But wait there's more!

The trail bikes are busy in Barrm Birrm, and the early wattles are coming into flower. The owners of private land on the western reach of Barrm Birrm, that stretches north of Royal Parade, want a deal to give land into the public estate in return for permission to build on just part of their acreage. Perhaps ‘Government’ will pick up the tab to buy the lots in the Shone and Schultz land. Perhaps.

Who will then throw a fence around the new reserve and put in the signage, mend the fences the bikers and 4WDers snip through and the replace the signs they deface, until a grudging peace is won? Who wants this battle, when there are so many others at hand? Who will support the slow rehabilitation of the fairly degraded land in the western reach, and keep up the work on woody weeds in the eastern slopes?

And here we are with the whole township invited to consider Sector Advantage’s proposal for 1290 lots on Amess Road, a prelude to the regulatory hurdles. 1290 lots pushed into a muddy landscape of trucks coming and going, then tradies and houses popping up and slowly, and finally the arrival of our new town residents, who at 2.5 people per residence will grow us close to double the current township, their kids riding their bikes to the primary school and their large vehicles gathering in Station Street on Friday afternoon for cartons of beer and bags of chips and sundries for dinner.

By the time you read this missive, we will have turned all these imponderables over at Riddells Creek Landcare’s AGM, early August, to gather together the likely impacts of the new development, and work out a few good questions. Perhaps we will find other brave Davids, with our slingshots and carefully chosen stones, ready to test Goliath.

At RCL, we’re curious to see how much attention Sector Advantage has paid to the landscape in which its 1290 residences will reside. Will Sandy Creek, which becomes Dry Creek as it trickles under the Kilmore Road, and that creek further north on the other side of the Dromkeen hill, become dense green incursions into suburbia, wilder places? How will water move across the estate? Walkways, common space that connects people – how welcoming with that be, to humans and to native birdlife? Will this be a precinct of exotic trees co-opted by gangs of Indian Mynahs, their raw persistent shouts, and nasty narrow streets jammed in to accommodate cookie-cutter houses? We will soon know all.

My own inclination is to start thinking how to make the heart of Riddell a place where it’s safe to walk with a pram, or to ride a bike or drive a car. How will we all get to the railway station without skittling pedestrians? Where will we stand in the sun talking to someone you haven’t seen in a while. How do we make a convivial place, for 2,500 more people. With a creek running through it.

But wait, there’s more! The environment groups of Riddell will have signed an agreement with Western Water, to jointly organise discussion about how to expand the capacity of the sewerage treatment works. Expand capacity, that is, while keeping Jacksons Creek and our little bit of the Maribyrnong catchment in rude good health. Riddells Creek Landcare won’t do the planning, that’s Western Water’s end of things, but our job will be to ask good questions, look at the data, assess the risks. And up discussion as a town to look at the options, weigh them up, and reach a considered point of view. We’re a species that tends to assume the environment can mop it all up, Can we deal with our waste without imposing too much on the environment?

As we start to wonder if the warm will even come back, it looks like September will a time for talking and thinking about the place we live. Here’s to wise decisions, and dodging the hype, and not falling into despair. 

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare