Friday, 27 January, 2023
Thinking of selling? You know who to call
12587199-AV04-23
Australia Day Honours
Dance against violence
Success kicks off
40-page liftout Property Guide
PAGES 4-7
PAGE 16
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INSIDE
PR OP ER TY
School’s in for preppies It was a big step for 50 preppies at Good Shepherd Lutheran College, Noosaville, who began their first year of school this week, and an equally emotional event for their parents. There were 44,000 new preppies starting school across Queensland as part of almost 875,000 students going through the gates for the school year, about 300,000 attending private schools. For state school teachers the first week marked their first increased pay, backdated to July, Education Minister Grace Grace said.
Preppies Aleah, Georgia and Efraim begin their first day at Good Shepherd Lutheran College. Picture: ROB MACCOLL
Nature’s delights By Phil Jarratt
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Noosa’s newest national park is full of uncommon and at-risk wildlife species, and wellmaintained paths that wind through sclerophyll and rainforest habitats, and this one’s on the house. While last year’s landmark 2400-hectare Yurol-Ringtail forest hand-over came with a price tag of $3.5 million (funded equally by the state, Noosa Council and Noosa Parks Association), the conversion of the 1150-hectare West Cooroy State Forest to national park, with no plantation rights to buy, cost nothing other than the blood, sweat and tears of conservationists and true believers over almost a quarter-century. Ironically, while Yurol-Ringtail, the vital completion of Noosa’s crescent of green where the final logging contracts have just been completed, was handed over in front of TV cameras and real, live, piddling koalas, the completion
Celebrating West Cooroy NP, from left: Tony Wellington, Rod Ritchie, Rob Skelton MP, Environment Minister Meaghan Scanlon, Cr Tom Wegener. of the 24-year journey at West Cooroy was celebrated last week by a handful of people standing in the drizzle at the edge of what looks like
an unremarkable forest. But the new West Cooroy National Park is full of surprises, a fact well known to a couple
of long-time campaigners who joined Environment Minister Meaghan Scanlon, Nicklin MP Rob Skelton and Noosa councillor Tom Wegener at the site. Nominated for listing as a national park in the 1999 South East Queensland Regional Forest Agreement, West Cooroy was mysteriously sidelined a couple of years later, although Noosa Parks Association kept beating the drum for it at every opportunity. However, when former Noosa mayor Tony Wellington was elected to the amalgamated Sunshine Coast Council in 2012, he renewed the battle at local and state level. He recalls: “It was always part of the big picture approach of converting local state forests into national parks, a vision that dates back to Dr Arthur Harrold and the Noosa Parks Association in the 1960s. Indeed, NPA has had West Cooroy State Forest on their radar for many decades. Continued page 3