$150k raised for legal fees

THE daughter of a man who grew one of Queensland’s largest marijuana plantations at Inglewood, raised $150,000 towards his defence via a market stall at Nimbin.

THE daughter of an "evil, manipulative man" who grew one of Queensland's largest marijuana plantations on an Inglewood property, raised $150,000 towards her father's legal defence through a market stall at Nimbin.

Rosemary Gardner, 35, set up a stall to raise money for Michael Bennett Gardner, also known as Dozer, who would regularly send more than 270kg of the drug for manicuring and sometimes on-selling in the Northern Rivers region.

On one occasion her father, who was jailed in 2012 for 13 years for the huge production, told her who owed him money and sent her to collect. On another, Rosemary set up the stall knowing those who owed her father would come forward to repay their debts.

Crown prosecutor David Meredith told Brisbane Supreme Court the $150,000 she raised under the legal defence guise would have been considerably less than her father was owed.

He said Rosemary had also hidden $50,000 cash her father gave her anticipating his arrest and recovered $70,000 from the southern Darling Downs property after her father's arrest.

Mr Meredith said she destroyed a video her brother made of the operation which involved Gardner recruiting his young family, children aged 11-14, to plant seedlings and tend thousands of plants when they should have been at school.

A heavily pregnant Rosemary, now a mother of four, was instrumental in gathering the family for a get-together to plant those 10,000 marijuana seedlings in late 2007. She would regularly help with manicuring, packaging and preparing the cut plants for sale on weekends, getting $100 for half a kilogram.

When police raided the property in 2008, they found 22,000 live marijuana plants and 3.59 tonnes dried.

Its black market value was almost $70 million.

Justice Ros Atkinson sentenced Rosemary to four years jail, wholly suspended for five years.

She told Rosemary she had to stay free of her father once he was released from jail so she could avoid his control again in the future. Ms Atkinson said Gardner was a dominating, evil, manipulative man whose actions had a detrimental effect on all his children. Defence barrister Alastair McDougall said his client had a horrendously tragic upbringing, but had still worked all her adult life.