By NOEL MURPHY
IT MIGHT be earmarked for a $4 billion waterside suburb but the former Cheetham saltworks at Newcomb has become a dangerous, asbestos and graffiti-riddled heritage site unsecured and open to all.
Broken fencing allows easy access for vandals to the disused site, littered with glass, timber and metal rubbish, broken concrete, bricks, rubbish, and derelict sheds and buildings.
Internal and external walls are smothered with colourful graffiti, empty spray-cans scattered across the site.
A tumbledown four-storey building is open to trespassers despite perfunctory efforts to fence it off.
Buildings and worksheds are covered in graffiti, wet with spilled oil and smell strongly of fuel and grease.
Broken gutters, timber studded with nails, shattered plasterboard, exposed rafters, metal pipes, jagged glass in broken window frames, busted light fittings and fixtures contrast with ‘Danger Keep Out’ signs and asbestos warnings.
Pigeons flutter from corrugated iron sheds almost ankle-deep in guano.
Daredevil vandals have climbed to the upper reaches of the site’s most dangerous buildings to daub their tags and artistic offerings.
Abandoned and dilapidated as the site might be, if Ridley Land Corporation and Sanctuary Living have their way the site could become a new suburb, Nelson Cove, with 5000 homes, light rail, shops, restaurants, a marina and a sports training centre.
Former Ridley chairman John Murray told the Independent earlier this year the heritage issues at the saltwork complicated the company’s residential plans.
“The heritage issue is something that needs to be dealt with, whatever we do,” he said.
The saltworks, which operated for more than are century, are listed for their historic, scientific and social importance, with buildings dating to the 1920s.
