91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳

By Lex Martin DARWIN — Until recently Darwin Harbour, a huge tidal mangrove, attracted scant attention from government or investors. However, the NT's Country Liberal Party has decided that of the existing 260 square kilometres of mangrove stock (teaming with Barramundi, mud crabs, prawns and crocodiles), 26 of it needs to make way for development. The Commonwealth has enthusiastically assisted, funding the three areas where the bulldozers are currently working around the clock and a major arterial road from Palmerston in the east around the coastal fringe through the wetlands to the city. The federal defence department is also contributing to the housing and industrial development bonanza. It handed over 440 hectares of RAAF land for a nominal $1.2 million fee to the NT government, only to buy some of it back at $200,000 per residential block in an estate built on mangroves. Meanwhile, the sandfly count is off the richter scale on the mangrove land-fill sites, and extensive "buffer" zones will need to be cleared into the surrounding forest in order to mitigate numbers. The federal government has also kicked in $18 million for the live cattle loading wharf off Quantine Island. Once, the island stood 23 metres above sea level. The Larrakeah people left massive shell fish midden mounds as proof of their 50,000 years of habitation. Now, the entire island is being levelled to make way for the new port. Around the corner, a new defence housing project of 1000 houses has begun. This is despite the NT health department advising against a residential development in the pandanus wetland due to the high sandfly count. However, defence, housing and the NT government have come up the solution: dredge out Hudson Creek — currently jumping with Barramundi — fill the surrounding mangrove forest and put in a sewerage treatment plant and another industrial estate. Warren Snowdon, a member of Labor's left, has often berated the NT government as "cowboys" and "rednecks". His relationship with them, however, is working very well.
[Lex Martin is a member of the NT Greens.]