Save our serenity
IT is not surprising that the Swan Hill community is suspicious about news of a newly registered business at the Swan Hill aerodrome after what occurred in May last year with council secretly negotiating with an international flying school.
In fact, a new flying school was set up at Swan Hill aerodrome in October 2020, following the council elections, under the name of Sport Aviation Flight Academy.
The new signage is on the hangar.
Could it herald more noise from circuit training over our town? These little planes let out quite a noise as we have experienced lately, as well as using leaded fuel.
Yes, lead. Flying over Swan Hill and district residences, causing disturbance into the evening and the wee small hours of the night, over our schools, sports grounds, aged-care and childcare centres during the day.
One can only imagine how a large scale training facility would change our lifestyle and cherished peaceful skies.
It is yet to be seen if Swan Hill council do what it can to prevent such an imposition to residents’ wellbeing.
As we saw in 2020, Mildura’s flying school International Aviation Alliance (IAA) were flying in Swan Hill and district skies and using the airport constantly throughout the winter months into spring.
The risk that our council could negotiate any other proposal that comes their way for another flying school at Swan Hill is very real.
The idea that a high-intensity flying training school sets up in Swan Hill, with its airport so close to the centre of town, was and still is a horrific thought to many residents. Council must realise this by now.
This new flying school in itself appears to be benign for now, but once the infrastructure upgrades are complete, we may be consigned to the very thing we have been fighting against, the facilitation of an industrial scale flight school or increased usage from visiting flight schools.
If you want to stand up against such harmful development, please come to our upcoming public meeting and write to council, again, and call councillors.
Save our serenity, health, amenity, tourism and clean farmland before, like Mildura, it’s too late.
Dr Jacquie Kelly,
Save Swan Hill Serenity Action Group Inc
