MT MEE NEWS May 2009
By Ian Wells
There are mutterings of “El Nino” in the air, but so far our season remains brilliant. Pastures have recovered well from the beating they took in the long hard drought times, although the common ratstail grasses did enjoy a lift from the difficult conditions. Let’s hope that they begin to disappear again – and that their big brother just down the road doesn’t spread his wings too quickly.
Next month – June 14th to be precise, sees the return of the St Lucia Orchestra for the first Mt Mee Sunday Concert of the year. Entitled “Life is Great” (in the Sunshine State), it celebrates Queensland’s 150 years in a timely fashion and focuses on some young Queensland performers. (See page 9 for more information.) This orchestra is very polished, very popular and attracts top line guest artists. Their Mountain concerts have been booked out in recent years. Reserve your seats now with Kay (5498 2104) or Joyce (5498 2270).
Feral dogs – mostly remote dingo crosses, continue to molest livestock on our Mountain. The density of settlement is however now such that general baiting is out of the question.
As I write, a key meeting between Mountain landholders and officials of the Moreton Regional Council and several Queensland Government Departments is to be held in late April to plan a joint approach to feral dog control. The general idea is to at last undertake simultaneous activity within the Mt Mee State Forest and in the neigbouring grazing country in which stock losses have been occurring.
Dogs are known to have territories of 30 or more km in coastal country and our landholders are confident that many of the troublesome dogs that hunt their country actually hole up in the safety of the State Forest. The meeting aims to pinpoint trouble-spots around the Forestry boundaries and to plan appropriate action.
In the meantime, a group of West Mt Mee landholders will be running a baiting program from the 14th of May. All nearby residents will be notified and urged to prevent their domestic dogs from wandering during the following week or two.
Rod Thomas has been attempting, (without result at the time of writing), to trap some particularly elusive ferals known to hunt out of a scrubby acreage block in Settlement Road. These particular dogs are well known and have been recognised worrying stock on several nearby properties, but are too cunning to offer themselves for shooting.
ROAD WIDENING
Controversy continues to rage over the widening of a section of Settlement Road in preparation for the construction of the new complex of church buildings. Settlement Road has been a very popular scenic walk for Mountain residents, with the narrow ribbon of bitumen fringed on both sides by magnificent eucalypts.
Feral dogs – mostly remote dingo crosses, continue to molest livestock on our Mountain. The density of settlement is however now such that general baiting is out of the question.
As I write, a key meeting between Mountain landholders and officials of the Moreton Regional Council and several Queensland Government Departments is to be held in late April to plan a joint approach to feral dog control. The general idea is to at last undertake simultaneous activity within the Mt Mee State Forest and in the neigbouring grazing country in which stock losses have been occurring.
Dogs are known to have territories of 30 or more km in coastal country and our landholders are confident that many of the troublesome dogs that hunt their country actually hole up in the safety of the State Forest. The meeting aims to pinpoint trouble-spots around the Forestry boundaries and to plan appropriate action.
In the meantime, a group of West Mt Mee landholders will be running a baiting program from the 14th of May. All nearby residents will be notified and urged to prevent their domestic dogs from wandering during the following week or two.
Rod Thomas has been attempting, (without result at the time of writing), to trap some particularly elusive ferals known to hunt out of a scrubby acreage block in Settlement Road. These particular dogs are well known and have been recognised worrying stock on several nearby properties, but are too cunning to offer themselves for shooting.
ROAD WIDENING
Controversy continues to rage over the widening of a section of Settlement Road in preparation for the construction of the new complex of church buildings. Settlement Road has been a very popular scenic walk for Mountain residents, with the narrow ribbon of bitumen fringed on both sides by magnificent eucalypts.
Before photo below:
Roadworks photo at left: No more – as the pictures illustrate, it is now all one sided, and many people are puzzled at the chain of events. But the trees are gone and only questions remain – how could this have come about, and how can it be prevented in the future?
The facts are that while the Mt Mee section of the SEQ Regional Plan prohibits subdivision into blocks of less than 100 ha, there are provisions enabling Council to make exceptions for proposed places of worship.
The Church people made a development application. There were objections on several grounds lodged by residents, but the developers successfully negotiated road access and some other outcomes with Council.
The existing carriageway – a gravel road with a bitumen dustcap just eleven feet wide, was incapable of servicing any development and Council initially required the developer to rebuild the relevant section as a full macadam pavement. But the applicants renegotiated those specifications to a simple extension of the existing pavement sufficient to accommodate two cars travelling in opposite directions. Measurements confirm that there was plenty of room for this without disturbing any trees.
But rather than sealing some 1.5metres on either side, the design approved by Council was for widening on one side only.
The new section of road is now hard against the property boundary, with some fence posts almost in the new bitumen. Furthermore, the work has created drainage problems in the low lying section, making proper compaction difficult during construction.
Aesthetically, residents see the loss of trees as tragic – particularly as the approval for the development was conditional to absolutely no disturbance to native vegetation.
But that is not all – the design has the road narrowing to its original single lane form at the very entry to the most dangerous corner in the vicinity!
Without question, the developer and the vendor went through all of the due processes of law and the contractor has presumably proceeded in accord with his Council instructions. Residents can only wonder at the curious decisions of the responsible engineers.
Let’s hope that the torrent of complaints has led Council officers to a better understanding of how highly our residents value the ambience of the Mountain.
On another subject (at last), it seems that some readers last month failed to make the connection between my grey’s allergy in our Mt Mee churchyard and Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” written in the early eighteenth century. Gray muses on the people buried therein, and on what they might have become under more prosperous circumstances. This “standard” work in English literature famously begins:-
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea
The ploughman homeward wends his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness – and to me.
And one of the (many) stanzas goes:-
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
The facts are that while the Mt Mee section of the SEQ Regional Plan prohibits subdivision into blocks of less than 100 ha, there are provisions enabling Council to make exceptions for proposed places of worship.
The Church people made a development application. There were objections on several grounds lodged by residents, but the developers successfully negotiated road access and some other outcomes with Council.
The existing carriageway – a gravel road with a bitumen dustcap just eleven feet wide, was incapable of servicing any development and Council initially required the developer to rebuild the relevant section as a full macadam pavement. But the applicants renegotiated those specifications to a simple extension of the existing pavement sufficient to accommodate two cars travelling in opposite directions. Measurements confirm that there was plenty of room for this without disturbing any trees.
But rather than sealing some 1.5metres on either side, the design approved by Council was for widening on one side only.
The new section of road is now hard against the property boundary, with some fence posts almost in the new bitumen. Furthermore, the work has created drainage problems in the low lying section, making proper compaction difficult during construction.
Aesthetically, residents see the loss of trees as tragic – particularly as the approval for the development was conditional to absolutely no disturbance to native vegetation.
But that is not all – the design has the road narrowing to its original single lane form at the very entry to the most dangerous corner in the vicinity!
Without question, the developer and the vendor went through all of the due processes of law and the contractor has presumably proceeded in accord with his Council instructions. Residents can only wonder at the curious decisions of the responsible engineers.
Let’s hope that the torrent of complaints has led Council officers to a better understanding of how highly our residents value the ambience of the Mountain.
On another subject (at last), it seems that some readers last month failed to make the connection between my grey’s allergy in our Mt Mee churchyard and Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” written in the early eighteenth century. Gray muses on the people buried therein, and on what they might have become under more prosperous circumstances. This “standard” work in English literature famously begins:-
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea
The ploughman homeward wends his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness – and to me.
And one of the (many) stanzas goes:-
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
Does it sound just a bit like our Mountain?
