Mary Newlinds, blocked airport to set benchmark for community activism

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This was published 6 years ago

Mary Newlinds, blocked airport to set benchmark for community activism

Updated

Debate regarding an additional airport for the greater Sydney region is nothing new. As far back as 1953, a group of aviation enthusiasts had their eye on a possible site for a light airfield on the north side of the harbour. The place in question was 100 acres of state-owned Crown land amid the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, an area also bordered by the semi-rural and sparsely populated suburb of Duffys Forest.

Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, having initially gained council approval for the project, the pro-airport lobby seemed close to their goal. What they had not counted on was a group formed in mid-1971 called 'Stop the Duffys Forest Airport Committee', the driving force of which was Dr Mary Newlinds​.

Mary Newlinds successfully campaigned against an airport at Duffys Forest.

Mary Newlinds successfully campaigned against an airport at Duffys Forest.

The campaign to stop the airport and to preserve "a million years of natural balance" ranged across Commonwealth, state and local council jurisdictions, was highly and tightly orchestrated and so effective that, in the end, the proponents had to reach for their parachutes.

The federal minister for civil aviation put an end to the airport proposal in December 1971 but a further battle, to ensure the land in question was made part of the national park, continued until 1978.

It's not too much of a stretch to suggest this anti-airport campaign established a benchmark for similar community activism in and around the city through the 1970s and beyond.

Newlinds' approach to this cause was typical and illustrative of a life lived to high standards and of an intellect and spirit that was indefatigable. In 2002, she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her dedication to conservation.

Mary Stewart Campbell was born on May 11, 1929, in Rose Bay to Evelyn (nee Rennie) and David Campbell, a wool buyer with a wide interest in political and social questions. Mary's early memories of life in Rose Bay included watching flying boats land on the harbour and rowing out to Shark Island with her father.

A family move to the upper north shore in 1940 gave her the space and scope to explore one of her life's longest and most abiding interests, a deep and profound love of horses. She shone academically at Abbotsleigh and enjoyed her role as a defender on the school hockey team. Her hero as a teenager was the first female Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie. She enrolled in veterinary science at Sydney University in 1947.

A setback with a first year physics exam - in part due to it not being taught in all girls' schools at the time - meant a change of course to medicine. At The Women's College, she thrived as head student. In her final year in 1953, her secretary was an up-and-coming medical student called Marie Bashir.

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She ventured to Britain in 1956 and worked at Newcastle upon Tyne and then Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. On taking up the job of paediatric registrar at Crown St Hospital in Sydney in 1959, she met her husband - the then medical superintendent Dr John Newlinds.

Upon returning from England for a second time in 1964, the couple moved to a 5 acre block at Joalah Rd, Duffys Forest and didn't move out of the postcode again.

Being the Duffys Forest GP in the 1960s involved working from a surgery at home (where patients would wait in turn on the front veranda) and, with a leather doctor's bag and stethoscope in hand, making house calls to her assorted patients; market gardeners, horse owners and other residents drawn to the quiet majesty of the area. She liked the medical profession but was never defined by it or her status as a doctor.

Newlinds was a high-minded person who saw the airport proposal as an affront to the tranquillity and beauty of Ku-ring-gai Chase, the preservation of which to her was non-negotiable. The anti-airport campaign involved bumper stickers and rowdy town hall meetings but was more characterised by systematic letter writing and unrelenting arguments – one of which was the proposed development was a Trojan horse for a second domestic terminal. Try as it might, the pro-airport lobby simply couldn't match the energy, determination and intellect of her kitchen table committee.

She enjoyed routine and hard work but fully understood the benefits of down time and leisure. Aside from tending to her horse daily (there were many in her nearly 50 years in Duffys Forest), she cared for a range of distinctive and unlikely pets.

When her husband bought a sugar cane and cattle retreat at Shark Creek on the Clarence River in 1972, she took on the role of part-time country wife and host to numerous school holiday visitors. When the floods came or adventures went awry, she handled the problems with practical good humour and an ever-present sense of the ridiculous.

​She lived the last five years of her life in the Terrey Hills nursing home, interred within sight of the forever pristine national park. As dementia took its toll, she moved in a diminished state along the same corridors that, in her prime as a doctor, she strode with such confidence distributing wisdom, logic, wit and compassion in equal measure.

Mary Newlinds is survived by her three children and seven grandchildren. Her husband John died in 2015.

Peter Newlinds

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