Our tireless PBCA bushcarers gathered at Lorikeet Park to celebrate another year of keeping our village naturally beautiful, and this location holds special significance for our community battlers.
It was right here that the battle of Lorikeet Park took place in 1993, a fight to stop the Sunshine Motorway from connecting directly down the quiet beachfront street of Lorikeet Drive.
In those days South Peregian Beach was still in developer-controlled Maroochy Shire, which wasn’t too bothered about what the residents considered a major threat to the life of their village.
Without State Government permission, contractors had started to bulldoze the site. At the eleventh hour, angry locals pressured the State Government to put a stop to the work and saved the quiet neighbourhood we know today.
One of them was Margaret Wilkie. (That’s her fifth from the right in the top photo) It was Margaret’s direct contact with the Transport Minister’s office that helped stop the work.
She remembers those days in January 1993: “,Residents who confronted the contractors refused to move off site until the man in charge rang the Government department to verify the stop work that had been placed. They were ordered off site and work was stopped until the roundabout site was settled.”
There will always be pressure on popular coastal villages like ours from those who want to develop at any cost.
PBCA is proud of our current and past members who have been on the front line of these battles for decades, and we know there are more to come.
A footnote. Today, at last, Google acknowledged this place by including Lorikeet Park in its maps. About time.
