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description= This blog is a diary of the struggle to save an avenue of significant and beautiful street trees - a struggle that was ultimately unsuccessful. It pitted community volunteers against a toxic council administration and a conservative elected council - and at the end, some of the media and the riot police. It still amazes…;
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t an appeal the case was not about whether the trees are safe or unsafe the community know they are safe it was about whether the council can use the roads act to chop down these trees calling the trees a traffic hazard our team of legal people are looking at the detailed judgement to help us decide whether to appeal you can read the judgement here the online petition is still relevant you can sign it here altogether we are at the time of writing up to about 8500 signatures thursday 11 11 2010 the court found against the community today the injunction will last another week more soon wednesday 10th november 2010 we just heard that the court will hand down its judgement tomorrow at 4pm i m uncharacteristically lost for words but i am taking bets on whether the tree mulchers will be sitting in laman street tomorrow the other thing that is new is that i uploaded the submission for a renaming of laman street to anzac centennial place which sadly seems to involve yet again moving the war memorial grove you can see the pictures by clicking here or on the link anzac centennial place in the blogroll on the right on this page i don t see the grove i don t see the fountain and i certainly don t see eight or is it 9 hill s figs in the middle of the street i only see 30 pretty and unrealistic european looking trees let me guess they re ornamental pear trees they seem to be the fashion at the moment at least i suppose there are some trees in the da for the art gallery extension there are no trees in laman street and no parking for the gallery just lots of car parks in laman street show me a veteran who should have to stand in the hot sun to remember the fallen how insensitive and novocastrians will love that we are reinventing ourselves that s in the submission presumably in the image of someone from sydney we re part of the way towards paying for our david and goliath fight to save the laman street figs what a sad concept that residents have to go to the length of going to the land and environment court to change we hope a very unpopular decision i d love to see you there newcastle leagues club on friday november 12 at 7 30pm had a successful movie night a couple of weeks ago with lots of fun before and after the gorgeous movie the tree poor harassed moreton bay fig it was a star along with the stunning scenery the trivia night is the next instalment to fund the legal efforts to stop council from clear felling laman street monday 4th october 2010 only 2 days to go until the land and environment court hearing which will decide whether council can use the law they have chosen to remove the laman street figs a few of us had a meeting with the lord mayor last week about the issue in spite of what some people have called a gag order from the general manager the lord mayor offered to read the evidence we had for the safety of the trees i was a touch surprised that he hadn t read it already since we sent it to all the councillors as well as the media about 6 weeks ago and because this decision is just a touch on the monumental side for newcastle wouldn t you think you d want to have already read it friday 1st october 2010 less than a week to go before this issue is heard in court the vigil keeps going from 5pm to 7pm every night in front of the library in laman street we re collecting signatures on petitions and passing on information and enjoying the trees if anyone wants to be part of a phone tree to be called if help is needed to protect these trees at the last minute leave a comment and i can email you you don t have to leave your number or your name in the comment lots of phone calls were made the first day we had this case in court when cherry pickers and mulchers or similar appeared in the street three days earlier than council had warned the community when challenged by journalists council s spokesman said that they were just moving the barriers around yeah right you can also tell us at the vigil if you want us to call you we re also about to have a fundraiser so watch this space it ll be fun saturday 25th september 2010 we ve had our first bonus week of enjoying the fig trees after they should have been felled by council there s been a vigil in the street every night one night there was a wedding one night there was a beautiful meditation and a protest song written there have been children enjoying themselves a video shot in the street affidavits written poems read and soapboxes climbed on some great networking has been done and some lovely friendships cemented there are now a few videos to watch about the community s attitude to the plan to transition our beautiful heritage trees into a qrap landscape plan the latest is the perilous figs of laman street there are links to the videos and some favourite reports they re more fun to read than you d think here sat 18th sept 2010 a vigil was held in laman street tonight half the street was blocked off to make it harder for us but we had a great time anyway it was lovely to see dogs and kids playing in the street friends brought food everyone met our legal team and heard about what happened in court and the compliance man arrived and booked the coffee van onya guys overtime pay there was a full page ad in the herald today explaining the destruction of the trees i presume that cost another 20000 i wonder what we re up to now the senior counsel appearing on behalf of council on friday would have been another 10000 councillors don t like waste like this when they have so many other important things to be doing friday 17th sept 2010 we re off to the land and environment court today to see if we can stop this tragic mistake wish us luck thursday 16th sept 2010 mark hartley is the arborist who kindly reviewed the risk assessments previously done on laman street he wrote a report on these assessments and their flaws see below sadly council has somehow managed to ignore this totally and most councillors have not even responded to us about it a number of councillors did however express reservations about the report and mr hartley s response to those emails is here 247 57kb arborist s response to councillors sept 10 like his first report it s comprehensive and easy to understand for the non expert it s worth a read council have added some of the other peer reviews of mr marsden s report from late last year to their website since mr hartley s report was delivered no prizes for guessing what they say mr hartley has also pointed out to council that there is a test that would once and for all time determine if the trees are unstable it is called the pull test it could be done by an independent team and would cost a vastly smaller sum than the 1 4million that council is spending on the street wed 15th sept 2010 i m looking forward to my appointment at the library tomorrow to give my oral history of laman street i hope everyone has put their name down for this opportunity so sensitively given by imaginative council officers by my reckoning about eighteen people can put in their two bob s worth so the announcement was made this week that fences will go up on monday and the chain saws will be in on tuesday it will be a busy three weeks for some lucky crew doing council s dirty work the plan another sensitive one is to take the canopies out first in such a way that the little bats that council s arborists says might be there will fly free and roost somewhere else yeah right bad luck about the east coast freetail bat and the grey headed flying fox bad luck about the family of what i presume is kookaburras who used to roost above the fountain until some arborist came along and chopped their branch off and who now live in the fourth tree up from the darby street corner on the northern side of the street bad luck about all the fig birds bad luck about the pedestrians in the street for the next couple of decades who will burn in summer i hope council is going to upgrade the air conditioning in the library and the art gallery because the street will be 8 degrees hotter in summer bad luck about the decreased lifespan of the bitumen a costly little item bad luck about all of us who valued having a beautiful street and bad luck for those of us who have had our eyes open to the workings of local government our rates at work i m currently taking wagers about which infrastructure project will end up being the cause of all this devastation will it be an electricity cable upgrade or will it be a water main bets anyone 1st sept 2010 the first day of spring and we have the independent arborist s report to read and distribute to councillors it s available in today s post here 21st august 2010 council voted on tuesday 17th 2010 to fell the 14 hill s fig trees they had proposed to replace them with liquidambars and were ridiculed in the press so the fall back plan is a row of hill s figs a single row down the centre of the street in vaults this is in spite of municipal arborists in this neck of the woods seeing hill s figs as inappropriate as street trees they just happen to have been growing hill s figs for long enough for them to reach a height of 3 5 metres how convenient don t hold your breath though council officers were asked by elected councillors to replace the canopy in tyrrell street the forerunner of this doesn t history just repeat itself over and over and they didn t apparently arborists and insurance people look at trees in a completely different way from the rest of us a wise man sees not the same tree as a fool the pages on this blog that would bring you up to date with the fig stuff are what s the story behind save our figs and a short version of mr marsden s report and if you re interested in short ish raves about how to assess tree risks and the implications of taking this too far have a look at risk management quotes i adore the misuse of qtra and personally like questioning tree risk calculation 1st august 2010 the most recent post is always the first in the list on the right under recent posts 24th july 2010 i ve started a new page about us part 2 to update summaries of new posts council stuff and urban forest stuff because this page is getting too long and taking too long to load 18th july 2010 lots of fun this week starting with fig jam s latest protest photos under the fig trees when the governor came to the art gallery tree stuff and other stuff which has some overseas tree news and forget the big banana we can have the big celebrity who left newcastle about the lord mayor s idea to cut the tree stumps into sculptures 13th july 2010 this week s posts were selling the farm about the state giving away non renewable resources and depriving councils of funds how do figs cope in a pond about a row of hill s figs which end up knee deep in water each time it rains and visual pollution rave about the ugliness of an industrial commute past coal loaders and how in need of trees that drive is 4th july 2010 the date for the briefing to councillors about the laman street trees has finally been announced it s tuesday 27th july 2010 at 5 30pm in the hunter room at the town hall it s open to the public this week my posts were the humble tuckeroo about spacing of street trees and how some of them aren t prospering as well as i d like them to and an arborist chatroom about a public forum with some scary anti tree talk coming from arborists as well as odds and ends of news about trees elsewhere 27th june 2010 in a week where we changed prime ministers and the bp oil rig continued to discharge millions of gallons of oil into the gulf of mexico the problems of our cbd figs seemed small and fortunately nothing happened to them i still managed to go on about a few things branding and remember this is not about right tree right place is about how well known the trees are in newcastle as is the plan to cut the mature figs down old and new photos was inspired by a book i found about the history of the conservatorium which was housed for many years in laman street wauchope figs and too much other news as usual is about a town further north whose successful fig saving fight inspired the moves to conserve the trees in laman street but where some trees will soon go because of infrastructure damage and the last post for the week was when will laman street figs come back to council was written when council meeting agenda listings for july a week away consisted of an empty page 19th june 2010 this week s posts were about the felling of 100 year old hill s figs at wahroongah station in sydney figs in wahroongah gone comparing the transparency there with that in newcastle bee in my bonnet about wahroongah figs vs laman street figs and the problems of being a regional centre rather than the capital of a state and a safe seat to boot newcastle neglected again newcastle put in a bid for a paltry sum of money to start the extension to the art gallery but was unsuccessful such a short sighted decision 14th june 2010 it s the queen s birthday long weekend now there s an anachronism but everyone just loves a long weekend and i ve written two posts found some public art i didn t know existed and dragged the family even the dog on our first instalment of walking every suburb in newcastle the poor dog has had an ear infection it turns out and this manifested itself for about two months as anxiety and we couldn t get her to walk the hundred yards to the corner shop the picture here of the gutter deserves more prominence than it s so far had buried on a council web page and in one of posts here it s the damage supposedly done to a fig by the 2007 pasha bulker storm and the reason three of the figs were removed see that gap that s the damage no one was squished no car was crushed no branch fell off this gap represented potential instability anyway the post day one of a long weekend was inspired by an article in the paper about damage caused by trees and how much this costs the ratepayerand how can we tar the laman street trees with the same brush the second post figs in wahroongah gone was my response to the unpleasant news that 80 year old figs on a sydney train station were removed because of uneven pavement 11th june 2010 the laman street figs survived more windy weather this week new post today bits and pieces mostly about how we should be demanding more of developers to ensure this town becomes more beautiful not more ordinary 8th june 2010 new post did you know bitumen can hold up trees more rants about council website spin on an historical and hysterical note i was torturing myself by reading old council documents about laman street s trees and found a briefing given in february 2009 in response to councillors resolution that council replace the two removed hill fig trees with an appropriate species at the eastern end of laman st near newcastle region art gallery one on each side of the street as a matter of priority council receive a report on the planting options to replace trees lost in the cultural precinct area of laman str...
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