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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

In the Kandos Scout Hall for Cementa15

The Kandos Scout Hall

see more

The WRVAP Instruments of Democracy performance focuses on the metal lock-on equipment used as 'instruments of democracy' by many insightful and courageous people from all walks of life across NSW. Performed twice-daily during Cementa15, it is a 5 minute performance that bears witness to the non-violent direct action against open cut and coal seam gas mining that is spreading across NSW. 

 see more on Cementa15 site

Instruments of Democracy also included individual works by members of the WRVAP:

L-R: Suzanne Bartos; David Watson; Noelene Lucas & Juliet Fowler Smith
with cardboard lock-ons in the centre

L: Suzanne Bartos, centre + top: David Watson; R: Noelene Lucas

David Watson Checkout + Ransom Note (with Denise Corrigan) 
(powerpoint on screen), Australian Navigators 
(photographs) with performance images in front

Noelene Lucas Death by Coal video, with blackboard drawing behind
and performance objects in front

Juliet Fowler Smith Barking Owls and Weeping Woodlands
 with performance object in front

performance metal lock-ons  

top: David Watson Koala Diplomacy (2015) prayer flags;
 L: Juliet Fowler Smith; R: Toni Warburton

front: cardboard performance objects; centre floor: Margaret Roberts;
 top R:Toni Warburton AgitPots H2O (2015) clay and ceramic 

Margaret Roberts Life4Coal piled tuille cut-outs of
threatened species.  photo Jessica Maurer

Sue Callanan Breath by Degrees (2015) coal, felt
photo Jessica Maurer

Suzanne Bartos Another Meeting Pool (after Merlyn Skipper) puppets

photos by David Watson except where otherwise stated

 See also: Cementa15,  c/- Maria Miranda, c/- Gina Fairley, c/- The Mudgee Guardian,

and thankyou Fleur for your wonderful images and commentary on Sixtoeight.net

LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND Opened by NSW Greens MP Jamie Parker

Opening of LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND 

by Jamie Parker MP (left with chocolate frog ) 

with Juliet Fowler Smith WRVAP founder (right)) 

David Watson, artist and chief editor of The Stuttering Frog, 

introducing Sharyn Munro

Sharyn Munro, author of Rich Land, Wasteland

The Stuttering Frog #2

The title of this exhibition is taken from a popular song, a version of which you can see and hear here

LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND - the artwork

LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND at Articulate project space

David Watson Checkout  + Ransom Note (with Denise Corrigan)  

2013  powerpoint 

David Watson  Mining Rash [The Drip]  2013 

inkjet print on aluminium

Juliet Fowler Smith The Area of Affectation  2013

 installation, table, dowel, seats & found objects

Margaret Roberts Titled  2013

ply, hinges, live space/visitor-interaction

Noelene Lucas, Rivers of Coal  2013 3-channel HD video 

Christine McMillan Sludge  2013 

coal sludge in snow-domes on shelf

Sue Callanan Going, Going, Gone  2013 

hessian bags, stencil paint,coal, wood, lights

Ian Milliss Viburnum with Coal  2013 inkjet print

Noelene Lucas Living with Coal  2013 single-channel HD video

above  Toni Warburton coal clay water wood - some processes and relationships 2013. 

People are invited to submit words, images, patterns, marks from which the artist 

can select to draw onto clay beakers. Beakers will be glazed, fired and available 

for sale for $30.00 each on Sunday 1^st December. 

Neil Berecry-Brown Social Licence  2013 inkjet print

David Watson Fuse  1:100,000 maps showing proposed 2014 walk

 following power grid from Rozelle to Hunter valley source

Ralph Snowball New Lambton pit head, Adamstown  1897 

inkjet print (2013) from an original Ralph Snowball glass negative,

     courtesy Norm Barney Photographic Collection,University of Newcastle

photos Chris Ward and Margaret Roberts