AUCTION SATURDAY 12PM 2/3 MORWONG DR, NOOSA HEADS
12627253-SM33-23
Friday, 18 August, 2023
Something’s rotten in Noosa
Kin Kin comes alive
Focus on our hinterland
32-page liftout Property Guide
PAGES 6-7
PAGES 12-13
PAGES 28-32
INSIDE
PR OP ER TY
An evening with Rachel By Erle Levey Film director and actress Rachel Ward is heading to Noosa this month for screenings of her movie Rachel’s Farm. Born in the UK and with an early career in modelling, she is not the first person you’d expect to join a farming revolution. In 1984, she starred in the iconic TV series The Thorn Birds, which glamorised the rugged Australian Outback. The whole world fell in love with it, and Rachel fell in love with her Australian costar, Bryan Brown. And of course, Australians fell in love with Rachel. The two married and moved to Australia and several years later they bought a farm in the Nambucca Valley, in the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. There, they have raised cattle and their three children, endured droughts, and flooding rains and finally the catastrophic bush fires of 2019-20, which threatened Rachel’s farm and devastated the country. Neighbouring farmer and farm manager Mick Green shared her view that conventional farming was no longer working, and together they discovered that neither of their farms were ecologically or financially viable. Continued page 36
Rachel Ward. 352490
Affordable blow By Margie Maccoll Despite an impassioned plea from Cr Amelia Lorentson and hours of debate at Noosa Councils general meeting on Monday councillors followed officers recommendations in a majority vote to refuse a development application for a relocatable home park aimed at housing some of Noosa’s most vulnerable people. The application put forward by Eco Cottages was for 32 one and two bedroom dwellings at 55 and 70 Carpenters Road, Cooroy with the property’s existing four bedroom dwelling converted to a community facility.
The applicant detailed two tenure options for the development, including sale of the development to Coast2bay or titling of the units and sale to not-for-profit community housing providers and indicated conditions could be imposed in this regard. While admitting the proposed development raised significant conflicts with the Noosa Plan 2020 the applicant listed relevant matters in its support for approval which focused on the current housing crisis and the need to provide housing opportunities for disadvantaged and low-income groups within the community.
Cr Lorentson proposed a motion requiring council officers to explore a way to approve the development. “We have a moral obligation,” she said. “We have an opportunity to find a way if we really want to do something.” There were more than 2500 residents on the Sunshine Coast on the waiting list for social housing, half with high needs, half single parents and women over 50 years the highest group in need, the second highest group children escaping domestic violence. The average wait for social housing is two and a half
years, she said. “There is a dire need for affordable and social housing. There are women sleeping in cars, under trees and couch surfing,” she said. She told of a recent call she received from Vedra from Making Lives Matter charity shop who was trying unsuccessfully to find accommodation for a woman named Veronica she found sleeping on a concrete seat in a public toilet. “A home anywhere is better than a woman sleeping on a concrete seat in a public toilet,” she said. Continued page 3
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