31 MAR 2007 

Between the Traveston Crossing Dam and re-routing of the Bruce Highway, Rudy and Melody Zylstra have certainly been through the mill.

And that does not include all the other major issues suffered by the long-suffering residents of Federal.

“We’ve had the Vodaphone tower,” said Rudy, “and Noosa Shire Council trying to tell us our besser block home was of Heritage Character and could only be painted in specific colours”.

“Then there was the Queensland Regional Plan, which prevented land from being subdivided, even if that was what some farmers were relying on for superannuation”.

“Then there were all the accidents,” said Melody, recalling her days agitating for the much-welcomed highway improvements which have greatly reduced the death rate at her front gate.

But there are no hard feelings for this Federal couple who have finally resigned themselves to leaving their 100 acres of paradise for a smaller, but still substantial and much more convenient acreage block at Gympie’s Southside.

“We’ve had four and a half to five years fighting governments and others trying to tell us what to do and putting the whole area under stress.”

“And a whole lot of people are suffering for it,” Melody said, citing stress-linked health problems affecting many in the area.

But something went right in a big way for the Zylstra family, on top of the benefits they say their family has gained by having the chance to live and grow up there over the past 33 years.

“We were being approached by both Main Roads because of the highway, and DNR because of the dam, which both affect our property,” Melody said.

“Main Roads accepted our hardship claim in June last year and we settled with them. The whole thing was finalised, and then the water people from DNR got onto us with their valuation to take our land for the dam”.

“I thought if the DNR offer is more than we’d accepted from Main Roads, I was just going to tear up the envelope,” Melody said.

“But it was actually $180,000 less, so it was very lucky for us we had accepted the Main Roads offer.”

The neighbourhood has become much busier in the time the Zylstras have raised their children there, with traffic going from “two or three cars on a Saturday morning to 28,000 movements a day.”

Melody had high praise for Transport Minister Paul Lucas in his treatment of people concerned about highway accidents. “He was just so good, I rang him up and thanked him. He said ‘No-one ever does that’.”