Concerns: Heather Winfield, Trish Carter and Jane Green are on a mission to have council reconsider a proposed building development.
Photo by
Aidan Briggs
As a former farmer’s wife, when Jane Green retired and moved to Echuca’s Woodlands Circuit with her husband it was the environment and vegetation around her that spoke to her soul.
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“When I came here and I walked out the back, I just stood here and went, oh that’s my tree,” she said.
Now Mrs Green and her neighbours Heather Winfield and Trish Carter are worried that a proposed development on the adjoining land will change all of this.
Campaspe Shire Council is considering approving a development site that will see the building of a 120-place childcare centre, a swim school, a pool and a doctor’s clinic on just over 8000 square metres.
The residents are concerned about the amount developers are trying to fit on that small space.
“I know that we need more childcare centres and we need more doctors and all these things but why do we need to build all of them on to the one space?” Mrs Green said.
“I don’t know why these buildings can’t be spread out a little.”
“When you actually look at it, it’s a very large development for such a small block of land,” Mrs Winfield said.
The traffic that all of these amenities will cause, just off a major Echuca road, is another concern of the residents.
“We’re gonna get a lot of congestion right at the entrance to Mount Terrick Rd, and eventually, I think there might be a few accidents there. We are concerned about that,” Mrs Winfield said.
Development: The town planners have released an artist's impression of what the proposal could look like.
Mrs Winfield said the green space beside her house was home to many native and wild animals, and she enjoyed the visitors to her backyard.
“We do get a lot of native animals coming in,” she said.
“We’ve had a giant goanna — huge, like six foot. We get echidnas and all these different bird species. We get every single bird you can imagine and they congregate in this tree.”
Mrs Green said an important part of living regionally was feeling like you were living regionally.
“People like the rural aspect living here, even though they might be in a town,” she said.
“Whereas in Melbourne, you’ve got to go forever to go out into a rural area. Even though there’s parks and gardens here, it’s not the same.”
None of the residents said they were against progress.
“Ideally, I don’t want any of the trees to go. I realise some of them will go and must go for the development, but I think something as old and as precious as that tree should be kept,” Mrs Green said.
“I’m not objecting to the entire development, but I think it would be nice if they could juggle things a bit so that this tree doesn’t have to go. I just love it and I will miss it. I’ve had it for 13 years.”
The residents in the court are concerned about the lack of information that was made easily available to them by council regarding the proposal.
“They didn’t give us a lot of notice and they only notified six of us, a very small amount of the people who live in the circuit. We’re all going to be affected, even if not as directly,” Mrs Winfield said.
“The time they gave us is not a lot of time to do anything about it, to seek independent advice from a solicitor or even to do our own research.
“If a couple of us had just been away for a week or two this could have been approved without any of us knowing a thing.”
Council and the company that submitted the application, Habitat Planning, were contacted for comment.
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