Tag Archives: Bathurst Regional Council

How to do history

cabbageToday I’ve been crocheting a cabbage. It has a head and three green leaves; I may have to make one more leaf to make it look a little more cabbage-like. Lately I’ve made a kayaker, a few turtles and fish, a platypus and a blue damselfly (a blue dragonfly-like creature). These are all being stitched to a 60 metre (and growing) crocheted, knitted and woven representation of the Macquarie River stretching from Bathurst, to Hill End, Dubbo, Warren and beyond. This evening, at 5pm, we’ll be unfurling this “banner” at the Council chambers to no to a proposal to divert up to 10 megalitres of river water a day to a gold mine near Blayney. Some people will sing; others will hang more conventional banners painted by local teenagers saying things like DON’T ROB OUR RIVER; others will be holding home-made placards. Wiradjuri people, who have been here since time immemorial and call the river the Wambool, will be there too. Just now, I just got a call from an older man who said he would be there but he might be a little late, as his wife is infirm.

In the local paper today we’ve been branded as “emotional greenies” by Councillor Michael Coote, who is very cross at being bombarded with text messages. He feels we have been blessed by the gold mining company’s offer to take our water. The economic bonanza to follow will be like “winning the lottery”.

“As councillors we have to make decisions based on facts and not emotion,” Cr Coote said. “Let’s take the emotion out of this.”

The idea that Cr Coote is all about the facts and environmentalists are all about emotion is rather curious. Our case against the proposed extraction from the river is based on a cartload of scientific facts, all of which appear in Council’s own reports and pronouncements about the state of the local environment. Local temperatures are rising as climate change kicks in, and biodiversity is falling as habitat is destroyed. We environmentalists are quite aware of these facts, and find them devastating. Yes, devastation is an emotion. But it’s not a random or irrational emotion – it’s a congruent response to a set of facts.

Whether he realises it or not, Cr Coote is having some emotions himself. It would appear from the Advocate story that he is sick of the “scare campaign” by “greenies”. He’s sick of it! He’s not going to take it any more! He wants to get this whole thing over with by having Council vote in favour of the water sale tonight. That’ll stop those pesky text messages, and allow the river of cash to flow.

The fact is that we all have both minds and hearts. We all bring both to bear on our beliefs, values, opinions. It guides the language each side prefers to use. We say “water”; Cr Coote says “effluent”. It’s simply wrong for Cr Coote to say that he is being rational and we are being emotional. All sides in this are emotional.

While Cr Coote believes he is being factual about the river water sale, there is a fair amount of mythology – fantasy – at the heart of such an approach to the natural environment. The fantasy is that we can keep plundering our natural resources indefinitely. If there are consequences, they will be dealt with by unnamed, unknown people in the future, or downstream, or somewhere else in the world. To countenance this brings the possibility – perhaps just a whisper – of feeling bad. Best to retreat into a fantasy world in which “facts” can stand alone without being tainted by someone’s tears.

So, back to my crocheted cabbage. It’s true, Cr Coote, I’ve been feeling emotional about the river. As well as researching it and writing a respectable, unemotional submission to Council, I’ve been working off some sadness by making these little objects. The saying goes that history is made by those who show up. The suffragettes had a long procession of embroidered banners. We’ve got a long woolly river bearing turtles and cabbages. You might be just one person, just one cabbage – but together, we’re strong!

The esky in front of the post office

danger_eskyThere it was, an esky. Just a small esky, sitting on the footpath outside the Bathurst post office. Next thing you know, the whole street has been cordoned off and there are cops everywhere. The cops don’t want to touch it, lift the lid. They do a bit of thermal imaging on it, from a distance. Looks like it’s empty. It’s probably empty.

Eventually, after some hours, the all-clear. It’s just an esky.

All the way through this adventure, the police referred to it as a “suspicious package”. That sounds more important, more fearsome, than esky. Esky is a friendly little word, redolent of backyard barbies, camping, car-race watching. “We are concerned about a suspicious package,” sounds more dignified than: “We are concerned about an empty esky.”

But these are days of terror, and people are twitchy.

It would appear there’s no actual terror around here. I just went to the playing fields with Bertie, under a big blue sky with fluffy clouds. I stopped at the Visitors’ Centre cafe to grab a coffee, tying Bertie to the bike rack. The waitress ran out with a white plastic jug of water to pour into the dog bowl, because it’s a hot day. It was only in the car on the way home, coffee in the holder, Bertie panting in the back, that I was reminded about the terror. “Paris has seen terror before but not on this scale,” came the sound of a BBC reporter’s voice.

What complete nonsense that sentence was. Paris has known terror before, and on a far grander scale than last week’s atrocity. There was, for example, The Terror, the days of heads rolling away from the guillotine during the French Revolution, the same revolution celebrated every July 14. The war on Jews in Vichy France. And in October 1961, the massacre of 200 Algerians marching in favour of their country’s independence from France. Deep in her heart, Paris knows all about terror.

Terror is being perpetrated all the time, in many parts of the world, mostly affecting non-white residents of countries that don’t capture our imaginations the way Paris does. Paris is a mental home away from home, so we’re twitchy.

Meanwhile, with attention focused on the suspicious esky, Bathurst Regional Council was voting Yes to a quarry at Napoleon Reef. Local residents who had fought for eight months against the proposal – citing loss of biodiversity and negative impacts on a residential area – watched as the motion was moved by Coote, Seconded by Aubin, supported by Westman and Morse.  North abstained (non pecuniary interest) and Hanger voted against, giving a final vote of 4 to 1.  Councillors Bourke and Jennings were absent.

At the same time, the latest State of the Environment report was tabled, in which the importance of local biodiversity was underlined. Clearly, we are to process such information in different parts of the brain. Quarries are to be dealt with in the “economy” part of the brain; “biodiversity” is to be dealt with in the abstract, feel-good, environmental part of the brain. This means you can vote for a quarry that will destroy a fragile environment at the same time as you express support for biodiversity – as a concept. This allows you to hold competing ideas in the brain at the same time without falling into the abyss of cognitive dissonance.

I’m totally pissed off, to be honest. ISIS terrorists are getting everyone to play right into their hands. Paris is all about terror, now, swamping media coverage in the lead-up to the crucial climate change talks. Facebook is awash with people throwing up their hands and giving up on the human race, the sort of nihilism that makes you turn to sites like Cake Wrecks for relief (as I did last night, for an embarrassingly long time). Polls in Britain are supporting on-ground war against Islamic State. And here in Bathurst, we don’t just pave paradise, we dig another bloody great big hole.

But there is hope. Here’s Jack Black and current Internet cat sensation, Lil Bub, urging us to send a message to Paris: