Walkaway’s Levett family fear for livelihoods, children’s safety under proposed bypass route

You’ve been brought up on secluded farmland your entire life, you’ve pictured and planned a future with your children thriving in the same environment, spending thousands of dollars building up your family home for the generations down the line. When you live in that world, it’s impossible to imagine having it bulldozed away. That is what four living generations of the Levett family are faced with, staring at map with a proposed bypass road that slices right through three of their properties. A shock new preferred route released last week by the State Government has the road zigzagging through paddocks on one of the Levetts’ farms, and nearly touching their homestead. Hugh Levett, 87, was born and raised on a family farm in Minnenooka — about halfway between Moonyoonooka and Walkaway — handed down to his granddaughter Alana Birnie. The family had roamed the Mid West country since Mr Levett’s great-grandfather travelled to Greenough in the 1800s and made camp at the lake. “If they put it on one of the existing roads, we’ve already accepted those boundaries. But to cut farms up into bits and pieces, they’re unworkable,” Hugh said. “There’d have to be ways of getting over or under — they can’t just chop half the country off.” Hugh’s grandson Tom and his wife Hayley are Walkaway farmers and have poured thousands of dollars, time and effort into their newly renovated homestead on Criddle Road. They live on a long, skinny block of land with their three young children. The new bypass plan leaves their block divided into three. Tom said two of the three parts of the land would be “landlocked” and took out paddocks. The Levetts understood compensation payments would be fair and accurate, but Tom said the property’s main point of sale was the land size as the soil on the block was not highly productive. “It’s not good enough dirt to be a smaller block and be saleable. Especially since instead of them being square paddocks, they will all be angled. Working it with modern machinery would be impossible,” he said. Hayley said the family chose to raise their family in Walkaway without traffic in front of their eyes. “I want to be able to let my kids go and not worry about them running on to a highway, to let them ride their horses without worrying,” she said. “We were hoping this would become a generational farm, so we’ve built a home, and spent a lot of money on infrastructure for a quality farm where we can earn an income.“ The couple run cattle, a major contribution to their livelihood that will become near impossible to manage. Three months ago, they invested in boundary fences and laneways. The livestock and cropping family would be unable to farm 150 cattle, and would lose an estimated 100ha of cropping land. “I don’t think I would be able to live next to a highway, it wasn’t how I was born or raised,” Hayley said. “We built this house knowing that you don’t get to sell it for the amount of money you built it for. You build it as a lifestyle choice, not an investment choice.” In addition, Hayley said she was concerned about how her kids would attend school and community sporting events with the bypass possibly blocking their entry into town. “Depending on what access they give us to get across the road, Walkaway is our community and they’ll cut us off,” she said. “It takes over every thought. I go to work on the fencing and wonder, ‘Why do I bother if it’s just going to be taken out?’ Why improve my cattle herd?” Tom’s parents, Dean and Rosemary Levett, are also affected living on Nangetty-Walkaway Road. Dean said Main Roads did not take into account environmental factors, the drop in value and equity of affected homes, or the heightened insurance costs due to traffic risks. “They take a lot more dirt than what they need . . . they revegetate it with stuff that’s totally useless. Their job is to build roads and not revegetate the countryside,” he said. When asked if they would put up a fight, Rosemary said she had a discussion with a close friend and lawyer who said there wasn’t a lot they could do. “They might never get the funding for it, but we still have a blue line through our property,” she said. “Let’s get down to it — the cost of it — this is our tax money, we deserve to know how much this is going to cost when it comes through and ruins our lives. I think we need to know these things.”