Richard has gone to the first day of the court hearing of Lockyer Quarries and Lockyer Valley Council. The judge came out yesterday to view the site. Shanahan was also present. There were other people in the Land Rover but don't know who they were. So now the judge has seen the site and the hearing starts in earnest. I have tried to keep a serene attitude. What will be will be. We've done what we can and now it is out of our hands (see Tarot card reading in previous post). Still, I know that I am having trouble letting it go. I haven't given up surrounding that hill with protective light, that's a given, but letting my imagination run away with me, that's harder to control. If we lose, then we lose and it begins a new phase in our life. But in a way, it's not even about us anymore. It's about protecting one small pocked of remnant vegetation from the bulldozers. It's not a big pocket in the scale of things but it is rare, dry vine scrub, and getting rarer. We've got to stop chipping away at what wildness is left. I hope the judge sees that. The only bone of contention is the noise. Everyone else mediated their little tails off so that there is nothing left to contest.
I am bewildered because in the first sentence of the appeal it says that Lockyer Quarry wants to quarry the mountain and the Council is refusing permission - and then they go straight to mediation. Once council's solicitors set (and said) "conditions", Game Over. No mediation should ever have been entered into, it should've been no quarry period. But that's done and dusted and it only depresses me to write the above.
Later same day. We lost.
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