By Jeremy Sollars
A decision on State-heritage listing of the Leslie Park Memorial Gate will not happen before July, the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection has confirmed.
As reported in the Free Times on Thursday, Southern Downs councillors had been expected to make a decision about shifting the gate back to Glengallan Homestead at their meeting on Wednesday of this week.
But council officers are understood to have received advice shortly before the meeting that a local community member had lodged an application to have the gate State-heritage listed, forcing the councillors to defer their decision.
Controversy has raged for some months since the Glengallan Homestead Trust asked the council if the gate – previously at the entrance to the Homestead grounds – could be shifted back prior to the homestead’s 150th anniversary celebrations later this year, planned to culminate with a gala dinner in mid-September.
The consensus of community consultation by the council on the request to shift the gate was overwhelming in favour of it remaining in Leslie Park.
The four sandstone pillars and the iron gates – which stand in the south-west corner of Leslie Park opposite the Warwick Courthouse – were gifted to the Warwick council in 1940 by the then owner of Glengallan Homestead, Oswald Slade, to mark the centenary of the Leslie brothers settling in the Warwick district.
When they were installed in Leslie Park the gates were mounted with commemorative insets recognising the Leslie Brothers, which remain in place today.
The Free Times sought comment from the local resident who made the State-heritage listing application but they declined to respond publicly at this time.
In a statement released to the Free Times this week the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection confirmed it had received an application “from a member of the community to enter the Leslie Park Memorial Gates in the Queensland heritage register”.
“The department will assess the application and make a recommendation to the Queensland Heritage Council, an independent body who decides which places are entered in the Queensland heritage register,” the statement said.
“The Queensland Heritage Council is likely to consider the application at their July or August 2017 meeting.
“The Leslie Gates stand within the Queensland heritage register boundary for the Warwick War Memorial and Gates, which encompasses all of Leslie Park.
“There is no information in the current heritage register entry about the Leslie Gates.
“Because these gates are contained within the heritage boundary, some form of development approval would still be required for any proposed relocation, with or without the current application.”
