called the Bradley bushland then, unless that parcel of bushland was protected in some way it would become tennis courts, which I thought would be an abomination.

So I devised a scheme whereby we named it as the Bradley Bushland Reserve after two pioneer women of Mosman. That would make it more difficult to turn it into tennis courts and you’ll find the plaque talks about that dedication, taking place in September 1983. It took place just before the election, and the election did change the nature of the council. But by that time the fact that it was a named Reserve after two pioneers of bush regeneration and who were residents of Mosman, protected the land.

As we came further down the track however, by 1986/87, there was a resurgence of people who wanted to turn it into – at least part of it – into an expansion of the tennis courts, so Lloyd Edwards and I then devised a secondary scheme and that was to get money from the Commonwealth for the Bicentenary and put it into the Bradley Bushland Reserve, so that now if you were going to change its nature you would have to consult with the Commonwealth.

So we got $35,000 and it was very interesting. It was to be presented by somebody from the Commonwealth and I as the Mayor in late ’87, early ’88 I think, was to get the cheque. I was in court and it was a difficult case and my opponent just kept droning on and on so it was getting closer and closer to the time – around 3.30 I think it was when we were due to get the money.

I didn’t finish in court until about 3, so I’d raced out. My clerk had ordered a taxi, which was on the opposite side of Philip Street to my chambers. I raced out getting dressed, put a nice tie on, raced out onto the road and I was struck by a truck as I crossed the road and the near-side mirror of the truck hit me in the chest and it smashed and the arm of the mirror dug into my chest and tore it. I didn’t realise this.

I got into the taxi and the taxi driver said to me, would I lean forward please, and I said, ‘Why?’, ‘because you’re dripping blood on the seat’. So I lent forward and there was blood everywhere. I got out here to the Bradley Bushland Reserve with all this crowd waiting including the then Deputy Mayor, I think it was Mrs. Lee Hutley, Mr. Justice Hutley’s wife, and my shirt was all stained and I was worried that it was going to spoil my suit, which was a very (laughs) expensive suit and so Lee Hutley took my coat from me – it was a bitter cold day I remember and there was a photograph taken with this big blood stain all over my shirt and down into my trousers, and the headline on The Daily was: ‘The Mayor shed blood for Mosman’. (laughs) So I got the 35,000.

No, I remember Peter Clive was the Deputy Mayor and Lee Hutley took my coat. When the ceremony was over we were to have a reception. Well, by that time I’d lost a lot of blood and I was feeling rather weak, as I had to go to hospital, so Peter Clive conducted the reception and I went off to hospital to be stitched up.

It was quite a dramatic time but it meant that the Bradley Bushland Reserve now was twice dedicated – Commonwealth money – safe.

There are really two episodes – one was in the early ’80s when the Commonwealth was proposing to sell off, for development, the area of bush land and trees between what is now the walkway down to Balmoral from the extension of Middle Head Road, and the hospital at HMAS Penguin. I can’t remember how many acres there are but there was a big protest about that down at Balmoral and that’s when I first met Tom Uren.

Tom Uren, who was strong Left Wing Labor, came down there and he and I stood on the same platform and addressed a very big crowd, and the net result of that was the conjunction between the Council and Tom Uren with his strong Labor party connections meant that that didn’t happen. Tom still reminds me quite frequently about the time we first met and stood on the platform together. Of course Tom is one of these very tall men, 6’ plus, and I’m 5’ plus, not very many inches, and the long and the short of it on this platform must have been quite amusing for people to see but it was very effective. So we repulsed that.

The second one was when the Commonwealth was shifting the military from Middle Head and George’s Heights to Holsworthy or wherever they were going to send it, Townsville as well. And there was a thing called the preferred solution that would have involved many 100s of houses on Middle Head. The Council agreed with it, I think, because it felt it didn’t have any alternative. But a number of us, Phil Jenkin of the Harbour Defenders, Don Goodsir of what is now the Headland Preservation Society, all clubbed together to oppose this and I was strongly opposed to it, and worked pretty hard.

Then just before an election in – I think it was probably 1998 the then Prime minister John Howard was convinced that all the defence lands around Sydney Harbour should go into one Trust and that these lands should be made available for public access and not developed for private purposes.

That was a genius decision. It meant that vast tracks of land around Sydney Harbour, including North Head, Middle Head, George’s Heights, Woolwich, Cockatoo Dock, and later the lighthouse at South Head, and the former biological station at Watson’s Bay, all went into this Sydney Harbour Federation Trust.

For Mosman it’s been fantastic, for Sydney it’s been fantastic.