This is our humble abode …

The tiny U-shaped clearing in the centre of this image is where our house is. What was once pasture is now monoculture industrial plantation. The Council rezoned the land from rural residential to rural industrial only 4 years after our home was built. I left a message with the OSEM today (last week) to try to get some assurance that the harvesting will happen before this summer and I’m awaiting a return call. The Waratah-Wynyard Council have dismissed my concerns saying that a 50 metre buffer meets ‘guidelines’. Though I requested my email be incorporated into the minutes of an upcoming Council meeting this was not done.

August 31, 2015: What has happened so far in relation to the fire threat since this article was published nearly a year ago. I contacted the Office of Security and Emergency Management (Department of Premier and Cabinet) after the local TFS district fire officer refused to respond. The person liaised with the TFS and then got back to me and said the plantation would be cleared within the next 12 months and suggested that the company may be prepared to change the clearing buffer between our house and the plantation. He said that if this doesn’t happen to get back to him and let him know. Spring is approaching. It is therefore logical for the trees to come down now. In summer it would be too late. The fire threat this summer is extreme. The Forest Enterprise plantation absolutely dominates and also edges onto the rest of the West Calder community. However the plantation is now owned by ‘Resource Management Services’ in Alabama in the US. So far I’ve been unable to locate a contact name and address for this company. A letter is being drafted to post to this corporation by registered mail.

November 17, 2014:

This is our humble abode. A little cottage and garden surrounds slowly taking shape since 1984 in what once was an unmaintained cow paddock. Since this photo was taken there’s been a lot of work done on landscaping etc. It looks better but so what! No matter what we do to beautify and improve our home, this place has now become unviable as an abode. We can no longer live here in safety nor without a constant feeling of trepidation each summer.

I don’t want my real name and my house to be linked together in the public sphere. I don’t feel protected at all from the malevolence of people in government or the industry that supports this monstrous invasion of our human right to basic security.

I’m not an activist. I just want to be able to live in peace and security. But to do that means that I have been (like others) forced to find a way to express the need for urgent change. Where do we find the funds to engage in abatement activities as well as pay out tens of thousands of dollars to get access to the courts and the legal system to find a remedy? (I don’t know whether I should presume that the legal system is still functional, however).

The Tasmanian Fire Service has been contacted repeatedly about this disaster. So has Forest Enterprises. The current ownership of the land and the plantation trees is now unknown. Where do I get this information from?

Suzette Harrison is the Tasmanian Fire Service’s Community Development Officer for the North West Region of Tasmania. Her job is to assist communities to be bush-fire prepared. See: http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/Show?pageId=colBushfireReadyNeighbourhoods

I haven’t contacted Suzette before but I have had numerous contacts with the district fire officer and other officers in the Tasmanian Fire Service over the past 14 years and this has not resulted in a resolution to this extreme fire threat, as mentioned above.

It is self-evident that plantations next to houses pose unacceptable risk to inhabitants. When we moved here that paddock next door was a grazing paddock and the region was zoned ‘rural residential’. The current zoning is ‘rural industrial’. The planner at the Waratah-Wynyard Council angrily shouted over the phone that if we don’t want to continue to live in this area under the changed zoning provisions (and associated industrial threats) we should “get out!” Contaminated drinking water tanks are thrown in with the mix, by the way. The state authorities refuse to engage in further testing of our water, apparently for fear of what they might find. But I wouldn’t trust such biased testing regime in any case.

The past five years have been spent in constant abatement from not only this nuisance and threat but also addressing nuisance and damage to another property we have in town! The latter is another story but entailed the Burnie City Council approving an as-of-right single story dwelling next door that resulted in a very long driveway and footpath being placed on 3 foot of fill along our entire 50 metre boundary that was retained by the wooden fence. With subsequent extensive damage and water runoff to the foundations of the house. To date I have not been able to persuade that Council to require the owner to complete his development by building a proper retaining wall and diverting his runoff back onto his own property.

What has caused the breakdown of order in this state?!