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

 

Bushfire Scenario Was Not Rocket Science

 

On Sunday 18th March 2018, the weather in Bega and nearby coastal Tathra was forecast to be a very hot 38 degrees Celsius, low humidity and high westerly gusting winds.  So a Total Fire Ban was appropriately declared the afternoon prior by New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.  The Fire Danger Rating was set locally to just “High”.

Around midday a fire started on or near the rural property at 580 Reedy Swamp Road, situated about 8km SE of Bega on the western edge of the Tanja State Forest, with the outskirts of Tathra situated on the eastern edge just 4km downwind. 

When will the ignition source be published so devastated Tathrans learn the truth?

It was a simple fire in bushfire terms.  It started adjacent and upwind of state forest bushland in hot windy conditions and kept going in the same direction as the wind blew it until the wind dropped.  It was wholly predicable, not rocket science.  So the circumstances are indeed suspicious, but we expect a cronyistic cover up.

The nearest bushfire brigade is the Tarraganda Fire Shed on Tarraganda Lane about 6km NW of the ignition site, but government expects local volunteers to respond on standby, under-resourced to defend their community last minute with no financial compensation. 

Four kilometres east is the outskirts of Tathra along Thompson Drive across the Bega River.  This is locally referred to as the Tathra River Estate – a Bega Council approved satellite suburb invading remnant native habitat.

 

The Chronically Avoided Questions

 

1. There was no lightning, so what was the ignition source on this day of declared Total Fire Ban?
2. How long did it take the RFS to discover the fire after its estimated ignition time?
   
3. How did the RFS learn about the ignition? Proactive real-time geo-stationary low-orbit satellite with infrared camera or just a reactive public call to ‘000’?
   
4. How long did it take the RFS to arrive on site to suppress the fire?  We’re talking mum and dad volunteers here, apparently arriving on the fire ground at 12:43pm to do squat.
   
5. What is the point of having fire trails throughout the Tanja State Forest if when there is a bushfire emergency, they are too dangerous to use?
6. When did the RFS realise that the gusty winds would spot embers over the Bega River and impact Tathra?  When the embers spotted over the river?
7. What bushfire preparations and asset protection zones had been in place for Tathra, if any?
8. Given that Tathra was obviously bushfire prone, which homes were Bushfire Attack Level assessed and compliant?
9. Where was the RFS Erickson S-64 Air-Crane purpose designed helicopter Elvis with its 9,500 litre water dumping capacity?
   
10. Where was the RFS C-130 Thor with its 44,000 litre water dumping capacity?  It cruises at 540kph, so from its base at Richmond it could have been deployed and effective over the active fire edge imminently set to impact  Tathra within an hour – 360km as the crow flies! – if they were military standard professional.

The under-resourced pre-1939 volunteer model for the bushfire fighting is a repeated failure

 

Another Promised Wildlife Sanctuary Goes Up In Smoke

 

So the fire was left to burn into the Tanja State Forest because, according to the RFS cultural scarce resource mindset, it was not immediately threatening property.  She’ll be right.  A bit of unauthorised hazard reduction wouldn’t go astray.  What habitat?

The fire was only incinerating the flora reserve which provides habitat for one of the last Koalas communities along the Sapphire Coast.  The RFS dubbed the fire the Reedy Swamp Fire or the Tarraganda Fire.  Residents were only advised to “Watch and Act”, whatever that means.

Then mid-afternoon the wind picked up as per the usual diurnal wind variation profile.  So with 38 degrees Celsius and 30 kph plus nor-westerly winds, the fire raced out of control through dense bushland toward the western outskirts of Tathra on the coast.  At no time did the fire front change direction.  It was heading towards Tathra from the outset.

Incident logs from Sunday show Fire and Rescue NSW, a state government agency, offered additional emergency brigades and assistance at 12:34pm in response to a flood of Triple Zero calls from the area.  Those offers were declined before the agency attempted to offer more crews again at 12.58pm – again being rejected.

RFS Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said while the fire was burning in remote mountainous terrain, “it would have been dangerous to have [Fire NSW] there”.

The purpose of fire trails?  Habitat reduction.

 

Rural Firefighting Dysfunction

 

She’ll be right.   It was only at 3.40pm that authorities from the Rural Fire Service did request extra help, issuing a priority request for all available assistance, as the fire front rapidly approached Tathra.

Shortly after 2.30pm the bushfire intensified as winds picked up. By 4pm the fire had hit Tathra and NSW Rural Fire Service volunteers warned residents it was too late to leave. 

But it wasn’t the 7km bushfire front misreported by the media.  The early spread of the bushfire started at around 500m wide and then spread to about a 1500m wide front, spotting ahead as it was fanned by the gusty WNW winds.  The bushfire front tracked from the ignition near Reedy Swamp downwind 7 km toward Tathra Head at the coast.  The only thing seriously stopping the bushfire was the weather or the sea. 

RFS deputy fire commissioner Rob Rogers said the bushfire quickly got out of control after it started yesterday afternoon.  “It jumped very quickly to a place called Thompson Drive and that was where the first home was impacted and it just really quickly ran then into the main part of the town,” he said.

By 4:38 pm the RFS was reporting: “EMERGENCY WARNING – Reedy Swamp fire (Bega LGA) – Fire impacting on #Tathra. Seek shelter. It is too late to leave.”

What is the point of having a Catastrophic rating if it isn’t used?

Deputy Commissioner Rogers said dealing with nature was not always “an exact science”.  “There has been dozens of hazard-reduction activities in that area,” he said. “There was one that was only two or three years’ old and the fire went straight through that burn as well.

This time 65 homes, 35 cabins and caravans destroyed, and dozens more damaged.  Only last January the Tathra Launderette caught fire and destroyed the premises as well as the adjoining Bliss Stylists hairdresser and Little Bottler Tathra Cellars.

But criticism is taboo because the government sends in volunteers, who are automatically beyond reproach.  The politicians are very quick to remind us at every bushfire aftermath.

 

Different Fire, Same Incompetence

 

The RFS in hindsight are reporting it as “catastrophic” and “a perfect storm”.  It’s frankly a bit late Shane Fitzsimmons and are they now furiously shredding their communication records? 

“It will never be the same again,” said Renata Boulter, a Tathra resident of 26 years.

Trust government’s used and abused volunteer force with your livelihood?

The insurance damage bill will be in the hundreds of millions, again, and that ignores the human, livestock and wildlife cost ignored by a sound bite media.  Ina few weeks the ghoulish media filming amongst the ruins in their shiny hi-vis wear will have packed up and moved on.

It’s another Dunalley (Forcett bushfire) (2013), another Yarloop (2016), another Mundaring (2018), another Marysville (2009), Canberra (2003), Cockatoo (1983), Anglesea (1983), Hobart (1967), Leura (1957).  On each occasion, the bushfire had been not threatening houses and so wrongly left to burn in some cases for days, then the wind picked up in the afternoon as it usually does and it was all too late. 

And the lawyers will no doubt be getting in for their pound of flesh, just like Maurice Blackburn profited $100 million in fees out of the victims of Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.  Tathra victims would be well advised to read up on Garry Angus, Kinglake victim, who suffered $4.2 million in economic losses.  But after six years trustful waiting, Maurice Blackburn offered him a compensation cheque for $120,000.  He sent it back to them in disgust.  The lawyers also exposed the victims compensation to a $20 million tax liability – so the government to a cut from the victims compensation as well. 

“The whole thing was flawed right from day one.  The $494m (for Kilmore East-Kinglake victims) that they settled­ on was never going to be enough to help people.  It needed to be three times that amount.”

(Read Postscript below).

 

Disaster Waiting to Happen..again

 

The western outskirts of Tathra, known as Tathra River Estate, bore the brunt of the bushfire.  It was subdivided and developed and built out from 2013.   The NSW Government Department of Planning and Infrastructure and the Bega Council happily approved the ‘Planning Report: State Environmental Planning Policy No. 71 (Coastal Protection) Master Plan: Tathra River Estate, dated June 2012. 

Concerns over the current inadequacies of bushfire access was raised during submissions, as the well as the cumulative impact of additional dwellings and the need for emergency access in the event of a bushfire.  

Many of the residential houses decimated by the fire were built between the 1960s and 1980s, in cheap and nasty asbestos.  No bushfire tolerance.  She’ll be right.

The provision of Asset Protection Zones, connection to the fire trail network and emergency access around the edge of the development apparently addressed many of the concerns.  It was then up to Bega Council “to consider other matters in a bushfire emergency strategy.”  What did Bega Council do or not do?  We suspect cronyistic developer corruption.

The NSW RFS raised no objection to the Master Plan.  Yesterday, Tathra River Estate (Thompson’s Drive or Estate) as well as similarly recently approved housing subdivisions extending into the native bushland such as Wildlife Drive and Sanctuary Place, bore the bushfire frontal attack.  

It’s called ‘Wildlife Drive’ for a reason. 

The residential development encroaches upon Tanja State Forest – established in 2017 to protect wildlife

 

There is shared culpability here, and how did they get home and contents insurance?

Tathra River Estate/Thompson’s Estate (bottom right of image) – juxtaposed next to Tanja State Forest

(This is an old image – more development has been allowed since)

It costs $20,000 a day to keep the Elvis air crane on stand-by and an additional $11,000 a day to operate.  This extrapolates to $11 million a year to have Elvis ready and able to seriously suppress bushfires.   Sounds like a lot of money but the economic loss and emotional cost besetting Tathra residents?  

In 2015, the NSW Rural Fire Service unveiled its latest fire fighting weapons, including a monstrous-sized former RAAF C-130 Hercules converhuman ted water-bombing tanker capable of dropping up to 44,000 litres of water on any bushfire any time.   It costs a bomb, but what cost Australian livelihoods?

The official economic cost of the Dunalley (Forcett) bushfire was $100 million, the Yarloop bushfire $45 million, Marysville $300 million and Canberra $300 million.

Melbourne University’s follow up study into the human aftermath of Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday bushfires reported a quarter of survivors still experiencing serious mental health problems six years later, including affected children.  (Read report below under Further Reading’)

“The reality of the disaster and its aftermath formed the ongoing backdrop of children’s daily lives. Children from a very young age through to older youth experienced anxieties and upheavals at home, in school, in sport, in friendship groups and in the community.

“She had so much trouble going back to school.  She couldn’t think, concentrate at all.  Everything seemed irrelevant that she was doing and they tried so hard.  They were very helpful but she had a lot of trouble with just fitting in with the kids that she knew before there.  They weren’t understanding her and she just felt that all their problems were very trivial.”

(Parent)

Photo by Ngaire Walhout

 

Lessons To Be Blocked by Cronyism..again

 

Of course there will be another government enquiry, so the government is seen to given a damn.   There are the same number of government enquiries as there have been bushfire tragedies since the Black Friday back in 1939.  It concluded – “Mistakes We’re Made”, and then the report gets filed and bushfire fighting returns to business as usual and set to repeat history.

The 1939 Black Friday fires in Victoria burned almost two million hectares, claimed 71 lives and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, including entire townships. In adjusted terms, these fires cost some $750 million.

On 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in Victoria and South Australia claimed 75 lives, more than 2,000 homes and over 400,000 hectares of country. Total property losses were estimated to be over $400 million.   Between 1967 and 1999, bushfires in Australia resulted in 223 deaths and 4,185 injuries, and a total economic cost of more than $2.5 billion.   Victoria’s Black Saturday in 2009 cost $4.4 billion and 173 lives.

For Tathra yesterday, it could and should have been responsible, militarily heroic, and quite beautiful – professional fire suppression like Sydney gets, where emergency professionals have proper resources at their disposal, are properly remunerated, and so residents entrust the firies to save their homes and family.

Where was it parked this time?

 

In 2017 the NSW Government delivered a $4.5 BILLION surplus, so they are not exactly struggling. 

Tathra is a microcosm of Victoria’s bush-enclosed Mornington Peninsula coastal residence west of Rosebud; timber and fibro shacks enveloped in a tinder dry tea-tree forest – in a bushfire Forest Fire Danger Index scary scenario – another catastrophic crematorium waiting to happen.

What does the land manager National Parks Service say about Tanja State Forest?   It is part of the Murrah Flora Reserves which encompasses 4 areas covering nearly 12,000 hectares and include Murrah, Mumbulla, Bermagui and Tanja flora reserves along the New South Wales Sapphire Coast.   The Murrah Flora Reserves were created in March 2016 and are significant to the local Aboriginal Yuin People who own neighbouring Biamanga National Park. They also provide an important conservation role, as habitat for the last significant koala population on the NSW South Coast and other threatened species, such as the long-nosed potoroo, yellow-bellied glider and the powerful owl.

Of course it was “overgrown”. It’s called wildlife habitat.  And firies, it’s scarce and valuable and worth defending.  It is not expendable.  yet another 1200 hectares of native habitat set aside for supposed sanctuary has been incinerated.  It was a defacto RFS hazard reduction again gone wrong.

NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service:

“The national and state forests within the Sapphire Coast are home to some of the most iconic views and breathtaking landscapes in Australia.   The South Coast’s outstanding national park system offers visitors a wide choice of opportunities to discover spectacular landscapes, from dense forests to quiet, solitary beaches; from cool, silent rainforests to colourful, alpine wilderness wildflowers. The national parks a diversity of unspoiled habitats and ecosystems which offer refuge to unique, and often ancient, plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth.”

Hypocrites!

Koala in the Murrah Flora Reserve, probably incinerated. Photo by David Gallan. 

Source:  Far South Coast Conservation Management Network

^http://www.fsccmn.com/?p=2151

 

Footnotes

 

‘Angry survivor returns Black Saturday payout to ‘only winner’, Maurice Blackburn‘, 20170501, by Reporter Pia Akerman published in The Australian Newspaper, ^https://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/bushfires/angry-survivor-returns-black-saturday-payout-to-only-winner-maurice-blackburn/news-story/ea9fe705b2616852235851e62424adea.

“I’ve lost the value of my business, I’ve lost everything.”

Garry Angus and Anne Salmon on a block they own outside Kinglake.   Photo by Stuart McEvoy

‘As cheques from the record-breaking Black Saturday class ­actions finally began flowing to bushfire survivors in December, many of the victims welcomed the payments as the end of another chapter in their emotional and financi­al recovery.

Not Garry Angus. He, with an unquantified number of the thousands of claimants who joined the lawsuits, remained angry about Maurice Blackburn’s handling of the cases.    The accountant from Pheasant Creek, just outside Kinglake, decided to put his money where his mouth is and sent back his cheque for $120,000.

Now he is launching a website for fellow survivors to register their complaints about Maurice Blackburn’s administration of the settlement scheme.   He hopes support from other aggrieved claimants will bolster his bid for a judicial review of the $494 million Kilmore East-Kinglake settlement and the $300m settlement for the Murrindindi-Marysville fire, announced in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

“The only winners out of this have been Maurice Blackburn,” Mr Angus said. “The whole thing was flawed right from day one.  The $494m (for Kilmore East-Kinglake victims) that they settled­ on was never going to be enough to help people.  It needed to be three times that amount.”

Like a number of other bushfire survivors who have spoken publicly, Mr Angus is angry at the fees Maurice Blackburn has stripped from the settlements — more than $100m — and the Australian Taxation Office’s claim that the firm has acted unusually to expose the funds to a tax ­liability of about $20m.   He is also furious at how his case was personally handled, claiming that the firm was lax in communicating with him, and only junior staff dealt with him (even misspelling his name on his formal assessment notice).

Before the February 2009 bushfires, Mr Angus owned and managed an accounting firm that employed eight people. He owned four investment properties around the Kinglake area, losing­ two completely to the blaze. 

He brought a 2000-page tome of his financial records with him to his meeting with assessor Neil Rattray, and says the barrister was clearly overwhelmed and ­admitted he might not be the best person to handle this complex case.

Mr Angus’s claim for $4.2m in losses — largely based on future earnings from his firm, which he closed while struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder in the fires’ aftermath — was dismissed by Mr Rattray.   The barrister did not accept he would suffer from any future loss of earnings or earning capacity, arguing that his business had been struggling and there was “no real suggestion” the company would be successful in the future.

In a submission to Supreme Court judge Jack Forrest, who oversees the Kilmore East settlement scheme’s administration, Mr Angus has accused Maurice Blackburn of failing in its duty of care, and asked for an independent review.

Maurice Blackburn has stood by the assessment, saying Mr Angus missed his chance to formally request a review (for which the firm charges $3800 if the finding is against the claimant).

“Given Mr Angus never objected­ or asked for a review during­ the assessment process, it’s an odd protest to now hand back a substantial cheque because of a desire to obtain more money,” a spokesman said.

Mr Rattray told The Australian he could not comment on Mr Angus’s claims, but in the reasons for his assessment, he noted that Mr Angus had treatment for ­depression and panic attacks ­before the bushfires. Since the fires, he has been suicidal­ at times, needing extensive­ medical ­treatment and occasional ­hospitalisation.

“It has psychologically scarred me for the rest of my life,” Mr Angus said. “I’ve lost the value of my business, I’ve lost everything.’’

 

Further Reading:

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[1]   ‘Bushfire emergency, houses destroyed in Bega, Tathra area‘ 20180319, by Ben Smyth, in The Land, ^http://www.theland.com.au/story/5290860/bushfire-emergency-houses-destroyed-in-bega-tathra-area/

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[2]   Murrah Flora Reserves Draft Working Plan 2017, by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Forestry Corporation (NSW Government), ^http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications-search/murrah-flora-reserves-draft-working-plan

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[3]  Submission on Murrah Flora Reserves Draft Working Plan, 20180131, by South East Conservation Alliance Inc. ^www.serca.org.au/submissions/2018/thompson1.pdf

 

[4]   Tathra River Estate DOP Assessment Report 2012 >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Tathra-River-Estate-DOP-Assessment-Report-2012.pdf

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[5]   ‘Tasmania’s Forcett Fire 2013 – 16 questions‘, 20130203, by The Habitat Advocate, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/?p=21167

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[6]   ‘Culpable Negligence of Tasmanian Burn Offs‘, 20130105, by The Habitat Advocate, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/?p=20848

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[7]   2013 Tasmanian Bushfires Inquiry Full Report, Vol. 1, >www.dpac.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf…/1.Tasmanian_Bushfires_Inquiry_Report.pdf

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[8]   Beyond Bushfires: Community Resilience and Recovery, Final Report 2016, by the University of Melbourne, ^http://beyondbushfires.org.au, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Beyond-Bushfires-Final-Report-2016.pdf

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[9]   Threats from Bushfire, article series by The Habitat Advocate, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/?page_id=6954

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Lynda loved Nature

Lynda Jacqueline lived by herself

In a small flat with a small garden bed

No electricity

Lynda was never poor wearing her straw trilby

Lynda’s tradition was young, young gorgeous young men

Who would steal a kiss

Lynda took life’s chances

Lynda would smile a sad smile

Lynda planted a sampling in her garden bed

Her peace with Nature

But Housing Commission killed it

Lynda was saddened

Lynda tried for wonderful tomorrows

This winter Lynda took a cold bath and never woke up.

 

 

This is a dedication to Lynda Jacqueline of Katoomba who passed away Friday 18th August 2017, aged 50.

Elphinstone Plateau from the north

© c.1991 Wyn Jones (biologist, NPWS)

Elphinstone Plateau is magnificently wild, forming an outstanding undeveloped peninsula-plateau jutting out into the Megalong.  It has long been a favourite wilderness destination for bushwalkers and rock climbers alike.

This predominantly natural and undisturbed plateau is mistakenly also referred to as ‘radiata plateau‘ due to a small invasive private pine plantation from the 1970s covering less that 5% of the plateau along an access track .  The plantation failed and the owner went broke.

Yet little known Elphinstone Plateau remains special home to rare and threatened regionally native species, culturally significant to local Aboriginal peoples and a magnet for the local outdoor community.

Sitting on the southern escarpment, Elphinstone Plateau, just west of Katoomba, towers high above rolling valleys has outstanding topography.  It remains the last remaining undeveloped peninsula-plateau in the upper Blue Mountains.   The Plateau has significant biodiversity, including vegetation communities such Blue Mountain Swamps, Eucalyptus Oreades Open Forest and Blue Mountains Heath.   It is also home to many endangered species including the Flame Robin, Glossy Black Cockatoo, Gang-Gang Cockatoo and the Varied Sittella as well as the Tiger Quoll, frequently sighted by locals.  Threatened plants include one of only ten places on the planet where the Dwarf (Blue) Mountain Pine (Pherosphaera fitzgeraldii) is endemic on the planet to the immediate upper Central Blue Mountains with its distribution fragmented to a few south-facing hanging swamp cliff faces on the Blue Mountains western escarpment at Elphinstone above Nellies Glen and nearby around Wentworth Falls above the Jamison Valley.

The IUCN reports that this taxon is endangered. It faces a very high risk of extinction in the wild in the near future due to a small population size and severe population fragmentation, with no sub-population estimated to contain more than 250 mature individuals.

The Dwarf Mountain Pine endemic on the planet to wet rocks within the spray of waterfalls of Elphinstone and Wentworth Falls

(Harden 1990, Hill 1998)

Steven, one of our local conservationists says that this wild plateau has significant biodiversity – Blue Mountain Swamps, rare Eucalyptus oreades Open Forest and many endangered species including the Flame Robin, Glossy Black Cockatoo, Gang-Gang Cockatoo, and the almost unknown Tiger Quoll.  

 

One of our local conservationists at Megalong Head on Elphinstone Plateau

Steven says that the plateau and its immediate surrounds provide are the only locality on the planet to naturally support the critically endangered Dwarf Mountain Pine and the little-known yellow flowering shrub Elphinstone Boronia (Leionema lachnaeoides).  Both are threatened with extinction and their survival depends on the area remaining undisturbed.

 
Threatened species Elphinstone Boronia  (Leionema lachnaeoides)

Endemic to Elphinstone Plateau (that means it grows natively nowhere else on the planet)

© Waratah Software
 

 

Survival depends on the area remaining undisturbed. 

Steven says local resident Glenn Humphreys has been involved with trying to protect and save Mount Elphinstone from housing development on and off for more than 25 years, successfully halting all sorts of elaborate development proposals.  

But now this wild and unique haven is at risk.   An integrated part of the Blue Mountains western escarpment has come under threat of land use development again – Mount Elphinstone (also mistakenly called Radiata Plateau) situated a few kilometres west of Katoomba.   Apart from a small area of Crown Land the majority of the Plateau is privately owned by a group that have repeatedly lodged development applications since the 1990s.  

 

Elphinstone Namesake

 

Mount Elphinstone, being the highest rise on the plateau is believed named after Major General Sir Howard Craufurd Elphinstone, VC, KCB, CMG (1829 – 1890) who was a British Army officer and a recipient of the Victoria Cross.

Born in Livonia (now Estonia), Elphinstone joined the British Corps of Royal Engineers as a gentleman cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in December 1847.  With the outbreak of the Crimean War, Elphinstone was posted to the Crimea.  

On 18 June 1855, he was 25 years old, and a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, during the Siege of Sebastopol when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.VC.

His citation read:

“For fearless conduct, in having, on the night after the unsuccessful attack on the Redan, volunteered to command a party of volunteers, who proceeded to search for and bring back the scaling ladders left behind after the repulse; and while successfully performing this task, of rescuing trophies from the Russians, Captain Elphinstone conducted a persevering search, close to the enemy, for wounded men, twenty of whom he rescued and brought back to the Trenches.”

With the end of the war he was decorated by both Napoleon III, Emperor of France being appointed as a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

 

Private Development Threats to the Plateau

 

A proposed private development threatens its future.  Currently, two of three development applications recently lodged have been refused, leaving one approved for two dwellings.  They pose an inappropriate development wedge to future residential exploitation of this still wild plateau.

Now is the time to prevent any building and move the Plateau in public ownership for protection.   This could be the public’s last chance to secure the future of this stunning area and have Elphinstone Plateau become part of the National Park estate.

Blue Mountains residents,  the local outdoor community, and the Blue Mountains Conservation Society are all firmly committed to seeking protection for the Plateau.  We were delighted with all the community support our campaign received at Winter Magic – with lots of cheers from the crowd during the parade and most importantly all the letters sent off to the Minister for the Environment.

We are seeking to have Elphinstone Plateau purchased by the New South Wales or Australian Commonwealth governments and be incorporated into the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

But the battle is not yet won.  The local Blue Mountains Conservation Society is championing an environmental campaign to oppose the land use development and to have the plateau incorporated into the adjacent Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

The Society is inviting locals and those passionate about protecting this special place, to join in a rally on Sunday 30th July at 1.30pm at Cahill’s Lookout, Cliff Drive, Katoomba.

 

Further Reading:

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[1]  Leave Radiata Plateau Wild Campaign,  ^http://www.bluemountains.org.au/leaveradiataplateauwild/

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[2] Elphinstone (Radiata) Plateau – Bushwalk: Bottleneck Pass and The Devils Hole (29 June 2016) by Dave Noble (NPWS), ^http://www.david-noble.net/blog/?p=11300

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[3]  Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pherosphaera fitzgeraldi), The Gymnosperm Database, ^http://www.conifers.org/po/Pherosphaera_fitzgeraldi.php

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[4]  Major General Sir Howard Craufurd Elphinstone, ^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Craufurd_Elphinstone

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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:

.

“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.

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ATLAS of Katoomba 

[ © Photo by Editor 20140907, Katoomba, Blue Mountains World Heritage Area]

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At an informal community meeting at ATLAS (a 200+ year old endemic Blue Mountains Ash) today, it has been made public that Blue Mountains Council’s tree officer had been inappropriately coerced by a councillor in 2010 to have this magnificent iconic tree conveniently killed.  According to the officer it is because of a (very) close association with a property developer of the adjoining site.

Fortunately the tree officer, out of respect for this heritage tree and out of respect for the rule of law and for due process, personally stood up to the councillor’s intimidation and so appropriately arranged for an independent arborist to evaluate the viable health of this tree.

That independent arborist reported that the tree was healthy and ought to be retained, and so it has.

All credit to Council’s Public Tree Officer for resolutely following due process. The developer has a track record of ignoring Blue Mountains Councils development consent conditions relating to this tree.  DA consent conditions 61, 62, 63, and 68 have all been ignored or breached.

Despite Council’s requirement for Tree Protection Measures and a Tree Protection Plan, neither were supplied, yet the industrial development was allowed to proceed.

The developer has illegally lopped a healthy branch from the tree.

Main branch illegally lopped by the developer’s contractor without Council permission

[ © Photo by Angophora Consulting Arborist, 201410-03, Katoomba, Blue Mountains World Heritage Area]

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The developer furnished no Tree Protection Measures, Tree Protection Plan or Tree Protection Zone. In the mind of the developer, the tree is situated on Council land after all.  He knew as such and was likely told that his environmental bond was a farce.

He is correct.  So this is why a string of Council bureaucrats have gone running for cover. .

Elphinstone Plateau

(from Mount Mark cliff edge looking SW)

Blue Mountains World Heritage Area

[Photo Source: © Wyn Jones, circa 1991]

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There exists a vast plateau unspoilt from the valley floor and it lies just west of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains.

It is Elphinstone Plateau, known mainly to locals and to informed bushwalkers.  It’s deep gorges provide critical habitat to one of the world’s most endangered plants, Microstrobos fitzgeraldii, and to its integral waterfall spray dependent ecological community.

Elphinstone Plateau lies interconnected with the Cox’s Watershed traversing the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, connected to National Parks owned land, to Narrow Neck and to the Jamison Valley.  The photo above shows how country is interconnected in the Blue Mountains and that Elphinstone Plateau remains one of the last surviving wild places of the Central Blue Mountains area.  We value it.

Elphinstone Plateau is an integral continuum of the Blue Mountains Great Southern Escarpment.  Elphinstone Plateau’s uniqueness and its dependent habitat and wild values deem that it should be integrated into the Blue Mountains National Park and the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

Elphinstone Plateau’s history contains stories, many sad and some a curse, and more recently of local community battles fought for years late into the night driven by a committed local few.

Exploring Elphinstone Plateau

[Photo © The Habitat Advocate, no reproduction permitted]

 

The website is about to embark on a protracted conservation campaign to “Save Elphinstone Plateau” from Developer Wars – Book 3.  The Habitat Advocate has its origins within walking distance of Elphinstone Plateau.  We have explored it, but we know little of its ecology, its history, its Aboriginal heritage, its recurring struggles against selfish developer exploitation.  So we are about to research all this and share our research journey on this website in the months to follow.

In doing so, we shall be shining a light on the stories of battles that have come before, back to the 1980s.  This promises to stir skeletons from closets and to reveal facts that some would prefer were forgotten.  For those interested in documentaries and reading history, our series of articles pursuing this conservation campaign will be an epic ride connecting the present to the past.

So after months of online hibernation, The Habitat Advocate is back in conservation action, awoken by a conservation warrior, asking us for support.

Elphinstone Plateau is where this website and logo were conceived.