Blockade over the weld river

1 min clip of my first day in the tree sit:



Later that night...

It starts in the distance, a deep roar. It comes closer, the pressure changes and its suddenly much colder. The branches of the eucalyptus tree start swaying & rustling.

You can hear it coming with the directional certainty of an oncoming car.. or juggernaut.

Then the roar hits and everything is swaying, the platform swings and the rudimentary tarp shelter rattles & whips nosily in the wind.

With it it brings rain and I curl up further away from the cold shower encroaching further and farther in the open end of the shelter.

30 Meters below the rumbles and splashes of the weld river churn on in the darkness, the when light comes I watch the river rise and rise with all the rainfall.



I'm up in a blue tarp world above a logging road reaching into the weld valley. A few weeks ago, while I was at the G20 in Melbourne they busted the ongoing camp I lived at over the winter, felled some of the trees with tree-sits, pushed through a new road and destroyed the pirate ship.

But now we have re-taken the valley.

The tree-sit I am in is made from 4 poles in a rectangle with a net tied in between with a small tarp on top like an open ended tent.



So essentially I am floating up in the tree tops with no floor.

The sit is attached to a rope hooked over a branch leading down to the logging road, there its attached to a monopod (single upright pole) lashed to a logging gate.



The idea is if they try to take down the sit.. the sit will fall.

The idea is that they don't.

At first I stayed in the tarp bubble getting used to being up there.. and eventually I grew more confident and started exploring. climing higher, exploring, reading books sat astride branches 30 up in the tree tops..




Most of the rest of the 'down below' time at camp, when others are up the sits, is spent on the road.. oftern getting up at 4 am incase foresty arrive with the cops to bust us. Daily wash swims in the frezzing Weld river, so pure you can gulp down the water while swimming..

Sometimes its cold and we are huddled around the fire, then a day, or somtines hours later it is burning hot and we are sweltering and dreaming of the river again. Never again will I call England 'changable'!

Its hard to believe they will come in and destroy this amazing forest, but after taking a numbing walk back to the old camp and seeing the new road they have put through the danger is all to real and immidate.

Keep up to date with happenings in the weld on huon.org and Melbourne Indymedia.