A new exhibition in Lithgow, presented as part of the Australian Heritage Festival, focuses attention on the remarkable Pagoda Country north of Lithgow. This extraordinary area features an ancient pagoda landscape, ‘lost villages’ of sandstone pinnacles and spectacular escarpments with Aboriginal rock art, canyons, rivers, forests, swamps, waterfalls and rare plants and animals.
Destination Pagodas Alliance is proposing a new State Conservation area for this landscape, to balance the protection of its ancient beauty, promote visitation to the area and continue sustainable underground mining. The groups behind the concept are seeking a proposal that allows mining to continue its operation under the State Conservation Zone, while work on a sustainable economic eco-tourism plan to make the ‘Pagoda Country’ a wild attraction equivalent to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area that lies to its east can begin. To learn more, see the detailed outline of the Destination Pagodas Proposal.
Exhibition Pagoda at the Gang Gang Gallery in Lithgow
The 2021 Australian Heritage Festival features an exhibition on the pagoda landscape and a public forum on the proposed State Conservation area. ‘Exhibition Pagoda’ at the Gang Gang Gallery in Lithgow fits very comfortably within the Heritage Festival’s theme ‘Our Heritage for the Future’. At its heart is an extraordinary installation art piece by acclaimed artist Anne Graham but surrounding it is an array of speaker and conversation opportunities promoting the Destination Pagodas, a proposal to protect our ‘Natural Heritage for the Future’.
‘Exhibition Pagoda’ at the Gang Gang Gallery in Lithgow will run from 28 April to 20 June 2021. We encourage you to visit, you won’t be disappointed!
For more information, go to the Gang Gang Gallery website.
Pagoda Journey Forum
The Pagoda Journey Forum, a key speaker event, is on Saturday 15 May 2021. This forum will provide an opportunity to hear of the treasures tucked away in the country earmarked for protection.
It will provide insight into the unique landscape, the amazing range of flora within it, the efforts that have been made to protect it to date and the potential for the regional economy that the Destination Pagodas proposal provides. To get an idea of the beauty of this country, view this two minute drone footage by Tim Harris who claimed it to be “the most beautiful place I have ever visited”.
As a highlight in the forum, you will hear a conversation between a curator and two acclaimed artists relating to the inspiration they derive from landscape, an insight into the visceral response we all feel when connecting to wild beauty.
The forum commences with morning tea at 10.30am, and formal proceedings begin at 11am. Light lunch will be served, covered under the ticket price ($15pp).
Bookings are essential – BUY NOW.
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This area is a wonderful communication between geology and the forces of nature.
We need the tonic of wildness!
I sincerely hope this MAGNIFICENT area can be preserved!!! It is a most wonderful – if not unique – area of the world. I’ve thought for a very long time that maybe we should have a lovely train trip, running on a permanent basis, which can show people (through glass ceilings/windows) this amazing scenery as they travel through the incredible rocks, gorges, etc. It is a breathtaking landscape and I marvel at its rugged, fantastic beauty, every time I visit it – or pass through it.