PRINCE HENRY CLIFF WALK, LOOKOUT AND GATHERING PLACE ECHO POINT KATOOMBA NSW

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Gold Medal Winner at the 2021 Landscape Excellence Awards

33 Parallel director Darren Mansfield prepared the detail design and documentation and undertook construction phase services for the Prince Henry Cliff Walk and Gathering Place at the iconic Echo Point for the Blue Mountains City Council and is currenlty under construction.

The Prince Henry Cliff Walk and Prince of Wales Lookout had been closed for 10 years due to partial collapse, and the existing lookouts were under increasing pressure from visitor numbers and overcrowding with more than 2 million visitors a year visiting the site.

The project, on a technically challenging site, was to reopen the cliff walk and lookout and to make it night-lit and fully wheelchair accessible with the option for a future accessible extension connecting to the Blue Mountains National Park Three Sisters Walking Track. A 20 metre long bridge, fabricated off-site and lifted into place, was required to cross a gully to access the site from the existing Queen Elizabeth Lookout.

In addition the Dharug and Gundungurra traditional owners, who first introduced the idea of a Gathering Place in 2016, wanted a space where they could share the significance of this sacred part of Country to visitors. The Gathering Place was to fit on a small peninsula of land behind the lookout and was envisioned in the spirit of an amphitheatre. The new gathering place is called Dyindinggang to the Gundungurra and Dyinbarri to the Dharug people.

To complicate matters, a length of heritage stone wall had to be preserved undisturbed on the tight site, and a proposal for a new enlarged visitor centre was not to be compromised.

A wheelchair accessible night-lit raised boardwalk, bridge and lookout replaces the original track which had failed due to landslip and had been closed for several years. Importantly, the layout allows for the retrofit of the CHROFI designed Visitor Centre building should it go ahead.

The walled Gathering Place provides ampitheatre style seating for groups learning about the Aboriginal stories of the location and will incorporate artwork in the pavement and pavement lighting. Endemic planting when mature, will wrap around the Gathering Place, making it a “Glade within a Grove”. Echo Point is one of the most visited sites of Aboriginal cultural significance in Australia.

The walk opened in 2020 and has been designed to integrate with a future connection to the National Parks Three Sisters Walking Track.