Activists fight to save historic home earmarked for demolition

Activists fight to preserve historic Frank Street home on Lismore flood plain Sat 18 Jul 2026 at 1:00pm In short: Activists want the NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) to pause house demolitions in flood-prone areas of the Northern Rivers. The RA has demolished 207 houses it says cannot be relocated. What's next? The RA says it will demolish a further 168 houses by November. If the walls of the old house in South Lismore's Frank Street could talk, they would whisper of once reaching for the rainforest canopy that used to cover the Northern Rivers region of NSW. The house, built in the late 1800s, is proving to be a flashpoint for residents calling for a moratorium on the demolition of properties bought back by the state government after record-breaking floods in 2022. Among them is Yani Clarke, who moved home to Lismore after the floods to help with recovery. She has been working with the Community Disaster Action Group and Lismore Reclaim Our Recovery advocating to preserve the city's built heritage. "Watching so many houses be demolished under the guise of reconstruction and recovery, it just doesn't make sense," Ms Clarke said. "We haven't been told why these houses are going at such a rate, why new companies are being brought in from interstate and the reason behind smashing entire fully renovated houses and sending them to landfill. "We've taken away our big scrub [rainforest] to build these houses and now to see them be turned into mulch, for all these timbers to be squashed, it is a diabolical stain on our history." Demolitions continue The NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) said in a statement that 835 homes had been bought back as part of the Resilient Homes Program, with more than 400 earmarked for relocation. It has so far has demolished 207 houses, with another 168 set to be bulldozed by November. "Wherever possible RA are prioritising the relocation, reuse and recycling of buyback properties over demolition," the statement said. "To date more than 70 per cent of eligible material from demolished homes have been recycled, excluding asbestos containing materials, across the Northern Rivers." "In addition, home owners and contractors are salvaging material from properties before they are demolished." Family ties The Frank Street house also holds within its walls the history of the Schafer family, and the industry of Rudolph Schafer who built Lismore's first ambulance in his workshop at the back of the property. Rudolph and Marion Schafer's granddaughter Sandra Cahill grew up in the house next door. Mrs Cahill said her grandmother was very house proud. "She was the lady of the house, my grandmother, and her nose, as far as I was concerned, was always in the air," she said. "I remember grandpop in his old long pants with the braces and grandma sitting on the back lounge waiting for him to come up and have a cup of tea." Ms Cahill said she hoped the house could be saved and moved off the flood plain. "Our heritage lives in every one of those houses and I think they have earned their right to stay upright after all these years of floods," she said. Hive of industry Her brother Allan Schafer used to spend his days in the workshop at the back of the property, where his grandfather converted a Model T Ford to serve as Lismore's first ambulance in the 1920s. Mr Schafer said the workshop was never connected to electricity, and his grandfather constructed by hand all the wood and sheet metal panels for car conversions. Allan's uncle Doug inherited the house from his parents, who sold it in 1994 when he moved into a nursing home. The current owner sold it to the RA about 12 months ago. The ABC understands the RA had issued a demolition notice for the house, but it has since given the owner more time to give it away or explore options to dismantle it. Rainforest timber expert Kevin Glencross has been working since the floods to assess and salvage big scrub timbers contained within flooded houses. Dr Glencross said establishing ways to grade the timbers by modern standards, assess their value and find opportunities within timber markets had all been part of the process. "This needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully, but it also needs to be done professionally and within commercial timelines," he said. "Just looking at that resource, the fact that it is from the original forest, it's from very old trees, the quality of that wood. There's nothing comparable on the market,"he said. As the bulldozers continue their work around the Northern Rivers, Dr Glencross said he was feeling time pressure to save as much as possible. "To me, every lineal metre is important," he said. "Frank Street is a critically emblematic house and the timber in it is some of the best big scrub timber I have seen."