Heads residents push boundaries in mechanic bid

Kim Waters
Barwon Heads residents are urging authorities to break town boundaries in an attempt to keep their last mechanic.
The reversal of opinion on breaking the boundaries follows widespread opposition in the past two years to residential development on the town’s Geelong Road doorstep.
More than 300 residents called for extended town boundaries at a meeting after David ‘Dutch’ Jansen was told to leave his Bridge Road premises earlier this year.
Mr Jansen said other potential garage premises inside the town were either unavailable or too costly.
A garage just outside the township made “so much more sense”, he said.
Keep Dutch Local petition organiser Graeme Wallace-Smith believed the community and councillors had “the wool pulled over their eyes” when they opposed previous bids to develop Macafee family land at 1920 Geelong Road.
Mr Wallace-Smith urged the town to “come to its senses”.
“We now see that if the Macafee development had gone ahead we wouldn’t have the medium-density housing problem we have now, with Melbourne people buying places and then only using them for one month in the year,” he said.
Mr Wallace-Smith believed most councillors agreed with him.
“We have seven of the 11 on our side and those who don’t vote in our favour will be named as betrayers to Barwon Heads,” he warned.
Ward councillor Andy Richards said rezoning land outside the township just for Mr Jansen would be like “firing a starter’s gun” for further expansion.
Cr Richards said “a few locals” had approached him about rezoning a small site outside the town boundary for Mr Jansen.
“Given there’s a clear town boundary, I’d think that land owners outside the town boundary would be saying to council quite legitimately that if we can rezone land for Dutch, then why not them.”
Council received 377 submissions regarding the structure plan process for Barwon Heads during a six-day hearing in 2009, with four in favour of rezoning town boundaries to include the Macafee property.