Bilpin international ground for Creative initiatives (BigCi) is an artist residency located on a large 8-acre property in the town of Bilpin, right on the doorstep of Wollemi National Park, in the World Heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains, one of the world’s biodiversity and geodiversity hotspots.
Positioned along the dramatic Bells Line of Road, about one and a half hours drive from Sydney, BigCi is within easy reach by car from the world famous Blue Mountains National Park and the stunning Gardens of Stone National Park.
The natural landscape of BigCi provides a unique venue for staging a wide variety of creative events in the strikingly beautiful environment of rocks, native plants, flowers, trees, dams and creeks.
Wollemi National Park
Wollemi National Park is the second largest national park in New South Wales, with the area of 4,870 square kilometres. It contains the largest wilderness area in NSW, the Wollemi Wilderness. The park lies 129 kilometres northwest of Sydney and forms part of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
It contains the only known wild specimens of the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis), a species thought to have become extinct approximately thirty million years ago but discovered alive in three small stands in 1994. The park’s terrain is extremely rugged and contains high mountains, wild cliffs, deep canyons and undisturbed rainforest.
BigCi lies on the border of the Wollemi National Park, and the property includes bushland, creeks and natural rock formations, as well as some of the famous Wollemi Pine plants.
The Wollemi National Park is key to maintaining the quality of many tributary rivers to the Hawkesbury River and Goulburn-Hunter River catchments. The National Park incorporates rivers such as the Wolgan River, Colo River and Capertee River which arise from outside the Park. The Colo River is regarded as the last unpolluted river in New South Wales because the majority of it flows through the Wollemi National Park.