All quiet on the blog front for a while.. which either means I'm off galavanting in the bush or ridiculously busy.. A bit of both this time as I became logistics queen again for an action camp for the Anvil Hill Campaign.
It was heartbreking not to be at climate camp but although on a different scale the Anvil Hill action camp was great - it brought together a diverse range of folks.. local people, 'activists', forest ferals, greenpeace, greens MPs.. all to skill-share, stratagise and do direct action training. Much fun was had by all.. and I learned loads as well.. Had my first bash at media work.. (hmm but I hate the corporate media..but maybe not when they love us and are bigging up our campaign! ohh sell out!) I did TV, Radio & Newspaper interviews all in one day.. oh the whirl. I better go put some time into Climate Indymedia to ground myself.
Here's our cheesy anvil hill movie, the voice over is cringe-worthy.. but hopefully appeals to 'middle Australia'
Otherwise for the Anvil Hill campaign it has been a non stop few months.. on top of camp organising their has been actions, running coal/cliamte stalls on the radical edge - remote rural mining towns! and all over the Hunter Region.. Then also screening t-shirts, making patches.. all sorts..
Photo Blog!
There have been lots of other fine adventures from scores of action to random Push-Bike prom queen escapades. Check out my last two months in pictures at Flicker - set: 'springing into action'
In Bandit Love - Rebel Clowning
When first talking about summit organising over here for upcoming fun in Melbourne I got all enthusiastic about using my experience to help create convergence spaces, horizontal organising, support networks - stuff like that.. and the main response? "that's nice cookie.. tell us about the clowns.." so I though bugger it.. I'd go with the flow and work on something cool that's fun & silly for a change and doesn't involve logistics!
And with some of the fine folks from Newcastle, and the bandicoot insurgent rebel clown army was born. Check out some of our adventures on our blog..
However its a parody site... so first take a very quick peek at the Aussie Army recruitment site: >>here
Then check out the BIRCA blog: birca.blogspot.com Really do - this site is groovy, getting hundread of hits and its only 3 weeks old!
There was a big arts festival in town while brought all our cool mates from all over Australia to town I ended up doing two radio interviews on blogging! (Well they were interested in the Rainbow Warrior one and Blogging by mountain radio from Happy Valley). So I'm now a celebrity blogger so y'all keep coming back OK? And I'll try and post a little more often..
So almost a month back from the outback and still no blog. I must admit.. as well as being stupidly busy I've been struggling. I really cant do the campaigns, the issues and the amazing people we both met and travels with justice in one blog. The post just keeps on growing and I feel I haven't really said anything at all. So I'll give you a snapshot of some of the crazy-beautiful-stunning-inspiring-horrifying experiences and link to some of the campaigns.
If you cant hack the big blog then I'd urge up to go look at my photos, the desert is really, really special. Then the video clip below and skip to my sum up at the end! There are a LOT of links.. so I've put a list of them at the end of the blog for anyone feeling extra geeky.
And to everyone currently at climate camp I miss you fab folks!
The Tour was to see and learn about some of the issues surrounding nukes in Australia. I went into the desert as I felt inadequate when people asked me if nukes were are solution to climate chaos. Apart from 'NO!' and 'Well that's just insane' and a few figures on the carbon emissions of mining, production & transportation etc. I really found it hard to answer in any convincing or heartfelt way. And to be honest I just don't learn very well from reading stuff, I'm all about life experience.. and when so many environmentally aware folks have been 'Doing a Lovelock' and coming out in support of nukes I wanted a little more fuel to my 'no feckin way' fire.
Articles on why Nukes are not the solution to Climate Change: 1|2 | 3
The tour was organised by Friends Of the Earth. FOE in Australia are ace.. they are the most radical grassroots NGO.. full of awesome not-quite-paid-ish folks doing very cool things. I keep meeting people from Europe and exclaiming to each other.. wow like FOE are cool here!
Also blog followers may have noticed I've been in Australia a few months now and and haven't mentioned Indigenous issues on my blog once. That's because I really don't know what to say yet. Its a really hard issue full of pain and horror and ongoing racism and I think I need to do a lot more learning before I do any talking.
So.. the tour..we set of.. A big bus.. and two minibuses. After a 12 hour train ride to Melbourne and then 12 drive to Adelaide. almost ready to drive out into the desert....
The nights out under the stars camped on the red red sand around a fire watching the stars I will never forget. The sunrises and sunsets were as amazing as out at sea.. actually I was often reminded of my time on the Warrior.
We had a tour of the mine driving around in a big bus, it was huge, industrial and crazy. There are massive works around the mine, the kinda things you usually see only in movies.
"A place like that can turn a kitten into a tiger" - Uncle Kevin
The PR and Environmental guys who came around with us, stalwart under the shower of "how can you do this evil shit?" type questions that assaulted them. You'd almost feel sorry for them. Until you think about the work they are defending. The destruction in front of us and dangerous places left where the reactors and waste dumps.. Not to mention the crazy countries getting their hands on all that Uranium..
The environmental manger said, of the barrels of nuclear waste.. "So safe you could lick it!" Yeah mate.. like to see you do that.
Sat by the huge industrial works were massive piles of bright yellow sulphur we all seemed to, on some level, want to be radioactive ore.. Somehow if it was big and evil looking yellow, like in the Simpsons, it would be a more visible threat.. one people would take more seriously. If it was a neon yellow it would be a more tangible evil to be pointed at and villainised.
The tailings dams are where all the remaining sludge, after the ores have been processed, is left and are are massively huge. They are beautiful, ugly, radioactive and disturbing at once. And what's to stop birds and marsupials going about their daily lives form stumbling on this toxic hell hole? Not much..
They mine something else here too, as well as a range of heavy metals. They mine water. They use heap and heaps of it .. they use around 33 Million Liters of water a day form the ancient Great Artesian Basin, Mound Spring, a few hours drive away is a group of rare ecosystems that live from this water and are drying up.
Many of the Springs are in Uncle Kevin's country. An amazing Elder I will never forget - some people you just shut up an listen to. He took us around to many of these springs. Beautiful and crazy pockets of life in the middle of the arid lands with lush plants and dragonflies buzzing around like some fairy portal to another wold. However they were all lower then they used to be and then we visited one that had all but all dried up, it was the first time he had seen it dry, and all the life around it parching away. Sad, sad times.
Back in Roxby Town - Everyone who lives there is connected with the Mine. I felt like an invader, in this weird place with shiney 4x4s, manicured lawns and high cancer rates. Somehow reminded me of the USofA.
Woomera. Before going on this trip a friend skyped me after hearing of my itinerary and said "So, your going to all the nice places huh?" What can I say.. the infamous detention centre has been shut down ... cant say the rest of the place is much better.
Its a full on military town were the locals are afraid to be seen associating with protesters.. or taking their custom. Its proud centre piece is a 'missile park' in the middle of town displaying bits of rockets that have been tested there over the years.. And again green lawns eerily shine in the dry, arid desert.
We had been joined by Avon, A man who was in the army back in the 50s when they tested the nukes.. Yeah.. I didn't know that about Australia.. they blew up nuclear bombs in the middle of the country. What kinda insane place blows up Nukes in the middle of the country? And actually it wasen't even the Aussies doing it, it was the British army..
He told stories of his life and what they were exposed to, and how many of his army mates are dead. We heard about the histories of the missiles on display in the park.. I looked beyond to Woomera school right next door and wondered what affect it has on children growing up next to this glorification of weapons of mass destruction.
So they blew up nukes in the big beautiful deseert. They said it was empty. Empty dead lands. Its all a lie. There were people in the area, they didn't check out the routes of the indigenous folks in the areas, that went right through the site. An aboriginal family were found sleeping in the crater.. they wisked them off, stripped them and scrubbed them down.. they all died.
But thats just one example.. there were more. The dust cloud went over a much larger area than they were expecting. We met a man who, as a boy, had been in the radioactive fall out cloud: Uncle Yami Lester (uncle being the title of respect for indigenous elders). Another amazing man full of so many smiles and so much joy. He lost the sight in one eye within a couple of weeks of being covered in the fallout of 'Totem 1'. They took him into hospital.. then removed the wrong eye. Its like an unbelievable horror story... did they support him? Like hell did they. They took him from his home and people into the city and taught him how to make brushes.
The Racism that has been here, and is still so prevelent is, well I dont have words for it, just so wrong.
Words like creek & lake, river.. Now I've, being a soggy brit grrrl, have been brought up to expect water to be some major and integral part of these enitites.. How wrong am I! I've spent ages here looking for creeks to find I am walking right up the 'creek'. "But they are so dry! I exclaimed.." And ruffled some feathers. . "they are not dry.. they are ephemeral" I was told earnestly. Water is a serious business out her in the desert. Ephemeral my new favourite word..meaning 'lasting for a very short time'.
Lake Eyre is sometimes a lake.. and more often vast salt flats stretching a far over the horizon. The cracked salt splitting in jagged lines that catch in the in sunset twilight and glow like something out of Tron.
After the full on intenseness travelling together of the tour we all ripped our boots off and spread out on our own or in small groups over the... i want to say over the ice, because it was so much like ice.. warm under out bare feet.
We ran, danced, rolled about, licked the salt and got infused with the intensely both calm and exciting energy of the place. I spoke to a guy who against years of social conditioning had walked off on his own and watched the sun go down and cried, and cried. I think it affected us all a bit like that.
Well.. till I got all excited:
Watch it till the end!
People had a protest camp out here for years! Its the hottest, dryest part of OZ, resisting the stealing of the water for the mines.
It means White fella in the ground.. And on the while fella maps its morphed into the more western sounding 'Coober Pedy'. When I heard that everyone lives underground to escape the baking sun I had romantic visions of ancient pueblo style fronts to cave homes. But the reality is far more Mad Max, and facinating.. like in the way you have to stare at a train wreck.
Its a mining town, folks get leases on plots of land to mine opals. So people dig holes and everyehere there are shafts and big smetrical cones of dirt. Dirt piles everywherte. It spread K's & K's out of towm like some crazy gialnt moles on speed have invaded the area. There is so little rain out here that they are not going to be eroded away in a hurry.. so thousands of years from now all that might be left out here of human kind is the strange mounds of earth and maybe a higher then normal background radiation count from all that stray fallout.
This Town is home to the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, the Senior Aboriginal Women from Coober Pedy who fought an inspiring successful campaign to stop a nuclear waste dump in their country... until the planners stared to look for other targets up north.
Somewhere over the years I'd gained a slightly romantic vision of Alice. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was some kinda style.. but the town its self was like small town with lots of nasty tourist shops.. and it is a lot greener than I expected!
luckily we were staying out of town. Out in the beautiful red sand and red hills and everyone-a-blinder sunrises & sunsets.. Sadly this amazing place is threatened land, its right by one of the proposed nuke dump sites. We stayed with the traditional owner of the land, Auntie Kath Martin. We talked with her, protested with her and felt her pain.. an inspiring woman.
She spoke with hurt that they had been told her she was being selfish, selfish in not wanting the nuclear & hospital waste to go there. that her and her people should do this for all Australians. So why can't the folks if Australia that are gonna at least use the energy and other applications have the dump in their backyard?
SUM UP...
What did I learn out in the desert?
- There are LOTS of reasons why nukes are no solution to climate chaos, least of which is by the time they would manage to build all the dammed reactors and infrastructure needed to power the inflated power needs of the population by nukes, that we'd be way to far down the line of messing things up climatically it would not be worth the bother.
- That the Aussie desert really is amazing, calming. The quality of sound and light is amazing.. and unreal. At times it felt like being on a sound stage. Its not dead out there its arid- a whole slower beautiful way of life as vibrant as the lushest forest.
- That, as ever, the worst to suffer from our capitalist overblown needs are not white, are not the privileged. I'm used to the racism of the privileged world being from afar.. our lifestyles messing with and stomping on the lives of folks in far away places . But here, if you look, its right in front of you. Welcome to Australia.
- That I am thankful I have experienced the land in this way, welcomed by the indigenous owners. That i didn't go out to Uluru and take the tourist trail that so threatens and disregards the cultural heritage of the indigenous people here. It meant so much to me, that I was thanked for visiting in such a way, when the thanks really needed to be the other way for such a heartfelt welcome.
- That nukes are really messed up. Well we all knew that but I now understand and really feel it. And understand more of the entire cycle. In the UK we are used to the issues of decommissioning reactors and what to do with the waste. We might discuss the problems of Uranium falling into the hands of folks who want to make nukes if there is so much of it being dug up. But, as much of my Australian experiences have been about recently, mining is so much at the root of things.
Enough. Leave it in the ground. All of it. Everything.
The Uranium, The Coal, The Oil, The Gold, The gorilla killing Tantalum in Mobile phones, the Water, The Crystals, The Peat .. Everything.. EVERYTHING! I can't see any good in mining.. any of it. Carrots, Potatoes, Parsnips... They can come out of the ground, but go any deeper than the topsoil and we are all in trouble.
Life continues in a crazy whirl of campaigning, trying to be in 4 far flung places simultaneously, being totally skint, blagging, and generally trying to exist on air while trying to stop a coal mine.. Not having any income for the last 7 month's is becoming a BIG problem.. But I seem to fall on my feet, it takes a lots of work & energy to exsit like this, but the folks of Australia have been awesome in looking after me!
I sometimes struggle to remember when life didn't consist of constant travelling between several places, hitching adventures, getting crazy rides in the back of vans with ferals, not knowing where I'm gonna sleep that night, absorbing new info about yet another evil company trashing another amazing wilderness and when getting to sleep with an actual pillow didn't fill me with such unabated excitement.
Sorry I'm being really bad at communicating recently.. I miss you all.. But often my rare times online I have to get a heap of campaign stuff done.. However I am trying to keep my blog & photo site updated as much as possible. I have lots of time travelling to think & remember all the fab things we have all done.. I miss you all so big love to York, Leeds, Oxford, Norfolk, London, Sheffield, Notts, Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland, The Warrior, Mayo, Dublin, Papua New Guinea and lots more places.. Hello!
Last week, in addition to my four far flung crazy paces, I popped up to brisabne.. oh a quick 12 hours away.. I was at 'SoS' Students of sustainability conference, which was much like an activist gathering in the UK , but on a student campus and a bit too posh.. But there were heaps of great people there and some amazing work being done. On the last day a whole heap of folks spontaneously, nothing to do with SoS... no really, went out and 'reclaimed the streets' in Brisbane CBD, which was very fluffy but heaps of fun..
Oh and there are also some pretty pics of tourist surfers (they couldn't surf for toffee!) and hippies at sunset from a brief stop over in Byron Bay.. we were glad to escape as soon as!
As you may have guessed I'm sticking around for a bit longer - but don't worry.. the beer here is like piss.. engevita costs about four times what it should and vegemite totally sucks. I really cant stick around in a country that long that cant get its yeast products right.
So.. gotta run.. coal mines to stop an all..
Off to the desert for two weeks to check out Uranium mines, nuke test sites and the like.. see you when I've been irradiated..
G'day from the largest coal port on the planet. Newcastle is home to the Batcave, a cool activist house by the beach. Its a huge old bond storage basement of now yuppie flats half buried into the ground with 'rooms' partitioned off with old banners, and bits of carpet. It means half the rooms, and the 'corridors' are very, very dark. A big population of Crows live in the park outside so there is the constant cackling awww awww to add to the batcave feel.
There's an always busy ping-pong table in the kitchen/lounge, canoes & boats and props from actions stuffed into dark corners, wet-suits hanging by the windows and a stack of surfboards by the front door. And get this.. there is a photocopier sat in the lounge.. and it actully works!
Regular banner making, meetings and cooking up of vast quantities of soup to take out to events means it a busy place. Random activist households around the world are great, used to a transient population, communal food where you chip in, new friends and a place you can chill out and be more than a guest.... you can just be.
I'm rapidly becoming a 'bat', so I better split soon before I need to pay rent!
Its raining and thers is a strong wind blowing us out to sea.. a huge ship laden with coal is headed out of the port as people on brightly colours canoes, boats, surfboards and a raft made from milk crates are paddling out to block its passage...
Before lunch, we'd been out there blocking the narrowest channel with about 70 people while the cop boats jetted about chopping up the water with their wake.
On shore around 100 folks gathered in support, along with the press with telephoto lenses and more cops huddled in groups to the side like wannabes not invited to the party.
We'd come ashore for hot soup and to warm up. Its SO not warm all the time in Australia.. that's a complete myth and its winter now. Then suddenly there was a call out that there a coal ship was on its way and people scrabbled back into wet suits and onto the water.. the cops got to the fastest paddler, who was going to get in front of the ship and capsized him in their wake. I'd just managed to squeeze back into a cold soggy wet-suit and was frantically paddling at the ship which was passing.. steadfastly ignoring the fact that I was never going to catch up with a huge cargo vessel in a kayak...
Newcastle Harbour exports more coal than any other port in the world, it has the capacity for 80 million tonnes a year. The coal is form the Hunter valley, where the sunning Anvill Hill is, and the place Centennial Coal want to turn into an open cast coal mine. The Hunter coal industry want to increase coal exports by 65% over the next 5 years. That's really a poor effort in the reducing climate wrecking carbon emissions..
Out of this hub of carbon shipage, from homes where sat on the sofa you can see giant coal ships go by, Newcastle Rising tide was sprouted. Activists working to stop climate chaos.. The crew here are great, and very much like the RT folks in the UK with similar politics, energy and action. The groups now communicate and network.. but the original concepts for both Rising Tide incarnations came totally independently, some ideas are just too good!
A report of the action can be found on Newcastle rising tides website: risingtide.org.au/
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