influential landscape design practitioners and was a pioneer of the landscape movement known as the Sydney Bush School. The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens (Aitken and Looker) describes Mackenzie as one of the foremost practitioners in the 1960s promoting an approach to landscape design which respected and harmonised with natural environments. The reserve is associated with Bruce Mackenzie and Associates and other design practices working at 7 Ridge Street, North Sydney who were pioneers of the Sydney Regional School of architecture and the Sydney Bush School of landscape architecture. The place is important in demonstrating aesthetic characteristics and/or a high degree of creative or technical achievement in New South Wales. Illoura Reserve is a seminal work of Australian landscape architecture demonstrating the Sydney Bush School which inspired environmentally conscious landscape design that made use of indigenous flora and was respectful of the special qualities existing in a place such as natural rock formations. The reserve has the special quality of feeling "natural" whilst in reality being a highly designed landscape. Illoura Reserve has compositional qualities such as its layout, transition between levels, views, grouping of trees, texture of ground surfaces such as stone paths and mulched beds, exposed rock and stone walls and planting zones indicative of natural bush, which combine to delight the senses of the park user and provide an escape from the city environment. The original construction of the reserve demonstrated how indigenous plants could be propagated and planted to inspire a feeling of the original natural bush setting of a place, at a time when indigenous plants were largely unavailable from nurseries. Through the use of recycled building materials, such as wharf timbers and sandstone blocks, the reserve design also interprets the former industrial character of the site and its harbour side location. Located on a promontory in East Balmain in a central location on Sydney Harbour the reserve is a landmark green space. The place has strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group in New South Wales for social, cultural or spiritual reasons. The landscape and architecture professions have very high degree of attachment for the place. The community has demonstrated its affection and attachment to the reserve in the successful lobbying to have 6-8 Weston Street adjacent to Illoura Reserve purchased by Council for use as an extension to the reserve. The place possesses uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of