Friends of the Earth Kuranda’s Submission to the DRAFT Tablelands Community Plan
Human association with the hills around Kuranda is ancient, yet ‘modern’ settlement is very recent.
Although it’s likely this area has been inhabited continuously for tens of thousands of years – longer than anywhere in North or South America, for example – the modern township of Kuranda is less than six generations old.
That makes Kuranda, in its modern manifestation, a very young village. Each decade that goes by adds nearly a tenth to its age. Even a year is a significant fraction of its lifespan to date.
As a consequence, planning of this area can make a very real difference. Like a sketchpad with lots of blank pages, there’s plenty of scope to make for changing this area for good or for ill. Choices made at this time are likely to have long-term consequences for how this area develops long into the future.
FoE Kuranda congratulates the new Tablelands Regional Council for undertaking a community planning revue . We are grateful for the opportunity to make input into the revue process.
We are, however, concerned about the draft document that’s been made available for comment, for a few weeks only during the holiday season, with a view to the final plan being approved prior to the forthcoming March elections.
We’re concerned this community plan, at least for the Kuranda area, lacks coherence. To some extent its eclectic nature is a function of its identity as a community plan, with input from many sources. More seriously, we’re concerned that some of the key proposals that are articulated in this document amount to the WRONG plan for this area.
Having said that, we’re aware that the forthcoming new Planning Scheme, due for completion in 2013, may be the document that contains what we consider missing from the current plan – and that the Draft of that new document is not yet available. (see http://www.trc.qld.gov.au/
In any event, we hope these comments will be constructive input into the planning process on the Tablelands.
Due to shortage of time, we have not attempted a comprehensive review of the entire document. This region is an integrated whole but the focus of FoE Kuranda is mainly on our local area identified in the document as Speewah, Koah, Kuranda (and Myola). Our comments reflect that.
What the Kuranda area needs
In our view, there’s much that truly wonderful about this area that should be conserved, treasured and nurtured. But there are also significant problems in Kuranda and its environs. These need to be addressed, over time. Good planning and appropriate investment are crucial.
The following is a list of these positives and negatives as we see them, followed by some suggestions and a specific comments on points in the Draft:
Positives
The township of Kuranda and the inhabited outlying areas has stunning, highly biodiverse and largely forested surroundings
The surviving Aboriginal community in this area is a link with its unique and ancient pre-historic culture.
The climate of Kuranda is (we think) as close to perfect as anywhere on the planet.
Kuranda is near the small but internationally significant city of Cairns, with its many attractions and an airport that connects this region to the rest of Australia and overseas.
The village of Kuranda still has great charm and continues to serve as a magnet for visitors, who bring wealth and employment to the area
Kuranda has good basic services for a small community: schools, medical clinic, library
The community in Kuranda has experience, knowledge and skills – as evidenced by many fine suggestions documented in this plan, too numerous to repeat here.
Negatives
The Kuranda area still lacks a plan for long-term conservation of the biodiversity of the area. Really comprehensive identification and mapping of our biota has never happened. Even species unique to the area don’t seem to have survival/recovery plans. Wildlife remains threatened by exotic species – both plant and animal – and human activities such as pesticide/herbicide use, road kills and vegetation clearance). Loss of native vegetation continues mainly though new housing development in areas such as Kuranda, Speewah, the Myola Valley and Koah.
The surviving Aboriginal people of the Kuranda area still lack a place they can truly call their own – a refuge and centre for kindling Aboriginal culture. Aboriginal communities such as Korowa and Mantuka remain in need of significant new investment.
The Kuranda area is chronically car-dependent. The only form of pubic transport are buses, and bus services are infrequent, connect only some parts of the area and operate only in daytime. Rail easements are so under-utilised they would be more useful to the community as cycle tracks; if we are to have a rail network that makes appropriate use of them, a major rethink and very significant new investment are required.
The Barron River, source of drinking water supply for the Kuranda township, serves as a sewer for agricultural run-off from the Tablelands. It contains a plethora of pesticides which have a measurable negative effect on adjacent areas of the Coral Sea. These artificial compounds, while they may not be as lethal ad DDT, have an unmonitored impact on the health of Kuranda residents who drink water from the Barron that’s not tested for pesticides; there’s no attempt to remove them from the town water supply.
The Kuranda village, while it attracts some million visitors per year, does not have the vitality or general prosperity that many in the community feel it could and should have. A frequent comment is that the “village is dead”, meaning it lacks people and vibrancy, especially out of daytime trading hours. Reasons for this are various. (We have some suggestions for remedies).
Telecommunications in the area are second rate
We are still overly dependent on an occasionally-unreliable national electricity grid – and net importers of energy from outside
The region that includes Kuranda (FNQ) has no effective system for minimisation and/or recycling of solid waste; we suffer from this even more than necessary, because waste is currently transported between Cairns and Mareeba via the Kuranda Range Road, putting extra unecessary strain on this thoroughfare
The earlier Myola Plan has been superseded by the State Government’s 2031 regional plan, yet that plan was inappropriately amended, at the last moment and without public comment, to facilitate the development of Welcome Pocket. We believe that was a major mistake for the area
Suggested Solutions
We need a comprehensive survey of the area’s biodiversity. This should be assisted and facilitated by agencies such as the Wet Tropics Management Authority and James Cook University, but there should also be community ownership of and involvement in the survey, with the local school playing a pivotal role. The internet/web can be used to store and display data collected from the community as well as wildlife specialists – and updated progressively so it become an ongoing monitoring operation. Better data and higher community awareness about the area’s natural riches will facilitate improved conservation and planning
Many suggestions proposed by the local Aboriginal community should be embraced, but we wish to emphasise two things: the historic need and justification for higher investment in infrastructure and support for our Aboriginal communities in general – and in particular the desirability of providing significant new assistance to the local indigenous people to redevelop Mona Mona as a distinctively Aboriginal settlement with an appropriate amount of autonomy.
Transport in the area needs significant new investment. There’s a need to upgrade of roads, but in our view the balance of transport investment is quite wrong at present. We believe the rail service should be upgraded into the 21st century, and used not only for freight but for human transport, providing a real alternative to car transport for people travelling between Mareeba and Cairns and points between including the Myola Valley and Kuranda. It’s easy for this to be dismissed as too expensive. We believe there’s a need to review state of the art rail as a genuine transport alternative at least between Mareeba, Kuranda and Cairns and as soon as an appropriate solution is found, to actually built it. In addition, we’d like to see much more effective road based public transport – perhaps with frequent mini-bus services connecting people within the Kuranda area so the need for individual car ownership/usage is significantly reduced.
Until it’s regularly tested for the plethora of pesticides that are currently unmonitored in the Barron River (and/or a sophisticated filtering system is utilised capable of entirely removing these contaminants from the water supply), we believe the town water system may be unsafe for human consumption. If a suitable location can be found for small local catchment-replenished dam/s (not entailing clearance of native vegetation), that would be more satisfactory than drinking unmonitored river water. Alternatively, the entire drinking water supply could be shifted from a mains system to localised rooftop catchment and household storage. Long-term, and somewhat separate from the issue of drinking water supply, we seek a significant reduction in the usage of pesticides and herbicides in the Barron Catchment; it drains, after all, into the Coral Sea.
Rail could revitalise Kuranda – making it an attractive evening destination on the many hot evenings in Cairns and ensuring that more tourists visit and spend time in the village, arriving and leaving when they please. The “dead” feeling in Kuranda village, despite high aggregate visitor numbers, is partly the result of high proportion of visitors arriving via organised tours that take them, with limited time, to specific venues such as Rainforestation, the Market and Skyrail. Our vision is that Kuranda is more easily visited by people travelling under their own steam – and a regular, fast rail-link to Cairns is the best way to make this happen. Such visitors would be able to spend time and money visiting the smaller shops and attractions, ensuring that revenue from tourism is more evenly distributed. In addition, a better public transport network of the type we propose, entailing bus and a rail backbone, would help transform Kuranda into a more attractive place to live for people easily able to commute to Cairns or Mareeba. This would benefit our local economy without putting extra strain on our roads and without creating the demand for yet more unsustainable road transport. Improved rail should also become a real alternative for transport of freight, building materials etc.
Telecommunications should be upgraded without delay. The Tablelands Regional Council should be proactive in demanding that the area is wired ASAP with fibre-optic to the door for the vast majority of households in this area, supplemented by wireless in outlying extremities. Cable should be under-grounded.
Our area should become a much more significant producer of sustainable energy via solar and wind. Taking into account also the Barron HEP scheme at the Falls, the Kuranda area should aim to for a locally generated energy supply that’s carbon-neutral.
FNQ’s waste minimisation & recycling system need a complete overhaul following the abysmal (and predictable) failure of the Bedminster recycling plant. In the interim, solid waste should be moved between Cairns & Mareeba by rail – not on the road!
Crucially, we believe the Welcome Pocket development is a major planning mistake. We support the provision of aged care facilities in this area (and more public housing for low income earners). However, the location should be in the village – probably on the old school site and adjacent playing field or in another suitable near-village location. The scale of the Welcome Pocket development is very significant, and ancillary facilities are required such as shops, cafes and medical facilities. However, those facilities already exist in they village, which would benefit from higher usage. Kuranda should be consolidated – not have another node added on the Myola Valley, increasing car-dependency and forcing unnecessary duplication of facilities.
Additional specific comments
Any bio-mass production MUST be done in a genuinely sustainable way. Establishment and expansion of this industry without meeting this precondition would be a retrograde step.
The planning Scheme biodiversity overlay seems promising as long as it protects all native life forms and the natural environment that sustains these species. It would be insufficient to just favour certain iconic or endangered species.
FoE Kuranda believes there should be no more development including residential subdivisions on forested land whether rainforest or schlerophyll and other areas of significant regional biodiversity
Increasing population should be accommodated by higher density development in urban areas and capping growth if necessary if it cannot be done without damaging the natural environment
Suggestions that herbicides should be used on hill slopes in the Kuranda area are controversial and we do not support this. The impact of herbicides such as Roundup (and surfactants used with them) on wildlife remains a topic of international controversy. Given this uncertainty, the option we should treat it as a safe product to be encouraged via a plan such as this is not acceptable.
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