Environment/Global News/Organics Feature Articles
From "Maple Street Co-op News", Apr/May 2005
The Campaign for the Obi Obi
by Ruth Parnell
It was a year ago, on Wednesday 14 April, that Cornerstone sent in the
Deen Brothers to demolish trees on the site earmarked for a Woolworths
supermarket in Maleny. They'd have succeeded completely in their mission
had some brave protesters not climbed the remaining trees and staged
a vigil to protect them from destruction.
There have been many highs and lows in the meantime, including Daniel
Jones's six-week-long stint in the remaining bunya pine, and hundreds
of dedicated Maleny locals have carried on the campaign to keep
the Obi Obi creekside site free from inappropriate development –
a campaign that's been in progress for several years. They have lobbied
at local, state and federal levels to try to protect the flora and fauna,
particularly the habitat of the platypus whose burrows encroach well
into the proposed construction zone.
Maple Street Co-op has had an ongoing role in the campaign, for we consider
that a concrete box supermarket alongside such a sensitive part of the
creek would be a disaster in terms of environmental as wellas socio-economic
outcomes and thus would be at odds with our ethics and principles. Many
of our members have been very active in the ongoing protesting and lobbying.
Director Sidonie Bouchet was among seven protesters arrested on the
morning the Deen Brothers came to Maleny, and staff member Rod Castle
was one of several activists who took to the remaining trees to save
them; both of them have been part of further actions in the past year.
Your editor and other staff members like Lori Sturtz and Sue Verstraten
have been plugging away behind a computer, a camera lens, a shopfront
window and even over an oven
to raise awareness about the campaign.
Since our last edition, there have been some noteworthy developments.
Platypus expert Dr Les Hall met with Cornerstone in early February to
discuss his survey of the creek bank. A group of protesters under the
Obi Creek Protection Group banner made a stand on 17 February outside
the Brisbane offices of F. A. Pidgeon & Son, parent company of Cornerstone
Properties, to draw attention to the potential destruction of the local
platypus habitat due to construction activities. Maleny Voice, now a
legally incorporated association,
held its first AGM on 26 February, and a new phone tree has been set
up.
Of particular significance is that the Mairwarr Indigenous Environmental
Group has made a Land Acquisition Application to the Australian Government's
Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) to purchase the land at 2–4
Bunya Street for an Environmental Park and an Environmental and Cultural
Education
Centre, to be shared between indigenous and non-indigenous communities.
("Mairwarr", incidentally, means "place where platypus
breed".) According to the application, "the centre on the
site will also be used for cultural maintenance and restorative purposes
by Indigenous people and to generate income to enable proper management
of the property". One proposed land use is to revegetate the land
with endemic species as well as bush food and bush medicine plants and
to create a habitat for native fauna displaced since the site was degraded
in April last year.
The detailed, professional application was prepared for the group by
Sue Saunders, Terri-Anne Goodreid, Garry Claridge and Jill Jordan and
was presented at a public meeting on Saturday 26 February. It has
since been submitted to the ILC. The group also prepared a comprehensive
Obi Obi Creek Environmental Park Property Management Plan, which is
a supporting document to the application. (Maleny Voice has
downloadable versions of the application and management plan at http://www.malenyvoice.info.)
The Mairwarr Group has since received communication from the ILC, acknowledging
receipt of the application and stating that it is proceeding according
to the guidelines. The group is now in the next stage of
the process. We also understand that Cornerstone is aware that the application
has been submitted.
Some campaigners have even gone so far as to suggest that Woolworths'
top executives, with their huge salaries and packages, could easily
afford to buy the site from Cornerstone and hand it over to the Maleny
community as a gesture of goodwill and cooperation! What a sign of corporate
social responsibility that would be – and what a precedent!
Protest actions continue to be planned and staged. A large rally was
held in Tesch Park on Sunday 27 February and was addressed by Mairwarr
Indigenous Environmental Group members and others including Susie Duncan,
spokesperson for the Obi Creek Protection Group. After the speakers'
segments, protesters formed a human chain and wound their way under
the bridge to the Bunya Street site, where they tied colourful ribbons,
banners and artworks to the fencing. And a Peaceful Protest Workshop
took place
on 19 March, at which a Code of Conduct was drawn up.
In the week before Easter, the installation of a bright lime-green Holden
station-wagon between the gates at the site, bearing "No Woolworths"
signs and weighed down with cement, caused a commotion around town –
but no one has claimed responsibility for placing it there, and this
was not an official action by any established campaign group. The car
has since been removed, but Maleny is "Still Holden On", as
one message on the car announced. Amazingly, at the end of March the
fence itself was mysteriously taken away; again, not a sanctioned protest
action.
Maleny campaigners remain united in their opposition to a supermarket
on the site and are maintaining an early morning vigil nearby. The Obi
Creek Protection Group has restated its objective for the site to be
acquired for community use and will continue to pursue opportunities
to negotiate this with
Cornerstone and Woolworths. However, should work begin at the site –
and once Cornerstone secures a builder, this could be any time now –
the group will be getting behind any peaceful mass protests that are
staged; in fact, it is already liaising with the police department.
For now, perhaps Cornerstone is merely waiting to hear the results of
the Mairwarr group's application to the ILC.
Commenting on the scope for the acquisition of the site from Cornerstone,
Susie Duncan said: "I think we're closer to achieving this than
we were six to 12 months ago, because Cornerstone knows that the community
is seriously committed to protecting the site and is not going to go
away."
She added: "I have no doubt that Cornerstone and Woolworths are
looking for a simple way to get off the site to avoid continuing bad
PR, and that the community is more than willing to negotiate a realistic
purchase
arrangement."
[Thanks to the Obi Creek Protection Group and various campaigners for
their contributions to this article. If you have any queries about the
campaign, contact Joe Colreavy on 5499 9662, Jan Duffield on 5429 6021
or Susie Duncan on 5429 6622.]
[From "Maple Street Co-op News", Apr/May 2005; published by
The Maple Street Co-operative Society Ltd, 37 Maple Street, Maleny,
Qld 4552, Australia, tel (07) 5494 2088, email maplest.co-op@serv
.net.au,
website http://www.maplestreetco-op.com.au]