Cooked to Order!
THE TWEED Volume 3 #01 Thursday, September 2, 2010 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 editor@tweedecho.com.au adcopy@tweedecho.com.au www.tweedecho.com.au
A wonderful insight into the best culinary minds of the Far North Coast. See page eleven.
LOCAL & INDEPENDENT
Vital protection order to save tree on hold Ken Sapwell
Thor packs hefty kick Thor Hoopman in action just before leaving for China for the combat sports games. Photo Jeff ‘Bigfoot’ Dawson Kate McIntosh
Thor Hoopmann is on his way to becoming a real heavyweight in the kickboxing world. The 26-year old professional kickboxer, who was born and bred in Murwillumbah, is representing Australia in the Martial Art and Combat Sports Games in Beijing this month. Thor is among six Australian kickboxers selected and will compete in the 91kg heavyweight division. Now based at Bilambil Heights, Thor trains at the Burleigh Heads Boonchu Gym in the art of Muay Thai kickboxing. The former Mt St Patrick College student first tried kickboxing as part of a pre-season football training session four-and-a-half years ago and soon became hooked. ‘It’s such an adrenalin rush. It’s the closest competition you can have with someone,’ he said. He now trains twice a day and monitors his diet in a bid to stay in peak fitness. ‘I can’t go out and party very much and I’ve got to stay off the beers,’ he said.
The upcoming international games are the latest achievement for the rising star, who has fought on the Gold Coast, Sydney and Hong Kong. Since starting the sport Thor, who works parttime at his family’s carpet laying business, said its profile had continued to grow. ‘It’s getting more popular now. The shows are bigger and the prize money is better.’
A plan to seek an interim heritage protection order to save a commemorative fig tree at Chinderah has been put on hold pending an inspection by a qualified arborist. Tweed Shire Council held an extraordinary meeting on Monday to consider the protection order after local arborist Brett Hamlin and residents prevented contractors from removing the 114-year-old tree from the carpark of the Chinderah Tavern last week. The meeting, which was held behind closed doors, considered legal advice and a submission from Chinderah publican, Rick Adams, who is worried about his public liability after the tree shed a limb two weeks ago. It voted unanimously to seek an urgent assessment of the tree’s health before deciding whether to apply for the protection order after Mr Adams gave them an undertaking not to remove the tree until the council explores its options. Crs Barry Longland and Katie Milne, who requested the meeting to consider a protection order ‘due to the tree’s heritage significance and the concerns about its imminent removal’, said afterwards the outcome was the best they could achieve. Cr Milne said a report from the council’s cultural officer confirmed that the tree’s cultural and heritage values were ‘significant’.
Govt backs down on developer fees Luis Feliu
The state government has caved in to pressure from councils across the state, including the Tweed, and lifted its controversial $20,000 cap on developer fees councils could charge per housing lot on greenfield sites. The government has also established a $50 million fund for priority infrastructure projects to help local councils in approving housing developments in growth centres across NSW.
Planning Minister Tony Kelly earlier this week made the announcement, describing as ‘fine tuning’ a number of new measures to be introduced ‘on ways to accelerate housing construction and keep downward pressure on house prices’. Tweed Council warned the minister in July that massive housing developments planned on greenfield sites at Cobaki Lakes, Kings Forest and Bilambil Heights would be dramatically scaled back if the developer-contribution
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She believed that if the arborist’s assessment proved the tree was in good health the council could act quickly to seek an interim heritage order to provide protection in the short-term. Mr Adams said later he would stand by his pledge not to remove the tree, even though he still believed he could be held responsible if anyone was injured by another falling limb. ‘We could have gone ahead and pulled the tree down and asked the community for their forgiveness rather than their approval,’ he said. ‘But something has to happen, either it’s pruned or made safe. It’s not about a tree. It’s about a duty of care, about having a safe workplace.’ Mr Hamlin, who staged a sit-in under the tree to help foil its removal, says the tree is in good health and likely lost one of its limbs because of the weight of a climbing cactus which was invading it.
Commemorative tree The tree was planted by retired Cudgen policeman-turned-publican James Lewis Brown and his wife to commemorate the birth of their second son in 1894, according to local historian Di Millar. Residents who turned out to protest against its attempted removal last week included two of Mr Brown’s descendants, bringing into focus council’s past failed attempts to draw up a local heritage register. It has also triggered renewed calls for an overhaul of council’s laws to ensure that trees enjoy the same level of protection as they do on the Gold Coast and Byron shires where in most cases landowners must seek council approval before removal. In the Tweed landowners can nearly always get away with removing any trees at any time as long as they can argue that it was in pursuit of a rural activity or they had been damaged in some way. Ms Millar said she believed the community wanted landmark trees such as the Chinderah fig to have some level of protection. ‘The trees are an important living history and people are getting sick of seeing some of them turned into sawdust,’ she said.