The Birkdale Commonwealth lands are part of our country – but are they underutilized waste lands or valuable koala habitat?
Most Australians would be familiar with the poem My Country. Written over a hundred years ago by Dorothea Mackellar. My Country presents a romantic vision of Australia’s rural landscape featuring sweeping plains and saphire misted mountains.
About 40 years ago a parody version of My Country was written by Oscar Krahnvohl.
Here are the first 2 stanzas of My Country, the parody by Oscar Krahnvohl.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of open drains
Mid-urban sprawl expanded
For cost-accounting gains;
Broad, busy, bulldozed acres
Once wastes of fern and trees
Now rapidly enriching
Investors overseas.
A nature-loving country
Beneath whose golden wattles
The creek is fringed with newspapers
And lined with broken bottles.
Far in her distant outback
Still whose cities chafe
Find hidden pools where bathing
Is relatively safe.
It doesn’t paint a pretty picture, does it?
I’ve seen creeks lined with bottles and bush tracks littered with human rubbish. The urban sprawl continues to destroy our precious, natural environment.
Even here, in our beautiful Redlands, profit-driven development is destroying bushland and koala habitat. The qualities that set the Redlands apart are changing forever.
The poet uses the word “wastes” to describe where ferns and trees grow.
I’ve heard a government employee from Canberra describe the healthy natural environment of the Birkdale Commonwealth lands that supports koalas, as a waste. How despairing!
How sad that people can only see bushland as wasted or underutilized because it’s not growing money!
Why does everything have to be covered by a built environment?
Is it time, with climate extremes becoming more prevalent, to rethink what we’re doing to our world?
Pam Spence
President of Birkdale Progress Association
Community views on use of the Commonwealth lands
A petition about the Commonwealth lands initiated in May 2018 captured the views of more than 400 people. Their comments are reproduced in this post by Redlands2030:
Don’t develop the Commonwealth lands
Redlands2030 – 30 March 2019
Please note: Offensive or off-topic comments will be deleted. If offended by any published comment please email thereporter@redlands2030.net
3 Comments
Looks like we may have to vote this Government out, elected Prime Ministers are being changed like underwear, they are deaf to anything voters say, we had an Environment Minister who used his Ministerial discretion to over rule his own Departments recommendations ignoring scientific findings and 1000s of submissions. Now they are handing out $75 to “help” with electricity bills instead of doing something about the problem with the Electricity Market. Why on Earth would I want to have these politicians continue along that same line for another four years ? Anything is better than that.
The latest interest in this land is by Alma Park Zoo interested in relocating to the Birkdale site, I am not sure how this will work with the Federal government sale but it is certainly in discussions with our federal member. Watch this space for further information apparently in the paper tomorrow.
Happy to provide updates. Very early days