Concerned local residents have made an appeal for help as they fight the development of a $4.5 million Hindu temple planned for their quiet town on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.
The Peninsula Green Wedge Protection Group (PGWPG) spoke out ahead of an upcoming Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) hearing on September 15 where a decision will be made on an application by non-profit Hindu organisation Melbourne Ayyappa Seva Sangam (MASS) for the temple near Pearcedale.
Locals have spent the past two years fighting the development plans, which include multiple structures including an extensive podium with temple and prayer rooms, a double story food hall, bathing pool, 22 toilets, light and bell towers and parking for 60 cars.
The site is in one of Melbourne’s green wedge zones, which were legislated in 2002 to preserve the countryside on the city’s outskirts by limiting urban development, and is one of more than a dozen place of worship planning requests filed in recent years, including Sikh and Buddhist temples, mosques and Islamic schools.
According to the 2021 Census, there are just 368 Hindus in the Mornington Peninsula Shire – 0.2% of the population – and in October last year Mornington Peninsula Council unanimously rejected the proposal, but it has now been referred to VCAT to gain approval.
PGWPG founder Craig Gobbi, who lives in Pearcedale, wrote an open letter last week urging other residents to join the 1,000 existing members and make submissions at the hearing.
“This letter is to advise you of an application, the first of its type within the MP Green Wedge, to construct an extremely large place of worship on 10-acres of environmentally-classified land in rural Pearcedale. The mega-structure, with facilities to accommodate over 1000 devotees, has met with considerable community backlash,” the open letter reads.
“Thanks to community opposition and planning recommendations, the application was unanimously rejected by the MP Shire Council. However, this was not enough to deter the applicant and the development may still be approved. A final decision will be reached at a VCAT hearing in less than 7 weeks’ time. Our tightknit, rural community will participate in the hearing but, if we are to win, we urgently need your support in opposing this application.
“The proposed development will NOT be successfully integrated into the current landscape without irrevocably compromising the character of our region and the biodiversity of the site. It will destroy vegetation, displace wildlife, fragment wildlife corridors and severely compromise the area’s environmental and rural amenity.
“Approval would set a dangerous precedent and invite similar developments across the Mornington Peninsula.
“If you value our green spaces, flora and fauna, food production, the health and wellbeing benefits of connecting with nature and the importance of preserving our unique landscape, I urge you to join us in opposing the rapid advancement of inappropriate and intensive land use within the Mornington Peninsula Green Wedge.”
Vijay Senguttuvan, MASS secretary, told The Age in April: “The temple is always located in a very peaceful, calming area with a good sense of vibrations.
“This is part of our worship and part of our cultural needs, and we want to pass this tradition on to future generations, so that’s why we need this temple.”
The planned Sree Ayyappa Temple will cost $4.5 million to build over three stages, and “serve the purpose of providing a place of worship for all devotees who believes and follows devotional values of Lord Sree Ayyappa Swamy,” according to the MASS website.
The proposal comes as Hindus in Melton, on Melbourne’s western outskirts, demand a new cemetery allow open-air funeral pyres so the growing number of Indian immigrants can cremate their dead like they do in their home country.
A traditional Hindu funeral pyre uses up to 600kg of timber and burns for six hours. The custom is responsible for the consumption of 50 to 60 million trees a year in India while sending 8 million tonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Indians are the fastest-growing immigrant group in Australia, and according to the 2021 Census there are now more than 784,000 people with Indian ancestry in the country – 3.1% of the population – a 400% increase over the past 20 years.
