Residents call for end to quarry plans for Wallaroo State Forest at Balickera near Raymond Terrace
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00:00 Hi, my name is Rebecca. I'm a resident of Italia Road, Eastium, and we would really
00:07 like to not see the quarry go ahead. The trucks normally wake me up going down to the quarry
00:14 at 4am in the morning from my bed, and they go constantly from 4am up and down the road.
00:22 So the roads are narrow, if you know the road, it's a narrow road, lots of potholes, lots
00:27 of trees close to the edge of the road with a 90km speed limit, which is way too fast
00:32 for the conditions of the road. So other residents of the road, myself, my family, my friends,
00:39 at times since we've lived out there have all been pushed off the road by trucks going
00:44 too fast for the conditions of the road, and it's not safe. I have children that get off
00:50 the school bus there, and I have to make sure that someone meets my son at the school bus
00:55 every afternoon because I can't feel safe for him to be able to cross the road with
01:00 the trucks coming up and down there. So we also have koalas in the area. I've spotted
01:07 koalas on my place and without even looking for them. Koalas are very, very hard to find,
01:13 so getting an actual number of how many koalas are in that area that they want to demolish
01:17 would be impossible. We have wedge-tailed eagles and a massive amount of wildlife that
01:24 have just started to regenerate that forest after the fires, and to lose all wildlife
01:31 again would be devastating. We're saying it's a rural residential area, and it was never
01:38 intended, the Talya Road was never intended to be a haulage route for big industry. The
01:43 State Forest was never intended to be a place where they put a massive quarry, because this
01:48 isn't just a small quarry, it's going to be the biggest ever in a State Forest, and I'm
01:53 not sure why government would be doing this at a time when we're all learning that we
01:58 need to do more to stop climate change, and we need to make decisions about developments
02:04 with a view to environmental sustainability. There's many endangered species in that area,
02:10 and they're going to be put at risk. The flora and fauna is already in a fragile state, and
02:16 the idea that they're now going to just clear-fill a huge area for the purpose of a quarry is
02:22 just extraordinary that they've even contemplated.
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