Resumed in Protest: the Human Cost of Roads

By Nathalie Haymann

This story is a blueprint – a written documentary and tangible map of a grassroots activist community initiative of people versus the machine. In their own words, residents of a historical inner city suburb in Queensland describe their protracted and bitter battle with the Brisbane City Council, the hierarchy of the Anglican Church and two Queensland State Governments over the “Hale Street Ring Road”. The road project proposal involved the destruction of large areas which were listed as part of the National Estate of Australia, including the last remnants of an old cemetery beside an Anglican church, listed with the Australian Heritage Commission and the Queensland National Trust. Diverse in age, status, origin, life-style and outlook, residents joined together to defend themselves, their neighbours, their street, homes and gardens, church grounds, cemetery and other Heritage listed buildings. Many were elderly and had been born in their houses, with one or both of their parents also born there. Without warning, confronted with the sudden and shocking news that their homes were going to be resumed for a road project, they were unaware of the relentless roller-coaster of emotions they were about to endure. With no notice or consultation, no interactive public discussion, no political debate and no social or environmental impact study, approximately fifty properties were marked for resumption, with the plan effectively cutting the historical suburb of Petrie Terrace off from all other residential areas and forcing it into the central business district area. The circumstances this community was forced to accept indicates just how far our society has capitulated to the automotive industry compared to the welfare of the people it is supposed to serve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathalie Haymann
• Release date: Feb 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370052547

Book preview

RESUMED IN PROTEST:

The Human Cost of Roads

By Nathalie Haymann

Resumed in Protest: The Human Cost of Roads

Copyright © 2016 by Nathalie Haymann

First Printing, 1994, 1994ISBN 064621232X

Bungoona Books

Greys Point, NSW

Smashwords Edition

INTRODUCTION

This story is a blueprint – a written documentary and tangible map of a grassroots activist community initiative of people versus the machine.

In their own words, residents of a historical inner city suburb in Queensland describe their protracted and bitter battle with the Brisbane City Council, the hierarchy of the Anglican Church and two Queensland State Governments over the Hale Street Ring Road. The road project proposal involved the destruction of large areas which were listed as part of the National Estate of Australia, including the last remnants of an old cemetery beside an Anglican church, listed with the Australian Heritage Commission and the Queensland National Trust.

Diverse in age, status, origin, life-style and outlook (1), residents joined together to defend themselves, their neighbours, their street, homes and gardens, church grounds, cemetery and other Heritage listed buildings. Many were elderly and had been born in their houses, with one or both of their parents also born there - all linked to the earliest days of colonial Queensland. Without warning, confronted with the sudden and shocking news that their homes were going to be resumed for a road project, they were unaware of the relentless roller-coaster of emotions they were about to endure.

With no notice or consultation, no interactive public discussion, no political debate and no social or environmental impact study, approximately fifty properties were marked for resumption, with the plan effectively cutting the historical suburb of Petrie-Terrace off from all other residential areas and forcing it into the central business district area.

The circumstances this community was forced to accept indicates just how far our society has capitulated to the automotive industry compared to the welfare of the people it is supposed to serve.

There was enormous courage and love in the fight for the sake of the fight. But in the face of an overwhelming wall of intransigent opposition, the residents lost. Some died as a result.

David Engwicht, winner of the 1991 Qld. Division of the Royal Australian Planning Institute’s awards for Excellence in Planning and author (Towards an Eco-City: Calming the Traffic) observed that this ring road broke one of the most fundamental of all town planning principles – arterial roads should never be driven through the middle of functioning communities.

"Residents know their own neighbourhoods best when it comes to planning. They know how intersections work or do not work. They know how things change through the seasons. They know the traffic danger spots, and why they are dangerous. It is impossible for planners to plan without this invaluable body of expert opinion. People do not need expensive noise measuring equipment to know when noise levels are too high. They simply listen. Children do not need

degrees and expensive analysing equipment to know when air pollution has reached unacceptable levels. They simply breathe. Residents who know nothing about VC ratios can tell when there is too much traffic on the road. They simply try to cross the road to visit a friend."

"Planners have a responsibility to the citizens they serve to liaise with them, and citizens have a responsibility to let planners know what they want for their neighbourhoods. The volume of traffic in a city is not something like the rainfall that has to be accepted. Urban traffic is limited, intentionally or unintentionally, by measures adopted by governments. If these measures were relaxed, there would be more traffic: if they were strengthened, there would be less. We all have the power to change future traffic projections. Traffic doesn’t have to go on multiplying every year.

"It is important to recognise that the battles being fought at the moment are battles against an entrenched culture which is much more than the sum of the individuals involved. Ultimately the battle can only be won when enough pressure is put on politicians to intervene and change or supplant that culture.

"There was a time not so long ago, when Australian cities had a strong sense of community – a spirit of care and nurture. Hale Street is not just a street in Brisbane. It is the incarnation of the loss of home and place we have all experienced due to massive changes in our cities.

While we must go forward to a new future, we must also go back and reclaim the Hale Street which lives in our psyches – that place where few of us have lived, but we still call home."

CHAPTER ONE: ‘Breaking News’

CHAPTER TWO: ‘Father Perry’

CHAPTER THREE: ‘The People’

CHAPTER FOUR: ‘The Cemetery’

CHAPTER FIVE: ‘No Respite’

CHAPTER ONE: ‘Breaking News’

... It was there, in the car park, that it was announced to the world that the Hale Street ring road was about to begin. There was no knowledge in our church that anything was going to happen. It was like a bolt from the blue.

Ron Gardner was at peace with the world as he stood watering his front garden on a warm June day. He was happy to have completed some long-planned renovations to his typical Queenslander style house, using his superannuation earned over the years. His wife Gwen relaxed on the verandah with a cup of tea.

They noticed a Channel 7 television unit pulling up further down the road and watched the crew unloading equipment and talking to some of their neighbours. Ron walked down to the gate to greet his old friend Primo who had been talking to a reporter and was now hurrying up the footpath towards them in uncharacteristic haste.

"My neighbour Primo Marinucci came over and asked me if the T.V. people had seen me yet about our road", said Ron. "I told him I didn’t know anything and hadn’t heard anything at all. Not long after that, some reporters came up to me and introduced themselves. They