Flinders Beach residents are up in arms after being threatened with $40,000 fines for allowing their back yards to encroach on state government land.
Department of Natural Resources and Mines principal land officer Ken Rogers served 10 trespass notices in July, after finding some garden beds and sheds were on state land.
Residents were given 28 days until August 25 to remove their garden beds and sheds or risk the state moving them at the owners’ expense.
Flinders Beach land holder Greg Ovenden said residents had been maintaining the land for more than 20 years and were angry due process took precedence over courtesy.
Mr Ovenden said anger turned to fear when state surveyors started sizing up the bushfire buffer at the rear of their homes for a conservation park to be managed by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the Quandamooka people.
“Many believe this is part of the native title determination,” he said.
“The improvements identified by the crown surveyors have been deemed to be inconsistent with the native title aspirations and inconsistent with intended outcomes for management of the Conservation Park.”
Residents in other parts of the island have also called on the state, council and indigenous groups to reveal details of land use deals made as part of the 2011 native title determination.
They also questioned the legality of home-made signs erected on Crown land around the island staking out indigenous family claims to the land.
Dunwich resident and traditional owner Darren Burns said he and his brother Mathew erected signs at Amity Point where his family ancestor Toompani was buried in the late 1880s.
Mr Burns said the signs were legal under the Indigenous land use agreements struck with the state and council in 2011.
"Our signs are regularly vandalised and removed and so it's essential we keep maintaining them to uphold our rightful stance in the island social structure," Mr Burns said.
He said his family proposed to live on the land and hold indigenous ceremonies there.
Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Cameron Costello agreed the home-made signs were in line with the rights of the Quandamooka people under their native title.
However, he emphasised the Quandamooka people had no rights to freehold or privately-held land.
Mr Costello also said it was too early to discuss plans for indigenous land on the island and added there were no new areas under native title and no changes to the state’s 2011 plan to make 80 per cent of the island national park.
He said the only changes that affected the rollout of the national park plan were on land leased for sand mining.
“The Quandamooka don’t want a process where everyone is running around pegging out stakes claiming land,” he said.
“We will be looking at land use that complies with the laws of the land and I don’t want to pre-empt discussions we are having with the state and council.
“But they are keen to exercise their right to return to country, particularly where they have exclusive possession and it is legal for them to live on that land,” he said.
