Upper Hunter vineyards have been left out of the NSW Government’s recently released draft regional land use policy for the Upper Hunter.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
“There’s been some sort of misrepresentation or some sort of a mistake by the NSW government,” Upper Hunter Winemakers Association president Laurie Nicholls told the Muswellbrook Chronicle. “They have the Lower Hunter vineyards in there – Broke, Bulga, Belford and the Pokolbin area. There’s no mention of the vineyards and wineries in the Muswellbrook and Upper Hunter shires.”
The draft land use policy says: “Two critical industry clusters have been identified in the region – an equine cluster around Scone, Denman and Bylong and a viticulture cluster around Broke and Pokolbin.”
On the map of strategic agricultural land, the only “vital” wine areas included are around Broke and Pokolbin.
The draft policy classified almost 400,000 hectares of the Upper Hunter as “strategic agricultural land” where coal seam gas projects within two kilometres would have to go through a “gateway” process to proceed.
Mr Nichols of Denman, who is the director of Cruickshank Callatoota Estate, said the Upper Hunter was only included late on in the government process.
“The information we provided the Department of Primary Industries in terms of the significance of the area was not submitted or was just ignored,” Mr Nicholls said.
“If they are talking about viticulture in a wine-producing area, the Upper Hunter has to be included in that.”
The Upper Hunter Winemakers Association met yesterday to work on their submission to the land use plans.
Mr Nicholls said they group was working closely with the Hunter Valley Thoroughbred Association and Muswellbrook Shire Council.
Another wine body, the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Association, together with the Hunter Valley Protection Alliance, has called for an exclusion zone in the Hunter Valley to keep coal seam gas activities away from wine regions.
In their submission to the government on the land use plans, winemaker Bruce Tyrrell points to the Upper Hunter as an example of what mining can do to wine and tourism industries.
‘’During the 1980s, the mining industry looked into opening up the Upper Hunter region using the promise of ‘co-existence’,”Mr Tyrrell wrote.
“The Upper Hunter has been lost to wine and tourism completely.”
