[Nathan Arrowsmith]

For the past couple of years, there as been an ongoing battle between the
people of Maleny and
Cornerstone Properties. Cornerstone are developers who bought a prime piece
of land in town due to a
council bungle. Cornerstone want to build a concrete box with a supermarket
that nobody in the town
wants or needs (we already have a supermarket).

The land in question is home to 60 year old native trees and has the local
river flowing past two of
its boundaries. The river banks are home to at least one platypus family. My
wife often walks down
there at 5am to watch the platypus feeding.

This morning We got the call at 7am that there was action at the site,
chainsaws and police. We got
there and found that they had already destroyed the two majestic bunya pines
near the front of the
site. Several sneaky tactics by the demolishers and the police ensured that
most of the remaining
trees were bulldozed and chainsawed in the next few hours, despite all
efforts from protestors, who
were doing there best to knock down the temporary fences as quickly as they
were being put up.
Plenty of police helped keep the protestors at bay.

Finally, after an emotional few hours, there were three trees left. The
family of platypus lives in
the bank under the trees and it is essential to preserve the remaining trees
to ensure the survival
of their habitat. We managed to surround the remaining trees and people
climbed them in an effort to
stop the demolition crew from proceeding with the destruction.

This turned into a stalemate and the three trees are still there. My wife is
sleeping on the
site with a group to ensure they don't destroy the trees tonight. I'm at
home with the kids, and
we'll be back at 5am to continue the vigil. I can't believe this was allowed
to happen, every avenue
has been pursued by the community over the last couple of years to save this
site, and yet it still
happened. Now it's almost too late. There's a lot of angry and upset people
in this town at the
moment.

Here's the MO link, the demolition was conducted by the Deen brothers, who
are notorious for
sneaky demolitions. They are responsible for the Cloudland demolition as
quoted in Dreamworld. Here
is a quote I found about Cloudland:

"They came at 4am with heavy earthmoving machinery but without a demolition
permit. This, however,
did not deter the Deen Brothers who specialise in these types of clandestine
demolitions. In 1979,
they earned their notoriety when they tore down the Belle Vue Hotel in
George Street at midnight.
For the Cloudland job they employed six police to guard against protestors.
This was an unnecessary
measure as it took a mere sixty minutes to reduce the great arch and
ballroom to rubble."
From:
http://svc018.wic010p.server-web.com/add_story/_main/story_view.asp?sid=95

Still interested?
http://www.ecocyber.com.au/maleny/

Nathan.