Riddells Creek is a town where people show up

November 2023, Montessori Preschool

The long-running Amess Road saga continues, and it’s time to get organised for the final act - the pubic hearing with an Advisory Committee appointed by the Minister for Planning.

I drove down to the pub to meet with the Riddells Creek Planning Group four short days after Monday 11th November.  The Lions Park was all set up for a town gathering organised by the authorities, in the wake of the death at the preschool when a truck left the road and swept through a power pole and into the preschool playground.  The town needed a chance to be together in the shockwaves of that terrible event. I thought ‘Good on them, I wonder how many people will show up’, and kept moving to get to my own meeting.

So here we are, four guys sitting at a table in the bar, the working group on Amess Road, mulling over what to do, now that the invitation had arrived for the public hearing on the proposed development.

Was it worth it, we wondered out loud, to say again what the town had been saying for five years, that putting lots of small lots on the edge of town, packed together, too far out to walk so you have to drive everywhere, that kind of development wasn’t going to be good for the town.

That this wasn’t what we as a town had been part of planning for since 2013.  That people hadn’t chosen to live in Sunbury or Caroline Springs or any of the new suburbs growing out from metropolitan Melbourne. That they had come here to live in a country town, and a country town with a Melbourne suburb stuck on the edge.

The Advisory Committee is now considering the objections raised in submissions on the proposed Planning Scheme Amendment which will, if approved, pass all this into law. There may not be much chance of changing the mind of a government intent on shoving more houses into what a developer proposes, so is it worth stepping up once again?

We looked at each other across the table. Hell yeah!

The only thing, we realized right away, was the timing. The email on the public hearing had arrived 13th November, two days after that truck ploughed into the preschool in the middle of town.  People in Riddell wanted to speak, but now was not a good time to read a five page letter on a Directions Hearing and a Public Hearing. Now was not a good time to go online and fill in a Request to Be Heard form. Not right now.

Now was the time to go about your business and not know what you feel. Now was the time to drive past the broken fence with its row of television cameras in the first days after, and then the bunches of flowers growing thicker, and then drying out. Now was the time to go on with your life, feeling upset and a bit empty, knowing that others were hurting bad and worse, waiting for whatever sense it might eventually make.

So I left our meeting at the pub tasked with asking the Planning Panel Authority to back off a bit. Passing the Lions Park, I was amazed! It was full!

Lots of people had turned up, standing around in the afternoon sunshine. I imagined there had been official speaking, but now it was just people talking to each other, being connected, feeling the connection. I almost stopped, I knew I should stop, but I was done. It was 6.30 pm, I had a letter to write. I needed to eat.  I drove on.

But later that evening I thought, the way you do when you slow down and events of the day catch up with you, that’s one thing I really like about living here – people show up.

Within 24 hours of sending our letter, the date for the hearing had been pushed back.  Common sense and kindness prevailed. People who made submission now have till 13 January 2025 to put their hand up to speak. 

If that’s you, we’re organising a get together of submitters in mid-December.  Each of us is free say what we want to the Panel, but we will talk about how these hearings are run, and who plans to speak on what.

We want to make sure the Panel gets the whole picture from the people who live here.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Planning Group, December 20th, 2024