Explosives go off

Tim Ruddick and Belinda Marriage of Tillari Trotters.

By Jeremy Sollars

An application to establish an explosives disposal site on a rural property west of Warwick was approved by the Southern Downs Regional Council at the general meeting in Stanthorpe.
The application was lodged with the council by Ipswich-based firm Extech Explosives, which provides services to the mining and engineering sectors.
The proposal is to establish a site to be used for the disposal of explosives from the mining industry.
Blasting would be carried out six days a month, with a maximum of four blasts a day.
A maximum of 1000 kilograms of explosives would be held on-site at any given time.
Mayor Tracy Dobie used her casting vote in favour of the application after a deadlock of councillors.
Cr Cameron Gow was absent from the meeting with Councillors Sheryl Windle, Yve Stocks, Vic Pennisi and Marika McNichol voting against the application and Councillors Neil Meiklejohn, Rod Kelly and Deputy Mayor Jo McNally in favour.
The site is to be located on a grazing property on the Cunningham Highway at Karara, ‘Waraghai’, owned by Donald and Angela McLeish.
The principal opponents of the plan are Belinda Marriage and partner Tim Ruddick, whose neighbouring property ‘Tillari’ is their home and business ‘Tillari Trotters’, which specialises in free range pork and lamb and other agricultural products.
The couple had also been planning a farmstay for autistic children which is now unlikely to proceed.
The couple did not lodge a formal objection to the Extech application but are adamant that blasting and associated impacts will have a detrimental impact on their farming operations, including stress caused to livestock by blasting.
They claim that mapping and GPS co-ordinates in the application are at odds in showing the exact location of the proposed blasting site and that the council’s proposed approval conditions only provide for a one-kilometre buffer zone from any boundary of the ‘Waraghai’ property.
They also claim blasting could affect native animal species in the area and that Extech did not carry out an Indigenous cultural assessment of the property.
It is understood a similar application by Extech was rejected earlier this year by the Goondiwindi Regional Council.
Ms Marriage has also claimed Extech advised the council it would engage the Karara Rural Fire Brigade to conduct dampening down of the blasting site, but that the brigade had no knowledge of such a suggestion.
She was granted a five-minute address to the councillors, but it was to no avail.
A devastated Ms Marriage told the Free Times shortly before this week’s deadline that Cr Dobie’s casting vote in favour of the Extech plan was “a vote against farming and against tourism”.
An Extech spokesman told the Free Times the company had “no comment until due process has been followed”.