Kongwak is a quiet peaceful hamlet in South West Gippsland. Our tiny community, population 50, is completely unserviced we have no town water, gas or sewage. The busiest that we get is once a week we have a Sunday market from 10 till 2 pm, which is well loved in the community. The developers want to modify the old Kongwak Butter and Cheese Factory to create a wedding and convention centre for 130 people and want to construct 32 cabins in adjacent farmland that they have purchased for guests to stay in, plus 8 other accomodation rooms or cabins. Here are the key issues:

• they want to knock down a local house and construct a carpark.
• for the other car park, they have indicated they will cut access roads through our historic Avenue of Honour, planted in 1918. Each tree represents a fallen or returned soldier from our district from the two world wars.
• The developers plan to construct 32 cabins in farmland but these paddocks are natural floodplains, and tributaries to the nearby Foster Creek.
• They plan to construct septic tank sewage processing in those paddocks less than 20 m from a permanent tributary to the creek.
• The wedding venue will be constructed 40 m from the nearest house. We object to the impact of noise, traffic, parking and expected patron behaviour on our tiny town.
• We expect the late night trading, loud music, alcohol, litter and the sounds of party-goers traversing our tiny town to their accommodation will ruin the serenity of Kongwak
• The wedding venue alone will overwhelm the population of our community by 260%, in addition, the cabins will swell our population by another 168 %.  
• The sewage processing required, to be located in farm land, will exceed the sewage processing capacity of the entire town many times over.
• All infrastructure created in the project - roads, curbs, gutters, lighting and other infrastructure will drive up rates for all South Gippsland residents. 

We don't want this development in our town. We are not opposed to any development, just to the size and scope of this development. We are for small scale development including a restaurant, cafe, art gallery and general store but we oppose a large wedding / convention centre venue, late night trading and live music and oppose street facing car parks, short stay cabins and effluent processing on farm land and any impact to our Avenue of Honour. The developers are putting their permits through the Victorian government Development Facilitation Program (DFP). This puts the final decision making authority with Victorian state ministers Sonya Kilkenny and Danny Pearson and takes that decision making power away from our local Shire Council. The DFP process has no right of appeal at VCAT.

Sign our petition to show your opposition to this inappropriate proposal. We also petition the Victorian Government Ministers to return this permit application to the local Shire Council and the community. You can forward the petition to your friends and ask them to send to theirs. Any requests for donations are from Change.org and not from Save Kongwak Group.