BATTLE FOR THE WOODLAND
The good folk of
Mt Eliza are not known
for community activism or
even for raising voices to
disrupt the status quo.
Life has always been
fairly comfortable on the
Mt Eliza hill?. that is,
until something disturbs
the very thing that
attracted them there in
the first place.
A two day Independent Panel Hearing in
Mornington during late May was the culmination
of a three year battle by many residents to keep
subdividers and developers out of what has
become known as the Mt Eliza Woodland.
10 | good life, june -july 2007
As the yellow planning notices advertising a
subdivision proposal have been increasingly
popping up around the quiet hillside, the
membership of the Mt Eliza Woodland
Association has been swelling to repel the
commercial invaders.
The Woodland area spans about a quarter of
Melbourne?s most southern suburb. It?s bounded
by Canadian Bay Road, Humphries Road, Nepean
Highway and Moorooduc Highway. The 1600
homes on mostly 2/3 acre blocks sit unobtrusively
within natural vegetation. The streets are quiet,
bird life abounds and the main recreation is talking
to neighbours and walking the dog.
The area escaped the normal suburbanisation
process because the soil is so poor and
impervious that sewering was not possible.
Council set a minimum 2/3rd acre size to allow for
the dispersal of household waste. It also avoided
the ravages of farming because it was too nutrient
during the past five years
in order to refute the Association?s claim that
there is a flood of people wishing to chop-up the
blocks. However, Woodland Association President
Deborah Haydon says that she only has to look
by Tim Bracher at the hearing dates for the Victorian Civil and
Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) in her diary to see
that the push to subdivide is on the rise.
Deborah Haydon says a loophole discovered
about seven years ago in the planning regulations
has made subdivision possible in an area
previously considered to be well protected.
? We think it might have happened at the time of
municipal amalgamation, when the council in good
faith tried to introduce some clarifications, but, in
fact, it made the matter worse? she said
A December 2005 survey of Woodland
residents by the Association revealed that
98% of respondents rejected subdivision. A
Neighbourhood Character study commissioned by
Council from planning firm, Planisphere, concluded
that ? the area has been identified by Council and
the community as an area of distinctive character
close the loophole and to definitively
area from subdivision.
blocks for income or to downsize await
.
Creek Reserve in Frankston South and
in 1976
be smaller than 2/3rds of an acre
even a hint that there could be
the natural complexities of that environment.
It?s nonsense to suggest that clearing the
land, then planting back species that are not
indigenous to this area is a case of net gain for
the Woodland environment.?
|