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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This is me and the heroines of my Chapter One, ‘Living with open cuts’: Wendy Bowman, The Genteel Guerilla General’, (left) and Deidre Olofsson, ‘Deidre the Dauntless’. They are still fighting for justice and survival, and we were at Wendy’s home, ‘Rosedale’, where I spoke at a fundraiser for their court case. Photo courtesy of the Singleton [...]
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Last week I left my highlands to travel to the flatlands. The very, very flat lands. So flat they are grand, in scale and scope. I went at the invitation of the tireless Anne Kennedy of the Great Artesian Basin Group and the Coonamble Action Group and I went to talk at the Coonamble Show [...]
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Many of you will have seen the Bimblebox documentary, partly about Paola Cassoni’s fight to save this Queensland nature refuge, but also a pretty shocking overview of the coal and gas rush in Australia, and its consequences, for global warming, for the Great Barrrier Reef — to name a few small impacts! It’s now BB-Day; [...]
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I’m not a ‘good flyer’, but once the panic at takeoff subsides, I am always agog at the fantastic cloud landscapes we pass, like these escarpments and plains and scudding ‘sheep’. I’m glad to be home but the Tassie tour was well worthwhile. My ‘Rich Land, Wasteland’ talks to audiences in Cygnet, Hobart, Burnie and [...]
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Just before I left my mountain, this beautifully fat and glossy Red-bellied Black snake came to say goodbye and bon voyage. By the time I get back from these Tassie talks, he could well be asleep in one of his many hidey holes. When I first got here it was warmer than my wardrobe planning [...]
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Mount Lindsay in the Tarkine — threatened by mining. Photo: Rob Blakers. On 27th March I’m flying to Hobart to begin a series of talks on the runaway resources boom, whatever that moneymaker might be: coal, gas, iron ore or…? Let’s dig it all up and see what we can get for it. Damage? What [...]
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Last Saturday, 16th March, 1000-1500 people (depending on which media you follow) walked the main streets of Newcastle, already the world’s largest coal port, to tell the government what they think of the idea of a fourth coal terminal there. With the evil King Coal puppet looming over all, people from the Gunnedah, Mudgee, Gloucester and Hunter [...]
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I’ll be hitting the road again soon, still talking… writing Rich Land, Wasteland has made this a full time follow-on occupation! If the rains don’t intervene again, first I’ll be in beautiful—and wet—Dorrigo, so high up as to often be a cloudland. Then down to trendy and only slightly less wet Bellingen, at the feet [...]
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I’m back home after a week in North-West NSW. I was there for the NorthWest Alliance of community groups across the Walgett, Moree, Narrabri, Coonamble, Gunnedah, Coonabarabran, Quirindi and Tamworth shires — all very concerned about the expansion of extractive industries there, especially coal and coal seam gas. We were a trio at information forums [...]
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Last week Tony Burke let us all down by rushing in and approving Whitehaven’s Maules Creek coal mine and Idemitsu’s Boggabri expansion. And this despite the report exposing the Whitehaven ‘offsets ‘ for what they are: so ‘off’ as to be useless, if not fraudulent, and likely to be investigated because of it. He says [...]
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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.
