THE TWEED
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Volume 3 #22 Thursday, February 10, 2011 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 editor@tweedecho.com.au adcopy@tweedecho.com.au www.tweedecho.com.au
LOCAL & INDEPENDENT
W E Npage12
Truck-stop plan riles residents Murray Simpson
The residents of the sleepy bywater of Chinderah have woken to find a full-blown 24-hour highway truck stop about to be plonked in their midst – and they’re hopping mad. Outspoken caravan park resident Lynda Mack has accused the Tweed Shire Council of deliberately suppressing information about the true nature of an industrial development in Ozone Street. She says an innocent-looking development application (DA) has been lodged with the council to create a public road and acoustic fencing to service a four-lot industrial subdivision in Ozone Street. But she says the council threw a smokescreen over what was really in the wind for at least one of the industrial lots – a 24-hour BP highway service centre for north-bound traffic to mirror one already built on the southbound side at Kingscliff. The cat was let out of the bag last week when the Roads and Traffic Authority confirmed in a letter to the council general manager Mike Rayner that a highway service centre had been planned for the site for at least six years.
Strategic site since 2005 RTA regional manager David Bell said the locality had been identified as a strategic site for a highway service centre in a study completed in 2005. ‘The Far North Coast Regional Strategy considers it a suitable location and consistent with the RTA’s function of promoting road safety through fatigue management,’ said Mr Bell. The RTA was responding to a request to attend a workshop at the council last week to discuss the subdivision. The RTA declined to send a representative to the workshop which turned out to be a rowdy affair attended by a number of Chinderah residents and chaired by mayor Kevin Skinner. Ms Mack, the president of the Tweed Heri-
tage Caravan Park Residents Association, said she ran into an information brick wall while investigating an earlier DA for Ozone Street. That DA, filed in 2009 by Planit Consultancy of Kingscliff for developers Wareema Pty Ltd, sought to concrete over an old cane drain/ waterway that ran down the notional ‘paper’ road known as Ozone Street to give access to the industrial site. The road ran past the caravan park and residents objected to the truck traffic it would generate and pointed out the cane drain/waterway had become a significant fish habitat. A public outcry forced the council to review the DA and an amended DA was lodged in May last year proposing a new access road running past the neighbouring Royal Pacific Caravan Park. Ms Mack, a retired mortgage broker, said she went to the council offices to inspect the earlier DA. ‘To my surprise I noticed the correspondence attached to the DA referred to a highway service centre planned for Lot 1 of the subdivision. ‘The council officer confirmed it had been spoken of for some time. ‘I asked for photocopies of the correspondence, among other material. ‘We waited hours for it to come back – but when we got home we found that correspondence had not been photocopied. ‘I rang the council the next day and they agreed to let me look at the DA paperwork again. ‘But this time the correspondence relating to the service centre had gone and was replaced with clean white photocopied paper – not the yellowing paper there was before. ‘This time the council denied the earlier correspondence existed.’ The Tweed Heritage residents have been joined by Royal Pacific park residents and adjoining neighbours who are horrified to discover their quiet streets are to play host to all-night highway truck traffic.
Gallery provides an Aussie insight
Tweed River Art Gallery’s assistant director Anne Schardin admires several of the impressive portraits in the exhibition ‘The Australian Character’ on show at the gallery till October 16. The foreground work is ‘Farmer Girl’ (2003, Lambda print) by Petrina Hicks, while the portrait rear left is ‘Eye Candy’ (from the series ‘Descendants’, 2008, lightjet print) by Petrina Hicks, and the one on the right is ‘Caitlin’, 1987 oil on canvas by Penny Dowie. More gallery news on page 19. continued on page 6 Photo Jeff ‘Portraits to the Gentry’ Dawson
ABN 82 087 650 682
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