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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.

Camberwell – in crisis from coal

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In a loop of Glennies Creek sits the historic village of Camberwell: 56 houses, all but seven now owned by Ashton mine — which is Yancoal Australia, which is Chinese company Yanzhou.

Camberwell is on its last legs. As you can see from the map, the village is all but surrounded by opencut mines.  The Ashton North mine is the closest, just 500 metres away. Life has become almost unbearable there, with the collective noise and dust.

The one aspect still unmined is to the south. Ashton wants to fix that with their Ashton South East Open Cut, immediately across the highway from the main part of the village. 

Recently Planning recommended that the Planning Assessment Commisssion approve the mine.

There’s a bit of a problem because half the pit site is veteran battler Wendy Bowman’s dairy farm. Beyond Wendy and her neat paddocks is mine-owned; you can pick it by the weeds and general air of abandonment. The trees and houses to the right is the village, just across the highway; the treeline to the left is Glennies Creek.

Wendy’s already been forced off the family farm once by a coal mine, at Rixs Creek.  She has no intention of letting that happen again, partly because she is desperately worried about what the mine would do to Glennies Creek and its alluvial systems.

Not far south, that creek joins and virtually takes over from the polluted Hunter River, so all irrigators downstream, such as the lucerne-growers at Maitland and the vignerons  at Pokolbin, would be affected.

Planning doesn’t say how Ashton should make her give in, but note the mine is not viable without that property and would not proceed. I shudder to think what tactics, what pressure, might come into play.

Wendy’s not alone in resisting the new mine; the local Wonnarua people are trying to stop the cultural damage it will do, asking the Land and Environment Court  for a 500-metre wide buffer zones around Glennies Creek and Bowmans Creek.

And there’s Deidre Oloffson, who’s been fighting for her village and the right to health of its residents ever since 2002, when Ashton began digging away the back of the hill beside the village. That hill, behind her, used to be the village Common, but the Planning Minister took it away in 2010 for Ashton to use. 

Coincidentally, White Mining, related to Ashton, then applied for an exploration lease over it. Since the Camberwell Common Trust is no longer recognised, Deidre is to fight the government and both miners in the Land and Environment Court, on behalf of the residents, to get their Common back.

She has said all along that this Ashton South East Open Cut will be the final deathblow for Camberwell.

What did Planning suggest to square the mine approval with their conscience?

The seven remaining Camberwell landowners could ask to be bought out if the increased noise and dust got too bad — which it already had and which option they have been refusing — or they could ask to be relocated for the seven years of the mine’s operation. In other words, get out of our way.

Ashton’s tenants have to be warned of the risks, could ask to be relocated too, and everyone had to be given copies of the NSW health fact sheet ‘Mine Dust and You’. Does this absolve Planning and Ashton of blame?

The Planning Assessment Commission is coming to the area for a public hearing, 9 a.m., 6th September, at Glennies Creek Hall. People can have a say there if they register before 31st August with Megan Webb on (02) 9383 2113 or by email.

For details go here and look at the recommendations to the PAC.

All support will be appreciated by the battlers of Camberwell.

Glennies Creek Hall is on Middle Falbrook Road, reached from Glennies Creek Road off the New England Highway. On the way you get some lovely views back over Camberwell’s surrounding rural environment…

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.

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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Don’t breathe the air

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The once-rural Hunter Valley baked in the early February heatwave, but not under blue skies. The many and expanding open cut coal mines in Singleton and Muswellbrook Shires made sure of that. This was what the air quality looked like on Friday 4th February.

On the Tuesday before, the 1st February, the averaged PM 10 reading was ‘very poor’, exceeding national health standards where ‘people with heart or lung disease should limit exercising outdoors’.

We are told that local dust emissions could be reduced by half if best practice particulate emissions controls were put in place, and if there was ‘a substantial increase in the area of land rehabilitated each year and the application of suppressant to haul roads’.

Given the known health issues from dust particulates, why don’t they do this already? It would cost money, cut into profits.

Why aren’t they told to do it or shut up shop?

Surely not because it would displease donors, cut into royalties?

A friend sent this snap, taken from the road, of dust rising from the massive Mt Arthur mine at Muswellbrook, about two weeks ago. A common enough sight to those who live in the two shires, when passing any of the mines.

And yet the state government has just issued its NSW Coal and Gas Scoping Paper, where the scary assumptions are made that, rather than agree that these shires are over-saturated with mines and dust and power station emissions– they will get more.

‘The intensification of mining in the area between Singleton and Muswellbrook will require the careful management of potential cumulative impacts in an area that already accommodates substantial coal mining activity.’

The words say it all about the disconnect from the dangerous and dirty reality: ‘potential’? ‘accommodates’? ‘substantial’?

So we are not to worry, because it will be ‘managed’ as it is now, no doubt under equally strict consent conditions as now, since, as we are always told, the mining industry is the most highly regulated of all.

Comments are invited from the public until 15th April. Please have a read of what I consider an offensive draft blueprint for a coal-trashed future for NSW — it’s not very long — and let them know what you think!

Download it here: Coal and Gas Scoping Paper

Gladiator skinks

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Following my last post (Skink family?) on my cute Southern Water Skinks, web visitor Darian Zam told us of his skinks:

‘I have a lot of these. I thought having the screens fixed would stop them getting in the house and running around this summer. It didn’t and it’s worse than ever this year! It’s quite annoying. They poop on everything. I got some great shots of two battling it out dramatically last week — they were biting each other on the head and then flipping in the air together. It was a pretty dramatic fight over who gets to claim the back of the refrigerator, I believe.’

Intrigued, since my skinks so far seem non-aggressive, managing to divide territory quite amicably, I asked Darian to send some of those photos and with his permission I share these three below. Thanks, Darian!

The flipping over is clear and they contort like wrestlers, but I am astonished that they bite the head, not a soft, vulnerable part like the stomach. I wonder if many lose an eye this way.

Perhaps they hold firmly with their jaws — to flip — rather than bite?

I will now be on the lookout for battle wounds on my skinks, of which there are now five zipping about on the verandah. Glad my screens work!

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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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!

Farmers versus BHP

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On the Liverpool Plains near Quirindi, New South Wales, local farmers at Caroona have been defending their properties from invasion by BHP Billiton’s coal exploration drillers.

For 615 days, until Thursday 25th March, they have inspired coal-threatened communities everywhere with their blockade, by saying ‘No’ — and meaning it.

Trish Duddy and Tommy and George Clift (front L to R, all hatted) have been at the blockade camp every single one of those 615 days, joined by other locals on a rolling roster for cups of tea, information swapping, resolve steeling — and symbolic trailblazing.

The drillers had government permission in the form of an exploration licence but these farmers did not agree to access because they have strong and reasonable fears that any drilling through their precious aquifers could cause contamination or loss of the water on which their highly productive grain cropping depends.

Recently the Supreme Court quashed the Mining Warden’s decision where ‘access agreements’ were imposed on two Caroona properties. The access agreements were declared null and void because BHP had failed to notify the mortgagees for the properties.

It was the the first victory for the Brown and Alcorn families in an almost two-year battle to keep BHP Billiton off their land. The ruling could set a precedent that voids every access agreement in the exploration licence area and across the state.

So the blockaders have won a major and significant battle, but the war continues to save their fertile farmlands and its water supplies.  And they will not hesitate to reinstate the blockade if need be.

I had driven in to the Blockade that morning, looking south across the Plains to the polluted and dust-laden skies of the Hunter Valley, where the government has allowed every coal company to win every battle. Down there it is the wineries and thoroughbred horse studs now protesting that their industries cannot cope with any more coal mines.

The difference when I looked north, away from the coal-trashed Hunter, is obvious – clear blue skies as country skies should be, not murky brown. I admired the vast patchwork of ploughed land and crops, with the rusty red of sorghum seed-heads, the green of new crops, the cream of harvested stubble and the rich dark soil itself.

Later that day, heading towards the hills and home, I pass incredibly flat golden vistas of sunflower heads and their vibrant green plants and I am struck by its ‘livingness’ as I think of the appalling contrast I will meet back as I drive back into the Hunter.

Vistas of dirt and coal, an industrial hell, a dead landscape, seen through the veil made by one of the highest concentrations of fine dust particulates in Australia. I hope the Caroona farmers manage to stop this happening to their Plains — and after speaking to many of them I believe they will!

Women’s International Peace Walk  — Australia

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Brisbane to Canberra 13th March—26th May 2010

My friend Christa is part of the group of women undertaking this walk — she designed the great fundraiser postcard too.

FootPrints for Peace is a global community of friends who are dedicated to creating change through peaceful action. They organise events throughout the world that bring people together to deepen our understanding of environmental, cultural and spiritual issues.

FootPrints for Peace believe that every step counts and would like to invite women to walk with them for one hour, one day, one week or the whole journey. They have five women doing the whole walk:  June Norman, Di Jenkins, Dawn Joyce, Sue Gregory and Cassie McMahon, with others walking significant distances and locals who will be walking with them for a day or meeting them on the outskirts of their town.  

If you are planning to walk for more than one day, please download the registration form from the Footprints for Peace website and email it to them here. You will also need to print the form, sign it and bring a copy with you when you commence the walk.

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