Planning Institute of Australia fellow Mike Day believes lord mayor Adrian Schrinner’s plan to rejuvenate Mount Coot-tha Quarry by 2032 should be a project of state significance.
Urban planner Mike Day says the rejuvenation of Mt Coot-tha Quarry should become a project of state significance to produce a legacy for the city.Supplied
Day,a partner at urban design firm Hatch,suggests the Queensland government could help run an international design competition,or call for expressions of interest.
“They could call for ideas internationally to leverage the expertise and ideas that have been implemented around the world,” he says.
“But I stress the point:whatever has been done overseas needs to be locally calibrated.”
Local residents oppose the quarry,local Greens MP Michael Berkman and Schrinner agrees,asking for new uses for Mount Coot-tha and Pine Mountain quarries.
“Just like the desolate industrial precinct on the banks of the Brisbane River was transformed into South Bank after Expo ’88,these two quarries present similar opportunities,” Schrinner said at the time.
“If we start planning now,then we can organise the transition over the coming years so that things can happen prior to the Olympics.”
Day believes 2032 is a realistic time frame.
The transformation into the family-run Butchart Gardens in Canada started in 1904 as limestone stocks were exhausted.Julia Rogers/ Alamy Stock Photo
Day,whose company has redesigned two quarries in Melbourne and a third near Perth,believes planners should also be looking at Canada’s – built on an old limestone quarry on Vancouver Island – for inspiration.
Their Sunken Gardens were planted in nine years,but the transformation into the family-run attraction started in 1904 as limestone stocks were exhausted.
To mark their 100th anniversary,the 20-hectare gardens were added to Canada’s National Historic Sites.
This five hectare ‘Sunken Gardens’ section of Canada’s Butchart Gardens,which began as a limestone quarry,was planted in nine years.Butchart Gardens
In another example,Alcoa in Victoria is reshaping an.
Day says the shape and make-up of any quarry dictates its future use.
“It depends on the setting. Sometimes the quarries are almost impenetrable in terms of moving through them,” he says.
“They are quite deep and have severe and dramatic edges to them. So remediating is a complex work.”
But they offer cities and towns great potential for renewal,he says.
Artist’s impressions of proposed Eden Project development at the former Alcoa site in Anglesea near Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.Supplied
“You can transform these sites,so they become much more of a community asset that are much more accessible.
“You can work with the First Nations people and celebrate Indigenous history and art and also work with Brisbane’s artist community as well.”
Coot-tha means place of wild honey and comes from the Turrbal First Nations people who lived in the area for tens of thousands of years,
“This was an area where the Aboriginal people collected honey from the stingless bee,which is native to the area.”
Given its Indigenous history,some suggest Brisbane’s First Nations Cultural Centre could be located at a reimagined Mount Coot-tha Quarry site.
in Brisbane’s Games planning,but is slowly being prepared.
Day says the transformation of an old cement mine into Canada’s Butchart Gardens lures thousands of international visitors every year.
“That is an exceptional example. But it needs to be tailored to the local setting;if it’s Indigenous art it needs to be ‘of the place’,” he says.
“So if you use some examples from Butchart Gardens,or use some examples from the United Kingdom’s Eden Project,you need them to be locally calibrated.”
In Melbourne,Lilydale’s 120-metre deep quarry has been filled and the Victorian government.
“They put 7½ million cubic metres of fill in there over about three or four years.”
Cave Hill Quarry,a 162.7ha property in Lilydale,is one of the biggest remaining sites of vacant land in Melbourne.Eddie Jim
At Burwood Brickworks at Northcote,Fraser Properties is preparing the landscape for 700 homes,with 2.5 hectares of parkland.
But Day sees a different future for Mount Coot-tha Quarry because it is next door to the 56-hectare Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.
He even envisions a conference venue and restaurant.
“It could be an extension to the botanical gardens there,but with quite a different composition. They could be very complementary,” he says.
“There could be eco-cabins in between the two gardens,the two sites. It could be a revenue source as well to defray the costs to maintain the gardens.”
Community consultation will continue until June 2024
