OUR GLEN APLIN HOME
Our 14 hectare (32 acre) farm is situated at 113 Mt. Stirling Road, Glen Aplin, Queensland, Australia. Glen is a Scottish word for a valley and the first Government surveyor who came through this region was a Scottish born man with the surname of Aplin, who named this pretty valley after himself. It became a valley of small land owners growing stone fruits or vegetables and grazing a few head of cattle. Within the past 20-30 years tourist enterprises like wineries, restaurants and guest accommodation have brought changes to the region.
Our home, Das Helwig Haus B&B, is situated in the forested area at the centre of this photograph, which was taken from the Felsberg Winery on the eastern ridge of the valley.
Valley view
To give you a greater appreciation of where we live, below is a view taken with a telescopic lens. Try to place that road, directly above the cluster of trees. The roofs of our buildings are barely visible behind the forest of eucalyptus trees.
Das Helwig Haus B&B
Over beside the road, you can just see the golden wildflowers above our entrance drive way.
Entrance wildflowers
Another way to view our location is to see a land title map. This is an old map and I have coloured our land yellow.
Glen Aplin map
As you can see from this map, we have roads on two sides of our farm, a frontage to the Severn River and two neighbouring farm boundary fences.
Now I will show you a more recent map of our property.
Remnant Forest map
On this map I have marked in the position of our entrance driveway off Mt Stirling Road and drawn a circle to encompass the land where our house and garden are situated. They are in an open cleared area. The reason you don’t see the structures in the valley photo is that you are looking directly across the river and the height of the eucalyptus trees screen our house from view.
But, why is this area shaded? Some years ago the State Governments of Queensland and New South Wales decided to create laws forbidding landowners from clearing trees from their land. Why? Australia has become a country of urban dwellers. Many of these people, as voters, were told by their governments that country landowners were clearing trees from their land at an alarming rate. Combine those lies with the information from the United Nations that about 13 million hectares of forest were cut down or burnt every year between 1990 and 2005, causing about 17 percent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, second only to the energy sector.
Although much of this occurred in developing countries, in particular Indonesia and Brazil, our State Governments used such sensational stories to claim that Australian farmers were destroying their forests in a similar manner. These State Governments, about 10 years ago, brought in draconian laws forbidding the clearing of trees from privately owned farm land. Using aerial photography the forested land of Queensland was mapped. This shadow appeared across our land, indicating our forested land, now tied up from our use by laws enacted by our Queensland State Government. It became illegal to cut a fence line, a road way, or a fire break through these forests. This meant that our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, could sign the Kyoto Protocol claiming that Australia had met its carbon saving targets. This occurred at no expense to the Australian Government, but crippled many Australian farmers. No compensation was ever provided for this Government land grab!
What could the country land owners do? Absolutely nothing! The rural people of Australia only amount to 7% of the voting population. We are a minority group. Compared to the GREEN clamour for such Government policies our minority voice could not be heard as our right to use our land was taken from us.
After 10 years for fighting for compensation for the way the use of his land was stolen by the New South Wales State Government one Australian man, Peter Spencer, is making a dramatic statement.
Peter Spencer
Farmer hunger strike to protest ‘carbon theft’
03 Dec, 2009 05:06 PM
NSW grazier,
Peter Spencer, of “Saarahnlee” in the Monaro region, has gone on an indefinite hunger strike following failed court actions to get compensation for his inability to use effectively a large section of his property because of government land clearing restrictions.He began the hunger strike at his farm house on November 23 and on Wednesday moved it to a wind monitoring mast on his property.
Mr Spencer has vowed to stay until Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, meets the terms of a submission Mr Spencer has made.
The submission argues that land clearing restrictions have amounted to 109 million hectares of “stolen” farm land and farmers should be compensated under “just terms” provisions.
Mr Spencer has previously argued farmers have been denied millions of dollars in payments for 70 million tonnes of carbon stored on land they have been unable to clear.
The Prime Minister of Australia failed to get a Carbon Trading Tax bill passed through the Senate, the upper house of the Australian Federal Parliament, for the second time during the past week. He had hoped to attend the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference boasting of Australia’s GREEN credentials.
A solution being proposed by the United Nations to stop deforestation is known at Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (or REDD). If accepted at Copenhagen this would enable countries and landholders to be paid for preserving forests and also replanting trees in previously cleared areas.
Ten years ago our Australian State and Federal Governments should have offered us, the country land holders of Queensland and New South Wales, payment to preserve out forests, not stolen them!
After I put up a post on another site a couple of days ago concerning this issue, a comment was posted there this morning.
I don’t know how many people read my posts on
http://fayhelwig.com but I link it to
Facebook where I have been writing each day in support of
Peter Spencer, a man fighting for the rights of all
Australian country land owners.
Book cover
Das Helwig Haus B&B owned by Eberhard and Fay Helwig is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.
This is a region noted for Australian wildflowers, four wilderness National Parks and sixty wineries. In 1997 Eberhard and Fay established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies, a European wildflower.
To obtain my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine email me at helwig@halenet.com.au The price is $33.00 posted to destinations within AustraIia. You may phone me on 07-4683 4227 if you wish to pay by credit card.
Internationally it is available on
http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary
http://books.google.co.uk/
