From the category archives:
In Western Australia I drove about 200km south from Perth to spend a few days in the town of Collie, the state’s coal mining and coal-fired power base. Like many towns founded in the late 19th century on underground coal mining, Collie is proud of its history. However, I fear the that townspeople have not realised the [...]
{ 4 comments }
On Saturday Australians must vote for a Federal government — as if we didn’t all know, with the election campaign dominating our media ad nauseam. Because we no longer believe what Labor or the Liberals say, in or out of campaign mode, it’s hard to care what they’re saying. And neither of them cares about [...]
{ 4 comments }
If the Galilee Basin in central-west Queensland sounds biblical, the scale of the threat facing it is certainly of epic proportions. The coal underneath it has always been there, but cattle and drovers, not coal mines and drillers, have dominated the land. If you’re listening to the Queensland Government or the mining industry they’d use words like [...]
{ 6 comments }
Once the fog had lifted from the Latrobe Valley, the old Hazelwood Power Station near Morwell showed the true colour of its emissions — brown. Of course the real toxic output of such an outmoded technology — CO2 — is colourless, and all the more insidious for being invisible and thus unacted upon. Hazelwood produces [...]
{ 2 comments }
Victoria’s Latrobe Valley is the state’s powerhouse, burning their abundant brown coal for 85% of that state’s electricity. I knew that, but until I went there and stayed to see it in different weather conditions and times of day, I didn’t know it made its own cloudscapes. The eight little dots creating this amazing, yearning [...]
{ 2 comments }
About 80 km south-west of Bowen in Queensland is the historic mining town of Collinsville. They’re proud of their strong coalmining and union past here — as the saga of underground strikes and fatal accidents and protest convoys to Brisbane attests. I know this from the coal museum and their interesting online history site. But [...]
{ 2 comments }
Lately I went to look at the coal mining explosion in Queensland, to see for myself if it was as frighteningly out of control as that in NSW. It is. This grim industrial scene is on the coast just south of Mackay, Hay Point — not your typical tourist vision of sunny Queensland’s tropical waters. [...]
{ 5 comments }
Recently I visited Lithgow, partly to see how the area just south of it compared to the Hunter Valley, since both are now threatened with a third power station, also likely to be coal-fired. At Wallerawang power station the village of the same name is extremely close by, as the church shows. I wonder if [...]
{ 2 comments }
On the Liverpool Plains near Quirindi, New South Wales, local farmers at Caroona have been defending their properties from invasion by BHP Billiton’s coal exploration drillers. For 615 days, until Thursday 25th March, they have inspired coal-threatened communities everywhere with their blockade, by saying ‘No’ — and meaning it. Trish Duddy and Tommy and George [...]
{ 5 comments }
In the Goulburn River National Park north of Mudgee, from The Drip picnic area, I recently took the easy 1.5km walk beside the river to the fabulous and deservedly famous Drip gorge formation. On the way, I passed moss-clumped cliffs, vertical gardens that looked like they ought to be lying flat. The sandy path led me under [...]
{ 2 comments }
When you finally settle on your piece of rural paradise, build your home with your own hands, landscape your gardens and get to know the wildlife neighbours– you expect to enjoy the peace and quiet for the rest of your lives, right? Wrong, if there’s coal in the area. North of Mudgee, NSW, I recently [...]
{ 14 comments }
The fight to save Anvil Hill near Wybong, NSW, from being mined by Centennial Coal involved thousands of people from near and far. We wanted to draw a line in the sand here at this scenically biodiverse ‘Ark of the Hunter’ and say ‘No new coal’. We lost to King Coal and the NSW Planning [...]
{ 6 comments }
Exisle, my publishers, have made a special arrangement for my web site visitors — you can buy Mountain Tails at a special 20 per cent discount by ordering from the Exisle website and quoting the coupon number MT2009; you can use that coupon any number of times.
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?'
