Dark now lives at Varuna and has spent more than 25 years involved in conservation movements, and has been a supporter of the campaign for World Heritage listing. It might make it harder for developers here, which is great. The harder the better. All they are doing is making money out of it and they have never made an attempt to educate anyone. Elsewhere the decision was being met with similarly mixed feelings.
People come to live up here because of the environment, and they want to see it protected.
Nor was the World Heritage listing high on the schedule of conversation topics at the Hotel Imperial in Mount Victoria, where the buzz around the bar was mainly about about the effects of the GST on small business and rising fuel costs. Labourer Ray Stubberfield, who lives in Lithgow, said it did not make much difference to the man in the street.