‘A slap in the face’: NSW state housing push set to clip Kiama’s green hills

Relatives of the 19th-century poet Henry Kendall are among the 70 people buried at the Kendall family cemetery which sits within the proposed South Kiama development. Photograph: Susan Lark

A portion of the famous rolling green hills near Kiama, on the New South Wales south coast, is under threat from a housing development, after the state government overrode Kiama municipal council zoning to allow a 440-house development.

The South Kiama project is part of a push by the Perrottet government to ease housing pressures, but the Kiama mayor, Neil Reilly, said viable alternative sites on non-rural land were ignored, including an old quarry at nearby Bombo and vacant land within Kiama’s town boundaries.