Latest NBN NewsNewcastle News

MAYOR TO PUSH FOR WEAPONS RANGE MOVE

Port Stephens Council will ask the defence department to shut down the Salt Ash Weapons Range before the noisy new Joint Strike Fighters arrive at the end of the decade.

Noise forecasts have left several pockets of land worthless, but the mayor says the situation will continue over his dead body.

text will be replaced

Related Articles

9 Comments

  1. I support Mayor Mackenzie that is what all the residents want for the bombing range & practice be done elsewhere, the base is not the issue.
    My Dad fought with the Raaf in WW2 & would turn in his grave to think he had fought for this country for it’s people to live in peace & harmony not the assault everyday of residents in this area by this taxpayer funded force.

  2. I’m glad Mayor Mackenzie has changed his mind. A month ago he stated the Weapons Range was going nowhere. We support the WLM Base and the great men & women who work there. We don’t support the use of the Salt Ash Weapons Range by low flying aircraft. My home is just 1 km from the target area. In 1998 we came from Canberra, did all the right things by getting council 149(2) certificate etc etc. Knew about the base (9k’s away) but not the weapons range. My home/land has been through 4 ANEF’s and is now uninhabitible. Dept. of Defence is responsibile for moving the goal posts, not the council. DoD is a dictator to the masses. They answer to no one. Not even the tax payers whos money keeps them flying.

  3. Most people do not have a problem with the RAAF base in general, but only with this particular type of weapon training, which obviously comes from the past, when they were flying little propeller ‘Tiger Moth’ airplanes. It is hard to believe (and quite absurd) that they still do the same low flying bomb dropping training over increasingly populated residential areas today with modern, extremely noisy and water polluting jet fighters. In most civilised countries this type of training is banned from residential areas since many years, although many of them have far less un-populated land, compared to Australia.
    Australia is not a third world country either, so why is is necessary to do this type of training over beautiful coastal area where families live, although only 2.3% of Australia’s land area (1995) is populated?

  4. When we bought our house we were not in the noise zone but with the stroke of a pen our home and land has become dramatically reduced in price, so basically will be hard or impossible to sell at a price that we will ever be able to repurchase another property.
    Nightly we hear on our news of the dramatic house/land price increases and in our local paper that our Port Stephens rates may increase!
    With all those square klm of unoccupied land in Australia why do the DoD insist on having a weapons range in a residential area?
    Where in the world do you find a weapons range in a residential area?
    Please take note that we ‘are not’ against the RAAF base as an example they co-exist in Darwin without problems. We just want to live unshellshocked and a peaceful life in a pristine beautiful area.

  5. Subjecting your own population to unnecessary military exercises, which cause severe stress and health risks, is the sort of activity one might expect in countries like North Vietnam, or Iran, or some left behind fascist African regime….
    So why is it even a discussion to move an out-dated Bombing Range from a sensitive eco-system, which already has a number of communities living in it, who just want to live there in peace? With our economy booming on the back of mining, can’t we afford to re-locate the Weapons Range to a more suitable location?
    The whole of Port Stephens would be a better place to live and holiday, if the out of touch burocrats in charge of the RAAF activities in Williamtown would have the guts to make a progressive decision. We don’t hate the RAAF. We hate the Bombing Range in our Back Yards!

    P. Rombouts

  6. People the range was there long before you, you move to an area for the price then carry on to get rid of the item that gave you the cheap price.
    Its like buying next to an airport and than complaining about the noise

  7. The air force always say they were here first but the Salt Ash school was here in the 1800s well before the Wright Bros. but the planes fly directly over the school. I don’t believe the noise is the main problem but it is a fact that 6% of the fuel is lost over the population and as we have rainwater tanks the fuel will go into our tanks which we use for drinking. This I believe is more important.

  8. ■Michelle on May 6th, 2010 9:18 am
    People the range was there long before you, you move to an area for the price then carry on to get rid of the item that gave you the cheap price.
    Its like buying next to an airport and than complaining about the noise

    I think michelle who wrote the above needs to think about the people who purchased their homes before the ANEF maps were changed and spread out further, the people who were none the wiser at the time and the people who didnt even realise that there were ANEF maps – Grow a heart darling !

Back to top button