Operational facility in 2023
Aboriginal groups from the Coen area in central Cape York Peninsula have not moved into the gifted and now dilapidated former biosecurity facility which protected the $600m Tablelands horticulture industry and the remainder of Queensland from invasive plant and animal pests.
Empty facility in 2024, where is the shed?
Queensland Labor member for Cook Cynthia Lui negotiated the handover of this vital facility to a Coen indigenous group when the state environment department scuttled the group’s application to open a rock quarry after complaints from another quarry business.
Sources said the gift of the $2m biosecurity infrastructure, 20 klms north of Coen and the nearest hotel, was a trade-off for the failed quarry application made in 2022 by a local indigenous earthmoving company.
An annual influx of more than 100,000 tourist vehicles into Cape York posed a threat to the southern farming districts and biosecurity officers, some of whom were indigenous, inspecting south-bound vehicles for invading insects in fruit, vegetables and livestock.
The deserted complex in July 2024, overgrown with grass waiting for the next bushfire to raze it to the ground
Now there is no biosecurity barrier between Papua New Guinea, Torres Strait, its northern sea lanes and the remainder of Queensland.
Labor MP Cynthia Lui (r) with former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, puppeteer for the Yam Island MP
Since 2016, South African immigrants and other family farmers have descended upon the Mareeba Dimbulah Irrigation Area to the south buying farms and planting large areas of grapes and citrus.
Sugar cane cropping is dominant throughout the district supplying the Arriga sugar mill.
Closure of the biosecurity facility to the north of this vast irrigation area will leave growers at the mercy of the red-banded mango caterpillar, black sigatoka banana disease and other insect invaders found in the Torres Strait and PNG.
