Our Campaign to Preserve Victoria Park Barrambin
Seal’s Speeches to Council Chambers
- A Historic & Iconic Park, 4th Feb 2025
- Protect Victoria Park Barrambin, 11th Feb, 2025
- Brisbane is Unsustainable, 26th Nov, 2024
- Council reducing Greenspace by 290 Hectares, 5th Nov, 2024
- Greenspace under attack, 29th Oct, 2024
- Barrambin under threat, 17th July, 2024
Victoria Park/Barrambin is our city’s biggest park - Brisbane's green lungs. It's under threat.
In 2016, Jonathan Sriranginathan, our first Greens Councillor, started calling for Victoria Park Golf Course to be converted back into parkland. Despite initial opposition, the LNP administration eventually took up this Greens idea and have been running a Master Plan process to return Barrambin to an beautiful lush greenspace destination for the whole city. $120 million has already been committed by the federal, State and City Council to the revitalisation of this iconic park as the "lungs of the city".
However, the latest LNP state government 100 day review of Olympic stadiums recommendations has been leaked, proposing an Olympic stadium in Barrambin. It is urgent that we take action now to protect and preserve this essential inner-city greenspace, before the state government announcement on the 25th March, 2025.
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Picnic Rally - MARCH 22nd
Please join us on Saturday, MARCH 22 for our PICNIC MARCH to protect and preserve this unique inner-city greenspace that could be lost forever.
First Nations Cultural Tour - APRIL 5th
Join us, on a walk alongside the traditional custodians, connecting past with present and inspiring a shared future of Barrambin, utilising award winning virtual reality technology to transport us to an accurate depiction of Barrambin in pre-colonial times. Brett Leavy’s use of virtual reality to transport the viewer to a 3D dreamtime has been embraced in galleries, libraries and museums across the world.
Why Should We Protect Barrambin?
History of Victoria Park /Barrambin
Before European invasion, Barrambin was an open forest of grassy fields with large eucalypt trees: blue gum, apple, box, spotted gum and ironbark, not dissimilar to the way it looks now according to expert historians. This was a meeting place for corroborees, agriculture, dancing, hunting and gathering. A place for other First Nations to visit and stay from other Nations. In early colonial history, violent attacks were perpetrated against First Nations People in Victoria Park Barrambin. Many First Nations People were injured, killed, or forced off their land. By the 1860s, most Aboriginal people had been removed from or had left Barrambin.
The Park was gazetted in 1875, at that time a much larger 130 hectares. More than half has been removed for other uses since this time, leaving only 64 hectares. Barrambin has never managed to be given the role that was intended, with many various developments and uses overriding its original intention. The Council’s adoption of the Greens campaign in 2020 would finally return one of Brisbane’s oldest and largest greenspace, to its original use.
Climate Crisis
We are in a climate crisis requiring us to spend huge amounts on severe weather disaster recovery. Is this the right time to be spending billions of dollars on a massive new Olympic stadium in Barrambin? This stadium will be a similar size to Suncorp, which can easily host the opening and closing ceremonies. For Brisbane to navigate the emerging climate crisis it is vital that we increase our greenspace and tree canopy in order to reduce the impacts of an over-heating urban streetscape.
Losing 290 Hectares Greenspace
This council administration has recently amended our City Plan to allow for a reduction in the amount of greenspace by 290 hectares for Brisbane’s projected population in 12 years (based on a per capita ratio). Losing this 64 hectare inner-city park is an environmental disaster, that will further erode our cities greenspace, increase the severity of urban heat island effect, decrease water retention and exacerbate the severity of local flooding.
Sports Before Profits
This council is ‘broke’ because of the unprecedented tax breaks (up to 75%) they have given to developers. Our Mayor Adrian Schrinner has openly advocated for private investment for Olympic builds. This is a ‘gifting’ of our precious greenspace to developers to make massive profits, not to develop our local sports which are ironically suffering from a lack of greenspace.
Victoria Park Masterplan
By February 2024, the Lord Mayor had spent $33 million of ratepayer funds on the design and early works for the Master Plan. In August, all three levels of government each committed $40 million of public funds. That’s a further $120 million committed to the Master Plan. It only took a few months for the Lord Mayor to throw this out the window and spruik developer plans to dump a mega stadium in the green lungs of our city.
No Olympic builds on Cultural heritage sites
The Olympic bid for Brisbane committed to the conservation of biodiversity and cultural heritage. The Olympic agreement stipulates where new permanent venues will be constructed and the hosts must ensure they are not located in or adjacent to statutory nature, cultural protected areas or World Heritage Sites. Barrambin is protected as a local cultural heritage place.