coal

Beyond Coal and Gas

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In a few weeks I’m heading back up to Queensland, to revisit some of the places in my Rich Land, Wasteland book, as in the chapter ‘Dark times in the sunshine state’ and others.

The catalyst was that I’ve been invited to speak at the Beyond Coal and Gas Forum, which will be held in the almost ex-village of Louisa Creek, just south of Mackay. It’s right beside the Hay Point and Dalrymple Bay coal stockpiles and loaders, and is threatened by a proposed stockpile in the village itself.

The idea behind the get-together is ‘Uniting communities affected by the boom’. And boy, do they need to help each other under an even more pro-dig and drill-it-all-up government than Anna’s, if that’s possible.

“We have brought together a range of voices to help communities and landholders overcome the steep learning curve that is necessary when coal and gas companies decide to set up shop in their region”, said event organiser, Ms Ellie Smith.

The other speakers include three people, Jo-anne, Maria and Patricia, who are in the book…

  • Jo-Anne Bragg, Principal Solicitor of the Environmental Defenders Office in Queensland (who’ve just had their funding cut!);
  • Dr Gavin Mudd — Monash University: Coal and gas mining impacts on ground and surface water;
  • Mark Ogge — The Australia Institute: The economic impacts of the coal and gas boom and renewable energy alternatives for Central Queensland;
  • Sarah Moles — Lock the Gate Alliance: Key lessons from the Lock the Gate movement in Queensland;
  • Maria MacDonald — Bowen resident and health professional: Health impacts of coal including dust and noise pollution;
  • Jaquie Sheils — GBR Marine Biologist: Threats to the Great Barrier Reef from the coal and gas boom; and
  • Patricia Julien — Mackay Conservation Group: Overview of the extent and impacts of coal expansion in Central Queensland.

“We’re inviting people from all over regional Queensland to come together to learn and share strategies for protecting our land, our water, our reef and all their associated industries. We will look beyond coal and gas to strategies that will build a more secure future”, said Ellie.

WHEN: 9am Saturday 28th July until 4pm Sunday 29 July 2012

WHERE: Louisa Creek Community Centre, Hay Point, South of Mackay

TO REGISTER OR FOR MORE INFORMATION: Visit the forum website or contact forum coordinator Ellie Smith at the Mackay Conservation Group on (07) 4953 0808

Personally, I’m looking for inspiration and possible solutions as well as to catch up with many of the people who shared their stories in the book, like Louisa Creek local Betty Hobbs, Paul Murphy, Paola Cassoni, and Avriel and LIndsay Tyson.

Afterwards I’m visiting Bimblebox and giving talks around the regions en route to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast — details later!

Visit the forum Facebook page

Victoria, the next Pilbara?

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Victoria used to be all about brown coal, but only in the Latrobe, and only for the adjacent power stations. The whole world knew about dirty old Hazelwood, but all their brown coal power stations create 33% more C02 than black coal.

We also heard a fair bit about its wind power, and how the yellow-bellied parrot had stopped one progressing.

But since I was there in mid-2010, the government has changed. Mr Baillieu has dropped the target of bringing emissions down to the very low benchmark of black coal power.

He has also publicly, and I assume happily, said something like ‘Victoria could be the next Pilbara’.

This means that vast areas of Victoria are now under exploration licences for coal (brown or black) and gas: methane, however it comes, CSG, tight, shale. Often the same company is exploring for both in the same place.

Now this looks like a good place to put a new brown coal mine. This is Bacchus Marsh, about 55km from Melbourne, on the way to Ballarat. It’s a fruit and vegetable (and herb) bowl if ever I saw one, with market gardens and orchards picturesquely lining the road in.

Grain and beef production are also important here, I’m told, but they wouldn’t look as pretty as this field of what I assumed to be parsley .

Bacchus Marsh also made national headlines in February this year when pregnant local resident Natasha Mills and Quit Coal activist Paul Connor chained themselves to Mantle Mining’s drilling rig.

Natasha and her friends in the Moorabool Environment Group (MEG), like Deb Porter, Kate Tubbs and Liz Cooper (L to R) don’t want Bacchus Marsh to go the polluted way of areas like the Hunter Valley of NSW and they intend to keep fighting to stop it. MEG have joined Lock the Gate.

They’d been doing their best to alert locals of the threat, but since there’s long been a very small mine here just for fertiliser production, most can’t believe that the new owners plan a huge mine here.

Mantle, whose licence covers 38,000ha, apparently aim to use Exergen’s still experimental drying technology to reduce carbon emissions and hence export it to India. It’s called ‘clean coal’!

Looking back to Bacchus Marsh township from an opposite vantage point, I imagine the ‘bowl’ edging mountains would do a good job of holding in the pollution from an open cut.

MEG asked me down to talk to locals, and showed me over the proposed site. The coal here is not like in the Latrobe, where it’s only 9m below the surface and so soft that no blasting is needed.

Here it’s under basalt and can be 70m or so down, so blasting and overburden mountains and dust and air pollution will be the lot of Bacchus Marsh if this open cut goes ahead. And who knows what will happen to the aquifers?

Totally incompatible with a food production area.

It’s also a major harness racing centre, and I knew I was nearing the Tubb family’s Jessamy Park, where I was to stay, by the ‘dirty’ signs along the fence. Mantle want to drill on Jessamy Park. Healthy horses, like healthy people, aren’t compatible with an open cut mine either.

(Photo of Eleanor,top, by Liz Cooper)

After I got back home, I received this media release. I guess getting into Hansard is some sort of milestone!

Book boom

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Things are snowballing with the Rich Land, Wasteland coal book. One amazing lady has just bought 100 books to send to politicians whom she feels simply must read it to know what they are doing to us.

Bacchus Marsh and Inverloch here in Victoria are yet more unthinkable regions for mining/gas to be proposed.

When I get back from Victoria, I’m heading over to the mid-north coast for several talks before nipping down to Parramatta. Maybe some of you can make one, so just in case here are the details:

?Wednesday 27 June
Gloucester? 7pm Senior Citizens Centre
?30 Hume Street
Contact: Email Di Montague

??Thursday 28 June
Kendall—Laurieton?
5.30pm Laurieton Library
Contact: Kate Forrest, Librarian (02) 6581 8177 or email?

Friday 29 June
Kempsey
?4.30pm Kempsey Library
Contact: Alison Pope (02) 6566 3210 or email

??Tuesday 3 July
Taree
?1-2pm Taree Library
Contact: Margie Wallis (02) 6592 5291 or email

and ??6-7pm Taree Library

??Wednesday 4 July
Parramatta?
5-7pm Parramatta Library
Contact: Yan Zhang (02) 9806 5157 or email?

Hornsby talk

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For interested Sydneysiders, I’m speaking at Hornsby Library at 10 am on Friday 8th June. Phone (02) 9847 6904 for details.

Having spoken there for each of my other books, I know it’s always a good event, with keen readers and a lively Q & A after the talk.

Novella Fine Books from Wahroonga will be there with books to sell — and be signed!

Last Autumn colours

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As the last red leaves fell from the Glory Vine, this exquisite little nest, round as tennis ball and about the same size, was revealed. It was knitted with gossamer threads and moss onto three twigs, like grandma making a sock by going round and round on her three needles.

Quite empty, it and its twiggy frame now adorn my verandah collection.

The other verandah drapery is the wisteria, the leaves now mainly butter yellow, edging to amber before they fall. It fills the window behind my desk, and as the afternoon light behind them sets them aglow it helps me bear having to be in here at the computer instead of outdoors on such beautiful still sunny days.

But yellow is also the adamant all-year-round colour of the NO GAS groups in many areas, like Bunnan and Merriwa in the Hunter.  The T-shirts are bold and un-missable, with the simplest of messages worn defiantly centre front.

This photo was taken at the May 1 Rally by friend Sandra Stewart, and sent on to me later. It’s me and my two good friends Alyson Shepherd and Doug Blackwell; although they’ve moved to the north coast from the Merriwa district, they came down to join old mates at the rally.

Yellow definitely predominated on that Autumn day!

City and Country: united we stand!

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On May Ist, I joined a busload of Hunter farmers and ‘concerned citizens’ like myself and headed down the freeway to Sydney. There we and 4000-5000 others walked from Martin Place to Parliament House in Macquarie Street, chanting all the way, like ‘City and Country — united we stand!’ and bearing colourful signs that spoke of desperation and anger at the threats to their regions.

The ‘Protect our land and water’ rally was organised by NSW Farmers against the Coalition’s draft Strategic Regional Land Use Policy, which breaks pre-election promises and in reality gives no certainty as to protection of either agricultural or environmental values from CSG or COAL or any other resource company’s desires. It was not, as some media portrayed, solely an anti-CSG rally, although there was plenty of angst about that.

The broken promises centre around exclusion of identified areas of value before exploration licences are issued. Exploration also causes harm (e.g, to aquifers) and investment down that track increases the likelihood of lobbying and success in getting by the proposed protective ‘gateway’. The exploration stage can last years and is extremely stressful for the landowners concerned.

And Cabinet can override the gateway process anyway, as the old 3A did, for projects deemed state significant.

Identifying and mapping areas tp be protected is a good start, but not if is incorrect, so that it only legitimises the absence of extremely important and very obvious features and so offers them not even token protection.

A few glaring omissions just in the Hunter are:

  • the quality Upper Hunter wine industry around Denman is not there as a critical industry cluster!
  • the Gloucester Valley with its guaranteed water and fertile soils as future food bowl, let alone environmental values
  • the Merriwa Plateau’s cropping and grazing areas

To me, these feel like sacrifices to the coal and CSG projects already in the pipeline there.

So people are upset, feel betrayed, and fear for the futures not just of their farms but their region. From young to old, they wore their protests, often handmade, on their hearts, in their hands, around their necks, or like me, on their hats! (Denis Wilson snapped the pics of my hat and me with a strange Mad Hatter expression)

Read more

Media alert

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My new book, Rich Land, Wasteland, will be in the shops this coming week.

Now begins the media — the using of the tool, which is how I see the book.

I’ll be on the panel of ABC News 24 TV’s ‘The Drum’ at 6.30 on Monday 23rd — that’s today —and I’ll also be a guest of Phillip Adams on Late Night Live which airs tonight at 10.00pm on ABC Radio National (repeated tomorrow at 4pm).

And tomorrow, Tuesday 24th, I’ll be talking to Alan Jones on 2GB at 7.40 am.

Friday 13th: a black and white day

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Last Friday I collected a special parcel at the post office: my copies of the new book!

After two years, it’s reality, quite a hefty reality at 453 pages, but that includes the many references. It’s half as many words again as my first book, and in a larger format.

The cover looks great, and despite the size, the pages flip easily. So a great production job by Macmillan, following on from Exisle.

Both teams are working hard to promote it, as they are right behind the need for Australians to know of the urgency and gravity of this issue.

I think maybe at last I do feel proud of it, as people keep telling me I should; until now I’ve just been relieved to have survived to finish it! Cathy Smith took the photo.

I understand from Exisle that copies are already being sent to those who pre-ordered online.

I possibly need to explain that I don’t have (or own) the books myself so I can’t sign them, but bring them along to any talk I give near you and I’ll write in them for you. 

So that was the white side of the day.

At 11 am I had to be at a rally outside Singleton Civic Centre, where a public forum was to be held on the Coalition’s  Strategic Regional Land Use Plan. About 300 people were there, bearing signs expressing their concerns and their wishes, like ‘AGL go to hell!’  Merriwa, Putty, Bunnan, Bylong, Bulga, Jerrys Plains, Gloucester… all fighting for their futures.

Nobody was happy about the quite insultingly glib ‘plan’ which broke just about every promise made before the election.

That became anger and frustration in the actual forum as Planning Minister Hazzard in particular seemed to dismiss so many concerns in a manner that to me seemed quite patronising.

Apparently he can’t exclude or ‘ringfence’ areas from mining or drilling because they could be changed at a whim later; why not do it anyway, as Murray Armstrong asked, while they get their plan finalised. And why, I ask, can’t they legislate so they’re not subject to whims?

It would appear that obvious defects in the mapping were news to him: like no mention of a viticulture industry cluster for Upper Hunter wineries; almost nothing worth protecting, so needing to go through the ‘Gateway’ process, in the Gloucester Valley, nor on the cropping and grazing lands of Merriwa.  It seemed like deliberate sacrifices of some areas had been made to coal and gas.

Farmers and residents stressed that Cabinet needed to realise this that was a matter of survival, to be aware of the ‘mental anguish’ of people forced into this daily battle against coal and CSG, and the critical importance of surface and groundwater to farmers. If they don’t, who knows where will it lead? 

The feeling was that Planning was looking after the mining companies; there was no confidence in ‘answers’ given to the limited number of questions able to be fitted in. Surely more than two hours could have been allowed?

But would they listen anyway?

Everyone needs to have their say officially by making a submission by May 3rd. 

If possible, join the rally on May 1 in Sydney: see the NSW Farmers website or call 02 8251 1700.
 
Submissions can be lodged online, by email or by post to
Director, Strategic Regional Policy,
Department of Planning and Infrastructure,
GPO Box 39
SYDNEY NSW 2001

Visit the Rich Land, Wasteland Facebook page

Bimblebox and beyond

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Many of you will recall my several posts on Bimblebox, the Nature Refuge in Queensland’s Galilee Basin that Clive Palmer wants to dig up for his China First mine. (See Outback Eden under threat and Speak up for nature)

Now there’s a film about its plight — but not only about this one precious place.

The documentary Bimblebox, by U.S. film-maker Mike O’Connell, spans the coal and CSG frenzy in Australia generally. The poster image was provided by associate producer Eleanor Smith.

It’s hoped to be Australia’s Gasland, to wake up the city and the country and add to the growing popular rejection of this mindless resources rush, set to ruin Australia, as it is ruining the lives of so many Australians.

DVDs are currently being prepared, and the film is available for screenings.

Find out more at the documentary’s website, via Facebook or Twitter.

I saw it at the premiere in Byron Bay in March, were I was delighted to meet Paola Cassoni, (left) one of the caretakers of Bimblebox, and driving force behind this film, and to re-meet Lindsay and Avriel Tyson, with whom I’d stayed at their Springwood property, under serious threat from the neighbouring Xstrata’s Rolleston mine. See my posts When the neighbours get pushy, Coal floods? and Blackening the Golden Triangle.

Avriel’s segment in this film is extremely moving.

All three feature in my new book, Rich Land, Wasteland — how coal is killing Australia.

Visit the Rich Land, Wasteland Facebook page.