It may be early days, but whichever way you look at it, the development application to rezone the land around Macquarie Fields House for housing is of great concern.
It becomes an even greater concern when you consider that the Scenic Hills are under development attack on three fronts.
The Baird Government’s decision just before Christmas to sell the land at Hurlstone Agricultural High School was a bitter blow because it will shrink our open space by a massive chunk.
If Macquarie Fields House goes ahead, and anything is possible, we won’t just kiss goodbye to one of the most important heritage properties in Australia.
We will also lose another vital piece of open space between Campbelltown and the rest of the urban world – indeed a natural border between the edge of the metropolitan area at Glenfield and the start of the bush where we like to think we live.
The third is the proposed cemetery at Varroville, which looks like getting the nod sooner or later.
Varroville from Hurlstone is not far at all and is pretty much the 500 acres or so of the land we used to know as the Scenic Hills Riding Ranch before it was sold.
South of Varroville, a stone’s throw away is a golf course adjacent to Kearns, a bit more open Scenic Hills space and then St Gregorys College.
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”default”]The point is there isn’t that much of Scenic Hills that we can afford to lose even a metre of it.[/social_quote]
And of course the Macquarie Fields House application will be decided on its merits once the councillors have studied the DA in detail.
But we lost views of Blair Athol House – another important heritage building in our midst – for ever and hopefully we’ve learned our lesson.
Locals need to realise that we have a fight on our hands because outsiders just don’t realise how much we cherish our heritage assets.
