Since becoming Chair of the Heritage Council, Hazel Hawke has visited many regional centres throughout NSW and spoken to councillors and the community about heritage in their local area. She is pictured here at the Federation Museum at Corowa on the Murray River. Photograph courtesy of The Border Mail, Albury-Wodonga.

One of the most pleasing aspects of my role as Chair of the Heritage Council is the time I am able to spend travelling around local communities in the State and seeing at first hand how heritage comes alive in the care of those communities. We may not automatically think of the word 'heritage' when we recall the towns, villages and many other places with which we all have some kind of past connection. I know that one of my most powerful memories is of a little street in Mount Hawthorn, Western Australia, where I spent energetic and seemingly endless childhood summer days. What largely gives this memory its power is the sense of place engendered by that little street, providing as it did a backdrop for carefree childhood games.

Yet this is the stuff of which 'heritage' is truly made - those personal connections with places that are special to us. The value we put upon those places, people and things important to us as individuals can in turn become absorbed into a larger collective memory which makes up a local community's heritage.

The Heritage Council has recognised the strength of heritage conservation at a community level by introducing a new policy aimed at linking local communities' care of their heritage to the level of government which is closest to them - their local council.

The Local Government Heritage Policy seeks to achieve major breakthroughs in conserving heritage in local communities in a number of ways. For example, heritage training for local government officers will be intensified, including a new program for raising awareness of Aboriginal culture. The existing Heritage Assistance Program of grant funding for local government will be further value-added, with a pledge of $ for $ funding so that at least 50% of councils throughout New South Wales will have prepared or completed local heritage plans by the year 2000. These are just two of the initiatives in the new policy, which is reprinted in full on page 6 of this edition of the newsletter. This issue also looks at the Astonville Plateau, one of the heritage features of far north-eastern NSW. I had the pleasure of travelling to Lismore and Tenterfield for the October meeting of the Heritage Council and would like to thank the Councillors, staff and community for their hospitality.