Well, what a week it has been.

Just when we thought it was safe to come out from behind our masks we get to keep them on until the end of the month.

At work masks and sign-ins have gone pretty well with only a couple of dissenters. Hopefully the same for you.

Of course, last Tuesday was the Lismore Council meeting for the month and the second last for this extended term, and what a meeting it was with a couple of historic moments and both of them about protecting people on the land.

The first I mention is the finalisation of the LEP in our rural areas and protecting farmers from enforced E Zones. Now there is nothing wrong with a zone that is designed to protect the environment and a lot of the developments that we have seen come through in recent years use them to protect the environment.

Our farming community were going to have them forced upon them which had the potential to restrict the way they farm. My thoughts have always been that in today’s world the farmers in our area are the protectors of those rare pockets of endangered environment and they protect them because it is good for them to do so, that is why they are still there and in great condition.

I did not see the need to force an E Zone on them with all the restrictions that come with them so at the beginning of this term I put forward a motion that the E Zones should be voluntary and if someone saw the benefit then they could apply to have them put over those parts of their property that fitted the environmental conditions.

It was contentious but it got up and nearly five years later, with some people putting their hand up they are now a part of the current LEP.

History-making because we are the only council in NSW to do something like this successfully and I know many have been watching this for a long time.

The other is that we are looking to hand back a part of the North Lismore Plateau, or as it is also known Sleeping Lizard Hill.

Council owns a small parcel of land, 37 hectares, in the most westerly part of the Sleeping Lizard. In fact, it is the head of the lizard which was heavily quarried up until 1978 and since then has sat unused and unloved by the council.

It has however always been loved by our local Aboriginal community especially the Northies who have been the traditional custodians of the North Lismore Plateau (NLP) and its sacred sites and stories. These people have never left their country or their stories that date back thousands of years. They have passed them on to the next generation of their families to do the same when the time came.

They have also shared the stories of the Sleeping Lizard with the wider community, and you just have to ask anyone who has been through a local preschool in the last ten or more years if they know about the Sleeping Lizard and they will be able to tell you the story.

Kids are a great way to start the understanding.

I have been lucky enough to learn through my involvement through Councils Aboriginal Advisory Group to learn what this land means to them especially the Northies.

Now, the majority of them that I know do not want to halt things like the developments that are planned for the NLP they just want to have some areas protected and kept sacred for their cultural history, who would not want that.

So, what did Council “give away” as some have put it.

A 37-hectare site that is mostly a disused quarry that has never been repatriated, something we would never let others get away with, the rest is steep and rugged country that is covered with some environmentally sensitive and protected flora.

It also has many of those aforementioned sacred sites that are registered and must be protected.

There is a small area of land that abuts the Winten land that is slated for development in the future that could be developed. This part of the land from memory would yield approximately 5 rural residential blocks at best at great cost but with little profit if the option were ever taken up. Not the 70 to 80 that has been mentioned by some.

Now it would form a buffer to further protect the sensitive sites and environmental areas.

The land is valued at $399,000 for rating purposes, rates have never been collected because it is considered parklands presently, and not the $5 million that has been thrown around recently.

Whoever came up with that figure needs to do some better research on the 3 block that takes up the site.

This site means more and is worth more culturally to our community, indigenous and non-indigenous than its monitory value.

Could the whole thing have been handled better, hell yes.

We left out even talking to some of the stakeholders including our own Aboriginal Advisory Group as well as many of the Northies who made their anger at the lack of consultation known to me.

We also have left the Council staff playing catchup on how this can actually be done and what is the best way to do it, if it can.

There has already been discussion within the Aboriginal community on how the best way would be to do this and what structure to set up to manage this parcel of land that is so sacred to them on behalf of all the community.

There is a long way to go in this story but if there is one thing that our Aboriginal community is they are patient.

Let us stop the bullshit and hand wringing, deal in the facts and treat all people with respect and start thinking of ourselves as one Mob here in Lismore no matter whether you can count your time here in tens of thousands of years or in the tens of years.

Wow, Lismore City Council did two historical and precedent-setting things in the one meeting all around looking after the land and its varying people.

Who would have thought?