Gate’s fate on hold

Decision deferred: An application from a private individual to have the Leslie Park Memorial Gate State heritage listed has been lodged.

By Jeremy Sollars

A council decision on whether or not to shift the Leslie Park Memorial Gate to Glengallan Homestead has been held up after a local resident applied to the State Government to have the gate State-heritage listed.
Debate has been raging over calls by the Glengallan Homestead Trust to move the set of historic gates from Warwick’s Leslie Park back to their original home at the Homestead, to co-incide with the its 150th anniversary this year.
The four sandstone pillars and the iron gates – which stand in the south-west corner of Leslie Park, opposite the Warwick Courthouse – were gifted to the Warwick council in 1940 by the then owner of Glengallan Homestead, Oswald Slade, to mark the centenary of the Leslie brothers settling in the Warwick district.
Community consultation carried out by the council in recent months appeared to reach a consensus that the majority of Warwick people who responded think the gate should stay where it is.
Southern Downs councillors at their April meeting in Warwick yesterday had been expected to make a final decision on the matter but are understood to have been advised at the last minute that a local person had applied in recent days to the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage to have the gate State-heritage listed.
Leslie Park is State-heritage listed but the gate itself is not, causing a potential grey area for the department.
What is certain is that the gate will stay right where it is for at least the time being, with councillors deciding yesterday to defer their final decision until a decision on the heritage listing application is made.
The gate is on the council’s own Local Heritage List which carries only minimal legal weight.
When they were installed in Leslie Park the gates were mounted with commemorative insets recognising the Leslie Brothers, which remain in place today.
A special council meeting on Monday 13 March considered a formal request from the Glengallan Homestead Trust to have the gates shifted back to the homestead – at the trust’s expense – with the council deciding to put the issue out for public comment.
In March, Glengallan Homestead Trust chair Donna Fraser announced that a Toowoomba businessman with family links to Glengallan, Warwick and Allora had donated $10,000 to Glengallan’s 150th anniversary projects, including return of the Glengallan gates.
After the special council meeting in March planning and property portfolio councillor Neil Meiklejohn said in terms of current planning requirements, the gates were not a building and as such the planning scheme did not apply.
“While the planning scheme does not apply to this proposal, and there is also no particular requirement for public notification, given the prominence of the gates and the length of time they have stood in Leslie Park, coupled with the knowledge that there are differing opinions in the community about whether the gates should stay or be relocated, the council has decided to invite feedback from the public to inform its decision,” he said.
“The Glengallan Homestead Trust has indicated that if the proposed relocation proceeds, they would cover all costs associated with the relocation of the gates to the Glengallan Homestead and the reinstatement of the Leslie Park memorial site, along with interpretive signage.”
Some have proposed that a replica of the gates could be installed in Leslie Park if the originals go back to Glengallan.

See letters to the editor on the Leslie Park Memorial Gate, page 6