Fight for Fairness — Save Mountain View Nursery

Our Story

Mountain View Nursery is a small, family-run business on the South Coast of NSW that has spent years providing thousands of beautiful, healthy plants to homes, landscapers, and community projects across the region.

We’ve always operated as a true plant nursery — propagating and growing many thousands of plants annually, restoring landscapes, and supporting local jobs.

Yet for more than five years, we’ve been trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare that’s threatened to close our gates for good.

️ The Backstory — Six Years of Delays and Heartbreak

Almost six years ago, as soon as our nursery began attracting visitors and looked set to become a small retail venture, we did the right thing — we lodged a Development Application for a simple change of use to a Plant Nursery, a land use clearly permitted under our zoning.

What followed has been a nightmare of bureaucracy, bias, and delay.

Our first DA was rejected for using an aerial map as a to-scale drawing — something that’s been accepted in other applications.

Since then, we’ve faced long stalls in the process, unanswered emails, and repeated attempts to meet with council staff and councillors that, for the most part, were left unanswered.

We tried again and again to work collaboratively — but every time we got close, the goalposts shifted.

We’d spend thousands more dollars, often with the promise or suggestion of resolution, only to have the posts yanked back the moment we complied.

To make matters worse, one of the original councillors lives on our road and has openly sided with the small group opposing us.

That group has used threats, intimidation, and constant public criticism to paint our family and business in the worst possible light — and council has allowed that noise to shape its decisions instead of relying on evidence and fairness.

We are now in the sixth year of what should have been a routine approval process.

Our business has been paralysed, our savings drained, and our reputation dragged through the mud — all while we continue to supply plants that help green our region, support local jobs, and make our community more beautiful and sustainable.

This is not just unfair — it’s heartbreaking.

We are ordinary, hard-working people up against an entrenched system that seems to protect influence over integrity.

It truly is a David vs Goliath struggle — and we’re still standing, only because of the incredible support of those who know us and believe in what we do.

Why This Feels So Unfair

We’ve supplied thousands of plants across the region and have always operated as a plant nursery — a fact that should have been self-evident.

Yet, unbelievably, for the past four years, council determined — incorrectly — that we were not a plant nursery, despite a detailed dossier of evidence to the contrary prepared by council’s own former town planner, and without anyone from council’s DA department ever assessing the property before making that assumption.

That error became the basis for a Development Control Order (DCO) and a long chain of setbacks that caused immense damage to our livelihood.

Now, despite costly independent engineering reports confirming that an all-weather gravel surface is more than adequate, Council insists that we must seal our shared rural Right of Way (ROW) with a 4-metre-wide bitumen surface and additional passing bays.

This is a Right of Way benefitting only two neighbouring residents — plus a third who uses it without legal entitlement — all of which adds significantly to the upkeep costs that I alone bear.

An official traffic assessment found that Mountain View Nursery contributes fewer than two vehicle movements per hour on average — far below the threshold of fifty movements per hour normally required before sealing is even considered.

To make matters worse, each condition must be certified by qualified engineers — and then re-assessed by the same council department that has repeatedly obstructed us — before we can even reopen our gates.

For a small regional business, this is a punishing and unnecessary demand. The cost runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars — far beyond what any family enterprise could reasonably bear — and all to replace a perfectly functional, environmentally gentle gravel surface with heat-trapping asphalt.

Adding insult to injury, Council collects a percentage of the total project cost in fees — so the higher their demands, the more they profit.

What we’d love to see now are big-hearted philanthropists, respected community figures, and those with strong reputations for fairness to step in to help restore balance, transparency, and a sense of justice to this fight.

⚠️ A Pattern of Bias and Inequity

Over the years, our dealings with council have revealed what feels like a consistent pattern of unequal treatment and administrative bias.

We’ve complied with every request, paid for expert reports, and responded in good faith at every stage — yet those efforts have been routinely dismissed.

Meanwhile, other local businesses continue to operate freely, without the same costly or restrictive conditions for unsealed access, drainage, or environmental works.

Requests for transparency and meetings with elected councillors have been overruled on numerous occasions — most recently during a Public Access Meeting, where one councillor attempted to raise our case formally, only to be told by the General Manager that it should be handled “in-house.” Our plight was formally dismissed in that meeting as “not an urgent issue.”

Yet, only a few weeks later, the same group opposing our business — including a former councillor who lives on our street — were granted meetings with both sitting councillors and the General Manager.

They were later seen parading up and down the Right of Way with councillors and the GM, continuing to make disparaging remarks within earshot of me and my children — behaviour that was clearly captured on our security cameras.

Meeting only one side of the story has created a biased narrative within council chambers, allowing decisions to be shaped without our input or the benefit of accurate information.

This lack of balance has been devastating — the truth has been lost in politics.

During earlier dealings with council leadership, I also experienced what felt like intimidation and attempts to silence me.

Both I and a former town planner were marginalised, explicitly told not to speak directly with the Mayor, and it was even implied that any reconsideration of the DCO might depend on us staying quiet.

That atmosphere left me feeling bullied and powerless — punished for simply standing up for fairness and transparency.

For most of this ordeal, I faced it alone as a single mother — an easy target in a system that too often favours the well-connected and the male-dominated culture within it. It has truly felt like a boys’ club, where fairness and empathy were nowhere to be found.

Only recently have I had the good fortune of meeting an honourable, compassionate man who has stood beside me against this impossible fight, a difficult foundation on which to begin any relationship. He is one brave man!

The constant hostility, intimidation, and public criticism have been exhausting and extremely stressful for the whole family, yet we keep going because we believe in fairness, truth, and the community that still believes in us.

Why This Matters — For People and the Planet

Mountain View Nursery isn’t just a business; it’s part of the region’s green lungs.

Every plant we grow and sell helps reduce carbon, cool urban spaces, stabilise soils, and restore native habitat.

We’ve supplied trees and shrubs that now thrive in parks, streetscapes, and gardens across the South Coast, NSW, and the ACT — a living legacy of environmental improvement.

Yet Eurobodalla Shire Council is now demanding that we lay down tonnes of asphalt — one of the world’s most carbon-intensive materials — on a rural lane that functions perfectly well as gravel.

Bitumen traps heat, increases local temperatures, contributes to runoff, leaching of toxins into the soil and adds to our collective carbon footprint. In our local situation it will mean loss of habitat for our resident ring-tail possums, blue-tongue lizards, arthropods and countless small creatures; and fragmentation of vegetation used by a protected field-kite species.

And for what? To satisfy the demands of a couple of naysayers, not the evidence of science.

This decision flies in the face of environmental sense.

What We’re Asking

We’re calling for fair treatment, transparency, and common sense.

We’re asking Council to recognise the professional evidence and environmental reasoning already before them — and to treat Mountain View Nursery the same way they treat every other local business.

If you believe in fairness, community, and sustainability, please consider supporting us.

Your contribution will help us either:

Fund the sealing (if we’re forced to comply), so we can reopen and continue serving our community, or

Mount a legal challenge to stop this environmental and financial injustice once and for all.

How You Can Help

Donate what you can — every bit brings us closer to reopening.

Share this campaign to raise awareness of what’s happening in Eurobodalla.

Speak up if you have evidence, experiences, or professional insight into similar cases of council overreach or unsealed-road policies.

Collaborate if you work in civil, bitumen, or environmental fields and can offer discounted services — even a small reduction helps.

Together, We Can Keep Growing

This isn’t just about one nursery — it’s about how small family businesses are treated, how councils wield their power, and whether community voices still matter.

Mountain View Nursery has always stood for integrity, hard work, and care for the environment.

Now we’re asking for your help to make sure that continues.

Please donate, share, and help us fight for fairness — for small business, for truth, and for the future of our planet.

Mountain View Nursery