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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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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Last Friday, 1st February, we raced ahead of an impressive storm front that was curving in a pincer shape towards the Maules Creek area. It was the first time I’d been past the edges of Leard Forest, and I was bowled over by the beauty of this long-established farming valley, with the Nandewar Ranges’ woolly [...]
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Being on the edge of the Leard Forest here at camp, apart from maps I didn’t have much of an idea of its scope and what it might lose if Mr Burke doesn’t do the right thing by it. This morning Murray drove us around this state forest under threat from creeping coalmining. It’s varied in height [...]
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I swished in over watery roads across the Liverpool Plains yesterday, flying the Eco-Warriors’ flag that I was given in Brisbane last year. This symbol for worldwide cultural change has the the yellow tripod for unity, the red, yellow and black of the Australian Aboriginal flag, representing indigenous cultures worldwide and the beginnings of all humanity, and [...]
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You may have heard of Jonathan Moylan’s now infamous hoax against Whitehaven Coal and ANZ. He carried it out from the protest camp in the Leard Forest near Narrabri, set up 167 days ago by he and fellow campaigner Murray Drechsler and others. They’ve been stationed on watch ever since, being joined or relieved by [...]
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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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Over 2012, Paola Cassoni and I have worked together to use her Bimblebox film and my Rich Land, Wasteland book as our tools to raise awareness, to shock Australians into action. Wherever I speak, if I am allowed, I have the Bimblebox DVDs for sale. For background. see my recent Bimblebox posts: Beyond Coal and [...]
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Battlers used to be applauded in Australia; this year I was privileged to meet Celia Mackay, the truest bluest Aussie battler one could imagine. I visited her property with the ‘Bridging the Divide’ bus tour, where city people came to see and hear first hand what rural folk are suffering from the coal and gas rush [...]
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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.
