Sharon Webb looks at the history of the land chosen as the new prison site

THE 70 hectare block of crown land on Birralee Road chosen for a prison site was never reserved, even though it was bought by the State Government with Federal Government money for that purpose.

Corrections Minister Elise Archer recently sought to shrug off any environmental value of the site in Parliament. ‘Publicly, the site has not been actively managed by the Crown. It is not the responsibility of DPIPWE’s private land conservation program,’ she said.

‘The site does not contain the values for which it was originally purchased and, for more than a decade, consideration has been given to the land being sold …’

Ms Archer may have used the word ‘publicly’ because a former DPIPWE employee, shocked about wood theft and rubbish dropping there, told the Gazette he erected signs used for another DPIPWE project. The signs told people to keep out and that the land was protected under the 2002 Act.

Environmentalists such as Australian bird expert Sarah Lloyd OAM who lives at Birralee and long-time conservationist Alistair Graham dispute Ms Archer’s comments, saying the land is a haven for endangered and vulnerable wildlife.

The block was sold to the Tasmanian Government by former Westbury residents Harry and Elizabeth Laker.

According to a family member it was owned by Laker family company, Marney’s Hill Estate, part of a much larger property including the 280 hectare Birralee Road farm now owned by objectors to the new prison site, Aaron Reader and Olivia Quill.

Harry and Elizabeth Laker were well-known in the Westbury area. Harry was a local vet and the couple owned Culzean, an Anglo-Indian style house built in 1841.

From 1965 until 2000, the Lakers lived at Culzean, with its stunning four hectare garden and large lake installed by Dr Laker.

In 1997 the ageing Lakers sold the Birralee block as part of the Regional Forest Agreement process. It was the beginning of their move from Culzean to a newly-built Westbury house where they planned to spend the rest of their lives.

Tasmania’s record of land ownership, The List, shows the Lakers sold the crown land block for $75,000.

The family member said she believed Dr Laker had wanted to subdivide it.

‘My memory is that he was told he couldn’t do that because it contained a plant that needed to be preserved,’ she said. ‘So he chose to sell it to the government.’

A DPIPWE spokesperson confirmed the site was bought with Federal Government funds.

At that time the State Government, through the Regional Forest Agreement, was preserving under-reserved land with high conservation values. It achieved this by either by encouraging owners to covenant land or buying it with $30m funding provided by the Federal Government specifically for this purpose.

But according to the spokesperson, Dr Laker’s land was never made a reserve. The soil type was key.

‘It was thought that the land contained the vegetation community “Eucalyptus amygdalina inland forest and woodland on Cainozoic deposits” which was considered a high priority for reservation because of historical loss due to land clearing, and which was subsequently included as a “Threatened Native Vegetation Community” under the Nature Conservation Act 2002,’ she said.

‘However, further surveying of the site revealed that it actually contained the community “Eucalyptus amygdalina forest and woodland on dolerite” which is not listed, is well-reserved, and has not been a high priority for reservation.’

This non-reservation brought the land to its current status of unallocated crown land.

During the RFA process conservationist Alistair Graham was on the advisory committee for the Private Forest Reserve Program and said he knows the block well.

He believes it was reserved – then de-gazetted about 10 years later by a subsequent government. ‘It is a very high-quality reserve. The forest type is immaterial,’ he said.

‘We advised the Federal Government to spend money on it in good faith and it’s frustrating that the State Government can now denigrate its values and dispose of it as it sees fit.