Friends of Wave Break Island

H5 Bird Flu has now reached Australia and many of our native birds and mammals are at risk. The community is encouraged to keep watch for signs of Bird Flu and:

⚠️ Avoid. Record. Report.

If you see sick or dead birds or other animals, avoid touching them. Instead, take a photo or video, note the location, and report it to the 24 hour Emergency Animal Disease Hotline:
📞 1800 675 888
🌐 birdflu.gov.au

Internationally this disease has caused deaths in more than 560 species of birds and 100 species of mammals.

While the Australian and State Governments and many groups working directly with wildlife have been preparing for the arrival of H5, our threatened bird species urgently need increased conservation actions and funding to abate threats and restore habitat and mitigate further losses.

‼️Do not touch sick or dead birds or other animals.

🧐 Keep watch for signs of bird flu.

Wild birds
- can’t stand, walk, or fly properly
- droopy or puffed-up appearance
- breathing problems (panting or sneezing)
- unusual head or neck posture
- sudden death (especially in large numbers)

Poultry (Chickens, ducks, etc) and Mammals (cows, cats, etc) may also be affected.
For more info visit: birdflu.gov.au

The June edition of has landed. 🪺

Flightlines shares the latest news, updates and stories from the Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme. Banding helps us understand where birds and bats travel, how long they live and how we can protect them.

In this issue:
- new protections for migratory seabird species🤍
- ‘Alby’ the Southern Giant Petrel 🐦‍⬛
- celebrating 22 years of Grey Falcon fieldwork. 🏆

Link in comments. 🐦
📷 Pied Oystercatcher, Stephen Ward

📣 THE BATTLE TO SAVE WAVE BREAK ISLAND & THE SPIT - AN ANNIVERSARY by Save Our Broadwater

We’ve been called troglodytes, a noisy minority who should get with the real world, tree huggers, people who scare politicians, green activists and more.

This weekend ten years ago we went to Southport High School and met with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to put forward our case for the State Government to do a masterplan for The Spit.

It had been a long, tough and expensive campaign to fight against the former Newman Goverment’s plans to give a Chinese consortium the rights to build numerous high rises, a casino and a cruise ship terminal on Wave Break Island.

We know it sounds absurd but it was a very serious proposal to turn Wave Break Is into a high rise city. At one stage the proponent
decided to triple the size of the project.

The Palaszczuk Government got elected and put an end to that proposal but immediately gave the same company, ASF, a free for all to come up with a proposal to do a similar thing on The Spit.

We were back in campaign mode.
Not surprisingly the company wanted to fill The Spit with high rises, up to a dozen this time - and a casino.

More campaigning occupied our time. It got ugly once again. Palaszczuk used The Sunday Mail to tell us what a disgraceful place The Spit was. The same paper targetted us.

Throughout these years of campaigning we knew we had public support on our side and we engaged numerous professional polls to confirm that. At the same time the Sunland company came up with plans to build two 44 storey towers at Mariner’s Cove.

This time our fight was with the Gold Coast City Council. New enemies, more name calling. Another campaign.

Fortunately we managed to convince the Council to reject the application. By the time we met with Premier Palaszczuk at the high school, years of community objections to over development on The Spit and Wave Break Is was difficult to ignore. To her credit she agreed to a masterplanning exercise and importantly stipulated that any development on The Spit had to conform to the three story height limit that was in the Gold Coast City Plan.

The masterplanning exercise involved a good selection of community representatives and produced a mostly impressive result.

The Palaszczuk Government put $60 million into implementing the first stages of the plan. With this money, the government built the bikeway, redeveloped some of Doug Jenning’s Park, Moondawarra Spit, the Seaway Promenade, Muriel Henchman Park and has funded the upgrade of Federation Walk.

We believe most of the community has welcomed these upgrades. They have certainly increased the community’s usage of The Spit.

The fight to protect this incredibly important public land will never be over.

The ridicuous idea to build a cruise ship terminal off Philip Park will not go away. We had to stop a bungy jumping company from purloining some public land for their enterprise. There have been new calls for a casino and a cable car to go on The Spit and the future of the fishing trawlers is currently being threatened.

It is arguably the most valuable 180ha of public land in Queensland and the fight to keep as public open space will never go away. While groups like Save Our Broadwater, the Main Beach Association, Friends of Federation Walk and Save Our Spit continue to be part of government consultations we feel confident we can continue to protect it.

We have had lots of wins because we have had the community on our side and good people will always do what they can to protect the things they love. End.

🙏🏼 Thank you Save our Broadwater, it is true, majority of the community are on your side and are rising to the occasion opposing absurd ideas and ideals of the elected public servants

‼️ No development of Wave Break Island ‼️

🏝️ Wave Break Island, naturally always 🌿

‼️What the 💩! There’s a $17 million dollar tax payer funded study planning the development of Wave Break Island under the Direction of Tom Tate ‼️

Wave Break Island coastal environment is home to incredible marine life as one of our City’s most loved boating destinations

We’re encouraging boaters and pwc riders to enjoy the water responsibly by slowing down near marine life, avoiding sensitive habitats and keeping rubbish onboard

Thank you 🏝️