Every day, 83-year-old Wesley Kilham can be found in his garden, tending his orchard and communing with the kangaroos, the wombats and the cockatoos.
For 46 years, Mr Kilham and his wife have dedicated themselves to restoring the natural landscape of their block just outside the Googong township.
There was "barely a blade of grass on the place" when they bought part of the former sheep paddock, Mr Kilham said, but about 70 per cent is now bush.
"All of us individual landholders have tried to restore the land to what it would have been," he said.
"We don't all think the same, we all have different beliefs, but there's a strong community spirit based around love of country," he said.
However, Mr Kilham's community is in danger of being "dissected" by the new routes proposed for Dunns Creek Road - one of which would run directly through his house.
"There would be people cut off from each other by a busy arterial road," he said.
"It's not just self-interest, it's more than that. It's about community spirit and about how the road would damage the community as a whole, as well as doing a lot of damage to the environment."
Dunns Creek Road proposed more than a decade ago
A road connecting Googong with the Monaro Highway has been in the works for more than a decade.
In 2015, the Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council approved a "preferred route", but it was never gazetted, and the land is now subject to environmental protections which make development on it less likely.
Since then, both Labor and the Nationals have made election promises to fund the road, and in 2023, the council commissioned an options report to consider new routes.
That report was released for community consultation last month, and detailed six new possible routes, one of which would require the NSW government to compulsorily buy Mr Kilham's land from him.
The others would affect between three and 22 properties.
Four other options which only included upgrades to existing roads were also included in the report.
Mr Kilham said he did not know where he would go if he was forced to give up his home.
"The physical demands of a property are far greater than people realise," he said.
"To re-establish that our age would be very difficult. I'd like to live here till I die to be honest.
"I couldn't contemplate where I would live if I had to start all over."
Community consultation on the proposed routes will be open until Tuesday, October 6.
An extraordinary meeting of the council is planned for October 21, where councillors would be presented with and consider the feedback given over the consultation period, a spokesperson for the council said.
The spokesperson said there would be further rounds of extensive community consultation if a preferred route was decided on in October.
"It is too pre-emptive to indicate if, or when, any land purchase would take place," the spokesperson said.
"There are many years of detailed planning before that step in the process, if it were to be considered."
