The sad euthanasic demise of our rural ‘Shaggy’ – our harmless verge May Bush (Spiraea cantoniensis). 

Some hateful vindictive ‘anonymous’ incoming ex-Sydney newcomer has targeted as urban improper and complained to Council that it be killed as ‘un-urban’.  Sydney urban invaders of this rural bush streetscape bullying imposing their urban dogma yet again.  So, go back to high-rised mass immigration Sydney as you are not welcome in the Australian Blue Mountains!

This is the article we wrote following that nasty threat by Blue Mountains Council out-of-the-blue to attack our verge coppice.

 

Blue Mountains Council threatening letter is bureaucratic ignorant bullying

 

Civil community co-operation by Council, NOT!

 

This is our lush shady verge.  

 

It was just bare grass when we bought in 2000.  ‘Leave the place better than you found it’ – my grandfather was a farmer.  Such is a core lore of land stewardship, and the scouting movement.

This was like our grass verge back in 2000 when we bought the property.   Apparently as residents, we had to mow this Council verge!?!   I had hayfever, so wifies had to.

 

 

The verge grass was never mown by Council, which is chronic neglect in our semi-rural residential heritage precinct.  Yet Council’s cultural mindset demands without any legitimacy that residents mow Council’s verges (nature strips) outside their properties.  This governmental staid one-size-fits-all pendant urbane mindset needs to change.

‘Shaggy’ our verge May Bush is shown on the right of the pole, when ‘Shaggy’ was still a blooming youngtser of Mountains character.  Note the unusual reverse juxtaposition of the footpath and the verge.

We had planted this verge (nature strip) out in 2002 from what had been neglected for decades as Council’s unkempt grass lawn that they required us to mow it for bloody Council on their behalf.  Bugger that for a joke!  So the invasive grass went to Mars and we redesigned it mostly Native, landscaped it, kept it neat and tidy and had it maintained regularly to be safely clear of the overhead powerlines over the past 25 years.  It just made sense.  Council didn’t communicate a tuppenny shite. This verge design initiative provided the only shade and coolness in our street from the damaging hot summer afternoon sun (westerly left of photo) so car owners parking have long valued it. 

Then some anonymous pedant from ‘big smoke’ concrete Sydney complained about wheel chair access.  In our bushy area? What crap!   Then someone anonymous chose to vandalise our May Bush when we weren’t home.  

 

 

Give the brushcutting right angled military cut right on next door’s boundary.  Mmm, we suspect these new hissy-fitting newcomers adjacent from high-rise Sydney.  They’re threatened us previously with laser trimming to the boundary like the prior pollarding witch did.   It’s straight of the Book of Luke.

 

 

So, Council demanded that we kill our verge May Bush ‘Shaggy’ plus cut back our mature native lemon-scented tea tree, to somehow provide wheelchair access along our footpath. 

 

 

 

All ignoring the bloody elephant in the footpath mind you….  Try getting a wheelchair around this obstacle… 

 

 

Our entire old 1870s-heritage residential precinct is has bugger all footpaths, and frankly it’s just the way us Katoomba locals like it – rural, leafy and bushy!    We’ve never seen a wheelchair in our street or neighbourhood during our 26 years to date!

So with no joy trying to talkk to Council bureaucrats we tried to contact and complain about this bureacratic pedant urbanisation to our local Ward 1 Councillors – Cr Sarah Redshaw, Cr Suzie Van Opdorp and Cr Suzanne Jamieson.  Fat lot of good that did!   Their all Labor hacks!  Think Labor’s mass immigration driving housing unaffordability and more Hong Kong congestion downunder.

 

 

Council’s ordered killing of our May Bush cost us over $800 out of pocket, including:

1. 1. Us engaging a specialist contractor to remove (kill) the May Bush (our ‘Shaggy‘).   |  Cost: $450
   2. Us engaging a specialist contractor to stump grind the root ball.   | Cost:  $200
   3. Buying two replacement camilias with suitable fertilizers.  | Cost:  $180.
   4. Our time and effort to then re-dig the soil patch of (1m(W) x 1m (L) x 0.3m (D) = 0.3 m³ 
   5. Our time and effort to then replce the soil and landscape the rock surround and replant the verge with Camilias

 

 

 

This destruction supposedly to appease some anonymous newcomer nearby from obvious the city who demands a city streetscape. 

 

Be known, we’re hereby placing a set of street CCTVs up and that anonymous individual passer-by complainant of our May Bush we again observe damaging vegetation will be up on the Internet before you can say Jack Robinson.

 

Just weeks later our verge it has just been decimated by ignorants of Asplundh who deserve to live in concrete treeless Penrith/Glendenning relying instead upon airconditioning.  So passive solar design, eh!  Go the fake Greens (socialist Reds!)  

 

 

May be we plant an attractive red spiky Japanese Flowering Quince bush (chaenomeles-japonica) where Shaggy was?

 

 

 

The large bush on the right was our ‘Shaggy’ – our May Bush.  Being a northern hemisphere shrub it flowered in Spring with is May in the northern hemisphere.  But in Australia in the southern hemisphere it flowers also in spring in October.   The flowers were small white and when it was in full bloom every late October the appearance was like a giant fizzgig.

 

 

 

But then some anonymous urbane local newcomer to our leafy Blue Mountains (likely from inner concrete inner Sydney) complained to Blue Mountains Council that our May Bush was over-generous to the 1.2 metre (military standard?) rural footpath.

Obviously that pedant owns a pet rock and a chainsaw – a botanophobic!   Given recent damage problems in our street, we shall be installing half a dozen high definition colour infrared battery CCTV cameras strategically in our street shortly, and not the cheap Chinese ones. 

Compare the 2000 purchase of this (low-base) property’s scene some 26 years ago when we had just bought the property:

 

The land value would not be what it is in 2026.  So Council would not be since reaping the value-adding spoils from its rate hikes from then being $772.55 annually to in 2026 being $2285.34 – a 300% lazy gain.  Blue Mountains Council has for time immemorial exploited its local ratepayers, especially its NAZI1957 forced evictions of the poor locals out of the The Gully.  A shameful record that Blue Mountains Council continues to culturally shun its complicity and guilt. 

Some old locals never forget.

 

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POSTSCRIPTS:

 

POSTCRIPT #1:    OUR REPLY TO COUNCIL’S NAZI VERGE GESTAPO

 

Attention:  Mr Bhabuk Gajurel
Program Leader Inspections & Maintenance
Transport and Public Access (department)
Blue Mountains Council
2-6 Civic Place
KATOOMBA NSW 2780

Saturday 11th July 2026

 

Dear Mr Gajurel,

 

RE:  “Pedestrian Hazard” Claim by Council – Verge in front of 5 Kundibar St, Katoomba NSW 2780 – my complaint CSR 665885

 

I refer to you following up my request that you and your manager Nicole Hume attend onsite inspection with your colleague Chris on Wednesday 17^th June 2026.   Pity you did not notify  me of the timing and just turned up unannounced, and without Nicole Hume.

I appreciate your follow up email notification 30 June 2026 to me about this verge matter now being permanently closed by Council. (.JPG copy attached)  I presume that your email is also a follow up to you conducting a second following onsite inspection of this subject verge outside my property after I had acted upon Council’s request to remove the May Bush and trim the two limbs of the Tea Tree as agreed.  If so, again I was not contacted and not aware of any second onsite visit to inspect the vegetation trimming/removal.

I personally trimmed the Tea Tree and also contracted Greg Roberts Trees to remove the May Bush to the stump ground level and then a second contractor to stump grind the remaining vegetation of the May Bush verge section to below ground level.  I attach the relevant photos for Council’s reference.  These were your agreed actions for me to undertake when you first visited.

 

I make the following comments to this matter:

1. We have done the verge trimming as Council has requested of us.
2. I disagree that such trimming was necessary from the outset. My residence is in a semi-bushland setting, and such military pollard trimming demand by Council I consider to be absurdly pedantic given the rural streetscape of our old residential precinct. 
3. This residential precinct, labelled ‘North’s Estate’ dates from the 1870s and is the oldest residential subdivision in the Blue Mountains LGA. It is designated by the NSW Government as a Heritage Conservation Area.   
4. Public access silo mentality
5. Our property is one of few in this North’s Estate precinct seeming lucky to have a footpath at all! Are we not bordering environmental wilderness World Heritage?  We are not bloody military precinct or inner Sydney treeless “CITY”?  We are not Glenmore Park nor Pyrmont! 
6. You state in our conversations that our property was singularly targeted out by some anonymous complainant for verge trimming. May be I should try that method on someone whom I might have a personal vendetta with?  And we’ve experienced a few bad apples round these parts of late.  Such is the immoral manner in which Blue Mountains Council seems to have heaved in this petty one-sided matter.  
7. You have stated in your letter of 8^th May 2026 for us to trim our verge to some fabricated military type right angled precision (1.2m wide by 2m high) . Yet, whilst your letter dictated the footpath’s minimum clearance dimensions (above) you provided no by-law or basis for such.  Did you just make this ruling arbitrarily in your head? 
8. Council’s process in this matter has been a case of unwarranted ‘big brother’ bullying from on high in my opinion and its written order is anonymous so therefore baseless and unjustified.
9. The verge is Council property so your written threat of for Council to have otherwise do so and charge us the fee was intimidating and invalid. 
10. It is hypocritical that Council neglects the verges it technically has community custodial responsibility for, yet ignores their maintenance – typically many such verges are traditionally grassed lawns, yet Council does not mow them, rather its expects residents adjoining to do Council’s job and at the residents’ time and expense. Council’s verge ‘trimming’ in our semi-bushland residential precinct holds an ongoing neglectful history of grass lawn mowing of its verges/nature strips.  Other nearby residents have similarly complained.  Our verge has not once been mowed by Council since we moved here in 2001.
11. Such Council neglect over the years became an incentive for us to remove the unmaintained grassed verge lawn completely. At our own time and cost we replaced the grass with a mixed native garden bed mostly of locally indigenous native species and with local sandstone landscaping. It has been since maintenance free!  No cost to anyone else including Council.  It has positively added new privacy,  car parking shade, plus the native birds frequent the trees within.
12. The verge vegetation work ordered by Council has cost us personally about $1000 out of pocket for the May Bush removal associated stump grinding and purchase of replacement shrubs for this verge section.
13. We have chosen two white Camillias (Camellia sasanqua) to replace the May Bush and English Boxes, if this so pleases our beloved Council. May be we could receive a Council rates rebate from Blue Mountain Council promptly for this amount as compensation.
14. Following your letter of 8^th May 2026 to us, on 6^th June 2026 we first observed that someone unknown had edge trimmed a deep vertical corner section of the May Bush from top to ground. A large vertical chunk (30cm square section) was cut exactly at the border of our adjoining neighbours of 3 Kundibar Street. We received no warning or notice of this.  But the trimming created a public safety hazard since May Bushes cannot be trimmed like say English Box trees since it only leaves very  sharp inner branch pointy ends that pose an injury risk to passing pedestrians (unlike the soft small leaves of the May Bush exterior).  Clearly we have a vandal in our midst.
15. We have lived at this address since 2001. Council knows me personally on its record from many past correspondences – mostly regrettable in my experience, especially in relation to this precinct, Katoomba Falls Creek Valley (The Gully).
16. Your initial written letter ‘out-of-the-blue’ to my letterbox dated 8^th May 2026 to us was a shock, inappropriate and threatening about Council’s order for us to do pruning work itself then sending me some open ended bill charge with consequential ‘Big Brother’ legal action had I not done it myself. Such poor communication to a ratepaying resident perhaps cannot get worse. In my view you need remedial training in customer service courtesy skills, and your comment that my letter was one of 20 or more standard/roneoed letters to others suggests a lazy one-size-fits-all approach, indeed is Council heading to an AI outsourcing approach to communicate with its customer ratepayers now?
17. I pointed out to you and your colleague Chris on your initial onsite inspection that Council has for many years ignored repairing its footpath on the corner of Kundibar and Warriga Streets (photo attached). So Council’s personal targeting of our verge claiming fabricated and false concerns about public safety and access is completely hypocritical.
18. Our Council ‘Rates and Charges’ back in 2001 were annually $772.55. They have over the years snowballed to a current $2285.34 p.a. So without tempting some AI algorithm, I reckon that our average annual rates would approximate $1500.  So over our 26 years to date Council has reaped about $40k out of us.  Frankly, I don’t think we’re getting our money’s worth.  Likely that figure wouldn’t even pay for Council’s consultants or legal fees for one month.
19. I am disappointed that Council and particularly the three Ward 1 councillors, to whom I escalated this matter to, have been wholly silent in response. What is the point of serving on Council or becoming a representative for your local constituents if you do nothing when constituent raises a local matter of concern?
20. Yes, I am a Conservation Activist. I have published this article on the Internet: https://habitatadvocate.com.au/blue-mountains-council-threatening-letter-is-bureaucratic-ignorant-bullying/
21. I suggest that Council needs to apologise to us over this unnecessary petty drama and pull its head in.
22. I reserve the right after all this, to go similarly public again on this matter as a follow up. It may encourage other Blue Mountains residents to also express their own views about such bullying treatment as they see fit. In time the due negative publicly could implicate Blue Mountains Council appropriately well more than this petty verge matter it raised from some anonymous source.

 

 

 

Blue Mountains Council’s response:

 

 

POSTCRIPT #2:    OUR REPLY TO COUNCIL’S NAZI VERGE GESTAPO

 

Asplundh meathead vandal attacks our property causing malicious damage

 

 

 

 

As if our Katoomba Falls Creek Valley (The Gully) in the Blue Mountains of Australia hasn’t copped enough callous deforestation over the many decades? 

We previously copped Blue Mountains Council’s outsourced ‘JJ Richards‘ garbage truck meathead that had drove through our verge, then Council’s verge police, now its Asplundh’s meathead lumberjacks taking a crack at us.    WTF!

Last week some Kiwi ‘bevan’ wantonly killed our verge ornamental autumnal pear tree.  Was he on the turps?

 

 

We called our pear tree ‘Russet‘ (after the French pear variety) for its beautiful leaf colouring through autumn and its gift of recurring growth back to us providing us with hedge privacy, summer shade and attractive autumnal folliage. 

One planted our tree back in 2002. One nurtured it, watered it, yes had it duly trimmed every six months to safely stay growing below the electric overhead power lines above.  We acknowledged and accepted the tree’s height trimming with Origin Energy then Endeavour Energy every six months amicably since 2012.  That’s our initiated agrement for the past fourteen years.

 

 

But Russet’s now dead; killed by Asplundh’s meathead driver and they quickly dismembered it and all evidence in their Asplundh’s Bandit woodchipper…

 

 

Lumberjack Asplundh’s meathead vandals wantonly attacked our property last week causing substantial malicious damage.   Some Kiwi driver in the trimming crew driving the Asplundh truck came back after the power line trimming job to reverse hard back into where he had been crashing with deliberate force into our 25 year of old Pear Tree, taking it out completely.   WTF?

The image above and below show the extent of that wanton damage.  Of course the property owner didn’t ask for such proprty damage.  The property owner had planted this pear tree back in 2002 over quarter of a Century ago and has diligently maintained it to comply with Endeavour Energy’s tree clearance rules ever since.  Such overhead power lines clearance arrangement had all been amicable up until 12:45pm on Thursday 9th July 2026.

On Thursday 9th July 2026, NSW Government’s outsourced electricity provider Endeavour Energy decided to get its Swedish lumberjack ‘Asplundh’ to do its ‘tree trimming’ so-called.

This round it had its New Zealand backpacker boofheads do the job on the property. 

 

When will the electricity be installed underground?  That would have obviated the need for tree trimming entirely.  Indeed, we did so back in 2013 – both power and phoneline as can be partially seen in the above image of the galvanised steel cover down the pole.  So providing us with no above-ground wiring from the street to our property.  That effort cost us over $6000 at the time with a qualified Ausgrid contractor.  It’s called proper planning.

So, after the Endeavor Energy vegetation timming job had been done by Asplundh, its Hi-Viz ranga leprechaun (some imported Kiwi backpacker) came back and deliberately reversed his truck into our verge and took out a mature tree completely.   This is the damage – entire tree killed!  Wham bam!

 

Click to play this actual video:   ScreenRecording_07-16-2026 12-51-16_1 (1)

 

Kundibar Armageddon!

 

 

This shard image resonated.  I have personally onsite witnessed the holocaust of Tasmania’s Stix Valley ancient giants first hand back in 2011.

 

 

 

 

This valley pre-colonisation, actually used to be a rainforest pre-John Britty North’s deforestation of the 1870s.  So, one terms what we did on our wee patch by first removing all the grassed lawn on the property is our wee gesture of reforestation.   We’ve certainly observed (and heard) more native birdlife being appreciative.

The following image shows a similar example of what we started with:

 

 

Back in 2002, one contacted Council about its unkemp grass verge out the front of our place to propose we replace the grass with native plants and they had no issue.  Ok, good.  So, for this 16 metre verge length of about 1 metre wide (inside from the footpath mind you against our front boundary) we set about removing all the grass down to the roots, digging up the compacted soil and improving it, and adding soil to a raised level, then planting as many ferns shrubs and a few trees as would be allowed as ‘reforestation‘.  Better than deforestation. 

But just at a coppice scale, given that the property’s block area is under a quarter of an acre.  We just did our bit to give back to local Nature and enhance the natural landscape.

Had those bloody imposing and overruling overhead wires instead been better installed along the other side of the street (where there are no trees to speak of), or even better, installed underground (given we are in a bushfire risk zone), then this pear tree after 24 years would have grown by now to over 30 metres high.  It would not just shade one’s property, cars in the street, but most of our street.  Such were the dumb infrastructure planners of the day.   The property also wouldn’t have that super bright street light.

 

 

With a wide spread of up to six metres, and a more conical shape, the Chanticleer (Pyrus calleryana)  means proud strutting rooster.  It is one of the most popular ornamental pears in cultivation in Australia.  Its leaves are dark green, foliage dense, provides habitat for native birds and other wildlife.  It also provided spectacular autumn foliage in shades of gold, plum, and burgundy.  Chanticleer (also known as the Cleveland Select Pear) typically grows to a mature height of 8 to 12 metres (26 to 40 feet). It is a hardly cool climate species, featuring a distinctive, narrow, and upright teardrop shape, spreading about 4 to 6 metres wide at maturity. These ornamental pears are prized for tight spaces and streetscapes due to their naturally uniform, dense habit. 

In addition to their height, such ornamental pear trees typically grow moderately fast; and once established they can add 50 to 80 cm per year. 

Pear trees provide seasonal benefits – producing masses of small white flowers in spring; dense deep green foliage for summer shade; vibrant yellow, orange, red and burgundy coloured foliage in autumn.  Russet had been planted in well drained sandy loam.  It was one of six of the same variety planted by three adjoining neighbours in a row, two in front of each of the three properties.  The verge coppice hedging had sensibly replaced Council’s grass that Council insisted owne mow regularly at owner’s time and expense bizarrely as a ratepayer service to Council.  Shoe on the wrong foot or what?

Then Asplundh and its immigrant backpacker meatheads came along in July 2026.   Some folks just hate trees.   It’s probably why this mob operate in the leafy Blue Mountains – like “how many trees can we kill today?” mentality.   This was the offending truck:

 

 

 

And towing on the rear the industrial strength tree chipper:

   

 

The website states: 

“Meet the Bandit 21XP – Your Unstoppable Chipping Solution
Tackle the Toughest Jobs with Ease Imagine effortlessly handling the largest, toughest materials with the Bandit 21XP.  Its 21” capacity and 26” x 24.5” .

 

Bandit 21XP – 21″ Drum Style Wood Chipper

 

The manufacturer of the Bandit 21XP (also known as the Intimidator 21XP) is Bandit Industries, Inc., an American company based in Remus, Michigan,

INTIMIDATOR™ 21XP – TOWABLE

 

One doesn’t have to be too smart to drive a truck.  This author holds many ‘driving’ licenses so oughta know – like a HC (semi-trailer) license, authorised bus driver licence (including double deckers),  UPPL (unrestricted private pilot licence), CPL (commercial helicopter licence), low level flying endorsement (R22), commercial coxwains ticket, also for a motorbike, forklift and oh yeah a car licence – manual even!  All unblemished.

One does not hold a chainsaw license on principle, but it oughta not be too hard to work it out (see video below on how to start a chainsaw).  Yet I wouldn’t let a ranga leprachaun near one or near another truck for that matter. 

 

Click to play video

 

 

Endeavour Energy (the current powerline operator serving the NSW Government) should wisely consider discontinuing to associate with Asplund for its vegetation trimming.  It’s not been the first time in our experience over 26 years here.

 

 

 

BTW, that rego plate X0 135F – probably the ‘F‘ duly stands for fuckwit.  The Kiwi leprechaun would typically hate Aussie native possums and therefore Australians.  So why is he here in the first place across the ditch causing havoc downunder?   Perhaps Australian could exchange him with Grafton’s Brendan Tarrant of Christchurch notoriety in hatred.   Thus Brendan would fly back to OZ on QANTAS, and this Kiwi ranga leprauchaun skedaddle deport back to the long white cloud on AirNZ to continue his passion for deforestation on his home turf?

Problems across the ditch?  Good Kiwis deserve to stay downunder, but feral Kiwis deserve go back across.

 

 

 

 

 

And all this drama rocked up within juts a month after Blue Mountains Council’s wheelchair access dictat effort…

Blue Mountains Council threatening letter is bureaucratic ignorant bullying

 

Frankly, is it no wonder why we despise government in all its guises, corporatised or otherwise?

 

 

Then the coward contractors returned later that night and chainsawed the evidence… except the property owner had captured it all.

 

 

 

This malicious vandalism comes just a few weeks after the owner was harassed by Blue Mountains Council bullies about this same verge.

 

 

Blue Mountains Council and Endeavour Energy’s Asplundh simply don’t deserve to belong anywhere near the Blue Mountains world heritage, but back in the CITY.

 

 

This was our house originally:

 

 

 

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Sean Rowe:

 

 

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Postscript:

 

Since the date of this Asplundh Truck Crash into my property, Katoomba Police have served me with Court Attendance Order.  WTF?

 

“And the people came shouting, “What’s this all about…?” 

They looked!  And they stared with their eyes popping out.

Then they cheered and they cheered and they CHEERED more and more.

They’d never seen anything like it before!

My goodness!  My gracious! they shouted.  “MY WORD!

It’s something brand new!

IT’S AN ELEPHANT BIRD!!

And it should be, it should be, it SHOULD be like that!

Because Horton was faithful!  He sat and he sat!

He meant what he said.

And he said what he meant…

An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent!”

 

SOURCE:  ‘Horton Hatches The Egg’, children’s book by Dr Seuss, 1940.

 

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References and Further Reading:

 

[1]  Asplundh’s notice of trimming of vegetation to us, 2026-06-29, from our files,

 

[2]  ‘Chainsaw massacre reduces beautiful old trees to ugly stumps‘, 2018-07-05, by Jennie Curtin, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), Gladstone Road, Leura, Blue Mountains, ^https://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/5509314/tree-maintenance-turns-brutal-in-leuras-chainsaw-massacre/

 

[3]  ‘Asplundh cut down all of my pine trees and lied about obtaining permission‘,  Reddit.com (social website), (author chose to remain anonymous), ^https://www.reddit.com/r/treelaw/comments/1ecvwop/asplundh_cut_down_all_of_my_pine_trees_and_lied/

 

[4]  One’s formal complaint to Endeavour Energy in writing the very next day , 2026-07-10,  it reads as follows:

 

“To whom it may concern,
Complaints Manager
Endeavour Energy
Level 40-42, 8 Parramatta Square
10 Darcy Street
Parramatta, NSW 2150

Dear Sir/Madam,

RE: Asplundh tree destruction at 5 Kundibar Street Katoomba NSW 2780

Your Complaint Ref:  C-331040

Asplundh Job Ref:   AA358396

I refer to my telephone call to your Complaints department yesterday.

Yesterday (Thursday 9^th July 2026), Endeavour Energy’s outsourced vegetation contractor Asplundh arranged with me to trim our verge vegetation clear of the overhead  powerlines at our above residential address, to which I agreed and oversaw.

This arrangement has been mutually agreed between myself and Endeavour Energy since 2011 to occur roughly every six months and the arrangement has been amicable.  

That was up until yesterday, when one of Asplundh’s cowboys drove into a mature tree of ours and destroyed it totally, and totally unnecessarily.

The trimming job yesterday had been performed between 11:30am and 12:30pm, and the task duly completed as I watched on.  Then the Asplundh crew headed off to another location.

However, about 10 minutes later, I visually observed from my front home office window one of the Asplundh trucks reverse into my verge and completely knock over a large 25+ year old ornamental pear tree to the road leaving a 1 metre high severed stump.  The tree’s truck diameter was just under 30cm!  It was no small tree!  I planted it 25 years ago.

I attach photos of the damage.  I point out that the tree was in no way impacting the safe vertical area near the overhead  powerlines. The trimming work had already been completed and this work has just previously been mutually confirmed with me happily by the Asplundh vegetation trimming supervisor onsite to his satisfaction.   I had thus returned inside.   

Upon seeing the tree fall across the street, I immediately raced outside to see the damage. The Asplundh truck driver (photographed) had exited his truck as I took photos and videos of the matter.  The truck driver then questioned me and approached me in an aggressive manner on the street in front of his truck.   I photographed and videoed him at the time at the damage senesce at the time only to be threatened by his aggressive behaviour toward me. 

I asked why.

The Hi-Viz Asplundh crew laughed at me, stating it was only a tree.  Yet, I was the victim. The truck driver was clearly in the wrong.

I have reported this malicious damage to Police, Blue Mountains City Council, Asplundh’s contact Calib, and to Endeavour Energy.

What has occurred is unacceptable and I have sought legal advice in relation to this matter.  I now have engaged a solicitor.”

Attached evidentiary images:

Yours sincerely,

(affected property owner)

 

[5]   Asplundh ‘Chainsaw massacre reduces beautiful old trees to ugly stumps‘, 2018-07-10, by Jennie Curtin, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), ^https://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/5509314/tree-maintenance-turns-brutal-in-leuras-chainsaw-massacre/

 

In 2018, Asplundh launched its tree terror attack on Leura, targeting 

Gladstone Road, Leura (Blue Mountains) BEFORE Asplundh Terrorist Attack:

 

 

AFTER Asplundh terrorist attack:

 

 

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“Asplundh’s vision is to be the leading Australian provider of vegetation maintenance”

SOURCE:  Asplundh website, ^https://www.asplundh.com.au/about-us

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[6]     ‘Asplundh destroyed our tree without permission—what can we do?‘, 2025, by (anonymous), on REDDIT.COM, ^https://www.reddit.com/r/Albany/comments/1k6c01s/asplundh_destroyed_our_tree_without/

“You are actually lucky they left you a tree. On our land they just cut the trees off with 4 feet stumps and left everything. They are supposed to notify you ahead of time, but you basically have to be there chaining yourself to trees or they don’t care. National Grid would clear cut Sequoia National Forest if they had so much as an extension cord near the place.“

 

[7]  ‘Did Asplundh damage trees on private property in Ross Creek?‘, by Jess Wallis, Ross Creek Community Group , 5 July 2025, 

 

[8]  ‘Has anyone ever had asplundh just absolutely ruin the trees in your yard?‘, by eabcan (anonymous), 2024-2-28, on REDDIT.COM, ^https://www.reddit.com/r/milwaukee/comments/18leibc/has_anyone_ever_had_asplundh_just_absolutely_ruin/

“I’m in Portland, Oregon (USA) and Asplundh were hired by PGE.  They just came down our street and did a horrible job.  I agree that the power lines need to be kept clear, but they absolutely butchered trees.  They left stubs on the trees and took off branches that were no where near the lines. They also left a pile of debris in their wake. I am fuming right now.“

 

[9]   ‘Asplundh was a bully‘, Go to legal (anonymous), 2024, 

 

[10]  ‘Has anyone else had issues with Asplundh doing tree trimming for Duke Power?‘  by ‘LittleMissMeanAss’ (anonymous), 2023,  

“Asplundh recently entered my property, which is fenced and gated, and cut down a 20+ year old tree without any notice or permission. I contacted their Garner office and left a message on their complaint line. Got a call back from a fellow who said he would go out and look at the tree in question. He calls back and says the tree was actually “a cluster of trunks that is classified as underbrush” and they’re within their rights to cut it down. I asked how that was possible when the tree was taller than the barn it was next to. He said that the trunk was not 12″ wide nor higher than 3′ (how would you know how tall it is when they took the whole thing down?) and therefore they didn’t do anything wrong and there was nothing else that could be done. The tree was taller than my barn. There are photos of it on Google Earth that show it all the way back to 2007, being at roof-line height. We usually trim it in spring to keep it cut back from the power lines ourselves. They had no issues topping two other trees that were actually growing around the power lines, but they chose to cut this one all the way down?

He also said that they left a doorhanger, but also kept insisting there was a house on my property. There isn’t a house. It’s a farm. “Well, maybe he left it on your gate and it blew away. But we did our due diligence and left it. He’s going to send me his log later tonight to show where he marked that he left a door hanger.” When the matter of entering the property came up he said, “Not that it sounds any better, but they didn’t come through your gate. They climbed over the fence.” I mean.

I can’t wrap my head around a company just letting themselves into private property without (a) contacting the landowner and (b) just taking down a whole ass tree.

Has anyone had this experience with them? What did you do? Did you get a resolution or did they tell you to pound sand too?”

 

[11]  ‘Nuts about Gums‘, Facebook page, ^https://www.facebook.com/groups/371844566747946/posts/1925746648024389/

 

This large healthy mature native Eucalypt has just been chainsawed to death today.   We could hear the noise of multiple chainsaws ripping reverberated around the neighbourhood from early this morning.

This tree grew on private residential land within The Gully Catchment on a large double block on the top of a prominent natural spur overlooking the northern part of The Gully not far from Horrie Gates’ old Catalina Dam.   

The Gully is a valued small natural valley situated on the western edge of the township of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

The particular site is zoned by local Blue Mountains Council as ‘Heritage’ and ‘Environmental Land’ under current Local Environmental Plan 2015.  It is also a very old settlement area of the Blue Mountains dating back to 1876.  In fact, it forms part of the oldest housing area of the Blue Mountains Local Government Area (LGA) and traditionally known as ‘North’s Estate’.

It was named after the first land Torrens Title owner John Britty North (1831-1917), an English immigrant during British colonial times who owned most of the immediate area and became a coal shale miner and then property developer there.

 

Recognition of this colonial heritage is such that this North Estate precinct has been especially zoned by council as ‘K171 – Norths Estate Conservation Area‘ under council’s LEP 2015. 

Was Council permission sought?     It appears from a call to Council, that it knew nothing about the owner’s plan to kill this significant native tree in this heritage and conservation precinct, as confirmed by CSR525105.   Council used to have a Significant Tree Register to protect identified significant trees within its LGA.  It no longer does.

So why kill it?  It was a slight 5 degree lean but in the direction of the prevailing wind.  Was it some perceived fear that in many years to come it might fall on the house?  Was it a prejudiced fear of gum trees?  For fire wood?  

This native tree was probably over 100 years old, perhaps dating back to the 19th Century and was the most prominent specimen in the immediate area.

 

Yet this majestic native tree was in good health and vigour, and showed no signs of decay.

 

Was any prior assessment by professionally qualified arborist conducted on the tree?  

We recall back in 2014 with regards to saving the 300+ year old Eucalyptus oreades tree that local conservationists had dubbed ‘ATLAS’, that The Habitat Advocate contracted renown expert arborist (the late) Mr Fred Janes, to conduct a professional arborist appraisal and report on the relative health of ATLAS.   This was sought because a property developer of the adjoining land wanted the tree killed by chainsaw so that he could selfishly have an overflow car park for the benefit clients of his proposed industrial estate complex.  So he had secured a dodgy arborist, only licensed to use a chainsaw.   Where as Mr Jane’s report found the tree to be in good health and vigour, and Council agreed. 

SAVE ATLAS Campaign – Part 1

 

It’s a sad loss. 

We have observed over time since our own arrival in this special place in 2001, that whilst in The Gully’s ‘Aboriginal Place’ dissociated land parcels of native bush, the native trees within are culturally sacrosanct, as they should be; yet around the immediately periphery of adjoining private lands, housing development and deforestation continues incrementally.  It is death by a thousand cuts transforming the natural valley into an artificial urban landscape. 

This is why council insists on being called Blue Mountains City Council in its urbane dreams within a world heritage area.  

 

Giants of the Valley

© Acrylic on Canvas by Hannah Lenora Teichert, 2019.

 

Artist’s Statement:

Although my painting is set in the Styx Valley of the Giants, it transmits childhood memories of ethereal walks amongst the tallest trees found in the Redwood Forests of California. The Mountain Ash trees of Tasmania may arguably have been their contenders, if not for human intervention having commoditised them in their prime. My painting depicts the narrative of these Giants, whose crevassed valleys I have yet to travel.

The relational theme is exemplified through landscapes suspended in space, conveying our universally intricate ties to the natural world; ‘As above so below’.  The Giants are fused together by their roots, representing the recently discovered language of trees. Their wiring is juxtaposed with our own ever-escalating dissemination of information.

The native White Bellied Eagle protects his island, which is pockmarked with the scabs of clear felled, old growth forests. The monumental forest transforms from ‘hardy’ to ‘harvested’ and rests amongst machinery within the living limbs of a peace symbol balanced between its adversaries. The aerial perspective above the nest leaves the onus for the forest’s future, inescapably with the viewer.

The ‘Weld Angel’, perched atop a giant tripod, protests peacefully. She embodies repressed respect for mother earth and strives to regain equilibrium with her political nemeses abseiling from what remains of The Valley of the Giants.

White-Bellied Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster)

Source:  ^https://www.threatenedspecieslink.tas.gov.au/Pages/White-bellied-Sea-Eagle.aspx

 

Snuggle up to your stolen forest fire this winter

“…excellent quality, excellent service. We only source premium sustainable hardwood firewood (Ironbark and Box).”

Yeah sure you do, because it’s stolen from native forests when nobody’s watching.

Which forest for the restaurant industry?  RFS Hazard Reduction for Firewood profiteering?

 

No permit. No certification.  Any claim of sustainable is just lying advertising.

Legitimate Red Ironbark timber flooring retails for $100 per lineal metre.  So if you’re buying ironbark firewood off the back of a truck $140 a cubic metre, it is surely illegally taken from native forests.  Ever wonder why the ex-crim looking delivery driver only takes cash?

Firewood supplied across Australia is a cash black market run by criminal types.  It’s a winter scam.

 

If the firewood is not certified as plantation timber with an Australian Standard AS4708, then the firewood is likely stolen, which means you are in receipt of stolen goods.

And beware of this label photocopied in black and white

 

So snug up to an ironbark wood fire this winter and know you are part of the deforestation problem driving threatened woodland species into extincting. 

Your grand kids will ask why you were so selfish, when they see there’s none left – just like trying to buy Turpentine flooring these days.

Box Ironbark forest in central Victoria dominated by Red Ironbark (Eucalyptus tricarpa)

© Ian Lunt, ^https://ianluntecology.com/2012/01/20/fire-and-rain-2-water-for-ironbarks/

 

Criminal Loggers Caught

 

Pizzas sponsored by RFS commercial Hazard Reduction on the side?

 

There remains a termite-ridden industry needing eradicating in Gippsland Victoria and it is the old Heyfield Sawmill.  From the outside, the incidious business goes by the innocuous name Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, but like termite damage, it is rotten on the inside.

It’s website claims that the rare and disappearing “Victorian Ash is a beautiful hardwood that is dense, versatile, readily available and sustainably managed.”

Well, that’s why ASH have clear-felled logged it near to extinction?

ASH brands its products ‘Goodwood’, ‘Iron Ash’, ‘Alpine Oak’, ‘Supa Span’, but it’s all the same old growth Victorian Ash native forests older than any of the lumberjacks employed.  The only way these loggers could be sustainable would be if they planted the species, but then to get to a commercial size they would have to wait until their grand-kids grew up to use a chainsaw, the liars.

ASH exports Victorian Ash to China, Japan, South East Asia, Europe the Middle East and the USA.  Why?  Let these countries wreck their own forests.

So the 200 greedy timber workers at Heyfield Sawmill need to pack their utes and transition to a real job.  If their industry was as sustainable as they claim then  they wouldn’t have run out of trees to chop down, but some are just slow on the uptake.

If renovators want fancy timber floors then they need to pay for the plantation laminates.

Heyfield has a continual history of environmental exploitation since the 1840s.  They’ve been clear-felling Gippsland since 1939.  What did the greedy loggers expect?   That ASH needs a $40 million subsidy from Victorian taxpayers to refit the mill, so that it can process the smaller logs from newer regrowth forests, exposes the lie that logger John Tyquin at Heyfield Sawmill claims:

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“It’s just like farming – we cut a tree down, we replace it with two more. The timber is there, we want to keep working.”

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So go to your plantations John!  How high are the trees?  Twenty foot?  If there are less suitable trees left whose fault is that?

You should have put out the bushfires and saved the swathe of Alpine forests, rather than just watch them burn to ash.

ASH has been told they can’t have the logs they haven’t planted.    Nathan Trushall, General Manager of VicForests, has stated publicly that there are simply not the logs there to supply their customers.

This is a serious admission of a major calculation goof-up and/or years of lying. Incompetent wood supply modelling can’t be blamed on possums or bushfires. The writing has been on the wall for years with every report and enquiry pointing to ongoing over-logging.

That future is now here. The bosses have geed up workers to blame ‘the greenies inside Labor’ and ‘the latte-sipping greenies in the city’. They are of course reluctant to admit their industry’s criminal waste and abuse of forests since 1939.

Chief executive Vince Hurley says supply in the pipeline forecasts ASH is set to lose $12 million over three years.    “Having done the analysis we have no alternative but to close the mill.”

So once again they’re screaming job losses, town closures, families starving, and no more footy club. The bosses will receive massive tax-payer funded payouts and nothing changes.   150,000 cubic metres and 130,000 hectares may be critical mass for 260 mill jobs,  but if the plantations aren’t ready, then 260 mill jobs are not sustainable.

Who did all the recent hiring on false pretences?  Try 26 jobs!  Tick toc, tick toc.

Forests are not a Magic Pudding and this fact finally caught up with the government and VicForests in January 2017.  Knocking down forests faster than they can regrow has been the management standard for decades by every logging agency and overseen and excused by every government (Liberal and Labor). After such cut-throat management, the industry and workers are now screaming that their throats have been cut because the limit has been reached; forests can no longer provide the sawlogs demanded.

The acronym ‘ASH’ is about the scorched earth attitude and result and nothing about ‘sustainable’.  That ‘hardwoods’ are critical to the Australian Sustainable Hardwoods business model at Heyfield, was always short termism without eco-plantings staying ahead of a 150,000 cubic metre sawmill throughput to sustain 200 workers.   Google Maps shows not much native forest is left.   The writing has been on the wall for decades.

These forestry hard heads are the Easter Islanders of Heyfield.  They even call themselves “an endangered species”.

If ASH wants to refit it’s Heyfield Sawmill to scale down to smaller logs, then use the $40 million out of the profits of your profitable business if it’s as viable as claimed.   But thieving from the Victorian taxpayer else shows up your business to be the unprofitable scam that it is – existing not as a viable business but as a charity for loggers too lazy to get out of a 19th Century rort.

ASH says it plans to transition to plantation timber within 20 years.  That’s what it said 20 years ago.  The game is up.

Heyfield sawmilling is a 19th Century mentality of environmental exploitation.  The diehards can pretend with euphemisms like ‘sustainable’ and ‘good wood’ all they like.  Like a house of sand below high tide, next month is a forestry king tide.

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Why Aren’t the Logs There?

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Along with the historic malpractice of unrestricted clearfell logging, another industry crime is the illegal downgrading and chipping of good quality sawlogs for a quick buck. This has helped drain the landscape of forests that can provide sawlogs. Today we also see VicForests selling whole logs to China, a practice that was illegal not long ago. Logs needed to be ‘processed’ before being exported, so the ends were simply cut off to fit them into the containers – hey presto, processed log!

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What About Australian Paper?

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The AP mill at Maryvale (makers of Reflex paper) has been a favoured political donor with considerable influence. Decades ago it was granted long-term access to the beautiful Mountain Ash forests of the Central Highlands with their contract for Mountain Ash logs secure until 2030. They are VicForests biggest customer alongside ASH. But to cut trees down to put through a shredder to make paper, they have to be deemed ‘waste’.  For this they need a token sawmill as the fig-leaf to hide behind that takes the odd sawlog. Then the rest of the forest can be defined as logging ‘waste’. Without a sawmill, VicForests will find it hard to justify clearfelling solely for woodchips.

But even with all the millions this paper mill receives as ‘industry assistance’, various other handouts and dirt cheap quality logs, it still hasn’t made a profit for four years.  It is up against cheap imported paper, a boycott campaign and increasing demand for certified forest-friendly paper by customers. Its owner Nippon paper in Japan, has been considering the mill’s viability for some time.

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What was VicForests’ Brainwave?

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The result of all this is that the industry has finally hit the brick wall.

VicForests has been buying logs from NSW forests to meet its contracts with the bigger customers like Auswest and ASH to stave off the inevitable.  Smaller mills have closed after being starved of logs needed to feed the bigger mills.

VicForests has also been caught smashing down rainforests and key habitats regularly; it has been desperate to find every extra tonne of wood it can glean – legally or illegally.

But now VicForests finally admits there are far fewer logs out there. It has been caught illegally logging more times than we have changed our socks. The government can’t pretend to not notice or act.  So VicForests is now fessing up and offering contracts of ‘only’ 80,000 m3 next year and 60,000 for each of the two following years.

But ASH states that it would not be commercially viable at that reduced level.

We understand there is also a bit of haggling over VicForests wanting higher prices for the fewer logs.

The industry has over-logged itself into a terminal mess.

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What is the Real Solution?

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Since the early 1970s woodchipping has driven this industry.

If it is to continue it would be at a vastly reduced size with a vastly different product output. As the forests have been scraped to the bone and left struggling to regrow as healthy forests, what is taken now should only be used for very high-value end products using selective logging.

However even this is unlikely to be viable, as markets, products and competitors have changed. Plantations meet about 85% of all our building and furniture needs and this proportion is growing as technology finds ways to create stronger and better appearance timbers from pine.

Our forebears were resilient tough people and moved with the times – maybe this should be something the logging industry aspires to as well. The future is in nature tourism, outdoor recreation, the foodie trails, agriculture, enviro land management and who knows what else.

As Professor David Lindenmayer explained in a recent article, crunch time has come. The only solution is a very rapid transition to plantation timber processing. The plantations are there, ready and waiting.   We can’t stall this shift any longer while certain players position themselves for a massive payout in the next year or two.

In the Central Highlands, water and tourism (sustainable products our forests provide) are worth $260M value-added contribution to the economy.  The equivalent value of logging is just $9M at best.

These are the kinds of economic data government needs to look at to make sensible decisions.  It must maximise our forests’ assets and benefits, to get the best value for the people of Victoria who own these forests and create long-term, secure and conflict-free employment.

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Where does the state Taskforce fit in?

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The Victorian Forest Taskforce was set up in late 2015 to sort out how forests should be managed for timber and conservation into the future. It comprises reps from industry and the enviro movement, but no government reps are in the room.

And if you think Dan Andrews is extending the umpteenth deadline again and may even buy the mill, keep dreaming. He’d hanging you lot out to dry.  You are about to be the largest hardwood ex-processor in Australia.  The Andrews government was aware of this looming cliff.

With the above realities and when the VEAC reports are handed to government, we look forward to seeing Daniel Andrews assist – not the bosses and mill owners – but towns and workers to transition into new growth areas; outdoor work to put in walking trails, picnic areas, maintain park facilities, revegetation, catchment management, feral animal control – there is endless work to be done repairing and maintaining the environment. If $50M a year can be found to pay VicForests to knock down forests with immense natural values, surely it can find $50M a year to assist the dawning of a new era for Gippsland’s forests.

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Further Reading: 

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[1]   VicForests – ensuring there are none ^http://www.vicforests.net/

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[2]  Environment East Gippsland, ^http://www.eastgippsland.net.au/

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[3]  Goongerah Environment Centre,  ^http://www.geco.org.au/

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[4]   ‘‘Camp Kuark’ launches this weekend to save a forest‘, 5th March 2015, in Wild magazine, ^http://wild.com.au/news/camp-kuark-saving-gippsland-forest/

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[5]   ‘The Kuark Forest‘, ^https://themountainjournal.wordpress.com/environment/logging/the-kuark-forest/

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[6]   Forest Network – East Gippsland, ^http://www.forestnetwork.net/Docs/eg.htm

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Katie Ball, Saving Goolengook Old Growth by Bipod Blockade, 22nd August 1997

 

R.I.P – Katie Ball (1965-2004)

<<Katie was a staunch social and environmental activist who gave her all in any campaign she was involved in. Who can forget Katies wheel chair in bipod and tripod blockades?

A disability rights campaigner Kathleen (Katie) Ball died in Melbourne on June 25, 2004 from pneumonia at the age of 39. Katie was a qualified secondary teacher, a community development worker and a grassroots activist, who never shied away from taking direct action, whether it be in highlighting the social and sexual inequalities in the treatment of disabled people or protesting the logging of East Gippsland forests.

A disability rights campaigner from her late teens, Katie had Kugelberg Welander Syndrome (juvenile spinal muscular atrophy) and used an electric wheelchair for mobility.

Involved in the phone sex industry, she also taught the “politics of disablement” at the Kangan-Batman TAFE.  Katie was featured in the award-winning 1994 documentary film Untold Desires and her photos have been published in Picture magazine. She was featured on the ABC Radio National program, Earshot (“In the hoist with Katie Ball”), in 2000.

Kate was a founding member of the DLF, which continues to campaign for rights for people with disabilities, and for funding to be used for services for greater access for people with disabilities.  She spoke at many forums and wrote a library-based dissertation on the sociological analysis of sexuality and the disability rights movement.

In 1998 at the ska TV Activist Awards, Katie accepted the Most Daring Action award on behalf of the Disability Liberation Front for the DSF’s gate-crashing in September 1997 of the launch of the Disability Services Directory for the City of Brimbank by youth and community minister Denis Napthine.

In a very candid essay titled “Who’d Fuck an Ableist”, published in the US Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 2002, Volume 22, No. 4). Katie explained her fascination with human sexuality and the extent of discrimination against the sexual expression of disabled people.

Katie left behind her loving partner Peter Vanderfeen and their two young children. She continues to be remembered, missed and celebrated by many people in the social change movements whom she worked with and inspired.>>

Source:  Green Left Weekly, July 7, 2004.

Article by Noel Plumb Convenor of Forest Conservation Group ‘ChipBusters’

Logging desecration along the Snowy Mountains Highway at Glenbog State Forest

[Source: Aerial photo by Richard Green http://www.serca.org.au/pics/desecration.jpg  – see postscript]

 

The Federal Coalition Government has declared the forests open for business and tried to strip World Heritage listing from Tasmanian forests to permit yet more clearfell logging and woodchipping.

It has also passed new laws adding native forest wood to the clean energy sources under the Renewable Energy Target, effectively giving the logging industry a public subsidy to burn forests for electricity.

The move potentially creates a massive new ‘woodchip’ industry as forests are felled to fuel domestic power stations and huge amounts of whole logs or pellets are shipped to North Asia for power plants and domestic heating. These changes have been strongly supported by State governments and State Forestry agencies are now scrambling to identify massive new wood resources for long term contracts to supply biomass fuel from the forests.

In NSW there are nearly two million hectares of native forests subject to intensive industrial logging and woodchip operations. The South Coast, the North Coast as well as Pilliga and other western State Forests will be likely targets for the dense hardwood eucalypt species presently not suitable for pulp making and possibly also the White Cypress Pine.

These State Forests are supposedly managed “sustainably” for both timber resource and the conservation of nature, especially the wildlife. As such they form an essential part of the biodiversity reserve system.

It is a nonsense on both counts – the State’s Forestry Corporation has overestimated the resource available and cannot meet various contract commitments. Worse, the intensive logging and clearfelling can in no way sustain the required habitat for most forest wildlife.

On the South Coast from Nowra to Eden there are less than 100 surviving Koalas after 40 years of intensive logging and woodchipping and this is just the tip of a massive biodiversity crash in our forests.

In NSW, complimentary legislation to allow forests to be burnt for electricity was passed last year and the Liberal Government is proceeding to change the logging rules all along the east coast to permit access to areas previously off limits such as rainforest and old growth remnants, streamside buffers, endangered species exclusion areas and very steep land, including cable logging for slopes over 30 degrees.

Twenty year forestry agreements (Regional Forestry Agreements) around the country are set to be renewed over the next few years and negotiations between the Federal and state Governments for renewal of the five NSW agreements have already begun. These agreements suspend almost all environmental protection laws for forests with the result that the forests have been mercilessly over logged at unsustainable supply levels and with massive damage to biodiversity. On the South Coast from Nowra to Eden there are less than 100 surviving Koalas after 40 years of intensive logging and woodchipping.

Both Federal and State Labor profess to oppose the burning of forests for electricity but Federal Labor refused to block the passage of the new RET laws allowing forests to be burnt for electricity. The NSW labor Party opposes cable logging. However, both Federal and State Labor are still in support of continuing intensive logging and woodchipping of native forests. WE have to change the position of one of the two big parties and Labor at this stage seems the best prospect.

If you would like to support the Log Off campaign to put an end to native forest logging once and for all, please contact ChipBusters at chipbusters@iinet.net.au or phone 0425 23 83 03.

 

Footnote 

Sydney conservationist Richard Green, his wife Carolyn and passenger John Davis were found in the helicopter’s wreckage in mountainous terrain, south of Cessnock, in the Watagans National Park on Monday.   The aircraft, which took off from Breeza in northern NSW on Saturday, had been reported missing on Monday after it failed to arrive at its destination, Mona Vale.

Vica Bayley, Tasmanian campaign manager for the Wilderness Society in disputed World Heritage listed forest in the Styx Valley in southern Tasmania.  Photo © Peter Mathew.  [Source: ‘Senate puts weight behind push to retain Tasmania forests’ World Heritage status, 20140515, by Andrew Darby, Sydney Morning Herald, ^http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/senate-puts-weight-behind-push-to-retain-tasmania-forests-world-heritage-status-20140515-zrdqi.html]

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“It took the World Heritage Committee less than 8 minutes to unanimously reject this shameful Australian Government proposal to delist 74,000 hectares from the Tasmanian World Heritage Area.  It is a stunning victory for World Heritage!

Thank you to those who understood the value and the importance of protecting our wild places.”

~ Keith Muir, Colong Foundation for Wilderness

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Further Reading:

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^Tasmania needs a Wilderness Act

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