Campaigns

Bylong won’t be bygone

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Between the Hunter and Goulburn River regions, there’s a lush green valley called Bylong. Spectacularly edged by the steep escarpments of the Wollemi National Park, it’s home to horses and cattle and a few people. The village itself has a one-stop shop and a population of six, but the greater Bylong area is home to about 60.

Bylong was famous for its annual Mouse Races and for Tarwyn Park, where Peter Andrews OAM developed his revolutionary ‘natural sequence farming’ methods. Now it’s also becoming famous for its strong stand against the coal and coal seam gas companies that threaten its future; they also face a precious metals exploration licence and a geothermal application.

The day I went there, a laden coal train was snaking its way through the Valley to join the northern line to the coal port of Newcastle. It came from the coal-invaded area north of Mudgee, where the villages of Ulan and Wollar are little more than memories now. Bylong has no intentions of joining them in being cleared out by opencut mining or any other form of extractive industry.
This is farmland.

The Bylong Valley Protection Alliance may be small but it’s tech- and publicity-savvy. Their website is bright, informative and always up-to-date, and will be a permanent link from here. I actually didn’t realise I hadn’t already done so; they really deserve to succeed, and have already had quite an effect.

Take a look. Get yourself some of their free bumper or envelope stickers or picturesque ‘pester a pollie’ postcards, like the one at the top of this post. They need a lot of help, because their opponents are seriously heavyweight and cashed-up.

The Korean government-owned Korean Electric Power Company, KEPCO, as the so-Aussie sounding Cockatoo Coal, have two licences to explore 10,300ha here and have now bought historic Bylong Station, a renowned Angus stud, for $18 million. KEPCO is reputed to have bought 30 land titles in the area since they bought the Bylong project for $403 million from Anglo Coal in 2010.

Cascade Coal/White Energy has the nearby Mt Penny exploration lease, controversial at the very least because of the political clouds over the main property involved, Cherrydale Park, being bought by the Obeid family coincidentally not long before the EL was publicly available.

Other large properties like Murrumbo have also been bought up, and the greater Bylong area under threat includes the localities of Murrumbo, Coggan and Growee as well as Bylong itself.

Planet Gas is currently exploration drilling for coal seam gas here, as they are in the Southern Highlands, where Cockatoo Coal is also the threat.

BVPA manage to get good guest speakers and hence draw wider audiences and further publicise their cause. Recently I attended a meeting at Bylong Hall, where journalist Paul Cleary spoke about his new book, Too much luck — the mining boom and Australia’s future.  And it’s not necessarily a rosy one; plenty of good reasons not to mine Bylong.

Outside the hall this old Holden, belonging to Mick Cleary from Grattai, attracted a lot of attention, as it’s meant to, being a mobile protest against injustice of all kinds from what I could read. There were many that applied to Bylong, like this one on the right.

As I headed for the pass out of Bylong towards Rylstone, I could only shake my head —yet again — at the insanity of such a productive region even being considered for mining when we will need more food bowls, not less.

Even if some major agricultural properties are being seduced by the high dollars into selling, as is the right of a landowner, the staunch members of BVPA do not intend to stop fighting to save Bylong from becoming bygone. All power to them.

Bimblebox extension until December 19th!

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It was a November 7th deadline to speak up for nature and Bimblebox, but Paola has written from Bimblebox to say:

‘We were informed yesterday that the comment period for Waratah Coal’s EIS has been extended until December 19th. This is because Waratah has had an incomplete version of the EIS on their website (a major omission being Appendix 10, which deals with the impact on the terrestrial ecology!).

‘The EDO is looking through our ‘short version’ to make sure is all correct for people to sign.’

I will put the shorter submission letter that Paola mentions up on this site when it’s ready. And I’d say terrestrial ecology is rather relevant for a nature refuge, wouldn’t you? Lucky that Friend of  Bimblebox, Sonya Duus, spotted the omission.

Speak up for nature — November 7 deadline

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These are Bimblebox trees, on the Bimblebox Nature Refuge in Queensland’s Galilee Basin, several hours west of Emerald. 

It’s such a special place, of such high conservation value, that the Federal Government chipped in about half the cost of the property, under the National Reserve System, called ‘Caring for our Country’.

This property had 97% remnant bushland still intact, a rarity in Queensland’s Desert Uplands bio-region, a declared Australian Biodiversity Hotspot. Paola Cassoni and friends have been caring for it, but the government clearly no longer does.

The government counts the Reserve System towards meeting their international obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Tick it off — then cross it off for mining? For they gave Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal an exploration licence over Bimblebox, and now the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) confirms that his proposed China First mine would destroy Bimblebox Nature Refuge. 

The opencut mine would take 52% of Bimblebox and the rest  will be subject to major subsidence and interference from underground longwall mining.

People like Paola — and me — sign conservation contracts in perpetuity, to give up their bushland for the good of all, for the sake of regional and national bio-diversity. We remove weeds, nurture indigenous plants, harm not even a leaf that belongs there.

But the wishes of a mining company, for private profit, can negate this, render those cherished natural treasures as suitable for bulldozing. Only National Parks are safe from mining — so far.

Offsets are a sick joke and the myriad variety of living things on Bimblebox face destruction. If this mine goes ahead it will set a precedent for the invasion of all conservation areas.

Please have your say about this travesty and submit a comment on Waratah Coal’s Environmental Impact Statement. The more objections we raise, the louder we rattle the can, the more we will be heard.
 
The period for public comment closes on November 7th. 

Paola and the Friends of Bimblebox have prepared a submission for people to send in, and have information for people who want to write their own. 

Please visit the Bimblebox website to find out how to make a submission.

Saving the state

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If you think we ought to save some of New South Wales for future generations — rather than hand it out now to coal and coal seam gas companies — you might like to join like-minded people next Thursday and tell the government and the industry just that.

The NSW Government is sponsoring a $900-a-head NSW Mineral Exploration and Investment Conference in Sydney on 18-19 August.

Already 70% of NSW is under coal or petroleum exploration licences; those who will benefit are meeting to share tales of their progress and prospects, no doubt to applaud each other and to commiserate on the nuisances that these protesting communities have become.

I couldn’t see it on the agenda, but I’ll bet they share strategies over drinks for ‘managing the outrage’. Many of us are outraged that government still allows mining projects to over-ride the wishes of communities (like Camberwell), damage environments (like the Pilliga), threaten productive land (like Caroona) and precious water (like just about everywhere!).

All the heavies will be there; Thursday is about exploration, so Coalworks, AGL and Santos feature largely. Government and industry need to be told that we would prefer they conferred on how to save the state from rampant fossil fools, and think of the future instead.

The Lock the Gate Alliance is organising an alternative conference outside the venue — a conference for food, water and communities.

They are inviting community groups who want a different future to come to Sydney and present the other side of the impacts of mining. (I’m sure they mean individuals too.)

What: Rally at the NSW Mineral Exploration and Investment Conference 2011

Where: Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, Phillip St., Sydney
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When: 12 noon, Thursday 18 August

Speakers include:

  • Jess Moore: Stop CSG Illawarra
  • Tim Duddy: Caroona Coal Action Group
  • Bev Smiles: Mudgee District Environment Group
  • Peter Martin: Southern Highlands Coal Action Group
  • Jane Judd: Friends of the Pilliga
  • Mark Ogge: Beyond Zero Emissions
  • Jeremy Buckingham: Greens MLC
  • Rising Tide Newcastle
  • Drew Hutton: Lock the Gate Alliance

For more information email Lock the Gate

Register at the Facebook Event

Visit the Lock the Gate Alliance Website

Conference agenda

Get counted for Acland

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Many of you will have heard of Acland, the Queensland town almost erased by New Hope Coal for their New Acland Mine Stage 3. It’s not even approved yet but they have bought up the town and emptied it out.

A few scraps not worth selling off or not movable show where once where houses — and people.

Only one landowner, Glenn Beutel, remains.   See my past post, Acland, death by coal.

The Park and whatever Glenn owns are still cared for by him; they look loved and used by people. There’s a war memorial in the Park, but just across the road the concrete slabs and garden edges are poignant memorials to past villagers.

All of you will know that next Tuesday, 9th August, is national census night.  Brisbane Friends of the Earth’s climate action arm, Six Degrees, has come up with a great idea to ‘repopulate’ Acland.

They are inviting any and every one to join them in spending census night in Acland to show the government that people prefer community to coal.

Where: intersection of Acland Road and Francis St, Acland

?When: Tuesday 9 August from 6pm

?Bring: a plate of food to share for dinner, camping gear and warm clothes

(Any questions or if you’re driving and have a spare seat or need a lift, please email Shani

So if you live anywhere in striking distance (it’s not far north of Toowoomba) or are passing through, why not stand up (or lie down) and be counted for Acland — in Acland — on Tuesday night?  Say ‘Hi’ to Glenn for me if you do.

Blackening the Golden Triangle

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In Central Queensland there is a cropping area south of Emerald that’s so rich and reliable it’s called the Golden Triangle. It takes in the towns of Orion, Springsure, Gindie and Rolleston, and supports a population of farming families with an atypically young average age.

You’d have said it had a golden future.

With exceptionally reliable rainfall and deep black soils that grow sorghum, wheat, sunflowers, mung beans, navy beans, chick peas or cotton, any property that goes on the market round there is snapped up at once. Or used to be.


An Orion farm

Since Bandanna Energy laid its exploratory coal paws on this region, with their Springsure creek and Arcturus projects, nobody would touch it.

The Golden Triangle group has lobbied hard since 2009 to save their region and their livelihoods. When I visited, I saw how well-cared for and prosperous all the farms were on this flat flood plain; this was bleedingly obvious prime land.

Everyone was holding out hopes for the Queensland Government Strategic Cropping Land (SCL) Policy, then in draft form. If anywhere fitted the bill for protection, surely the Golden Triangle would.

And when the final criteria came out, much of it did. BUT only for new or less advanced projects; easier transitional arrangements would apply to coal projects that had submitted their final EIS terms of reference by 31st May.

Bandanna hadn’t, which gave hope to the farmers, but after some hard private lobbying, on 7th June it was announced that ‘a specific legislated transitional framework would apply to the Springsure Creek Project, green-lighting its potential development as an underground coal project, despite its identification as being some of Queensland’s best cropping land.’

But not to worry, as in published Letters to the Editor (QCL 23/6/11, CQ News 24/6/11 et al), Treasurer Andrew Fraser and former minister Kate Jones state “It is important to note that these transitional conditions were granted to the Springsure Creek project only after Bandanna Energy provided a written assurance that the project would not permanently damage strategic cropping land.”

How can they say this with a straight face?

The group intends to fight even harder against such shortsighted insanity in a world needing food and water security far more than Bandanna needs its coal dollars. They now have their own website, (to be a permanent link from mine) so please visit for more information or to give support.


Xstrata’s Rolleston Mine (photo courtesy of the Tysons)

Across the highway, where Avriel and Lindsay Tyson’s ‘Springwood’ is under serious threat from Xstrata’s Rolleston mine (see post ‘When the neighbours get pushy’), another productive farming property has fallen to Xstrata.

On 23 July Avriel emailed that their near neighbour, Meteor Downs, one of the original Springsure district properties — ‘a beautiful old established property’ with lots of history and ‘43,000 acres of good country’ had just been sold by the by AA company to Xstrata – for $21.6 million.

‘So, so sad,’ says Avriel.

I couldn’t agree more. Where will it end, and who will stop these cashed-up and government-favoured mining companies gobbling up our land, our history and our future? No state government for sure.

River walking

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North of Mudgee, the Goulburn River flows to meet the Hunter at Denman. This river has cut spectacular gorges and created world class natural wonders, as at The Drip — see my post about it, ‘Natural treasures.’

It flows through the Goulburn River National Park and some lucky private properties. I stayed at such a one — Stone Cottages — and went for a walk downriver.

At present the river here is a gentle and mainly shallow thread through sandy beaches, but I could see by the debris in the arching Angophora trees and the flattened vegetation on some banks that it knew how to assert itself when given the rainfall. But in the week the Hunter and the north coast were flooding, here we received only 5mm.

Walking down this river means that every now and then you strike giant cliffs like this one, Wave Rock, towering above the river bed. At such places you run out of beach and either wade across or climb over the top. I opted for wading after the first failed attempt at jumping. Wet boots are wet boots!

I wished the ancient Angophoras watching from the clifftop could speak of the sights they have seen over time.

On the northern side of the river the cliffs became more striated, almost tesselated in places, and pocked with holes large and small, clearly used by perching birds.

The rugged clifftops looked like pagodas in the making, as in the famous Gardens of Stone near Lithgow, now needing protection from coal mining. You can help by signing the Protect the Gardens of Stone petition.

Where the river had undercut the cliff, a mini-Drip had been established, watering a sheltered hanging garden of rows of ferns.

These are just a few of the natural treasures of these gorges, at future risk from Moolarben’s longwall underground mining. Overhanging cliffs and cantilevered rock shelves may wear away over eons, but they aren’t going to cope with the sudden removal of the strata below, as already seen in the Lithgow region and graphically documented in The Impact of Coal Mining on the Gardens of Stone by Keith Muir of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness. Download the PDF here.

And for what? Profit for Chinese company Yanzhou.

The march of the methane-mongers

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As the gas leaks and bubbles, and the contaminants creep into the falling water sources and the salt accumulates, as people itch at strange rashes, hold their heads with strange aches, or their stomachs with strange nausea attacks, and worry if they are drinking cancer-causing chemicals from the fracturing process or breathing them in from the gas flares — the coal seam gas (CSG) industry continues to advance across Australia. Gasland is here. This is Angus Bretherick, 6, with the rash his family say was caused by their local coal seam gas industry. Angus lives at Tara, hotspot of the Queensland methane push, and where residents had been complaining since 2008 about leaking gas wells and the dumping of CSG water on roads. (Photo: Courier-Mail 21.10.2010)

The Gasland film showed impacts of the coal seam gas and shale gas industry in the U.S. It put ‘fracking’ into all our vocabularies.

We have CSG rapidly spreading now; they are investigating shale gas, which always needs fracking, in three states. They want it all, in whatever strata the methane is hiding – for export, and ‘they’ are mainly foreign companies.

40,000 wells like these at a Chinchilla (Queensland) gas field have been approved in that state; the net of wells and linking roads and pipelines over the Darling Downs is more dense and more extensive now, a year later.

They can do this on your property; can you then imagine, as they claim, that CSG and farming can co-exist?

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Climate Camp 2010

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Last weekend I dropped into the last days of the Climate Camp being held at Lake Liddell recreation area near Muswellbrook in the Hunter. 

It was held here because near Bayswater Power station where a new one, Bayswater B, is threatened/promised, and which needs serious protesting against. An insanity, flying in the opposite direction of what is the publicised aim of Cancun. Has Mr Combet mentioned ‘coal’ yet?

Inspirationally, the Camp was just across the ‘lake’ from the Liddell Power Station and through the days and nights coal trains roared and rumbled along the nearby lines to the coal loader at Newcastle, the world’s largest coal exporting port.

They seemed non-stop — as they will actually be when even current expansions and approved mines get going — and they were as loud in that wide valley as a jet engine on the tarmac.

Some mines here and to the north and west do supply the two Hunter power stations, but most of the coal is shipped overseas to fuel climate change — they get paid more for that!

On Saturday night a wild and wet storm tested all the tents and made gumboots or bare feet de rigeur. They’d had a great week, I heard, with workshops and speakers and coalfields tours, where people from many states and even New Zealand  swapped information and drew strength from, as one participant said, this ‘family of environmentally concerned persons’.

I was delighted to meet in person two of the interstate activists who had helped me on my coal research trips: Sonya Duus, from Bimblebox in Queensland and Frosty from Bunbury in Western Australia.

As always, the last day was to be a day of community action and many Campers had put much effort and originality into the costumes, the placards and banners, and the songs and rap raves to brighten up the protest walk.

Many more folk turned up just for the walk; the police cars waited at the gate, the sun came out, and the colourful crowd of several hundred set off, to drums and whistles that stirred my heart, as if they were truly going into battle. As they were, for all of us and the planet.

I was staying behind to help others prepare food for them when they returned — which would be much later than expected.

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Acland – death by coal

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After 120 years as a town, Acland, only 35 km north of the city of Toowoomba in Queensland, has lost its community and services, almost all its houses and almost all its people.

It’s down to one landowner, Glenn Beutel, and the tenants to whom he has leased the old bakery building for the last decade, plus the occasional looter, visiting sympathiser or shocked and sickened ex-Aclander.

The rest have been cleared out, their house bought up by the (to me) obscenely named New Hope Coal, for their New Acland Coal subsidiary, which runs the New Acland Mine. Having worked their way through Stages 1 and 2, buying up farms in its relentless creep towards the town, New Hope is now awaiting approval of Stage 3, the application for which states they require ‘the removal of the town of Acland’.

How best to make that a non-issue for consent conditions? Why, remove it in advance; hint to the residents that the mine will be on their doorsteps so they’d be better off selling now, start a panicked rush not to be left in a ghost town, get rid of the houses immediately, demolish the brick ones that can’t be moved and insist the buyer of the rest remove them all at once. Erase all traces of human habitation.

It’s a bit hard for a stranger like me to even find Acland, as the sign is gone from the turn-off.

Then pray — or Hope? — for the coincidence of the local Rosalie Council choosing to assume your company will win rather than support the townspeople, hence jump in and prematurely offer you all ‘their’ property, including the historic Acland No 2 underground Mine site and Museum, and the Park, war memorial and all.

You’d think that pretty well seals the fait accompli of Acland being replaced by New Acland, a town by an opencut coal mine.

But New Hope didn’t take into account that a town is more than buildings, a home more than a house, a war memorial more than a lump of polished stone. New Hope doesn’t seem to understand human feelings.

Glenn Beutel has stayed on because he rightly feels that it is premature to pronounce what’s left of Acland as dead until that Stage 3 is approved. If and when that happens will be the time to think about what he might do.

He has continued to care for Tom Doherty Park, Acland’s remaining history, so closely bound up with his family. It was largely due to the voluntary work of his late parents, Thelma May and Wilf, that the Park was  created, that Acland won Queensland’s first statewide Tidy Towns Award and that it was known as the Town of Trees, especially for all the Queensland Bottle Trees they had raised and planted. His mother was the instigator of raising funds to build that war memorial.

You don’t bury the loved one, no matter how seriously wounded and close to death, while they live and breathe. Acland is very alive still: there may not be many humans left, but plenty of koalas and snakes and lizards and birds and bees and butterflies call it home.

Despite New Hope selling off Bottle Trees for relocation, there is a habitat corridor of trees and shrubs and flowering succulents and geraniums and daisies — Thelma May’s legacy of water-saving plants — left in the Park and the median strip and verges and Glenn’s own garden.

The war memorial has been the focus of an Acland Anzac Day service since it was built in 1991; nobody knows just what New Hope will do with it.  People feared that 2009 might be the last Anzac day in Acland, but things have dragged on in tensions and irresolutions – and so I was there for the 2010 service, along with 200 other people. Not a bad turn up for an almost dead town.

Glenn had the Park and the memorial looking great, his ‘Beutiful’ handmade wreaths of Acland flowers were handed out, ready to be laid at the base of the Roll of Honour.

It was a moving if painfully ironic ceremony, given what had been allowed by the government to happen to Acland, the opposite of the Aussie values, the Australia for which our forefathers had fought. They wouldn’t have believed this possible. 

When we all stood for the Last Post, I think most of us would have had those twin sorrows in our minds.

But the worst part was when the New Hope representative stepped forward to lay a wreath. The sudden intensity of the silence and the sharply focused resentment should have felled him on the spot if he had any sensitivity about what his company had done, was doing to these people.  This was not any Anzac Day ceremony; New Hope could have laid a wreath somewhere else if they wanted to pay homage. Like any enemy soldier, he would have acted under orders, but it would surely have occurred to them that as the invaders, the perpetrators, they should not be present as people here grieved, not just for the fallen soldiers, but for the fall of Acland.

Lest we forget indeed.

Another who was there that day and who has followed the Acland tragedy for some time is Frida Forsberg. Like me she has been driven to write about it, but Frida is a singer/songwriter so here is her deeply moving tribute to Acland.  She tells me she will be re-recording this more professionally and setting it to a slide show for YouTube later, but I couldn’t wait to share this. Get your hankies ready:

Anzac Day at Acland

Contact Frida here

Election choices?

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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!

Outback Eden under threat

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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

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