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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Joe Hinchliffe

A new Queensland bill aims to ‘streamline’ major projects. Matt and Caitlin fear it could hand their farm to developers

Matt and Caitlin Wood on their farm in, Springbrook, Queensland
Matt and Caitlin Wood, Springbrook, Queensland. The pair fear a new bill will lower the difficulty for the state to compulsory acquire land – including for a cableway that could be built on their farm. Photograph: David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Matt Wood gives Neville a pat behind his ear – as if the one-tonne Droughtmaster bull were an oversized labrador puppy – while his wife, Caitlin, watches hundreds of pasture-fed hens scratch beneath old macadamia trees her dad planted.

Their talk is of building their regenerative agricultural operation amid the rainforests at the top of Springbrook mountain: adding goats to control fireweed and maremma to protect their chooks from wedge-tailed eagles and letting wild trees grow.

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