THE TWEED Volume 3 #15 Thursday, December 9, 2010 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 editor@tweedecho.com.au adcopy@tweedecho.com.au www.tweedecho.com.au
PAGE 12 LOCAL & INDEPENDENT
Cobaki project gets green light Luis Feliu
Gem gallery rocks Tweed Kate McIntosh
Limpinwood couple Russell and Sharon Costin have turned a unique hobby into a way of life. The lapidary enthusiasts and lifelong nature lovers recently opened a gallery showcasing Russell’s 3D photographic work of semi-precious gemstones. The Rock On Gallery is situated on a hilltop in the centre of the Limpinwood Valley offering expansive 360-degree views of the McPherson Ranges and Mt Warning, and Russell and Sharon hope it will become a tourist drawcard for the area. The idea for the gallery came after Russell began experimenting with macro photography of local gemstone specimens about 18 months ago.
Russell Costin shows off a piece of green malachite from Africa and a small slab of the more commonly occurring rhodonite, on display at the Rock On Gallery in Limpinwood. Photo Jeff ‘Rock Steady’ Dawson
Sharon says her husband’s eyecatching images, which are not digitally enhanced, capture the inner colours, shapes and textures of gemstones, with visitors invited to view the works using 3D glasses for fulleffect. ‘Obviously we’d like to show people the real beauty of gemstones,’ said Sharon. ‘The layers and the colours, it’s definitely a new way of looking at rocks.’ The gallery stocks a wide range of products for sale, including t-shirts, mugs, bags and jewellery boxes, designed by Sharon and incorporating Russell’s images. Also on display is a selection of the couple’s impressive private collection which has been sourced from internet sites, gem shows and collectors. These include jasper, agate, chalcedony, rainbow calsilica and tiger eye, with many of the stones cut
and polished by Russell on site. The couple, who have lived in the area for 34 years, also run a nursery, specialising in native plant varieties, on an adjoining property. They hope to eventually wind down that business and focus on photography and gemstones in their retirement. The keen nature lovers were also founding members of the Tweed Valley Wildlife Carers, a volunteer-run organisation helping rescue and rehabilitate injured wildlife. ‘We’ve always had an interest in nature – whether it be plants or rocks or animals,’ said Sharon. Rock On Gallery is located at 235 Limpinwood Valley Road (between Chillingham and Tyalgum) and is open Thursday to Sunday from 10am to 4pm. For more information visit www. rockondesigns.com.au.
Developers of the proposed Cobaki Estate for 5,500 new dwellings to accommodate around 12,000 people wasted little time in lodging a development application (DA) with Tweed Council this week to build the estate’s first 1,000 homes, only days after NSW planning minister Tony Kelly announced approval for the concept plan on site. Mr Kelly said the housing project, the size of a ‘small country town’ on a 594-hectare site on the Tweed side of the border with the Gold Coast just west of Gold Coast Airport, would help cater for the area’s fast-growing population. The Leda Developments project, estimated to cost over $3 billion when finished, includes a town centre based around a full-line shopping centre, with medical and childcare facilities as well as two primary schools. The concept approval includes environment protection and rehabilitation for 194 ha of land with an extra 87 ha of open space and recreational areas. The proposed 17 residential precincts will contain a total of 5,500 dwellings, including detached houses, townhouses and unit blocks up to three storeys, a town centre and neighbourhood centre containing 18.8 hectares for retail, commercial, community and residential uses, also with a three-storey height limit. The minister said the site had been zoned for residential development for over 20 years and ‘covers about 30 per cent of the region’s need for housing over the next 20 to 25 years’, as per the government’s Far North Coast Regional Strategy.
Mr Kelly said he expected strong demand for the new homes in the township which would create an ‘enormous’ number of jobs over the next 20 years, especially in the building industry which needed projects like this to survive. Leda Developments general manager Greg Campbell told reporters on Monday that the first DA for construction of the project’s first 1,000 lots would be lodged with Tweed Council later that day. However, a Leda spokesman yesterday told The Echo a delay in preparing some documents meant it was due to be lodged yesterday afternoon (Wednesday). Mr Campbell said the plan had undergone extensive and rigorous environmental assessment with ‘some 15 environmental management plans covering the site’.
Lot size reduced Mr Kelly said the Tweed Local Environmental Plan’s (LEP) minimum lot size for the urban zone in the new estate site would be reduced from 450 square metres to 120 square metres to ‘allow for a range of different types and sizes of housing depending on people’s different needs, which was in line with a trend across Australia and the world’. He said his department was currently considering an application for earthworks and drainage, landscaping of the central parkland and rehabilitation of riparian corridors. The developer had made some substantial changes from the original plan, including removing a series of man-made lakes from the proposal to avoid potential water quality or
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