Defending Bellingen’s Natural Peace
Yesterday I walked over the Bellingen Bridge. I looked at the river and saw what looked like big mullet browsing around the ribbon weed. There were a couple of moor hens paddling over the hydrilla near the southern bank. The water, just below me, was cold and clear, someone was swimming, or at least standing waist-deep in the water. There were a few people sitting around on the grass in the sunlight. Just upstream I could see the lowland rainforest on The Island. There was no sign of any flying foxes, not from the bridge, but I could hear a few there when I got closer and listened. Straight up the river, in the distance, there was Ngaali. Luckily, I did not see a long, high-level concrete bridge built for cars and trucks to speed through all this and dominate it. You can see those anywhere, everywhere. But one of those is what the Council’s consultants are recommending, in order to further consolidate the sovereignty of cars and trucks.
Ross Macleay, North Bank.
Save Urunga Green Space
The answer to the question posed by your article “Will affordable housing project harm the environment?”, (30 July), is an emphatic: Yes!
And although Diane Jacobus (letters 30July) is correct when she says “nothing ever changes unless people come up with new ideas”, the critical thing is that those changes must be for the better, not for the worse.
The proposed construction of houses on Lot 1 Ferry Street Urunga is a change for the worse, not for the better, and would be detrimental on many levels not only to those living nearby, but to the surrounding neighbourhood, the local environment, and Urunga as a whole.
Lot 1 has evolved over many decades into a delightful and much appreciated little greenspace, with a diversity of local plants and animals which have naturalised underneath the majestic canopy of multiple mature eucalypts and other species, including 70-plus year-old blackbutts, home to gliders and other tree-dwelling creatures.
Add a couple of seats and a little maintenance, and you’ve got a unique, world-class suburban nature park, accessible right from the footpath, an asset any progressive country town would be envious of.
Contrary to what the proponents of this scheme claim, putting six houses on this block, each with their own complement of people, families, human activity, cars and paraphernalia, will destroy any existing eco-system, and cause the death of most, if not all, of the trees due to the amount of soil disturbance and root destruction required to establish these houses and their services on site. The increased vehicle traffic turning into and out of the already constricted Ferry Street would also be an unacceptable hazard.
Given that people move to beautiful Bellingen Shire for clean air, space, and a country lifestyle, it seems illogical and contradictory to condemn people to live in pre-fabricated houses crowded together as close as is possible to a noisy, smelly railway line.
Finding ways to make housing more affordable is a worthy aim which we all support, but it must not be an excuse for an ill-conceived project which will help very few at the expense of many others, and, if built, be a bad example to all of affordable housing.
If Bellingen council wishes to address the affordable housing issue, it must find less destructive and less divisive ways to do so. Lot 1 is the wrong site for this project.
Peter Dingle