In Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire it seems everybody has a horse. There are more than 3500 residents living in Yarrabah and it seems they all own horses; they all ride horses ; and their horses seem to graze everywhere and anywhere, effectively sharing Yarrabah's streets and open spaces with their their owners and the residents of Yarrabah.
Horses are a distinctive feature of the lives of younger people growing up in Yarrabah, and a significant feature of Yarrabah Shire's livability (recently celebrated by Yarrabah's mayor and Councillors last year restarting the annual Yarrabah rodeo).
Horses are a distinctive feature of the lives of younger people growing up in Yarrabah, and a significant feature of Yarrabah Shire's livability (recently celebrated by Yarrabah's mayor and Councillors last year restarting the annual Yarrabah rodeo).
Unfortunately for all of Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire's residents and horse owners:
i. the Queensland State Government has required the Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire Council to produce a statutory land use plan (planning scheme) to regulate the next 20 years of Yarrabah's growth and development; and
ii. the Queensland State Government has prescribed a statutory land use plan (planning scheme) of a kind that was NOT written with Aboriginal Shires in mind, and was most definitely NOT written for those very rare communities like Yarrabah who daily share all their roads, parks, and open spaces with horses and horse users
iii. the Queensland State Government prescribes statutory planning for a whole variety of community living conditions (livability); a whole variety of traffic conditions (safety), and a whole variety of road conditions (infrastructure) in a way that does not even seem to contemplate the possibilities and potential of whole communities living with horses
(see, for instance, the current State Government's State Planning Policy and associated guidelines)
iv. the Queensland State Government has required the Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire Council to produce a statutory land use plan (ie the draft Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire planning scheme) which leaves no places for the people of Yarrabah to be able to legitimately keep horses, and definitely no places for people to be able to legitimately graze nor even enclose, yard or stable horses.
It is perhaps fortunate the State has contracted specialist planning consultants (RPS Planners) to spend some time in Yarrabah on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and that at least one representative from the Balamba area (together with myself) were provided the opportunity:
i. to bring the specialist planning consultants attention to some of the more unique, possibly more peculiar challenges in producing statutory land use plans (planning scheme) for places like Yarrabah
ii,. to bring the specialist planning consultants attention to Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire Council's evident interest in possibly better managing horses into Yarrabah's future including recently arranging an annual rodeo [although this is not consistent with current recommended open area zoning], currently investigating the possibilities and potential of establishing the Balamba area as a possible horse yards [although this is not one of the current preferred uses of this area within the draft scheme]; and recently developing special local laws to better empower and enable the Council to manage their residents horses.
It was perhaps fortunate the State has contracted specialist planning consultants to spend some time in Yarrabah to find out about the above kinds of misfits between the State's prescribed planning and the Yarrabah communities real needs and aspirations for the future.
It is perhaps less fortunate that the State has NOT contracted those speicalist planners we were meeting to actually review, reconsider, and potentially rewrite the existing draft statutory plan to better address some of the very real and very significant challenges involved in producing statutory plans for the more financially impoverished Aboriginal residents of an essentially impoverished Aboriginal Shire (ie one of Queensland's "poorest postcodes")
i. to bring the specialist planning consultants attention to some of the more unique, possibly more peculiar challenges in producing statutory land use plans (planning scheme) for places like Yarrabah
ii,. to bring the specialist planning consultants attention to Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire Council's evident interest in possibly better managing horses into Yarrabah's future including recently arranging an annual rodeo [although this is not consistent with current recommended open area zoning], currently investigating the possibilities and potential of establishing the Balamba area as a possible horse yards [although this is not one of the current preferred uses of this area within the draft scheme]; and recently developing special local laws to better empower and enable the Council to manage their residents horses.
It was perhaps fortunate the State has contracted specialist planning consultants to spend some time in Yarrabah to find out about the above kinds of misfits between the State's prescribed planning and the Yarrabah communities real needs and aspirations for the future.
It is perhaps less fortunate that the State has NOT contracted those speicalist planners we were meeting to actually review, reconsider, and potentially rewrite the existing draft statutory plan to better address some of the very real and very significant challenges involved in producing statutory plans for the more financially impoverished Aboriginal residents of an essentially impoverished Aboriginal Shire (ie one of Queensland's "poorest postcodes")