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 vast difference between impacts from those old mining methods and the large open-cut mining employed since the 1990s, now much in evidence — but only if you drive 10 minutes out of town.

Collie has two companies, Wesfarmers Premier Coal and Griffin Coal, the latter under administration, mining mainly to supply the four privately owned power stations, more of which are planned to to open or re-open in the next few years. Collie Basin is set to remain the carbon powerhouse we don’t need.

 As I first approached Collie, one obvious difference to the similarly coal-dependent Hunter Valley was the heavily forested, hilly surrounds.

Collie itself is a nice town, with all the services you’d want. Residents can go ‘down the hill’ to the city and port of Bunbury for anything else — just as ‘flatlander’ workers come ‘up the hill’ to the mines and power stations. However, the Collie coal work force has roughly halved in the almost 20 years since the mines went open-cut and mechanised.

The mine landscape of overburden, dust mountains and vast stepped holes was familiar to me. There are farms under current impact right near these mines, which are expanding or moving operations along and so threatening more properties with unacceptable noise and dust. And of course there are the people already forced out, those who used to live where now nothing can.

From anecdotal evidence, I’d say that health damage from infrasound is likely to be occurring.

The other familiar aspect was the milky air. Pollution? It was winter and most Collie homes have wood fires, plus there was hazard reduction burning in the forests, following an unusually dry winter. I accept what the locals say, that it doesn’t look like this in summer. 

However, if Collie Valley holds the winter smog like this, it has inversions and is highly likely to also hold the fine PM2.5 dust particulates from those uncovered mines and those high coal-fired power station stacks. Plus the uncovered coal trains go right through the heart of town.

Since I was there, a 2008 Collie Basin air quality study has just released its PM 2.5 section and yes, there were ‘exceedences’, but hazard reduction burning seems to be getting the blame. Ongoing monitoring was recommended, however, plus particle analysis.

Collie itself doesn’t seem to want to know. Afraid of what might happen, jobwise, if health damage proved that mining might be stopped? How about insisting on better practices right now from mining and setting up cleaner industries for the future of Collie?

Instead they are planning a coal-to-urea plant! That should spice up the airborne particles with plenty of nitrogen and put Collie folk on a knife edge, as many are very worried about the dangers inherent in storing ammonia. They don’t mean ill-health; they mean almost instant and widespread death for the people of Collie. They have no faith in the assurances of Perdaman, the company wanting to establish this industry — who only estimate seven deaths at worst case scenario.

So that’s all right, then?

The other serious and totally unsustainable issue here is the dewatering of the area’s groundwater, estimated at about 1m overall drop across the Collie Basin, but up to 50m below the pre-mining water table in places.

The pools in the branches of the Collie River are not likely to join up soon and the outlook for what might still live there is bleak. Salinity is a fact of life.

The mines are supposed to treat their used water and put it back but it’s still too acidic. While also allowed to pass on their water to the power stations, the sums for overall water allocations do not add up.

With a drying climate and more water-hungry power stations to come, there will simply not be enough water for Collie industry or its people.

Who isn’t joining the dots — and why?

Another water issue for me was the water-filled old open cut void, Stockton Lake, a popular spot for camping and waterski-ing, and more are promised.

The tourist brochure warns ‘As the lake is a disused coal mine, the water is more acidic than other natural lakes and skiers are advised to limit their time in the water — especially those with sensitive skin. Swimming is not recommended.’

‘Yeah, they say they’re a bit acidic,’ said a local, ‘but I’ve swum in them for years and my legs haven’t fallen off yet’.

H-hm-m. Shades of The Simpsons?

What about the heavy metals this acid causes to leach out — lead, arsenic and mercury —  the effects of which may not show up for decades?

I liked Collie, and I am sad to see its head-in-the-sand response to the health issues and future job challenges, but they are taking their lead from the state government. A few well-informed local voices continue to tell it as it is, but, unlike the response to the boy who dared cry out that ‘The Emperor has no clothes!’ most of the townsfolk in earshot here would seem to be blocking their ears.

I am never a happy flier. I recently endured a five-hour flight to Perth from Sydney, and then a shorter return one of three and a half hours — don’t ask me why they can’t take the short route all the time!

However once airborne, so long as there is no turbulence and no odd noises, I do like to look out the window. I never, ever forget where I am, whereas my fellow passengers seem far more blasé, as if in a train or coach, on the ground, in their natural element, instead of thousands and thousands and thousands of metres ‘up there’, beyond even birdland.

On long flights the plane only flies low enough near the beginning and end for land to be seen as a photo map. I was lucky enough this time for the cloud cover to be thin and fragmented enough to reveal the snow-capped and dusted Snowy Mountains beneath.

For most of the flight it is cloud land, not earth land, that fascinates. On the early morning return flight we were flying east, so towards the sunrise, and I was struck by the way cloudland had a sunrise streak on its horizon — just like ours, and then a cloud layer above — just like ours.

As this was the first time in a while that I have flown Qantas rather than a very budget airline, I hadn’t experienced airline food for some time, and held an unpleasant memory of a rubbery textured vegetable protein slab like a Wettex  sponge. Having ordered Asian/Indian vegetarian options — and there are several — I was impressed with both the lunch and the breakfast I was served.

Later, well fed, sun up and back to the surety of which layer was what, I marvelled at the levelness of the upper horizon of this land, giving it such an appearance of solidity.  Why is it so, does anyone know?

It’s September, so it must be Spring, but at this altitude we are often some weeks behind in flowering times.

I shudder to think what the wallabies will do to the tender green buds of trees like this birch, but at least they can't reach to the top.

I love the way bulbs have naturalised and thickened into clumps over the years — and I love that wallabies don’t find them tasty.

The winter snowflakes and the jonquils of several varieties, both white and yellow, look perfectly at home around such deciduous trees.

The abundant yellow jonquils like these above may look like mini daffodils but they lack the stateliness as well as the size.

My daffodils only bloom with Spring here, so for me they are the true harbinger. And they have arrived!

Only trouble is, if Spring is here, can snakes be far behind?

I know that the wallabies truly feel at home in the yard now by the way they sleep here in the warmth of the late winter days, letting me walk past so close to them. Some of the very newly outed joeys are skittish but they soon learn I’m no threat.

This mother is so unconcerned that she is fast asleep, not even pretending to keep watch through half-closed eyes, as they often do.  Note the well-stripped rose bush behind her!

The joey stays close, in physical touch with mum. This endearing joey is, I think, the first one I made eye contact with, when it was a pouch-dweller. It often has one floppy ear.

I mildly regret the roses and all the other plants they eat, but how can I not be delighted that such beautiful and gentle creatures now think of my place as as ‘our place’?

This what a Wildlife Refuge ought to be — a place of trust, of safety.

I have often admired the work of textile artists like Jan Irvine-Nealie, where fine stitching subtly emphasises the shapes and patterns of nature.

However, lacking such patience and delicacy, I have never attempted anything like that.

Until the other day, after a short but violent hail storm and heavy rain, the sun came out for this picture. Not Jan’s tiny stitches, but great long ones, plain as a tailor’s tacking stitches, not necessarily all of even length, but in perfectly straight lines, perfectly spaced.

And it’s the latter that gives this away; I couldn’t stitch a straight line to save myself. I had removed the guttering from the verandah roof last summer, because it was sagging and leaking and a fire trap. Now the water simply ran off the corrugated iron roof.

There was so much water still doing that after this storm that it was dripping fast and continuously, in lines rather than round drops, falling from each of the dips of the roof.

It was one of those lightning moments; having taken the camera out looking for hail photos, I was given this instead.

If you became homeless because your house was being demolished, obviously you’d have to find a new home to live in. It’s no different for other animals; we all need shelter, a home, habitat.

However, I suppose we wouldn’t be allowed to choose the amenities block or the bandstand in a public park, let alone bring all our relatives. Similarly, there is much ado when a whole colony of wild creatures takes up residence in civic gardens or parks. Grey-headed Flying-foxes are a common ‘nuisance’ in many town and city parks as land clearing proceeds for development such as mining or housing, and their natural habitat is disturbed or lost. Communities are then divided with debates about how to make them move on before they defoliate all the long-established and cherished trees in a park like this one.

Sydney’s Botanic Gardens has the same problem. Bat droppings, bat screechings and bare trees are not the most inviting ambience for picnickers, walkers — or Anzac Day ceremonies.

But they are merely the victims, like many of us, of shortsighted ‘planning’.  In fact, these Grey-headed Flying-foxes (sometimes called Grey-headed Fruit-bats) are listed as a vulnerable species.

I took the chance to observe them at a stop at this park. After all, it’s pretty amazing that bats are the only mammals capable of sustained flight.

They spend the day in large camps and head out to feed at night, using sight and smell to find their preferred foods, the blossom and nectar of eucalypts and native fruits and lillipillies.

From introduced trees like jacarandas and firs they were hanging like thousands of leather lanterns with bright furry tops — each upside-down, and by the claws of one forelimb, daredevil style.

They can see quite well in daytime so that must be why they tuck their heads in. Many seem to have trouble getting comfy – they screeched and chattered and wriggled, stretched and flapped their amazing wings, which can exceed a metre in span, before rewrapping themselves in their slinky Batman blankets.

These Flying-foxes, with their foxfire collars, do have faces like foxes, or dogs, as the reversed photo of this restless one shows. They are not at all ugly, and certainly fascinating.

I don’t think I’d want them as close neighbours, but then I’m increasing rather than reducing habitat here, so there’d be room for us all.

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 us — or else they’d be offering us real leadership and action on climate change.

Not perhaps a carbon crumb in 2014, Julia, and certainly not more funding for the dirty myth of clean coal — for God’s sake, Tony Abbott, go talk to the coal mining unions! Nobody believes in that any more!

On Saturday 21st will the sun set on a wasted day, or worse, an Abbott-win day? I wish climate change was crap, as Tony says, but what sort of system do we have where such a man might be ‘leading’ us into worse global warming and extreme weather events?

I’d like to see him tell the Pakistanis that their unprecedented floods are just a spot of wet weather. Where has the urgency for action gone? Into reverse. Carbon is still an OK product in Australia; we are even planning new coal-fired power stations and lots of coal mines to keep emissions up. 

I can only hope that more people of conscience vote for those candidates of conscience who are un-aligned to Coal. This is especially critical — and achievable —  in the Senate, where they will have some influence.

To compare the parties’ climate change policies, go to this page on the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) website.

No prizes for guessing for whom I’ll be voting!

Voting and preferences

Voting for a minor party or independent is never wasted as your vote flows on at full value to your preferences if that candidate is knocked out, and then on to their preferences — and on. Major parties need to be kept? — or made? — honest; make your vote count by sending them a strong message that you’re not happy, so their primary vote has fallen.

Don’t forget that you can choose to allot your own preferences. I always do.

For the lower house you must number all the boxes in order of preference, that is, favourite to least-favourite. This ballot paper is green and smaller.

For the upper house or the Senate you can either put a number 1 above the line — in which case your preferences go to wherever that party or person has given them — or number every box below the line and allot your own. This ballot paper is white and large.

Fingers crossed!

Far treats here are the changing interactions of mountain and sky.

After the rain I watch from my dripping verandah as Omo-white clouds boil and steam in and out of the nips and tucks of the densely forested southern slopes. Wisps linger to lick the gullies clean before joining the rising mass above.

Closer to me, the sun makes the leaves of the trees sparkle to show just how clean they are.

Near treats can be unexpected, novel. The remarkable could easily go unremarked in the bush; I have to be really on the lookout for a flash of different texture or colour.

Because this is not a garden, I never know when birds or animals have gifted a new plant to our forest. I can only hope they are native ones!

This vine was swinging from a sapling by the track to my dam. I have driven by here plenty of times yet have never seen this before.
It was suggested it could be a Supplejack, Ripogonum album perhaps.

But I’m not sure if its fruits bunch like this, whereas they seem to in the alternative, Smilax australis. Any thoughts?

While the wallabies have more than made themselves at home here in my yard-that-was-once-a-garden, the kangaroos have been wary, staying over in the far orchard end and taking off if they saw me. But I recently spotted this young one through my window;  being up near the shed, it was unusually close to my cabin, but didn’t notice me snapping its picture though the window. Then I looked along the track from the shed, even closer to me, and there they were, a little family of kangaroos sprawled about on track and bank, lazy and unperturbed.

I went outside to the steps to take a better look; they looked back, but remained at ease. At last!

Since then the family is often close by, and take their rest in the grassy front yard mostly — much softer than the track. The mother is relaxed about feeding when I am outside, and her joey seems equally unbothered, although I can’t yet walk close by, as I can with the wallabies.

I thought this a good chance to show the two very different macropod mothers and their joeys, for comparison: the large Eastern Grey Kangaroo (left) and the more petite Eastern Rednecked Wallaby. They all get along together here, separate but in close proximity.

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 wealth and opportunity, revenue and development, but they would agree with the scale. Some of the world’s largest coal mines are proposed for the region, and coal gas industries scramble to tap into the underground energy potential.

If the powers-that-be have their way, the Galilee Basin could provide enough coal to almost double Australia’s current thermal coal exports, especially to China, to be burnt in coal-fired power plants and contribute billions more tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. That’s the global reason why we should leave it in the ground, there or anywhere, but the rustle of prospective dollars drowns out that argument.

Yet there’s also a critical precedent here, a unique regional reason why we ought not allow the Galilee Basin to be degraded from an outback Eden to an industrial wasteland.

Nobby-tailed Gecko

On top of the coal seam that Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal wants to dig up is Bimblebox Nature Refuge, 8000 peaceful hectares of biodiverse remnant woodland. If allowed to proceed, it would be one of the first protected areas, part of the Australian National Reserve System, to be lost to coal interests.

All of Bimblebox, as well as many surrounding properties, are under Waratah’s exploration permit. As current legislation stands, as long as the company receives the standard approvals from the state and federal governments – as we know they usually do – there is nothing to stop the innumerable living treasures, the plants and animals of Bimblebox, from becoming nothing more than dead overburden.

In 2000, when Queensland’s land clearing rates were amongst the highest in the world, several concerned people, aided by funding from the Australian National Reserve System program, bought the land and signed it up in 2003 as Bimblebox Nature Refuge Agreement with the Queensland government, to permanently protect the conservation values of the property.

White-browed Woodswallow; Kookaburra and Grey-crowned Babblers

Tragically, Nature Refuges and the protected areas that make up the National Reserve System are not automatically protected from mineral exploration and mining, which in Australia are granted right of way over almost all other land uses. As the owner of a Wildlife Refuge, under a Registered Property Agreement, about to enter into a Voluntary Conservation Agreement, also in perpetuity – unfortunately I have to tell you that the NSW government gives mining the same rights over all I value in nature.

Why do we bother? If Bimblebox was considered significant enough, having 95% of its original vegetation, to be officially reserved —– and partly funded — by the government then, how can it now be so insignificant that its total trashing is being contemplated by the government?

Thirty pieces of silver? Right hand, left hand?

Black orchid; Black-headed Python

In its seven years, Bimblebox has become even more ecologically valuable. Its semi-arid woodlands and understorey of native shrubs and grasses has a rich diversity of birds, reptiles and other animals. Bimblebox is a genuine example of how production and biodiversity conservation can co-exist. A small herd of beef cattle assist in the control of exotic pasture grasses, and a number of longterm research projects, with permanent monitoring sites, are aimed at generating knowledge and management practices to improve outcomes for biodiversity across the region. Take a look for yourself (www.bimblebox.org ). But mining and biodiversity?!
 
Now Hancock Coal’s proposed rail line to take the Galilee coal 495km to the wetlands of Bowen’s totally inappropriate Abbot Point coal loader has received ‘state significance’ status by the QLD coordinator general, which means that the government can ‘compulsorily acquire’ land should landholders wish not to be host to this madness.

I dispute their interpretation of state significance; Bimblebox is that, and should receive precedence over private business interests.

One of the next ‘official’ opportunities to express concern will be to comment on Waratah’s environmental impact statement, due for release in the next month. If you would like the chance to comment on this and provide feedback to the state and federal governments on this issue, please email Paola (pictured above) and she will let you know when the four-week period for comments commences. It will also be notified on the Bimblebox website which will now be a permanent link from my site.

See Bimblebox on YouTube