Report:
I was requested by local residents, some TRRA members, to attended the little gathering (10 or so) at Lot 424 today to discuss the 2012 Plan of Management for Halifax Caravan Park which revisits the 2010 plan rejected previously by Councillors, to incorporate the small piece of Crown Land into the Park as an extension.
This is all part of the pressure being applied By the State Government to Councils to run Crown Land Holiday Parks more profitably, so that returns to the Crown are greater and more money can be spent on their upkeep and other Crown assets.
Council ,who is now more accountable under the new trust system set up (see previous post) is keen to achieve this as well. In the Council and Governments eyes they only see more dollars in this expansion. Of course the local residents that use this little sanctuary regularly and watch the local wildlife in it don’t necessarily share this view .
We all got our photo taken by the Examiner Photographer. Sarah Price had asked him to come down and take a few pictures for a story she is doing in next weeks Examiner. We had a good discussion on the history of this matter, (TRRA presented a submission on this in 2009) as they needed to know where all this came from. I have encouraged them to reactivate their little group down there. Dale Kent is co-ordinating from the ‘Intrepid’ Owners Corporation. I told them TRRA would assist them if required. I advised them to apply pressure to the East Ward Councillors to take this further than just the Holiday Park Trust , they must get the POM changed, get onto Craig Baumann the Local Member and write to the Minister. A couple of them have already been talking to the Environmental Defender’s office and have photos of Koalas in there etc. Apparently they had noticed new pegs etc.over the last few weeks, and were all keen to know what was going on. We will keep members posted on further developments as they come to hand.
Dick Appleby, TRRA Vice President
Hi Dick,
Thank you for your visit and attendance at the gathering, there would have been many more concerned people there if we had had a little more notice to organize.
We will follow your advice and contact and lobby Craig Baumann, as well as the Minister Andrew Stoner, to plead our case. The secretive moves of The Trust Group seem to assume that they can ignore the concerns of the residents and owners, as well as the direction of the majority of the councilors, and just do as they please with the idea that they can fence out the public from the public reserve, remove some 30 trees, install facilities, and lighting, outlay some hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this, with the hope of redeeming the expenditure by renting out 12 camping sites, for perhaps 10 weeks of the year. It just doesn’t make sense.
Any assistance or lobbying that you or other members, are able to contribute will be greatly appreciated by the many users of the park (or Lot 424) – not to mention the resident koalas.