Ed,
In your last issue of 2023, you kindly published a letter from me concerning Clarence Valley Council’s initial proposals to house more people on our iconic Yamba Hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Since then, I have been contacted by numerous local residents asking the question “why the Hill now after the West Yamba floodplain housing debacle”?
Almost as one, my informants queried what has obviously become a policy of regarding Yamba as an easy cash cow for the rest of our local government area through the town’s recently increased land values.
They point out that Yamba has already suffered from the contentious and current West Yamba floodplain development which was recently blamed for the serious flooding along Yamba Road and its environs.
The general serious belief held by these concerned residents is that Yamba is already overburdened by people whose council rates are so seriously wanted by the council beancounters in Grafton.
As we all know, Yamba Hill is purely a sand hill originally considered safe for normal home buildings only and not for a higher level of construction, as now envisaged by Council. All very much against the development edicts of the N.S.W. Coastal Council, as discussed in my previous letter.
The town is already filled to capacity — and even worse — over the holiday periods when tourists visit here. It only has a single easily traffic-jammed two-way road in and out of the town area along Yamba Road. Traditionally, this is temporarily cut when natural floods occur and it has been considered by some as a death trap in the forecast 1-in-100-year flood, which many climate change pundits expect to happen sooner or later.
Some 21 years ago, I pointed out this problem to our pre-amalgamation Maclean Shire Council on behalf of Yamba Angourie Wooloweyah Community Association. At the time, the Council agreed with my contentions and put forward six alternative options to alleviate the then growing residential pressures on our only main sub-arterial road.
One of these options was to upgrade and widen Yamba Road to a full urban by-pass standard from the town, crossing Angourie Road from south of the industrial estate before joining the dead-ended Coldstream Street adjacent to the Yamba school.
When in 2002 I contacted the Shire’s Sydney-based consultants, the Urban Research and Planning organisation, their alternative suggestion to Council was for Yamba to have an outlet via Angourie Road to Wooloweyah and then through the adjoining Yuraygir National Park, around the southern end of Lake Wooloweyah to Taloumbi on Broom’s Head Road and then straight on to Maclean.
Our one-time fishing village also now has a need for a number of the normal services available to fully populated towns. These include close-at-hand medical specialist services, a return to more face-to-face banking, a 24-hour on-the-spot police station, a daily Council ranger service ensuring good parking, cyclist and pedestrian behaviour and more and better placed central pedestrian crossings.
Any further increases in Yamba’s total cheek-by-jowel population will also invariably place a severe strain on the existing infrastructure and services of postcode 2460.
Our Council has repeatedly reported that it cannot find the necessary funds to fully maintain our existing infrastructure, let alone install new systems. Yet it seems determined to increase the town’s population which must, through necessity, demand major extensions and additions to the infrastructure for services so far in place.
While the writer is not opposed to rational development, I and my many informants fear that the further addition of more and higher housing on The Hill will place a further burden on the Council’s resources and will further despoil Yamba’s unique position as a fishing village surrounded by river, beaches, national parks and nature reserves.
These factors, and others, are the reason why the area is greatly favoured as a peaceful family holiday destination and retirement locality by those seeking things natural as opposed to more concrete and high-rise dwellings, as is now the case with the Gold Coast and Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
By way of a final word, let’s hope we do not hear the usual old cry that attempts to cap a town’s over-growing population is un-Australian and selfish. In Yamba’s case, it is a necessity as we simply should not have to meet our local government’s original population target of 17,000 well-funded Council rates, double that of our present population, now considered by many to be at its maximum.
Oscar Tamsen, Yamba