Queensland family in backyard battle with solar giant over neighbouring fence
14th February, 2025
By Zarisha Bradley, A Current Affair
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Imagine coming home to discover your neighbours had bulldozed your land, burnt your fence and built a new, prison-like monstrosity without warning.
That’s what happened to the Hunt family.
They’re not happy with the foreign-owned solar farm that moved in next door so they’re fighting back.
“It’s just so wrong. It’s just so un-Australian, and the thing that’s really annoying is that this is a global Spanish overseas company,” Michelle Hunt told A Current Affair.
The Hunt family bought a big block of land 30 minutes west of Bundaberg, near Gin Gin, for peace and privacy, only for the new neighbours to make themselves right at home.
“So we rock up onto our property to find the front fence is down, a bulldozer had been through it,” Mrs Hunt explained.
“(We) drive up the back here to find four to six metres of the land cleared, the whole 350 metres of the fence, our fence, is gone. Completely gone.
“They touched a fence, removed (and) burnt a fence that should never have been touched.”
It isn’t the great big, neighbouring solar farm that Mrs Hunt has a problem with.
The problem for her is Global Power Generation’s solar project isn’t so neighbourly.
Her old farm fence was replaced with a prison-like security barrier without even a letter in the mail.
“They sent it to a neighbour who then forwarded it onto me, just paraphrasing (the letter) here, but just letting you know we’ve got the fire warden’s permission, we’re just burning all the old fences and some of the old cattle yards that were here,” Mrs Hunt recounted.
“And you didn’t know?” A Current Affair asked.
“No! Not told at all,” Michelle replied.
It’s against the development application that Bundaberg Regional Council approved.
The Hunt family was promised a 4m high green vegetation buffer running along the property boundary and then the fence was supposed to go on the other side.
Mrs Hunt claims the company has breached the development approval.
“How can you be in breach of DA and continue working with no consequences? Doesn’t make sense,” she said.
That’s when Mrs Hunt called Jim Wilmont from Property Rights Australia.
“When you’ve got global companies coming in and walking all over people’s property rights and individuals and small communities like Michelle, well, Aussies won’t stand for it,” Wilmont told A Current Affair.
“At first, Michelle and Jim had a meeting with representatives from the solar company and were promised in writing: “The security fence will be relocated to be set-back inside the project and the farm fence reinstated as per the original specification”.”
“Fix it. Do the right thing. Do stand by your word,” Mrs Hunt said.
“You know, you’ve told me in writing. You’ve told Jim and I at the Gin Gin pub.
“You know it was wrong. You blamed your contractors. You’ve told me in writing. Just fix it.”
And so, after months of waiting, Wilmont helped organise a protest at Mrs Hunt’s place.
“We said if they didn’t do anything we’d rally, and we have rallied and taken down half the fence as a show of defiance,” Wlmont told A Current Affair.
Around 70 community members turned up to take a stand.
“Communities have had enough. I’m not the only one. Communities have had enough. We’re fighting back,” Mrs Hunt said.
But on the day of our interview, Mrs Hunt was met with quite a surprise.
“So we folded the fence down my half of the fence, to come back to find it’s up again,” she said.
A Current Affair decided to pay Global Power Generation a visit.
“Alright so we’re approaching their front office, gate is wide open, let’s go and see if we can talk to someone,” A Current Affair said.
It had no issue crossing the line until it was its own.
“I’m Zarisha from A Current Affair. We just want to know what’s going on with the fence?” A Current Affair asked an employee.
“Right. Umm. I’m going to have to ask you to leave the site,” the employee said.
“That’s alright we can leave. We can start making our way out. We just wanted to know what’s going on because the fence is not supposed to be there but it’s been put back up when it’s not supposed to be there at all,” A Current Affair replied.
“We can’t just walk onto your site?” Mrs Hunt questioned.
“Correct,” an employee responded.
“But you can just come onto my property, remove my fence, clear my land and that’s okay?” Michelle continued.
“We didn’t do that. That was agreed with GPG at the time,” the worker said.
“So who did that then?” Michelle asked.
“That was the agreement,” the employee added.
A Current Affair gave GPG another chance to answer questions, but it didn’t bother responding.
Bundaberg Regional Council has received a complaint and is investigating.
DeFrock 