THE TWEED SHIRE Volume 1 #48 Thursday, August 6, 2009 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 Fax: (02) 6672 4933 editor@tweedecho.com.au adcopy@tweedecho.com.au www.tweedecho.com.au
pages 10 -11 LOCAL & INDEPENDENT
Wake-up A museum of the past, for the future call on waterways Ken Sapwell
A landmark report released this week paints a bleak future for the health of the Cobaki and Terranora Broadwaters and four fresh water streams flowing into them unless we learn from past mistakes. The report found all six waterways were under stress with some in poor health - mainly as a result of farmland clearing up to the 1950s and residential development which mostly peaked in catchments in the 1980s. The ecosystem health monitoring report warns that acute demand for housing in catchments areas will increase the pressures and that the council and the community needs to be proactive in dealing with the problem. The report follows an investigation into the health of the two broadwaters and the Duroby, Bilambil, Cobaki and Bilambil feeder creeks which for the first time examined the biological impacts of urban and farmland run-off. Tweed council river committee chairman Kevin Skinner said the report pulled no punches in assessing the damage that riverine tree-clearing and other land-use practices had caused. ‘It’s a wake-up call for everyone to learn from past mistakes,’ he said. On a scale from A to F, it ranks the health of three of the fresh water creeks beginning in the hinterland mountain ranges as a C-minus and the Cobaki Broadwater as a straight C, where C is defined as ‘fair’. Both Doroby Creek, which flows through Terranora, and the Terranora Broadwater struggles under a ‘D’ rating, defined as poor ‘and unlikely to meet the characteristics of a healthy river eco system.’ None of the systems ranked an F (for failure) but the closest any came to an A (excellent) was a small section of the Tweed River included in the study which was subject to ocean tides and
Members of the new Tweed River Regional Museum steering committee (left to right) Joan Smith (president, Tweed Heads Historical Society), Gary Fidler (president, Friends of the Museum), Helena Duckworth (president of Uki and South Arm Historical Society), Ron Johansen (president, Murwillumbah Historical Society) and former mayor Max Boyd (president Tweed River Regional Museum Foundation) with the model of the proposed extensions and upgrade to the Murwillumbah Museum. Photo Jeff ‘Museum Piece’ Dawson Luis Feliu
Museums, according to the late blind/deaf American author Helen Keller, are sources of pleasure and inspiration. The proposed new regional museum for the Tweed is set to provide both, as well as breathe new life into the shire’s three historical collections. So it seems only fitting that the bold plan to establish a state-of-the-art branch of the Tweed River Regional Museum at Tweed Heads to house their collections should be located on continued on page 2 the site of a former pilot station at Flagstaff Hill
on Point Danger. The Tweed Heads museum specialises in the Tweed’s maritime history The push for the purpose-built museum at one of the Tweed’s iconic locations at Tweed Heads as well as plans to refurbish and extend the heritage-listed Murwillumbah Museum require much fund raising from the community, but is gathering momentum with a Friends of the Museum group established recently to encourage donations to realise the dream. Last month the Friends, which already has around 100 members, raised around $2,500 for the museum’s building fund, which is a drop in
the bucket for the eventual amount needed for the goal. The projected cost for the centrepiece Tweed Heads museum is around $8 million ($2 million to be allocated by council from loan funds,$370,000 from state grants and $1 million from federal funding) while the Murwillumbah Museum extensions and upgrade is set to cost around $3 million with $1 million of that to be sourced from council loan funds. The move to create a single regional museum for the Tweed encompassing a purpose built museum at Tweed Heads and the upgrade/ continued on page 4
RUN & WALK Sunday August 16th
Great community event. Early bird entries close this week! go to www.mullumtobruns.org.au For further information: 6684 6886 or info@mullumtobruns.org.au