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Visit to Wollar

THIS IS MINE – NOT THE MINE’S

Col Faulkner outside his c. 1904

ex-butcher’s shop home in Wollar

Col ‘Midget’ Faulkner still holds the record, he says, for the longest tube ride on Sydney’s south side. Never one for publicity or competitions, Col – not to be confused with Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly – watched the greats come and go, and gave most of them more than he got: even world-champion Nat Young once made the mistake of dropping in on Col’s wave at Cronulla Point!

Nowadays Col lives a long way from the surf, in the tiny, dying hamlet of Wollar, 50 km north-east of Mudgee, five hours’ drive from Sydney. He lobbed there 30 years ago to visit his uncle, helped out with the shearing for six months, and never left. Col loved the peace and quiet - of being quite a way from anywhere. But for the past decade his town has been stealthily besieged, its social fabric eroded by the insidious intrusion of multinational Peabody Energy (the world’s largest private-sector coal company – recently declared bankrupt in the US), which operates the Wilpinjong coal mine, ever-closer to town. The NSW government is currently considering (i.e. about to approve) Pit 8 – an expansion which will bring more unacceptable dust, noise and division to the town and its dwindling population. Already residents have lost the mechanic and the hardware/stockfeed supply … and the school’s down to eight pupils. Since the bottleshop closed there's not even anywhere you can buy a drink.

Bev Smiles’ prescient COAL IS OVER! placard, Newcastle 2008

Photo: Sharyn Munro

On the invitation of long-time local anti-coal campaigner Bev Smiles, members of WRVAP attended a meeting convened in the Wollar Memorial Hall on 20 April 2016 to discuss ways in which the townsfolk might get a better deal (or rather, how a really bad deal from an industry now in its death throes, might be sweetened)…

Wollar Memorial Hall

After a number of residents (including Col) have had their say, several of us speak against the mine expansion – about degraded environments, compensation for ravaged social fabric, and mine remediation. Although the meeting is locally framed we feel impelled to emphasise that the extraction and burning of coal is currently destroying not only Wollar’s but the entire planet’s social and environmental fabric. [Only the day before we’d learnt that the corals in Sydney Harbour were bleaching due to dangerously warm ocean temperatures]. After a comfortable night’s sleep @ BIG4 Mudgee we drive back to Wollar next morning to take some photos. In the car we re-visit the complex traumas of coal mining and struggle once again to devise a manner in which we might capture its inhuman face, its incalculable costs within the spaces of a Sydney art gallery. Suddenly I see Col pacing within a cage, a white-maned man/lion neutered by circumstances beyond his control, speaking to (and perhaps growling at) visitors. When we meet him again later that morning I tell Col that we might need HIM for our exhibition, adding ‘but you probably wouldn’t want to come down to Sydney, would you?’. ‘Na’, he drawls, ‘I got outta there’.

David Watson 2016

Bev Smiles, 2017: Upper Hunter small communities are paying the price for the NSW Government's support for coal

Bev Smiles arrested under draconian anti-protest laws 2017

Once-promising road trip

Sydney Morning Herald 22.1.16

This afternoon, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that 'On Wednesday and Thursday senior officials were dispatched on a road trip to hear concerns of anti-coal activists.'

'The tour adds to signs that the push to develop coal mines is stalling, and may even face stiff new regulation.'

Bulga keeps fighting

update: Bulga comes to Sydney 7 August 

update: Wanarua elders face court 15 Sept

update: 'we live on the doorstep of the mine'

update police arrest Wanarua elders Kevin Taggart and Patricia Hansson

update: Bulga protest at Rio Tinto AGM

update: disputed land clearing

Make Some Noise For Bulga Thurs Dec 17th 2015, Macquarie Place Park 
(opposite NSW Planning Dept)
  Sydney. Image Singeton Argus

A rally calling for Justice for Bulga,Thursday 12 November
 2015,
 outside NSW Supreme Court  Sydney, image: Land Water Future

Bulga loses

On October 22 the SMH reported that Rio Tinto's plans to extend the life of its Mount Thorley Warkworth open-cut coal mine has moved another step closer to final approval after it gained approval from the Planning Assessment Commission's review panel.

  

Expansion of Rio Tinto's Warkworth open-cut coal mine near Bulga gets the go-ahead.

In its press release, Lock the Gate said the Rio Tinto Warkworth mine win robs Bulga of justice.  The independent planning panel’s recommendation to approve Rio Tinto’s Mount Thorley Warkworth mine expansion proposal is a blow for the Bulga community, who have fought the proposal for five years and twice won in court, says Mr John Krey, President of the Bulga Milbrodale Progress Association.

Residents of Bulga have fought fiercely against the expansion. . .Photo John Krey

On 27 November 2015, the ABC reported:

Residents of the small Hunter Valley community of Bulga have lost their battle against a controversial mine expansion, with the project given final approval.The Mount Thorley Warkworth project has been the subject of a long-running war between mining giant Rio Tinto and the residents of Bulga.
The Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) today approved the mine's expansion which will see the life of the mine extended by more than 20 years.
The proposal will involve the creation of an open cut super pit near the village of Bulga, to extract hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal.

Whitehaven AGM protest

Whitehaven Coal held it's AGM in Sydney today, and this is what greeted the board and shareholders as they arrived: a reminder that as Whitehaven's share price continues to tumble, coal is a bad investment!

Whitehaven and its controversial Maules Creek coal mine project has long been a target of protest due to the severity of the mine's impacts on Indigenous sacred sites, the Leard State Forest and its endangered flora and fauna, the local farming community, and the climate. 
30 October 2015
text & images: Land Water Future