Ancient Balga, grass tree, xanthorroea in Dwellingup forest, South West Western Australia. Photo by Jenreflect, 20121104.
If we can respectfully wise up and change from calling ‘Ayres Rock’ after an English mining magnate turned politician to ‘Ayers Rock/Uluru’ in 1993, then to ‘Uluru/Ayers Rock’ in 2002, then we can just drop Henry Ayres from the Rock’s association altogether. Henry Ayres was a 19th Century copper mining robber baron who devastated the landscape of Burra in South Australia. A statue in Adelaide near parliament may be appropriate.
Likewise, if we can respectfully wisen up and change from calling this grass tree a ‘black boy’ to calling it a ‘xanthorroea’ then we can call it its traditional name ‘balga’.
“We never catch marron when the creek didn’t run, or the river didn’t run. Always catch marron when the water runs. That’s our culture. You gotta give ’em a chance to breed.
And if you got anything with eggs on ’em, you threw ’em back….We never had nets, yeah, we coulda made nets but we didn’t believe that, you know, you rape the country. So you gotta leave some for the breeding.”
– Partick Hume, 2008, oral history , Kaartdijin Noongar, South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, Western Australia.
‘Aboriginal people, not environmentalists, are our best bet for protecting the planet’
<<… Using DNA to track the movement of people in the past, scientists suggest our species evolved some 150,000 years ago on the plains of Africa. That was our habitat, but unlike most other animals, we were creative and used our brains to find ways to exploit our surroundings. We were far less impressive in numbers, size, speed, strength or sensory abilities than many others sharing our territory, but it was our brains that compensated.
Over time, our numbers increased and we moved in search of more and new resources (and probably to check out the Neanderthals with whom we crossbred before they went extinct). When we moved into new territories, we were an alien creature, just like the introduced ones that trouble us today.
George Monbiot of The Guardian makes the point that we can trace the movement of our species by a wave of extinction of the big, slow-moving, dim-witted creatures that we could outwit with even the simplest of implements like clubs, pits, and spears.
Our brains were our great evolutionary advantage, conferring massive memory, curiosity, inventiveness and observational powers.
I can’t emphasize that enough.
Our brains gave us a huge advantage and it did something I think is unique — it created a concept of a future, which meant we realized we could affect that future by our actions in the present. By applying our acquired knowledge and insights, we could deliberately choose a path to avoid danger or trouble, and to exploit opportunities. I believe foresight was a huge evolutionary advantage for our species. And that’s what is so tragic today when we have all the amplified foresight of scientists and supercomputers, which have been warning us for decades that we are heading down a dangerous path, but now we allow politics and economics to override this predictive power.
No doubt after we evolved, we quickly eliminated or reduced the numbers of animals and plants for which we found uses. We had no instinctive behavioural traits to restrict or guide our actions — we learned by the consequences of what we did. And all the mistakes that we made and successes that we celebrated were important lessons in the body of accumulating knowledge of a people in a territory.
That was very powerful and critical to understanding our evolutionary success – it was painstakingly acquired experience that became a part of the culture. We are an invasive species all around the world, and I find it amazing that our brains enabled us to move into vastly different ecosystems ranging from steaming jungles to deserts, mountains to arctic tundra, and to flourish on the basis of the painful accumulation of knowledge through trial and error, mistakes, etc.
So it was the people who stayed in place as others moved on, who had to learn to live within their means, or they died. That is what I believe is the basis of indigenous knowledge that has built up over millennia and that will never be duplicated by science because it is acquired from a profoundly different basis (I wrote about the differences in a book, Wisdom of the Elders). The wave of exploration hundreds of years ago brought a very different world view to new lands — North and South America, Africa, Australia — based on a search for opportunity, resources, wealth. There was no respect for flora and fauna except as potential for riches, and certainly no respect for the indigenous people and their cultures. Of course, by outlawing language and culture of indigenous peoples, dominant colonizers attempt to stamp out the cultures which are such impediments to exploitation of the land. Tom King’s book, The Inconvenient Indian, argues very persuasively that policies are to “get those Indians off the land”.
“There was no respect for flora and fauna except as potential for riches, and certainly no respect for the indigenous people and their cultures.”
I think of my grandparents as part of the wave of exploration of the past centuries. They arrived in Canada from Japan between 1902 and 1904. When they came on a harrowing steamship trip, there were no telephones to Japan, no TV, radio, cellphones or computers. They never learned English. They came on a one-way trip to Canada for the promise of opportunity. Their children, my parents, grew up like all the other Japanese-Canadian kids at that time, with no grandparents and no elders. In other words, they had no roots in Japan or Canada. To them, land was opportunity. Work hard, fish, log, farm, mine, use the land to make money. And I believe that is the dominant ethic today and totally at odds with indigenous perspectives.
Remember when battles were fought over drilling in Hecate Strait, supertankers down the coast from Alaska, the dam at Site C, drilling for oil in ANWR, the dam to be built at Altamire in Brazil?
I was involved in small and big ways in these battles, which we thought we won 30 to 35 years ago. But as you know, they are back on the agenda today. So our victories were illusions because we didn’t change the perspective through which we saw the issues.
“Our victories were illusions because we didn’t change the perspective through which we saw the issues.”
That’s what I say environmentalists have failed to do, to use the battles to get people to change their perspectives, and that’s why I have chosen to work with First Nations because in most cases, they are fighting through the value lenses of their culture.
The challenge is to gain a perspective on our place in nature. That’s why I have made one last push to get a ball rolling on the initiative to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in our constitution. It’s a big goal, but in discussing the very idea, we have to ask, what do we mean by a healthy environment. We immediately come to the realization that the most important factor that every human being needs to live and flourish is a breath of air, a drink of water, food and the energy from photosynthesis. Without those elements, we die.
So our healthy future depends on protecting those fundamental needs, which amazingly enough, are cleansed, replenished and created by the web of life itself. So long as we continue to let the economy and political priorities shape the discussion, we will fail in our efforts to find a sustainable future. I have been trying to tell business folk and politicians that, in the battle over the Northern Gateway, what First Nations are trying to tell us is that their opposition is because there are things more important than money.>>
Things more important than Money
Noongar people are the Aboriginal traditional owners of the south-west of Western Australia and have been for over 45,000 years.
<<Noongar boodja (country) extends from north of Jurien Bay, inland to north of Moora and down to the southern coast between Bremer Bay and east of Esperance. It is defined by 14 different areas with varied geography and 14 dialectal groups.
We have a deep knowledge and respect for our country, which has been passed down by our Elders.
Noongar people have a profound physical and spiritual connection to country. It relates to our beliefs and customs regarding creation, life and death, and spirits of the earth. Spiritual connection to country guides the way we understand, navigate and use the land. It also influences our cultural practices.
For thousands of years Noongar people have resided on and had cultural connection to the booja – land. Everything in our vast landscape has meaning and purpose. We speak our own language and have our own lore and customs. The lore is characterised by a strong spiritual connection to country. This means caring for the natural environment and for places of significance. Our lore relates to ceremonies, and to rituals for hunting and gathering when food is abundant and in season. Connection to booja is passed on through our stories, art, song and dance. Noongar people not only survived European colonisation but we thrived as family groups and sought to assert our rights to our booja. For Noongar people, the south-west of Western Australia is ngulla booja – our country.
Noongar lore and custom guide the ways in which we define our country and our rights to it. Lore influences how we connect with and care for the land. As Noongar people we have a duty to speak for our country, to acknowledge its value to our communities and to observe lore that governs who may or may not ‘speak for country’.
Noongar people have always used our knowledge of the six seasons in the south-west of Western Australia to hunt, fish, and gather only the most ripe and abundant food sources for our needs.
The rituals and ceremonies performed by Noongar people over many thousands of years reflect our sustainable use of the environment and reinforce our connection to country. These rituals include domestic and social customs that observe Noongar lore governing the use of land and resources. An important and significant part of Noongar culture is the teaching of sustainable environmental practices, handed down by our Elders.
Being Noongar is to be part of a family and community, which determines our relationship to country. The relationship to country empowers our identity as a Noongar person.>>
“We come here to this place here, Minningup, the Collie River, to share the story of this area or what makes it so special. It is the resting place of the Ngangungudditj walgu, the hairy faced snake. Baalap ngany noyt is our spirit and this is where he rests. You have big bearded full moon at night time you can see him, his spirit there, his beard resting in the water. And we come to this place here today to show respect to him plus also to meet our people because when they pass away this is where we come to talk to them. Not to the cemetery where they are buried but here because their spirits are in this water. This is where all our spirits will end up here. Karla koorliny we call it. Coming home. Ngany kurt, ngany karla – our heart, our home. This, our Beeliargu, is the river people. So that’s why we always come to this Minningup. It’s very important.
This is the important part of the river, of the whole Collie River and the Preston River and the Brunswick River, because he created all them rivers and all the waters but here is the most important because this is where he rest. So whenever we come back now – my cousin died the other day so we come back here, bring his spirit home because this is where he belong here. They will bury him with his mother and you sing out to him. Ngany moort koorliny. Ngany waanginy, dadjinin waanginy kaartdijin djurip. And we come and look there and talk to you old fellow. Your people have come back. Ngany waangkaniny. I talk now. Balap kaartdijin. Listen, listen. Palanni waangkaniny. Ngany moort koorliny noonook. Ngany moort wanjanin. Your people come to rest with you now. Listen old fellow, listen for ’em, bring them home. Karla koorliny. Bring them home and then you sing to them. (Singing in language) And then chuck sand to land in the water so he can smell you. That’s our rules. Beeliargu moort. That’s the river people. That’s why this place important.”
Me, me, me anthropocentrism is so robber baron babyboomer. Learn about ecocentrism. Caring For Country starts with respect and perhaps respecting that 45,000 years of connection has shown that there are six seasons in Noongar – Birak, Bunuru, Djeran, Makuru, Djilba, Kambarang. (Ed.)
Yes, I fully agree that if we can respectfully wise up on place and plants names we should be able to respectfully wise up on accepting and adopting Indigenous Peoples’ perception of their place and dependence on the natural environment, especially, as David Suzuki tells us, that doing so is crucial for us, if we are to live sustainably on this planet of ours. After all, Aboriginal people lived on this island continent, that we now call Australia, sustainably for over fifty thousand years, and in contrast, it took us just over two hundred years to create an unprecedented biodiversity crisis which if not urgently addressed, will threaten our livability if not existence.
For anyone interested see following:
• Catton, W. R. 1982 – “Overshoot, the Ecological basis of Revolutionary change”; University of Illinois Press
• Christi, M. J. 1991 – “Aboriginal Science for Ecologically Sustainable Future”; Australian Science Teachers Journal, March, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp 26-31
• Kwaymullina, A. 2005 – “Seeing the Light: Aboriginal Law, Learning and Sustainable Living in Country”; Indigenous Law Bulletin, May/June, Vol. 6 Issue 11, pp12-15
• Rose, D. B. 2002 – “Country of the Heart, An Indigenous Australian Homeland”; Aboriginal Studies Press
• Washington, H. 2013 – “Human Dependence on Nature, How to Solve the Environmental Crisis”; Routledge Press
Thomson River from Walhalla Road Bridge, Victoria, Australia.
(Photo by editor 20170322 looking north)
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Walhalla Mizzle
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It’s been raining gentle all night
In crisp mountain air
I sit on my dawn porch
I gaze through the grey mizzle
To the thick treed ridge
Covering the steep spur
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Across Stringers Creek
The creek babbles far below
Feeding the mighty Thomson
Low heavy cloud envelops
Robins, larks, parrots, finches, firetails, martins or currawongs
Greet the daylight
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Walhalla’s quiet now
As it should be up here
In the wild ranges steep
The 50 year army of gold reefers
Has long been and gone
Shafters taken their bargains and fortunes
Till the ground lay barren, the hills denuded, the Thomson damned
The batteries, the boilers and engines and waterwheel are gone
The miners, drinkers, shop keepers, the shafted
The school kids who played in bad soil
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The long tunnels lie empty and dank
The dark shafts abandoned to victim ghosts
The slag heap lies as a mountainous waste
Still laced with arsenic
Stringers choked by discarded tailings
They all went back up over Little Joe, the twenty-five hundred
Back to their big smoke
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The rail remains as industrious memory
To the heyday of industry and hardship
Fifteen tons of gold taken
On the marble column count
Dividends paid out
Two fires, a flood, disease and arsenic
Dozens perished for the gold fever
As the slain to Odin
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The mizzle is pure till it touches the ground
Surrounding forest seems back
The creek tries flow as it did, crystal but dead
A heritage cancer cluster
A new breed of shafters.
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Stringers Creek, from Main Road, Walhalla
(Photo by editor 20170322)
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Further Reading:
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[1] “Elevated arsenic values can be detected up to 15 metres from the mineralised zone” – in ‘Nature of gold mineralisation in the Walhalla Goldfield, eastern Victoria, Australia‘, 2007, by Megan A. Hough, Laurent Ailleres (School of Geosciences, Monash University), Frank P. Bierlein (Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, Adele Seymon (Geoscience Victoria) and Stuart Hutchin (Goldstar Resources, Rawson), ^https://www.smedg.org.au/HoughOct07.html
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[2] ‘Approaching a century-old legacy of arsenic and mercury contamination’, 2016, by Dr. Linda Campbell, Senior Research Fellow at Environmental Science, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ^http://ap.smu.ca/~lcampbel/Gold.html
[8] ‘Thallium and Arsenic Poisoning in a Small Midwestern Town’, 2002, by Daniel E Rusyniak at Department of Emergency Medicine and Division of Medical Toxicology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA, and R. Brent Furbee and Mark A Kirk, ^https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/11867986/
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[9] ‘Cancer incidence and soil arsenic exposure in a historical gold mining area in Victoria, Australia: A geospatial analysis‘, 2012, by Dora Claire (University of Ballarat and Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne), Kim Dowling (Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne) and Malcolm Ross Sim (Monash University) in Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology (2012) 22, 248–257, ^http://www.nature.com/jes/journal/v22/n3/full/jes201215a.html
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[10] ‘A cross-sectional survey on knowledge and perceptions of health risks associated with arsenic and mercury contamination from artisanal gold mining in Tanzania’, 20130125, by Elias Charles, Deborah SK Thomas, Deborah Dewey, Mark Davey, Sospatro E Ngallaba and Eveline Konje, at BMC Public Health, BioMed Central, London UK, ^https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-13-74
It’s an excellent poem and its usage is a very effective way of introducing the topic of the toxic legacy of mining. Also, in view of the current Government’s policy on the Adani mine and mining in general, the poem is a very timely reminder that mining is not just about “Jobson Growth”, but more importantly the environmental destruction and toxic legacy that will stay with us for years, if not for ever, to deal with.
I would like to see this poem adopted by schools as part of the curriculum on the effects of mining on the natural environment and thereby on the wellbeing of the society.
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.
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.>>
Today, 16 September 2017, The Age reported that the Victorian Government saved the Heyfield native timber mill in Gippsland from closure by committing tens of millions of dollars of public money.
But what it failed to add is that the tens of millions of dollars underrepresents the total cost to the public as the provision of logs for the mill will inevitably come at the expense of the already stressed Gippsland state forest’s biodiversity, the loss of which will adversely affect our livability, and the price of which will far exceed the dollars spend to save the mill.
I agree with this article – the Hayfield Sawmill like many others is unsustainable. Logging old growth forests especially clear falling is not only unsustainable, but clearly destructive to the biodiversity on which our very survival as a species depends therefore it is harmful to us and our future generations and in my opinion it should be recognized as very damaging and stopped. It is obvious that plantations have to be established, preferably analog plantation and they also require years to grow and in order to be sustainable have to be replaced. Logging forest would only be sustainable if the forest were given time to regenerate. It is obvious that unlike a crop on a farm trees take a long time to grow, if a 100 year old tree is cut then its replacement will take just as long to grow.
Logging in Australia is subsidized by governments and I think that it is wrong and should be stopped.
Forests are a very valuable and important asset to the country especially now when we realise that planting trees is important to combat climate warming. It absolutely does not make sense to cut already growing trees.
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.
I am very sorry that Richard Green, his wife Carolyn and John Davis died in the plane crash.
This is a very good and timely article. The forests are being cut all over Australia for the ‘woodchip’ industry and profit to fuel economic growth without a thought given to the fact that our planet is not growing. The photo shows clear fell forest – this to me is a desecration, devastation, obscenity. Climate warming is obvious and yet we are destroying carbon sinks at an alarming rate. We have already produced air-conditioners to keep us cool, desalination water plants and soon we will have to produce air-purifying machines so will be able to breath.
The fact that forests are our life supporting ecosystem processes was and is well known to Aboriginal people and also for a long time to us. Yet, in spite of this, the Federal Coalition Government passed the new laws adding native forests’ wood to the clean energy sources under the Renewable Energy.
In 1946, Judge Leonard Stretton who conducted an inquiry into the grazing of forests and alpine regions in Victorian Alps, concluded that the grazing accelerated soil erosion and damaged water catchments; he identified
“an inseparable trinity – Forests, Soil and Water. No one of them can stand alone. Destroy your forests and your water will destroy your soil. Destroy your soil and you destroy your forests and you water supply. Destroy the source of your water storage and your forests and soil will vanish.” (William J. Lines- “Patriots – Defending Australia’s Natural Heritage”; University of Queensland Press, 2006)
I am so happy that there is a Log Off campaign to put an end to native forest logging, as continuing to do so is clearly a process of our self-distraction.
Smoking Ceremony or Smoke and Mirrors?Staged for the delegates by National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales (NPWS), somewhere outside Sydney, Australia
[Source: ‘Global First Nations environmentalists share stories at the World Parks Congress in Sydney.5:30’, ^https://twitter.com/nitvnews, 20141113]
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Every ten years a World Parks Congress is a forum staged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to discuss the effectiveness of World Heritage Listed Protected Areas. For 2014, Parks Australia put up Sydney’s hand to host and fund it.
<<“We (Parks Australia) are delighted to be co-hosting the IUCN World Parks Congress with our colleagues in the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service – and look forward to welcoming inspiring leaders from around the world.”>>
IUCN’s vision is a “just world that values and conserves nature.” The theme for the 2014 conference is “Parks, people, planet: inspiring solutions”.
The last congress was in Durban, South Africa eleven years ago in 2003 and significant messages from that congress were that:
Considerable progress has been made in the establishment of protected areas although significant gaps remain
Protected areas face many challenges, and management effectiveness must be strengthened
Protected areas play a vital role in biodiversity conservation and sustainable development
A new deal is needed for protected areas, local communities and indigenous peoples
There is a need to apply new and innovative approaches for protected areas, linked to broader agendas
Protected areas require a significant boost in financial investment
Protected areas management must involve young people
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Congress Cost Benefits ?
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The obvious first question for the 2014 Sydney Congress is what are the outcomes from these seven messages of 2003?
The second question is what is to be the conservation return on investment of staging the 2014 congress in Sydney? That starts with Parks Australia and NPWS disclosing the full costs of the congress. How much will it have cost by the time this week is over? Five million? Ten million? Twenty million? More? That also involves disclosure of the onground conservation outcomes, if any. The congress hosts more than 5000 delegates for a week-long event in Sydney.
If the answers are not forthcoming and/or the performances less than satisfactory, then perhaps the money could have been better spent (invested) by Parks Australia and NPWS on specific onground conservation of current and worthy Protected Areas in Australia. So the third question is what is the opportunity cost of the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress which could have delivered the IUCN vision of a “just world that values and conserves nature”?
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Congress Opportunity Costs
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According to IUCN director general, Julia Marton-Lefevre, assessments during the past decade have found that half of the world’s protected areas at best — and possibly as few as 20 per cent — are managed effectively. “Some are what we refer to as ‘paper parks’ ” – parks just on paper.
The Australian Government’s $180 million allocation to expand the park reserve system expired last year.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is a case in point. It is the iconic Protected Area in Australia. Its World Heritage listing along with various national zoning, management plans, permits, education and incentives are supposed to protect and conserve the marine ecosystems and migratory species from human threats. But farm and urban runoff continues to contaminate the rivers that flow into the Reef.
In 2009 and 2011, mining company Queensland Nickel discharged nitrogen-laden water and 516 tonnes of toxic waste water into the Great Barrier Reef.
On 21 July 2013, on the second day of the biennial joint training exercise Talisman Saber, two American AV-8B Harrier fighter jets launched from aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) dropped four bombs, weighing a total 1.8 metric tons (4,000 pounds), into more than 50 metres (164 ft) of water. On 3rd April 2010, The Shen Neng 1, a Chinese ship carrying 950 tonnes of oil, ran aground, causing the 2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill.
In December 2013, Greg Hunt, the Australian environment minister, approved a plan for dredging to create three shipping terminals as part of the expansion of an existing coal port. According to corresponding approval documents, the process will create around 3 million cubic metres of dredged seabed that will be dumped within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
On 31 January 2014, a permit was issued to allow three million cubic metres of sea bed from Abbot Point, north of Bowen, to be transported and unloaded in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, just outside of Abbot Bay. The dredge spoil will cloud the water and block sunlight, thereby starving sea grass and coral up to distances of 80 km away from the point of origin due to the actions of wind and currents. The dredge spoil will smother reef or sea grass to death, while storms can repeatedly resuspend these particles so that the harm caused is ongoing; secondly, disturbed sea floor can release toxic substances into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Dredging the Great Barrier Reef for bulk export shipping
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The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has become just a blue line on a map. The trickle of funds for Australia’s national parks betrays a lack of appreciation of their economic contribution. Annual funding for the authority that runs Australia’s most famous reserve, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, is about 1 per cent of the $5.2bn it earns the country in tourism revenue.
Yet if the IUCN World Parks Congress cost a conservative $20 million to stage then a key opportunity cost would be the June 2014 Federal budget cuts to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
The budget axed 17 staff including five of its’ directors positions. These positions included the director of heritage conservation, the director of policy and governance and the director of coastal ecosystems and water quality as part of an internal restructure. It’s being described as the greatest loss of expertise from Australia’s most important natural wonder and it comes at the very time the Great Barrier Reef is facing the greatest threat to its survival.
The Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has been reduced by the Australian Government to being in name only and ineffective at protecting the reef.
Until recently, one of those five directors, Adam Smith, was charged with dealing with the contentious Abbot Point coal terminal development and the proposal to dump three million cubic metres of dredge spoil into the marine park. Despite Dr Smith’s concerns, the sea dumping was approved by the Marine Park Authority.
Dr Smith has since accepted voluntary redundancy and moved on after disagreeing with the Authority’s new economic leadership and values. Heritage conservation director Jon Day has left after 21 years, disillusioned too with the direction the Authority has taken to compromise the reef.
Next year UNESCO will decide whether to put the reef on its world heritage in danger list. Native Dugongs are already endangered. The deliberate extermination of the dugong and turtles which habituated the Gladstone area is a national tragedy. Dugongs are species listed under the Federal Environment Protection Biodiversity & Conservation Act, which requires the Federal government to legally protect these animals.
Prior to the massive dredging operation of 52 million cubic metres of seabed for the development of the world’s largest LNG Terminal, ( which is 62% completed) a study commissioned by the Gladstone Ports Corporation found that a take, or a quota, of more than zero dugongs would be unsustainable.
In the face of massive mortality of dugongs, turtles and inshore dolphins during the ongoing massive dredging, both the Federal and Queensland governments ignored the slaughter.
Look at the stranding data from the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management. Monthly cumulative Dugong strandings by year for Queensland, up to 31 January 2012.
There are 22,000 vessel movements a month in Gladstone Harbour. No ship strikes of Dugongs or of Green Turtles need to be reported. No audit of environmental conditions has been undertaken by the Queensland or Federal Governments. The wholesale slaughter of our marine wildlife is the price Australians are paying for the transformation of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area into the world’s largest unregulated quarry.
Mass tourism operators good for the economy Getting up close to protected Humpback Whales within their 100 metre Protected Area
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Australian protected areas have seen rule changes in the eastern states have allowed cattle to graze, recreational shooters to hunt and hotel developers to build in national parks. Shore-based recreational fishing has been allowed in areas of NSW marine parks previously zoned as no-take sanctuaries. National parks on land and in the ocean are dying a death of a thousand cuts, in the form of bullets, hooks, hotels, logging concessions and grazing licences.
Yet as host of the 2014 World Parks Congress, Australia is showcasing “our own inspiring places, inspiring people and inspiring solutions.” The Global Eco Forum within the Congress programme focuses on tourism exploitation of Protected Areas because like the new Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the new values are not about conservation by the billions in revenue opportunity to Australia’s economy.
The October 2006 issue of National Geographic published an article “The Future of Parks: Hallowed Ground – Nothing is Ever Safe”.
It stated:
“Landscape and memory combine to tell us certain places are special, sanctified by their extraordinary natural merits and by social consensus.
We call those places parks, and we take them for granted.”
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Sydney’s 2014 World Parks Congress appears to be expensive window dressing, showcasing fraudulent conservation of Protected Areas in Australia.
It’s termed Greenwashing. The opportunity cost of the 2014 Congress could have instead funded the retention of the previously effective Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and so done more for Protected Areas than all the pomp, promising, luncheons, showcasing, and talk-festing of the congress combined.
White Lemuroid Possum(Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area in Danger)Has the white lemuroid possum become the first mammal to go extinct due to global warming?
The species, normally found above 1000m, has not been sighted during any nighttime spotlighting expedition since 2005. Experts fear a temperature rise of 0.8 degrees Celsius may be to blame for the animal’s disappearance. [Source: ^http://www.wherelightmeetsdark.com/index.php?module=newswatch&NW_user_op=view&NW_id=453]
A horse bred for racing and named Admire Rakti was overloaded and overwhipped in the 3,200 metre long Melbourne Cup race today.
The seven-year-old stallion, had just won the Caulfield Cup two weeks before, and so was handicapped by having 58.5 kg in weight, just to even out the betting odds.
On a hot 28 Celsius day, the horse was flogged into the race lead, then his heart gave way, finishing last, collapsing five minutes after the race and then had a heart attack, and so tragically died for sport. The race that stops a nation kills horses.
The RSPCA issued a statement calling for a full and transparent investigation.
The 30 protesters from the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses had gathered around the main gate at Flemington Racecourse chanting “racing kills”. They were right.
The group’s spokesman Ward Young, said Admire Rakti’s death was another example of horses being overworked on the racetrack. “Racing does kills horses and we think a lot more needs to be done to make horse racing safer. These incidents are a lot more frequent than people know about.”
He said in the past year about 125 horses have died during or shortly after a race.
This time, Mr Young said they were letting racegoers know that a horse had died “because last year the only people who knew about Verema dying in the Melbourne Cup were the people who bet on her”.>>
In Nashville, USA in 2012, a horse bred to be a steeplechase thoroughbred and named Arcadius won the Iroquois Steeplechase over three miles and eighteen hurdles.
He galloped under the pain and fear of the horse whip. His owner won $150,000 from the race.
Immediately after the race, the 8-year-old gelding, breathed hard as he walked back to applause. The humans lined up, the horse was led in to the winner’s circle. Catching his breath now, he stood for the brief ceremony — a sweaty, dirty, hot, victorious athlete.
It was as if he knew he had won. Arcadius stared regally to the distance, ears at attention, and everyone else paused, soaking in the victory. The cameras buzzed. Crowley jumped down, unbuckled the elastic girths, removed the leather saddle, breastplate, black and red cloth with the white 3 on it. The jockey folded it all up on his arm, patted his horse on the back, one more reward for the effort.
Two minutes later, Arcadius was dead — steps from the finish line he had crossed with so much power, so much life.
Arcadius: dead from cruel abuse, hidden from punters’ view
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It was quick, shocking, certainly eerie. After walking from that winner’s circle celebration, while getting the usual after-race hosing and dousing with water, Arcadius stepped awkwardly to his right, raised his head, stiffened his front legs and dropped to the ground on his left side.
Before he fell, his right eye went blank — flashing life, death, pain, something. >>
"We're coming to you from the custodial lands of the Hairygowogulator and Tarantulawollygong, and pay respects to uncle and grandaddy elders past, present and emerging from their burrows. So wise to keep a distance out bush."
Ancient Balga, grass tree, xanthorroea in Dwellingup forest, South West Western Australia. Photo by Jenreflect, 20121104.
Concept of Country 
Yes, I fully agree that if we can respectfully wise up on place and plants names we should be able to respectfully wise up on accepting and adopting Indigenous Peoples’ perception of their place and dependence on the natural environment, especially, as David Suzuki tells us, that doing so is crucial for us, if we are to live sustainably on this planet of ours. After all, Aboriginal people lived on this island continent, that we now call Australia, sustainably for over fifty thousand years, and in contrast, it took us just over two hundred years to create an unprecedented biodiversity crisis which if not urgently addressed, will threaten our livability if not existence.
For anyone interested see following:
• Catton, W. R. 1982 – “Overshoot, the Ecological basis of Revolutionary change”; University of Illinois Press
• Christi, M. J. 1991 – “Aboriginal Science for Ecologically Sustainable Future”; Australian Science Teachers Journal, March, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp 26-31
• Kwaymullina, A. 2005 – “Seeing the Light: Aboriginal Law, Learning and Sustainable Living in Country”; Indigenous Law Bulletin, May/June, Vol. 6 Issue 11, pp12-15
• Rose, D. B. 2002 – “Country of the Heart, An Indigenous Australian Homeland”; Aboriginal Studies Press
• Washington, H. 2013 – “Human Dependence on Nature, How to Solve the Environmental Crisis”; Routledge Press