Editorial: Mary’s promising future after a dam long time

JUST 30 kilometres south of Gympie, the little hamlet of Kandanga should have disappeared well and truly by now after it was earmarked to be inundated by the planned Traveston Crossing Dam.

The picturesque Mary Valley near Kandanga where properties were picked up for a steal after the failed Traveston Crossing Dam Project. Picture: Lachie Millard

JUST 30 kilometres south of Gympie, the little hamlet of Kandanga should have disappeared well and truly by now. It was in the rolling hills and valleys earmarked to be inundated by the planned Traveston Crossing Dam in the Mary Valley, proposed by then premier Peter Beattie when he was facing an election in 2006 at the end of the savage and heartbreaking millennium drought.

By the time it was due to be built, Beattie was gone, Anna Bligh was premier and Labor’s Kevin Rudd was in power in Canberra.

However, a community backlash, a strident and sustained campaign by environmentalists and a deadlock on whether the dam was needed, led to the proposal being rejected in 2009 on the advice of then federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

By the time Mr Garrett’s decision came down, the residents of the Mary Valley had been to hell and back. They were told they had to get out of their homes, that the towns they grew up in would disappear and they needed to find somewhere else to live.

Mr Beattie had thrown money at the problem, paying prices for properties that were far in excess of market value. Some were paid more than $20 million for their country farms and homesteads.

In all, about 500 properties, made up of 656 individual lots, were bought by the government for more than half a billion dollars.

The last two lots, which had been sold back to the public, went unconditional yesterday and there were plenty of winners along the way, just as there were losers a decade ago. The biggest losers have been the Queensland taxpayers who have sat by and watched the government write off three out of every five dollars involved in the purchases.

The total amount recovered through sales and development leases was $202 million – a combined loss of about $320 million. This is money we are not going to get back, but we should not forget what happened in the period from 2006 to 2009 and beyond. There was no real accountability and the fact that communities were being destroyed was not considered.

Despite these years of financial carelessness, heartache and despair there are now some rays of sunshine in the Mary Valley, including in the little town of Kandanga. Taking its name from the local Aboriginal word for “bend in the river”, the town is experiencing a new lease of life. People have moved back – the 2016 Census recorded 650 people, 100 more than a decade before when the dam was looming – and businesses are again thriving.

Bec Edmonds and Trent Kirkwood left the big city behind and have set down roots, with their community Kandanga Country Kitchen which promotes paddock-to-the-plate eating and caring and sharing community values.

This is a part of the Queensland dream, outside the busy and exciting metropolis that’s just 90 minutes away.

As well as affordable properties, whether you’re buying or renting, a great climate and the kind of peace and quiet that money cannot buy.

People are setting up business, whether they are larger community concerns like a local supermarket or niche micro businesses, and are finding customers down the street and across the country through better broadband connection.

There are also plenty of lifestyle advantages such as walking through some amazing countryside and kayaking along gently running rivers and streams.

It’s been a trying decade with a heavy burden for so many but, at least, there’s a brighter future looming.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge. Picture: Tara Croser

Church culture should change

TO say the Catholic Church has had a troubled time in recent years is not saying anything. Stories of horrific sexual and physical abuse, revealed through legal commissions of inquiry in Australia and Ireland and other exposes in countries such as the US, have sickened and saddened many and rightly embarrassed the church and its clergy.

Many church men have gone to prison and been publicly shamed.

There is now much soul searching in the ranks of senior and junior clergy in the Catholic Church – and other denominations found equally wanting – about how these failures came about and what can be done.

Two controversial propositions are whether to lift the requirement of celibacy for priests and if we should also require clergymen to hold close the secrecy of the confessional.

While the broad view in the Catholic Church on the confessional is to leave things as they are, there is an opening up of the debate about celibacy. Leading that debate is Brisbane’s Archbishop Mark Coleridge, who says he is open to having a discussion that comes from the grassroots of the church. In an exclusive interview with The Courier-Mail, Archbishop Coleridge says the ordination of married men, with “tried and true” relationships, was “certainly possible” and could be raised at the 2020 Plenary Council of the church, being held in Australia for the first time since 1937.

It is this kind of healthy and positive response to the recent Royal Commission that we should welcome and encourage. The culture of church life, whether it is the Catholic or any other faith, needs to be changed from within. If celibacy is an issue which can lead to transgressions we should not be afraid to talk about it.

Too many times in the past the Catholic Church has been hidebound by closed minds and the resistance to what for most people is common sense change. As Archbishop Coleridge says today, “we just have to accept (the judgment of the public) and eat humble pie and get on with the good work the Gospel has always promoted”.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Sam Weir, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details are available at couriermail.com.au/help/contact-us