Once our heritage is gone, it’s gone.
This is one of the many urgent warnings in response to the acceleration of buyback demolitions across Lismore over the last two months.
On Sunday 2nd August, over 100 community members came together on the lawns of Gwalia House in Lismore for a community rally to demand: Stop the Demolitions, Save our Heritage.
Draped in colourful banners reading ‘Save Me’, ‘Don’t Trash Me’, and ‘Protect Our Big Scrub Homes’, the iconic curves of the century-old Gwalia House set the scene for an afternoon of speeches, performances and an open mic.
A new clown collective called ‘Clowning Down the River’ paraded as the ‘Deconstruction Authority’, a group of bureaucratic clowns intent on feeding house materials to a hungry monster.
Local Arakwal man Uncle Billy Smith performed for the event and several people hosted a large letter-writing station.
Speakers Antoinette O’Brien, Dr Kevin Glencross and Sue Higginson MLC, and MC Mandy Nolan demanded protection for Lismore’s heritage buildings and Big Scrub timbers, as well as accountability and justice for the harms caused by the NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) and for a genuine community-led flood recovery.
In mid-June, following a strong community response to the increasing rate of demolitions across Lismore, and the need to protect Gwalia House, Minister for Recovery and local Labor MP Janelle Saffin announced a new Homes Reuse Program.
100 buyback homes in the Northern Rivers have been allocated to this program and 75 of them are in the Lismore LGA, including Gwalia House.
According to the RA website, eligible organisations can submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) to relocate listed homes for “affordable, social, transitional, crisis or key worker housing, or as community spaces that provide human and social support services” and be granted up to $135,000 towards the cost of this process.
The EOI opened on 9th July and will close on 17th September.
Housing Minister Rose Jackson stated that this program shows that the NSW State government is looking at “every sensible opportunity to get more homes into communities faster and make sure good, useable homes don’t go to waste”.
However, quotes estimate $1 million to relocate Gwalia, given its size and complexity.
Rally organisers highlighted there is no guarantee of protection for Gwalia, or any of the houses listed, if the requirements to relocate cannot be met.
Similarly, speakers also shared instances of local residents accepting buy-back offers on the grounds that their homes would be reused, often having done flood repair works, only to see them later demolished.
The announcement of Gwalia being ‘saved’ generated both relief and confusion on-line and in the community, interrupted the growth of widespread concern and made it more difficult for people to stay informed and active.
In this context, the key demands of the Gwalia rally were clear: (1) Protect our existing heritage buildings, (2) Honour the Big Scrub materials, (3) Allow caretaking leases for houses in the Homes Reuse Program, and (4) A moratorium to stop demolitions, and to reassess all buildings for their usability.
While the government assures the NSW public that they do not want to see good homes go to waste, local Lismore residents are regularly standing on footpaths or looking out their kitchen windows to see homes be pulled apart by machinery in a matter of hours.
They watch excavators scoop through brand-new kitchens, bathrooms and roofing, and look on as Big Scrub timbers are turned into splinters and piled into skips.
They hear of beloved local buildings going down, like the ‘20,000 Cows’ restaurant and ashram, only to turn up the next day to a flattened lot.
Despite this, people are continuing to care and show up in myriad ways, and there is still time for others to join, or return.
Whether advocating directly to the RA and Lismore City Council to save houses, approaching demolition companies to salvage material, speaking to neighbours or gathering together, they are steadfast in wanting alternative futures to what government or corporate interests can conceive.
You can add your name to the Stop the Demolitions change.org petition at: https://c.org?BRLxgSVkQCheck Reclaim Our Recovery on social media.
See related article, ‘The truth about the Homes Re-use Program’ on page 4
