Campaigns

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 convolutions as backdrop.

The top photo was taken after the storm and its wild winds and heavy rain had passed, and we were driving to the Maules Creek Hall for my talk that night. That’s a PM2.5 monitor in the paddock, wrung from Whitehaven by the Maules Creek Community Council earlier on, as baseline data.

Despite the storm, and the fact that they only had a few days notice of my talk, a surprising number of locals turned up. Some did have to be ferried across the rising creeks and some had to leave soon after the talk or they’d not have made it home.

Of the 50-odd folk who came, I was very pleased to see many with young families. The kids ran about and played outside in true country hall tradition.

I met quite a few local people, including Bruce and Wilma Laird, Phil Laird’s parents, whose ancestors setted here and for whom the forest is named. (They did originally spell it like the forest, said Bruce.)

Although the storm had been hot on our tails on the way over earlier, I just had to stop and take photos! This one is looking back to the Forest, with a fabulous dense rolled cloud, called an ‘arcus’, found ahead of a storm, ‘riding on the front of the outflow of cool air’ (The Cloudspotters Guide).

Looking in the opposite direction, towards the Nandewar Range, you get an idea of why Whitehaven must not be allowed to turn Maules Creek into an open cut coalmine! I hope that if Tony Burke doesn’t do the right thing and reject this mine, the locals decide to say NO in the way Caroona did and cause stormy days ahead for Whitehaven.

I’ll go back to join them.

The Nature Conservation Council suggests you call and tell Minister Burke to protect this important natural area from the destructive impacts of coal mining. He’s deciding by Thursday, so please call today! Of course you won’t get him but the message will get through.
 
Environment Minister Burke’s Canberra Office: (02) 6277 7640
 
NCC’s suggested phone call talking points:
 

• I am calling because I am extremely concerned with the proposal to put open-cut coal mines through the heart of Leard State Forest in NSW.

 

• The Whitehaven coal mine (Maules Creek) will clear hundreds of hectares of critically endangered woodland, home to federally listed endangered species.  This area should be protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

 

• An independent ecologist report has shown Whitehaven’s plan to offset the loss of this endangered ecosystem is inaccurate and does not meet federal standards.
   

• Under no conditions should this project be built. I urge Minister Burke to reject the Whitehaven coal project and protect this unique natural area.

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 the green background stands for nature and the environment movement.

As the flag flapped and snapped on my unused UHF aerial, I did feel like a warrior going into battle.

Gunnedah, Boggabri, and headed towards Maules Creek. The directions on the Frontline Action on Coal website are clear and the camp is unmistakable, right where the Forest starts.

A tepee (Murray Drechsler’s home) and tarps and tents large and small, solar panels for the communications, a fireplace (when fire bans aren’t in force) and even a makeshift ‘greenhouse.’ “Community not Coal,” say the signs, and of course Lock the Gate yellow triangles abound.

I made a good impression at once by getting bogged in my first choice of a level spot for the camper, despite having been warned it was soft there. Mea culpa — 4WD false sense of security!

Murray towed me out backwards, I found a firmer spot and set up in the drizzling rain. Lots of conversations about the issues here and beyond around the campfire. Two more supporters arrived.

I am hoping more people come in the next few days before Mr Burke gives his decision on the fate of this Forest from at least one of the mines threatening it. 

We need to show that this Forest and this Maules Creek Community matter more than coal.

One of the inhabitants has already moved in with me and my camper, just in case his home is earmarked for destruction.

On a drive with Murray today, on one of his unofficial ‘Mystery Dingo Tours’ (0418 754 869). I saw the all-too-familar ugliness of the overburden mountains dominating the landscape.

The Tarrawonga mine wants to expand and so does the Boggabri mine right next to it. 

Add to these Whitehaven’s new Maules Creek mine and this area will be well down the path of the Hunter, all balance lost in both land use and culture. Rural will have become industrial, with the human and environmental damage that this brings, despite all the sham ‘conditions’ and the extraordinarily inadequate and seemingly ‘misleading’ offsets proposed.

As we drove back, having been baulked by the last too-deep flooded creek crossing, I saw again the poignant juxtaposition of human lives against the oversized presence of the new neighbours.

The history of this farm gateway, and what might have been assumed to be its future — now all for naught. The new ‘hills’ are hardly an aesthetic addition to the view, and I’d imagine the noise and dust don’t add to the amenity of life here either.

About 80 kilometres west of Toowoomba lies some of the richest cropping land in the country — ‘Prime,’ ‘Strategic’ — and any other classification that means the best. This is Cecil Plains.

I’d like you to consider visiting there very soon — as part of a blockade/rally to support the local farmers making a stand against Arrow Energy – and for their land and water.

Good soil and reliable water mean good crops, from cotton to chickpeas.  Cecil Plains has the famous self-cracking black soils over the Condamine Alluvium and the Great Artesian Basin. These are the really essential and sustainable ‘resources’, to be treated with care for future generations.

Arrow Energy wants to drill for CSG here, as part of the short-term resource boom that will end Cecil Plains as a highly productive, long-term food and fibre ‘resource’ region.

The farmers there have been against the ill-informed proposal from the start, to the point of going to court over it. They know what a gas field will do their finely-tuned broad acre precision farming and their careful management of water use for their intensive irrigated cropping.

Arrow has been told of the impacts but presses on regardless and the Government is not stepping in as one would have hoped.

Save Our Darling Downs (SODD) says:

‘After years of discussion with Arrow, the farming community at Cecil Plains remains unconvinced that coexistence is possible. CSG will negatively impact on groundwater and soils and will diminish agricultural productivity in the area. This is unacceptable to our community and should be unacceptable to all Queenslanders.’

And to all Australians.

The project covers 8,600 square kilometers from Wandoan to Goondiwindi and almost 50 per cent of the project area is located on Strategic Cropping Land (SCL). 7,500 wells, thousands of kilometres of pipelines and multiple dams, compressor stations and water treatment facilities are planned.

Why even proceed if SCL would truly stop those activities? 

Lock the Gate says that:

‘Arrow has told the government that this Condamine flood plain area at Cecil Plains has a large proportion of the gas across all their tenements and are insistent they will come on. If they can’t get on to this land they will withdraw their investment.’

When Federal Environment and Water Minister, Tony Burke, approved the first two big gas projects in October 2010, it was against the advice of his own department’s Water Group, with ‘significant concerns’ about the CSG projects, warning that it could be ‘at least 1000 years’ before water levels recovered.

They spoke of ‘significant impact’ likely, with implications for the Murray-Darling Basin by reducing water in the Condamine Alluvium. 

As at Cecil Plains.

After speaking in Cecil Plains last Wedneday night, I stayed with Graham and Wendy Clapham of SODD, and next day Graham showed me around the farm.

I was impressed, not just by the vast size of the operational fields, but the ongoing amount of thought and time and money that has gone into the design of the agriculture practices 

The slope of the land, undetectable to my eye, is precisely calculated as to where the water will go. The machinery is designed not to interfere, nor to compact the soil anywhere more than absolutely necessary. In fact, farmers are highly regulated as to what they put on this flood plain, so as not to interfere with the flow.

How can Arrow avoid that? Even one drill hole interferes.

Here they collect any surface water and pump it into storage dams to use — and reticulate to re-use, as well as drawing on their underground water, which is also re-used. They know how precious the Great Artesian Basin is.

The afternoon before, I drove in through a hazard-reduction smoke haze, but the community opposition and the lack of social licence for Arrow were clear.

If this project goes ahead, anywhere is ‘fair game’. Arrow is coming back there on 22nd August.

If you want to help force a return to sanity and balance in our destructive and biased mining and petroleum laws,  please keep an eye on the Lock the Gate website for a call hundreds of folk to come in the next few weeks and support the farmers of Cecil Plains — and hence the rest of Australia’s sustainable natural resources.

Cecil Plains may prove to be an historic last stand for sanity.