Contesting Development: Rural Transition in the Bega Valley Shire, 1965-1996
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Contesting Development: Rural Transition in the Bega Valley Shire, 1965-1996. Fiona Whitelaw Firth November 2020 A thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University ©Copyright by Fiona Whitelaw Firth, 2020 All Rights Reserved ii DECLARATION iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis was written on Djiranganj land in Yuin Country. I acknowledge Djiranganj ongoing custodianship and pay my respects to Djiranganj and Yuin elders past and present. I would like to thank the participants in this study. Your generosity of time and contributions are very much appreciated. Without your participation this would have been a very different project and I hope that this thesis does justice to your contributions. My sincere thanks to Professor Nicholas Brown who accepted me into the Australian National University History program and nurtured this project through its very long genesis and completion. His patience is undeniable. Without his insights this thesis would have been a much-diminished project. Thank you to Associate Professor Maria Nugent and Associate Professor Alastair Greig who have commented on the drafts and provided valuable insights. I wish to thank Professor Tom Griffiths and Professor Libby Robin for their continued encouragement and for including me in the Environmental History PhD workshop in Canberra in 2014. The workshop expanded my horizons on what doing history might mean and how it can be presented. My attendance at the Darwin Colloquium, funded by the Centre for Environmental History, was an opportunity to speak about rural change and elicited positive responses from participants who could see parallels between my work and rural change around Darwin. I thank Bega Valley Shire Council staff for assistance to access to the books of Council minutes from all the three shires, and for permission to access these records received through a Freedom of Information request. The PhD project has been a very long process and I wish to acknowledge the continued support within my local community and thank all who encouraged this process in so many ways with conversation and by loaning books and resources including Dr Anne Marshall, iv Gordon Beattie, Averil Fink, Dr Heather O’Connor, Dr Moria Scollay, Dr Olga Walker, Dr Katrina Proust, Greg McManus and Judy Robinson. A special thank you to my family who have encouraged me and listened to my vague ramblings about this project for many years. Don Firth has been beside me all the way, a great partner and supporter, providing assistance in countless ways. This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. v ABSTRACT Between 1965 and 1996 the population of the area now incorporated in the Bega Valley Shire more than doubled. A set of factors transformed the economic, social and demographic profile and composition of the south-eastern corner of New South Wales. The region transitioned from an economy based on dairy farming to one with an increasing presence of rural residential living, ‘alternative’ and post-retirement settlement, the growth of a tourism industry and the establishment of new national parks. This process has been identified by geographer John Holmes as a multifunctional rural transition. Histories of non-urban places in Australia during this period focus on declining communities west of the Great Dividing Range. As populations increased along the eastern seaboard, rural geographers and sociologists conducted broad, quantitative studies. But this history follows the call to explore local history from the ‘parish pump to the cosmos’ by considering the interplay of resident and local government responses to the differing aspirations and expectations of individual newcomers, layered with increasing state government regulation of the development of non-urban spaces. It explores what geographer Doreen Massey terms ‘throwntogetherness’. Contests over development were central to these transitions, particularly over land use, environmental values and issues of social, economic and cultural change. This thesis tracks several of these conflicts, assessing the interests and identities engaged in them and analysing the experience of those people drawn into new forms of political action, organisation and regulation. Exploring what was learned by participants in these contests over land use brings both individual and historical perspectives to the local negotiation of pressures and opportunities shaping many aspects of Australian society and governance at that time. This thesis draws on testimony from interviews with nineteen participants who were leaders in disputes selected to illustrate these historical processes. Their experiences of, and reflections on, navigating regulatory structures and seeking satisfactory outcomes reveals how individuals came to understand the bases of conflict and the capacities required to move through and beyond them. Their testimony is placed in the context of wider debates and vi official responses, including the minutes of local government meetings, reports of local officials, newspaper reports and the policy and legislative frameworks in which local and state governments worked to understand the impact and progress of these debates. Studying a local area crosses subject boundaries, and this thesis draws on ideas from geography and sociology while focusing on personal stories of the struggles of people of diverse backgrounds as they attempted to fulfil their aspirations for ways of living and working in a challenged, and challenging, rural context. Legacies of these transitions have enduring consequences, many of which came into sharp focus in the conflagration that impacted villages and displaced residents and tourists in the Bega Valley between December 2019 and February 2020. vii List of Abbreviations ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics. ALS Alternative Lifestyle Survey. BAL Bushfire Attack Level. BRAG Brogo Residents Amenity Group. BVS Bega Valley Shire. BVSC Bega Valley Shire Council. Cr Councillor. DA Development Application. DEP Department of Environment and Planning. EG Earth Garden Magazine. EIS Environmental Impact Statement EPA Act Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, 1979 GDR Great Dividing Range. GR Grass Roots Magazine. Ha Hectare. IDO Interim Development Order. LEC New South Wales Land and Environment Court, NSW. LGA Local Government area. LG Act Local Government Act. MLA Member of the Legislative Assembly. NPA National Parks Association of New South Wales. NPW Act National Parks and Wildlife Act. NPWS National Parks and Wildlife Service. NSW New South Wales. OED Oxford English Dictionary. P&C Parents and Citizens Association. PEC New South Wales Planning and Environment Commission. RFS Rural Fire Service. SPA New South Wales State Planning Authority. viii Table of Contents DECLARATION ................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... v List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... vii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... x List of Maps ..................................................................................................................... xi Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter One Constraints and Opportunities .................................................................... 28 CONSTRAINTS ....................................................................................................................... 29 Location and Topography ................................................................................................. 29 Isolation ............................................................................................................................ 32 Ports and Shipping............................................................................................................ 33 Roads ................................................................................................................................ 36 Local industries ................................................................................................................. 38 Administration .................................................................................................................. 41 OPPORTUNITIES ................................................................................................................... 46 Woodchipping .................................................................................................................. 51 Social changes of the 1960s and 1970s............................................................................ 60 Population Turnaround .................................................................................................... 63 Lifestyle ...........................................................................................................................