The local community came out in force on Sunday to oppose a proposed rezoning
Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council1 is in talks with NSW Government around a rezoning that could potentially allow them to build 50 houses on an area of bushland off Woy Woy Rd that is currently zoned C2 ‘Environmental Protection’ due to the endangered wetlands (hanging swamp), the presence of cultural heritage on and around the site—including rock carvings and an ancient, sacred tree—and habitat for many threatened species, including the critically endangered Swift Parrot.
A community gathering on 23 August at Bambara Road, Kariong was opened by First Nations speakers Aunty Tracie Howie and Renee Sales, with locals participating in a traditional smoking ceremony. Many residents of nearby Narara Ecovillage, plus members of groups such as Permaculture Central Coast and Rising Tide, were in attendance on the day.
Coast Environmental Alliance Spokesperson and event organiser Jake Cassar said:
“We had such an incredible show of community spirit and unity. To see the broader community coming together again with the Traditional Custodians for such an important issue was just a great piece of Central Coast history to be a part of.
“We had hundreds of people attend … and around a dozen guest speakers, including local conservationists, elders, and members of the Aboriginal community.”
Ursula Da Silva, a guest speaker at the event, said:
“[T]he flow-on effect of having rubbish, pollution, weeds, cats and dogs accessing the reserve, graffiti and potential vandalism to the cultural sites, will seriously impact the surrounding National Park forever.
“The Central Coast’s environment is being chipped away at piece by piece, meaning that if we don’t do something, it could eventually be left unrecognisable from the place we all know and love. We don’t choose to live on the beautiful Central Coast to be immersed in the urban sprawl.
“An option could be to end house hoarding as seen with the thousands of empty houses2 currently sitting on the Central Coast. We certainly care about providing affordable housing. It just needs to be done in the right places where the impacts on our environment won’t be so devastating and irreversible.”
Kariong Progress Association President, Lisa Bellamy, was also a guest speaker:
“All we are asking is for the Government to abide by the laws that they created to protect our most vulnerable wild places and to not offer special concessions to private developers. We’ve had absolutely no support from our State Labor member Liesl Tesch on this matter, and we are hoping the community will remember this at the State election next year.”
Cassar said:
“After a nearly 7-year battle, we were told recently that a decision would likely be made at the end of September as to whether or not the area will be rezoned, so we decided to bring the community together in solidarity to show that we are still here fighting for a fair go for our wildlife and irreplaceable cultural heritage.
“We believe the cards have been well and truly stacked against us from the start, with it likely being decided long ago that Land Councils across NSW will have a separate set of rules applying to them when it comes to development in protected areas.
“[We] are doing our absolute best to stop the domino effect3 of the Government allowing DLALC to claim the majority of our Crown land and either develop it or sell it off with no regard for the impacts on our environment and cultural heritage.”
Coast Environment Alliance (CEA) is planning to challenge any rezoning decision in the Land & Environment Court.
An alternative view is presented by Jayson Cooke on his blog A Long Con Gone on Too Long.4 Cooke speaks out in support of DLALC and questions the integrity of CEA and its main actors.
Cover photo shows the Grandmother Tree (near the proposed development), courtesy of Aiyana Caposewa.
- The developer is Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council (DLALC), whose custodianship on the Central Coast is disputed by other elements of the Aboriginal community. According to several speakers at Sunday’s rally, DLALC was recently given $50,000 by NSW government expressly to promote the proposed development. ↩︎
- This number could be as high as 14,500 empty dwellings, according to one of the speakers. ↩︎
- According to Jake Cassar, a rezoning decision here would set a dangerous precedent in NSW. It’s possible that the state government is leveraging land councils to meet its growth targets on the Central Coast, which has been targeted to overtake Newcastle as the state’s second most populous city. ↩︎
- For one example of Cooke’s writing on the subject, across at least 5 blogs, see ‘Culturally unsafe event warning’, https://wordpress.com/reader/blogs/25377205/posts/13270 ↩︎
