Taree is on the Manning River, downstream from Gloucester. Taree doesn’t have CSG or coal, but Gloucester has. In a sane world the beautiful and bountiful Vale of Gloucester would not be even contemplated for these industries, but it has two coalmines, expanding, and a third, the Rocky Hill mine, proposed but being vigorously opposed, [...]
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On Saturday 8th June, 2BOB radio on the NSW mid-north coast is having its annual Envirofair in Taree Park, from 9.30 to 3.30. Taree is on the mighty Manning River. Manning Valley Community Radio Station 2BOB 104.7 FM They’ve been holding these family-day fairs for 22 years, with the simple aim of ‘raising awareness about [...]
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Photo: Australian Conservation Foundation Last July I attended the Beyond Coal Conference at Louisa Creek near Mackay — see my post on it from that time. Louisa Creek has been, is being devastated by the nearby coal ports of Hay Point and Dalrymple Bay and now they want to put a third coal port there [...]
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Victoria used to be all about brown coal, but only in the Latrobe, and only for the adjacent power stations. The whole world knew about dirty old Hazelwood, but all their brown coal power stations create 33% more C02 than black coal. We also heard a fair bit about its wind power, and how the [...]
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Recently I made my first visit to the Woko National Park near Gloucester, New South Wales. I was tagging along with the Upper Hunter branch of the National Parks Association, which I’ve joined. The camp site was perfect, flat and grassy and right beside the clear and fast flowing headwaters of the Manning River. You [...]
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This piece was probably one of my first non-fiction articles. Sadly, it remains as true now as when I wrote it, despite our knowledge of the pollutants in those coal power station emissions. Seeing is believing, right? As old-fashioned sceptics used to point out, however neat a theory might be, it was still debatable, whereas [...]
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The weathered sandstone cliffs by the Goulburn River offer shelter to a variety of creatures. Those who aren’t winged must like easy access; I fancied these caves had steps — foot and hand holds — cut into the face below. Closer to ground level, smaller winged creatures — like native bees? or? — had chosen [...]
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As the gas leaks and bubbles, and the contaminants creep into the falling water sources and the salt accumulates, as people itch at strange rashes, hold their heads with strange aches, or their stomachs with strange nausea attacks, and worry if they are drinking cancer-causing chemicals from the fracturing process or breathing them in from the gas flares — [...]
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A storm-bent early morning, when pewter clouds fill the western horizon and no scrap of blue to be seen. The sun climbs over my eastern treeline and switches on the spotlight, and the contrast between the suddenly vivid green moptops of the gum trees and that heavy background sky sends me running for the camera. [...]
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Up near Capella, north of Emerald in Queensland, cattle farmers Mick and Margaret Shaw took on the Kestrel mine, objecting to Pacific Coal (Rio Tinto) wanting surface rights to mine under part of their mining lease, which extends over a fifth of the Shaws’ cattle property. They had seen the results of longwall mining under a [...]
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The once-rural Hunter Valley baked in the early February heatwave, but not under blue skies. The many and expanding open cut coal mines in Singleton and Muswellbrook Shires made sure of that. This was what the air quality looked like on Friday 4th February. On the Tuesday before, the 1st February, the averaged PM 10 [...]
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As central Queensland floods, I am hearing much in the media about the economic damage to the coal mines there, but not what those mines are contaminating as the floods surge through them. Or as the exposed coal stockpiles at every mine, rail loader and port loader wash into the floods. When the town of Theodore [...]
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Here's the cover of my new book — Rich Land, Wasteland — How coal is killing Australia — which is now in bookshops.
A candid meander through my life up here on my remote mountain wildlife refuge, answering the oft-asked question 'Why do you live way out there?'
Stories about the wild things who allow me to share their living space — and a plea to look after them before it's too late.
