The map highlights Coopers Island Road heading to the waterway. Photo: Google Maps.
Five people addressed Eurobodalla Shire councillors at a recent public access meeting about council’s proposed closure and sale of Coopers Island Road. They spoke about the community’s long connection to accessing the surrounding waterways and asked what had led to the proposal.
For decades Coopers Island Road has provided public access to popular fishing spots in the area around Trunketabella Lake.
The proposal goes against a decision that councillors made on 8 June 2021 to retain the road to give people access to the tidal zones and non-private land around Coopers Island and Bowns Creek.
Announcing the proposal, council said it followed a Crown Land survey and correspondence received that confirmed there was no access to public land or water.
Resident Mylene Boulting said it was a complex issue and the community needed more time to fully understand the proposal, further investigate with council and relevant agencies, and canvas the alternative solutions. Submissions close 19 December.
Resident and fisher Sue Dunk and Max Castle, vice president of the Recreational Fishing Alliance for NSW, asked that the decision be deferred until the findings of the NSW Upper House Select Committee on Access Restrictions to Public Lands and Waterways were known.
Mr Castle said the proposed sale of the road eliminated safe and easy access to the surrounding waterways.
“On that basis council is effectively closing down part of a public waterway,” he said. “This position needs to be challenged as council doesn’t have the authority.”
A sketch of the latest survey. Photo: Eurobodalla Shire Council website.
Ms Dunk said selling the road to a private landowner could limit public access for fishers, kayakers, birdwatchers and photographers, as well as First Nations people who had accessed the area for thousands of years.
She proposed selling the land to a community trust or Local Aboriginal Land Council (LALC) with community-led governance, plus the compulsory acquisition of a small parcel of private land to establish permanent access to the foreshore.
In June 2021 council allocated up to $40,000 to realign the road back to the road reserve and other work to improve safety and the operational management of the property.
“You have spent more than $40,000 of ratepayers’ money and now this is all going to one ratepayer,” Ms Dunk said. “I request you withdraw the current proposal and negotiate with LALC to secure permanent foreshore access.”
Speakers probed the background leading to council’s proposal.
“This has come out of nowhere. Now we have another set of documents telling us that it isn’t Crown Land,” Mr Castle said. “It seems an unrealistic change in direction over such a sensitive issue. Nobody owns waterways.”
Coopers Island Road gives access to popular waterways. Photo: Brady Rogers.
Ms Boulting asked four questions, beginning with who decided that the best way to facilitate the sale of the road was to make it effectively useless to the public.
She asked who initiated the historical status searches with Crown Lands and what was the underlying rationale.
She asked how had the Crown Solicitor concluded that the causeway should be gifted to the landowner, especially when it clearly serves as a natural extension of a public road.
“Is council accepting the Crown Solicitor’s advice without further scrutiny or examination of all the circumstances and the above questions would very much seem to require,” Ms Boulting asked.
Chris Jones, former secretary of the Tuross Lake Preservation Group, spoke about how they had worked with the community in 1991 to plant 2000 casuarina she-oaks to mitigate erosion of the bank, and a further 1000 plants in 1994.
Walbunja Elder Terry Hill asked if council had contacted the LALC, council’s Aboriginal Advisory Committee or the South Coast Native Title Claim group about the proposal.
“Dispossession comes in many forms and it continues today, being shut out of our traditional land and waters,” Mr Hill said.
“No one can tell us the status. If it is Crown Land we have a Native Title Claim over it, so we must be consulted. That is the statutory law.”
Bernie O’Neil spoke in her capacity as co-convenor of community forum A Better Eurobodalla and as the public officer and member of the Arts Council of Eurobodalla. She talked about council’s new Creative Arts Strategy that will replace the 2019 version.
She wanted to see a comprehensive review into the effectiveness of 2019’s strategy before community and council developed the 2026 strategy.
Ms O’Neil also advocated for the formation of an arts and culture advisory committee, ideally along the lines of council’s Visitor Economy Advisory Committee, to advise and make recommendations to council on the shire’s arts, culture and creative interests.
