Inland Rail pays $3.9m for Defence Housing Australia land in Mt Lofty

Mt Lofty residents are waiting to see what kind of neighbour Inland Rail will be after it paid a high price for contaminated land on the Toowoomba Escarpment that was subject to failed housing development application.

Inland Rail has paid $3.9m for about 390ha of land along the Toowoomba Escarpment that was previously owned by Defence Housing Australia.

A spokesman for the organisation said that most of the land would be used as offset for tree clearing that is needed elsewhere in construction of the Gowrie to Kagaru section of the Inland Rail.

The property was the subject of a controversial 50-lot housing development application by DHA that sparked furious push back by local residents and nature lovers, spearheaded by the Save Mt Lofty group.

The Toowoomba Regional Council ultimately rejected the application in 2020 after it failed five key planning benchmarks, including zoning concerns, bushfire risk, ecological impact and damage to biodiversity corridors.

There was also concerns over heavy metal contamination left over from when the Department of Defence had control of the land.

Inland Rail bought the land in November 2024.

Mt Lofty Rifle Range, circa 1960s. Defence Housing Australia was hoping to develop the land for housing, but its application was rejected in 2020.

“The vast majority of the land will be used as an environmental offset property, enabling Inland Rail to provide offsets for environmental impacts on other parts of the Gowrie to Kagaru (G2K) section,” an Inland Rail spokesman said.

“Inland Rail will let the land being used for environmental offsets to regenerate to meet offset requirements for the G2K project, there will be very little ground disturbance on the environmental offsets land.

“Inland Rail has engaged the existing maintenance contractor to undertake maintenance on the offsets site.

“A small parcel of the land, around 12ha in the northwestern part of the property, will be part of the planned Gowrie to Helidon (G2H) section of Inland Rail.”

Australian Rail Track Corporation made the purchase on behalf of Inland Rail.

While work on the Queensland sections of the Inland Rail is stalled pending environmental approvals, construction of the NSW sections is proceeding at pace.

Part of the Gowrie to Helidon proposal involved building a tunnel under Toowoomba and the Inland Rail spokesman ruled out any suggestion that the newly acquired land would be used for this purpose.

Save Mt Lofty volunteers (from left) Jo Noonan, Cath Jordan, Chris Meibusch. Mr Meibusch thanked the community for its help with the campaign against the Defence House Australia development

Chris Meibusch from Save Mt Lofty said he was waiting to see what kind of neighbours Inland Rail would be, but was hopeful that it would repair some of the damage done over the past decade.

“We are concerned that the last owner has been passive in terms of land management,” he said.

“The amount of lantana and other exotic weeds on the property has made the habit unviable for koalas.

“They need a clear understorey to move from tree to tree.”

Mr Meibusch said the group had reached out to ARTC for more information.

“The last thing this property needs is to be locked up, like it was for the past seven years,” he said.

“We are looking for proactive management from ARTC.

“We will wait to see how it performs.”

Inland Rail responded by saying the organisation would work through a range of option for the management of the site.

“We will finalise our plans after further evaluation,” the spokesman said.

Originally published as Inland Rail pays $3.9m for Defence Housing Australia land in Mt Lofty