A court case in Brisbane is determining the fate of the Glass House Mountains, and the implications stretch far beyond the coastal plains to the heart of the hinterland.
When members of Save Our Glass House Mountains travelled by train to Brisbane’s Planning and Environment Court on 29 January, they carried with them more than 47 witness statements. They carried the concerns of a community fighting to protect a landscape that belongs to everyone on the Sunshine Coast, including the townships strung along the Blackall Range.
The case centres on Heidelberg Materials Australia’s proposal to dramatically deepen and expand its Glasshouse Quarry operations at the base of Mt Coonowrin. The existing excavation, with its terraced levels, exposed rock faces and industrial infrastructure, sits directly beneath the distinctive volcanic peaks. These mountains are so iconic they feature in the Australian passport, yet here on the Sunshine Coast they’re being exploited for profit whilst simultaneously being used for tourism branding. Now Heidelberg wants to blast 66 metres deeper, taking the pit floor to 48 metres below sea level.
For residents from Mapleton to Maleny, this isn’t just someone else’s battle. The Glass House Mountains are woven into the cultural and economic fabric of the entire hinterland, and what happens at the quarry could set precedents that echo through planning decisions for years to come.
What’s at Stake
Heidelberg Materials (formerly Hanson) wants to double production at its quarry on Mount Beerwah Road, Glass House Mountains, from 600,000 tonnes to 1.2 million tonnes of aggregate per year. The expansion would deepen the pit by approximately 66 metres without increasing the surface footprint, taking the excavation to 48 metres below sea level. They’re proposing to dig down rather than out, but the scale is staggering: blasting deeper into the earth beneath a nationally heritage-listed landscape that appears in every Australian’s passport.
The company argues the expansion is vital to meet construction demand across the region, particularly with population growth and major infrastructure projects on the horizon, including the 2032 Olympics. Queensland’s Department of Environment has already granted environmental authority for the expansion, subject to stricter conditions on blasting, dust, noise and groundwater monitoring.
But here’s where it gets complicated: Sunshine Coast Council failed to make a decision on the development application within the statutory timeframe, despite multiple extensions. After the deadline expired in August 2025, Heidelberg exercised its legal right to lodge a deemed refusal appeal, effectively transferring the decision from council to the Planning and Environment Court.
The court is now the assessment manager, and 488 properly made submissions from the public notification period have given way to formal legal proceedings. Save Our Glass House Mountains has joined as co-respondent, representing community concerns about noise, dust, traffic, groundwater impacts and crucially what this intensification means for a landscape with UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status and national heritage listing.
A Grassroots Fight in a Corporate Arena
For SOGHM, the court process has been both daunting and empowering. The group is self-representing, relying on fundraising campaigns and donated expertise to mount a case against a multinational corporation with deep pockets.
The 47 lay witness statements lodged in January represent a cross-section of local life: residents reporting vibrations from blasting that rattle windows and nerves; parents worried about dust settling on school playgrounds; drivers navigating narrow hinterland roads alongside quarry trucks; and locals who’ve watched the visual amenity of their home landscape gradually eroded by industrial expansion.
“Together, we can continue to stand for the recognition and protection of these mountains,” spokesperson Megan Standring said after the January court appearance. “Caring for what we love is a gift to those who come after us.”
The next phase involves expert witnesses, acousticians, air quality specialists, ecologists, hydrologists, traffic engineers and cultural heritage consultants. These experts don’t come cheap, and SOGHM is actively seeking pro-bono support and public donations to fund the fight.
Why the Blackall Range Should Care
If you’re reading this from Montville, Mapleton, Flaxton or Maleny, you might wonder why a quarry battle down on the coastal plain matters to you. The answer runs deeper than the mountains themselves.
A Shared Landscape Identity
The Glass House Mountains are not just a local landmark, they’re an icon of national significance. These ancient volcanic plugs are so emblematic of Australian landscape that they feature in the design of the Australian passport, alongside Uluru and the Sydney Opera House. Yet whilst they’re being marketed to the world as a symbol of our national identity, they’re simultaneously being quarried for profit at home.
The visual impact is already substantial. The quarry’s terraced excavation, exposed rock faces and pools of standing water are visible from Mt Ngungun. From lookouts along the Blackall Range, these mountains form the horizon that draws visitors to our cafes, galleries and guesthouses. They’re on postcards, in tourism brochures and embedded in the brand that Range communities rely on to attract nature-based tourism. The question is whether doubling the extraction rate, and deepening the pit to 48 metres below sea level, will further compromise the landscape values that underpin regional tourism.
The mountains are also central to the Sunshine Coast UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, declared in 2022. This designation recognises the region as a place where conservation and sustainable development must coexist, a balance that Range residents know intimately from their own debates about rural land use, development pressure and environmental protection.
First Nations Cultural Heritage
The Glass House Mountains hold profound significance for the Jinibara and Kabi Kabi peoples. Mt Beerwah, the highest peak, was used as a birthing place. The mountains feature in songlines that connect across the hinterland, linking the coastal plains with the Blackall Range and beyond.
Industrial intensification at the foot of these sacred peaks affects the integrity of Country, not just for the immediate community, but for all who share these lands. Cultural heritage doesn’t stop at cadastral boundaries, and decisions that diminish the mountains’ spiritual significance have implications for how we understand and respect First Nations connections to the entire region.
Setting Planning Precedents
This court case is shaping up as one of Queensland’s most closely watched planning battles. At its heart is a fundamental question: how do we balance resource extraction in designated Key Resource Areas with environmental protection, cultural heritage and the values that underpin regional identity?
The evidence being tested includes community lay witness statements about amenity impacts, the kind of testimony that rarely carries much weight in planning decisions dominated by technical reports and economic arguments. If SOGHM can demonstrate that community concerns about dust, noise and landscape values matter in court, it could strengthen the hand of residents across the region when they face their own planning battles.
For Range communities, this precedent could prove invaluable. Whether it’s debates over rural industry, intensive agriculture, tourism developments or infrastructure projects, the way this court weighs economic necessity against environmental and cultural values will influence future decisions.
A Familiar Pattern on the Range
For Blackall Range residents who have followed the Dulong and Image Flat quarry debates since 2022, the Glasshouse case will sound familiar. The issues differ: Dulong and Image Flat are council-owned quarries where concerns centred on transparency, governance and the potential scale of operations if leased to private operators, while Glasshouse involves a large multinational seeking deep expansion in a heritage landscape through the courts. But the common threads are strikingly similar: community concern about dust, noise, blasting, truck movements on narrow hinterland roads, water quality, loss of amenity, and, crucially, the feeling that meaningful community consultation only happens after decisions have already been made.
The Hinterland Quarry Action Group successfully convinced council to pause its leasing plans in 2023, raising questions about planning inequalities that gave council-owned operations different treatment from private quarries. For Blackall Range residents who’ve navigated those debates, the Glasshouse case is another test of how much say communities really have over extractive industry in high-value landscapes and whether the planning system is designed to balance competing interests or simply to manage the inevitable expansion of approved operations.
The Materials Supply Chain
There’s an irony worth noting: the aggregate and road base extracted from Glasshouse Quarry supplies construction projects across the Sunshine Coast, including infrastructure that serves Blackall Range townships. New subdivisions, road upgrades, public amenities, all rely on materials from operations like this.
If the expansion is approved, production will double, and truck movements will increase accordingly. Some of those trucks will use the same roads that Range residents travel when accessing the Bruce Highway and coastal services. Heidelberg has argued that without reliable local supply, major projects could be delayed or forced to source materials from further afield, potentially increasing transport impacts elsewhere.
This is the uncomfortable tension at the heart of the issue: we want sustainable communities, but we also want the infrastructure that requires extractive industry. How we navigate that tension, and where we draw lines, matters to everyone.
What Happens Next
The court process is now moving into its technical phase. SOGHM must nominate expert witnesses to counter Heidelberg’s assessments of noise, air quality, ecology, hydrology and traffic impacts. The company will present evidence that the expansion complies with all relevant planning instruments and that conditions can adequately manage any impacts.
The court will weigh community concerns against economic arguments, technical evidence against lived experience, and the protection of a heritage-listed landscape against the demand for construction materials in a growing region.
For SOGHM, the challenge is formidable. They’re a grassroots organisation taking on a multinational company in a legal arena designed for lawyers and consultants. But they’ve already achieved something significant: they’ve kept this issue in the public eye, forced decision-makers to confront community concerns, and demonstrated that people are willing to fight for places they love.
A Question for the Hinterland
From the Blackall Range, the Glass House Mountains have always been there on the horizon, ancient, enduring, seemingly permanent. But landscapes are never truly permanent; they’re shaped by the decisions we make about how we use them.
The Glass House Mountains are deemed significant enough to represent Australia in every passport issued to our citizens. They’re marketed internationally as an icon of natural beauty and used to brand the Sunshine Coast for tourism. At the same time, industrial extraction at the base of Mt Coonowrin has created terraced excavations that are deepening with each approval cycle. The proposed expansion would take the pit floor to 48 metres below sea level.
The question this court case poses is whether these two uses of the landscape, as national symbol and as resource extraction site, can coexist at the scale being proposed, or whether there comes a point where the industrial impact undermines the values that make the mountains significant in the first place.
For Heidelberg Materials, the expansion represents continuity of a long-established operation in a designated resource area. The company employs local people, supplies materials essential for regional development, and points to strict environmental conditions that will govern the deeper extraction.
For SOGHM and the hundreds of submitters who oppose the expansion, the concern centres on cumulative impact: noise, dust, traffic and visual amenity effects that intensify with scale, and the precedent of doubling extraction rates in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve beneath heritage-listed peaks.
The court will make its decision based on planning law, environmental evidence and expert testimony. The broader questions about how we balance resource needs with heritage protection, and whether existing impacts justify further intensification, will remain relevant long after the judgment is handed down.
The Glass House Mountains have stood for 26 million years. What happens to them in the next few years will be determined by legal process, technical evidence, and the weight given to community concerns about a landscape that appears in our passports but sits within reach of industrial excavation.
Save Our Glass House Mountains Inc is seeking donations and expert support for its court case. For more information, visit their fundraising page or contact the group through Sunshine Coast Council’s publicly available submissions on development application MCU23/0197.
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