What is Truly of Value

The following was published in Earth Song Journal this month. It’s a brief tale of an adventure 11 years ago.

One day in February 2001, a park in Melbourne’s north disappeared with a brief flourish of bureaucratic pens.

Nobody mourned it that day. The local council mentioned its demise in passing in a media release, and said it would ask the State Government for compensation. That was that. The Whittlesea Gardens, a windswept 19 hectares of public open space in Lalor, was finished.

At the time I was working as a reporter on the local newspaper, The Whittlesea Post. I was young and keen to make a difference in the community. The ensuing fight to save the gardens was my chief highlight in an 11-year career as a journalist on suburban newspapers and The Age, and an inspiring example of a community’s determination to rescue its treasured ground.

The Whittlesea Gardens will never feature on a list of Melbourne’s attractions, but to people in Lalor it’s a welcome break from roads, concrete and brick veneer; a place where the mind can wander, kids play and dogs roam. Ironbark and box trees are scattered across the landscape, there are rises with native shrubs and a lake where coots gently bob and cormorants preen on the water’s edge.  

Yet in February 2001 this suburban sanctuary was to make way for the Craigieburn bypass, a 17-kilometre section of freeway connecting the Hume Highway with the Western Ring Road. For years before the go-ahead announcement, the bypass was strongly opposed by people concerned about damage to the Merri Creek. The campaigners were mostly from the inner suburbs while locals living near the path of the freeway, many from non-English speaking backgrounds, were barely aware of it.

That is, until the Whittlesea Council mentioned, buried in its media release congratulating the government on the freeway (for its “economic benefits”), the death of the gardens. The Whittlesea Post stepped up to the plate. My editor, a man with a strong sense of compassion, was happy for me to take up the cudgel against authority in the typical way of the journalist. While the government and the council were patting each other on the back, we splashed “Gardens at Risk” on the front page of the paper, alerting people to the coming bulldozers. 

It worked. A fortnight later, shocked residents started an anti-freeway campaign. Led by Erkan, a young Turkish man, and his sister Tina, they organised a petition and began ringing local councillors and the State MP demanding to know what was going on. The Post ran a front-page story on the campaign with a separate profile on Erkan. “If they build the bypass here, I will be opening my back door and looking at a big wall – instead of the beautiful gardens,” Erkan was quoted as saying. “I don’t want to stop progress, but progress doesn’t have to roll over us.” 

By early April, People of Whittlesea Refusing Entry, as the anti-freeway group called itself, had chalked up several fiery community meetings and presented its petition with 1700 signatures to the government. Whittlesea Council now decided it would lobby to have the path of the freeway moved 300 metres to save the gardens. I well remember one abusive phone call from a government media staffer who berated me for writing negative stories, not balancing my coverage with the freeway’s economic benefits.

Ultimately the people won, sort of. In August the Federal Government, which was funding the bypass and had final say on it, decided to change the route as recommended by the council. The fact that a federal election was coming that year probably played a part. Erkan and the other residents were glad their precious gardens were saved, though still unhappy with the freeway. As environmentalists pointed out, Merri Creek grasslands would be destroyed whatever the freeway’s path. 

What does it take to save a park? Obviously, it requires organisation and leadership. It entails having a voice, speaking out and confronting authority; it means doggedness and determination. But perhaps the less tangible and often less articulated factors play the greatest part: a mix of fear and love. Fear of the modern economic, industrial machine – a kind of amoral monster that exists to expand and in whose path ultimately stand nature and communities. And love, which enlarges awareness beyond the immediate needs of the individual, allowing us to see what is truly of value.