coastal walkers need to dodge golf balls - Sydney Morning Herald

Obstacles to completing one of the great outdoor walks are errant golf balls, the odd angry rifle shot and an 89-year-old woman living in a house her father built.

The 23-kilometre stretch of coastal walkway from Coogee to Port Botany is only half finished. Major impediments exist with the need to traverse four golf courses, bush bash around the Anzac Rifle Range at Malabar, and negotiate dead ends and treacherous cliffs at Lurline Bay.

Randwick mayor Scott Nash wants to spend $20 million to achieve the holy grail of an uninterrupted walkway, with ratepayers being asked to back an environmental levy to fund it.

''I am determined to complete our section of Sydney's great coastal walk,'' the Liberal mayor said. ''The community wants it for their outdoor recreation.

''But more importantly, it showcases how beautiful our city can be.''

For locals and tourists alike, taking the sea air is a Sydney rite of outdoor exultation.

Every day runners and walkers charge or amble from Bondi to Bronte, Manly to North Head or Kurnell to Cronulla. It's an experience that tourism authorities and National Parks and Wildlife Service head Ann King hope to parlay into an international drawcard. Tourism Australia has identified multi-day walks as the fastest growing area of nature-based tourism in Australia.

''Walking from Barrenjoey to the Royal National Park, which includes Sydney Harbour, is recognised as a national landscape,'' Ms King said.

Yet the realities of local turf wars challenge this enthusiasm.

At the northern end of the proposed Randwick council walk, the shooting fraternity refuses to vacate the Anzac Rifle Range at Malabar Headland until its landlord, the federal government, finds it a new home.

In July last year, the NSW Rifle Association won a Supreme Court challenge to stop eviction by the then Labor government to create a national park. Association chairman John Fitzgerald said the federal government had breached a 1998 licence agreement by failing to find an alternative site.

''We are happy to move for the walkers and a national park for a new home somewhere in the Sydney basin,'' he said. ''And we have written a letter seeking a meeting with the new minister for finance to discuss this outcome.''

Further south, the council has to negotiate safe access for walkers around four courses of the Randwick, The Coast, St Michael's and NSW golf clubs.

Mr Nash said that the terms of the Crown land leases guaranteed public access.

However, Kieran Semple, The Coast's general manger, said the clubs had concerns that a dedicated walkway would lead to liability claims from walkers injured by golf balls.

''It's a problem already,'' he said. ''The council itself had a surveyor looking over the course and he was hit in the head.''

The council, however, has one important person on side.

It has rezoned a South Coogee home for public recreation to allow a future re-routing of the walk directly to Lurline Bay, rather than walkers taking a detour away from the coast back up to Malabar Road.

The 89-year-old owner of the house, which was built by her father in the 1930s, can remain until she is ready to leave. The council will pay market value.

The woman declined to be identified, but said: ''I am happy with the current arrangement and support the walkway.

''But I just don't want people knocking on my door, waiting for me to die, so it can go ahead.''