Climate reading

Hansen J, Kharecha P, Sato M, Masson-Delmotte V, Ackerman F, et al. (2013) Assessing “Dangerous Climate Change”: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature. PLoS ONE 8(12): e81648. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081648


Abolishing the Climate Change Authority is a Really Stupid Idea, Senator Scott-Ludlam, WA Greens Speech, video and transcript, 101213

Heatwaves: Hotter, Longer, More Often. Report finds hot weather in Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra has already reached levels predicted for 2030. Climate Council

Be Prepared: Climate Change and the Australian Bushfire Threat, Climate Council, Bushfire report

State of the Climate - 2014, CSIRO report (update) 

War and Peace in Time of Ecological Conflicts, Professor Bruno Latour, Feb 21, 2014 lecture, audio: soundcloud, YouTube, (update)

Coal, dredging and more greenhouse gas emissions in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. abc environment, also in the Guardian

Update: (31032014)
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2014 report (by chapters)

Guardian: Climate change report: 'No pause in global warming, the worst is yet to come' – live:
"No-one is safe/ "Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change." - IPCC chairman, Dr Rajendra K Pachauri.
The atmosphere can no longer be used as an open sewer..."

World Bank: Without Action, The Planet Will See 4°C Warming by time teenagers today are in 80's 25112014

Images:
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, Black Sea
Leonardo da Vinci, Water and Storm, 1514

See also
Climate wars, Gwynne Dyer, audio

Australia a free republic ?

Governor-General Quentin Bryce, the Queen's representative, says she would like Australia to become a republic one day.

Ms Bryce, delivering the final Boyer Lecture of the year, said she hoped Australia might become a nation where "people are free to love and marry whom they choose" abc 221113

Image:
Graffiti on urban walls of a representative democratic republic

Update:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has brought back the titles of knights and dames for "pre-eminent" Australians abc 250314, Guardian

In the 1999 republic referendum, 55 per cent of Australians voted that Australia should remain a monarchy. SMH 2013

Campaign to end celebrity royal worship in Australia  0614 Courier Sun

Scottish referendum: Yes vote to independence could leave Australia without head of state, expert says abc 26082014 

It's unbelievable that we are going back to property based voting! So 18th century @Wendy_Bacon 

Australia is one of the few remaining western democracies whose citizens and residents lack any significant, constitutionally declared rights. Bill of Rights 

Aust Republican Movement says awarding Prince Philip Knight of the Order of Australia is a sign of cultural cringe abc 012015

Don't forget, it's Tony Abbott who approves Australian Knighthoods.... Twitter 012015

Severe storms on mid north coast unusually consistent

"The Weather Bureau says consistency of recent severe storms on mid north coast is 'unusual'

The Bureau of Meteorology said it is unusual to have so many severe storms on the mid north coast at this time of year....Afternoon thunderstorms have struck parts of the coast every day for the past week....Many parts of the region have already exceeded their average monthly rainfall for November....Forecaster Michael Logan said storms at this time of year are to be expected but not quite as many...."But to have every afternoon for a week back to back to back without a break is pretty rare."...The Dorrigo Plateau was covered in a blanket of white after a severe hailstorm yesterday afternoon."  abc 191113

Sawtell Hail Storm 161113
Hail storm in Bellingen 131113

Bellingen

This iconic dwelling in Bellingen could stand for our only habitable home that is being vandalised by the addiction to burning fossil fuels and deforestation.

Sawtell Hail Storm

Toormina and Sawtell battered by mid-afternoon hailstorm 16.11.13
Severe weather: alert for Coffs Coast and eastern seaboard. Golfball-sized hail has been reported at Bellingen. (again!) 16.11.13
Massive hail buckets down on Queensland's Sunshine Coast abc 16.11.13 
Hail damage to Coffs Coast worst outside metropolitan area 17.11.13 
Weekend hailstorm on the Coffs Coast causes millions of dollars worth of damage 18.11.13 
Hail at Sawtell November 16, 2013, 18.11.13 
Dorrigo's town centre has been blanketed in hail as a severe thunderstorm continues to track over the coast. 18.11.13
Dorrigo hail storm - 181113 
Sawtell hail,16.11.13 video

And here we go again 21.11.14 
Brisbane hail: "We had to run to get out of there, the speed of the hailstones were like bullets. The place looked like a warzone." 281114 

2021:"Apocalyptic" hailstorm. Hail up to 30cms deep in the Coffs Harbour region. The roof in Toormina mall collapses and turns into a waterfall. Any link to climate disruption?

Hail storm in Bellingen

A severe storm brought a lot of hail to Bellingen at 5.30 pm. The land at the feet of Dorrigo Mountains was hit with approx. 2-3 cm hailstones and carpets of graupel.

One could imagine the typhoon arms of 315 km/h Typhoon Haiyan reaching over to the Pacific and articulating its rage here.

Yesterday Sawtell, Toormina and Boambee East were hammered by hailstones the size of golf balls.

Updates:
Climate change makes super typhoons worse, says UN meteorological agency, abc 141113 
Super storm wreaks havoc in Guangxi, Hainan, xinhuanet 131113
Annual losses from disasters quadruples as World Bank links typhoon to climate change 191113 
Typhoon Fuels Call for Global Warming Compensation Funds, Bloomberg 191113
World Bank Says Natural Disasters Cost $3.8 Trillion Since 1980 Bloomberg 191113
Hornsby was hit by a tornado, Bureau of Meteorology confirms 191113 
People around the world are feeling the "wrath of a warming planet",U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon 201113

Graupel and Eucalyptus leaves

Hailstones and teaspoon

Bats and birds increase crop yield in tropical agroforestry landscapes

"Ecology Letters": Bats and birds increase crop yield in tropical agroforestry landscapes. Abstract
 
"We found that bat and bird exclusion increased insect herbivore abundance, despite the concurrent release of mesopredators such as ants and spiders, and negatively affected fruit development, with final crop yield... Our results highlight the tremendous economic impact of common insectivorous birds and bats, which need to become an essential part of sustainable landscape management."


Insect-munching bats spare the chemicals. abc 240305

"Farmers can reduce the need to spray their crops with insecticide by encouraging insect-eating bats to roost in old hollow trees in their properties...There are about 90 species of bats in Australia, three quarters of which subsist solely on insects and spiders...The smallest species of bat in south-eastern Australia is the little forest bat (Vespadelus vulturnus), weighing in at just four grams. It gorges itself on mosquitos, while the southern free tailed bat (Mormopterus) feasts on the destructive Rutherglen, or seed bug ( Nysius vinitor)."

"Many farmers are unaware of the benefits of insect-eating bats... and often don't even know they have the tiny nocturnal mammals on their properties. Dr Lindy Lumsden "is encouraging them to preserve old dead trees on their properties so that bats can roost and breed in their hollow trunks...People often see a dead tree as just being good for firewood or a bit of an eyesore and cut them down...The main thing that farmers can do is maintain the remnant vegetation on their properties so the bats can breed themselves up....It takes around 80 to 100 years for tree hollows to develop, so farmers need to revegetate to ensure the trees that fall down and die, leaving bats homeless, are replaced in years to come."

Images:
Pisanello, Detail of Madonna of the Quail, 1420
Kaki Persimmon fruit, (Diospyros kaki)

Updates:
Native birds provide crop benefits, but Australian farmers treat them as a pest, abc 022014 

"Effects of land use on bird populations and pest control services on coffee farms” Railsback, S. F. and M. D. Johnson. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1320957111.  042014

Downturn in shade-grown coffee putting forests, wildlife, people at risk, mongabay, 07.2014

Shade coffee is for the birds 05022015

 Why shade-grown coffee is good for birds and farmers, The Conversation 26.02.2015

Snippets

No lawn without fossil fuel

Climate
Science-denying -  production of ignorance and the public right to know.
Big Australian media reject climate science. It is not surprising therefore that levels of acceptance of anthropogenic climate change have dropped in Australia, where we have the highest emissions per person in the world.  The Conversation  011113

Mega footprint, fossil fuel turf

Sprawl
A 200 lot sub-division was approved at the site near Woolgoolga in 2010, and the developers now want to expand it to 280 lots. They also want to see a restriction on domestic cats and dogs lifted."It's a delicate ecosystem in Hearnes Lake, because it feeds into the Solitary Islands Marine Park, into an area near Flat Top Rock" abc 041113

Bushfires
threaten World Heritage wilderness west of Kempsey. The Racecourse Trail and Dungay Creek fires have now burned across almost seven thousand hectares of mainly public forest."The conditions are that dry that it's just burning through all of those normal good containments. "There are no properties under threat but there is of course World Heritage listed areas in there and the environmental impact is quite serious." abc 041113

Slash & Burn
New arson laws could see farmers charged with criminal offences. Farmers involved in approved fuel reduction burns could be charged with arson if the burns get out on control and cause unforseen damage. abc rural 041113

Meat
Growth promotants (HGP) in beef. "I've worked in the meat packing plants for many years and when beta agonists first came on the market I started seeing problems I'd never seen before, stiff sore footed cattle that kinda hurt all over, just don't want to move." China, Taiwan and Russia have also banned US beef that's been treated with beta agonists. abc rural 041113
Rural
Higher death rate for rural cancer patients. Rural patients lagging behind city counterparts on cancer treatment abc, 041113

Drought in the Bellinger Valley

The Bellinger Valley is experiencing the driest Spring in 43 years. abc

"Australia in the middle of its hottest-ever year...The next six months are going to be unusually hot, dry and risky." The Conversation 

Update:
North Coast enduring driest conditions in more than a century. Average rainfall was the lowest since 1901 in the region from Coffs Harbour in the south to Bundaberg in the north. abc 110814

The Armed Man - Thoughts on War

The Concert:
Karl Jenkins: The Armed Man (‘Mass for Peace’) The anti-war piece was performed by the North Coast Performing Arts Orchestra and Choir for the UN International Day of Peace. The event took place in the Bellingen Soldiers' Memorial hall.

Thoughts on War:
Intense warfare is the evolutionary driver of large complex populations. Primate and ant societies pursue war to defend their turf or invade others for resources. Settler culture and rapid reproduction leads to an overflow of the 'petri dish'. The early enthusiasm for endless growth and expansion brought about a way of life of  'Go forth, multiply, fill the Earth, subdue and vandalise the Garden'. The logic of expansionism led man to the "The brutal destruction of 'creation'." H. Blumenberg

The uncanny hubris
of 'creation's crowning glory' promising to achieve paradise on Earth now might have as an outcome the creation of hell on a once habitable planet. (Anthropocene, CO2)

'The pride of creation' usurped the place of the many Earth gods, which they later rationalised into monotheism before upstaging 'the only one'. Heads of hierarchical societies grounded their existence with recourse to God - the sovereign's ownership of the land.

Techné
Controlled fire use by early humans and tool manufacturing enabled a civilisation of ever-refined means of destruction. Warfare conducted throughout human history has refined the means of killing and formed society.
The perpetual peace of “citizens of the Earth” (Erdbürger) had no chance against the perpetual war of defending the home soil from the other, or the land grab 'over there'. The state of war of all against all' in a 'free market' and the invisible fist of the market place became the new state of nature.

Sovereignty declares a 'state of exception' (G.Agamben) with a tendency to generalize of the exceptional state. This is a powerful strategy for legalised lawlessness,  suspension of the juridical order. Undeclared wars rage and no one can any longer say "we didn't know".

Framing of War
War is "framed" in the media so as to prevent us from recognising the people who are to be killed as living fully "grievable" lives, like ours. "Collateral damage" is not part of the war game.

Spectacles of Blood
"Roman gladiatorial shows were not put on for the purposes of indulging violence, bloodlust and cruelty, even if they may seem that way today. Instead, they were put on for several important purposes including social control and education". Today's media frames the robot wars 'over there'. Decisions are outsourced to machines. The masses consume the spectacle at a safe distance on screens. The spectacle, a social relation between people that is mediated by images is a self-fulfilling control mechanism for society.
 
A society modelled on war.
The 'war model' of the modern city and of human catastrophic society is elaborated in Virilio's  'dromology'.  "The expansive project of modernity has reached its limit in the light speed colonization of terrestrial time and space by technology and media"

A permanent war economy merged with Disaster Capitalism (Naomi Klein) further accelerates and exacerbates the catastrophic nature of modernity. Disasters (economic, political, military or natural) are good for profits - they reboot the system.  "Creative destruction, interventions and economic reconstruction mobilise resources for some. Margins are the largest outside the system of civil society. All is frontier with the loot going to the 'highest bidder'. There is no longer a safe place - anywhere!

Discipline techniques
Disciplinary or managerial techniques are initiated and developed into a technology for the control of individuals. (Michel Foucault) "'Discipline' may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a 'physics' or an 'anatomy' of power, a technology." Psycho-orthopedics and pharmaceuticals also aid in the pathology of normality.

Ordinary people engage in "the banality of evil." (Hannah Arendt). Genocides continue and we are running amok causing "the earth’s sixth mass extinction event, through such anthropogenic impacts as habitat loss and modification, the spread of invasive species and climate change" Is omnicide the goal? Modernity as a system of efficiency, beyond ethics, mobilises all in the war against nature.

The driverless and shipwrecked ship of fools cruises (kyvernó̱:  steers, navigates) into the anthropocene, with no goal other than cruising the ocean of 'business as usual': more growth on an infinite planet, holding tight to the rudder of pathological denial. 

Armed man is a tautology inhabiting the machinery of war.


Texts:
Agamben, Giorgio,  State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, excerpt, Video, European Graduate School. 2003, starts at 2.29 min.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus:, 1980/ Nomadology: The War Machine (New York: Semiotext(e), 19
Subtopia, A field guide to military urbanism
Aeschylus, The Persians 

Images:
1.  Blake, William Blake, The Ghost of a Flea, 1819–1820  
2.  Arcimboldo, Giuseppe, Fire 1566
3.  Goya, Francisco, The Disasters of War  (Désastres de la Guerra), 1815–1820
4.  Bosch, Hieronymus, detail of Haywain Triptych, 1516

Creating an inhospitable ecosystem on Earth

We have maneuvered our hospitable planet into turbulent and chaotic property changes. In the anthropocene we have profoundly modified the Earth’s landscape. Human activities are creating an inhospitable ecosystem for human biomes and the biosphere at large.

The diy catastrophic climate breakdown is due to the addiction to burning fossil fuels. We are racing into a 4 degrees Celsius scenario, although it is known that fossil fuels need to stay unburned to meet climate target of 2°C. Some engage in pathological denial and are willfully blind to it resuming business-as-usual. For some it's enough to have a “change of government and climate change just disappears!”

There will be a legacy from the ones that “dig it up, ship it out and let it burn” - an out of control array of fire 'incidents', droughts, record intense heatwaves, floods, an 11-cyclone season, sea level rise and a dead, acid ocean.

Climate disruption will have severe implications for Australia's already challenged biodiversity conservation and protected areas. "Rates of extinction of species are likely to increase as the global average temperature rises by just 1.0 or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and likely to accelerate sharply as temperature rises beyond 2 degrees Celsius."

Land degradation as usual continues with clearing, logging and slash and burn. The fossil-fuel-powered culture of sprawl, mining, plantations and pastoralism munches its way through all Australian biomes.

Fear of mega fire storms
There is a tendency to reclassify all bush/ native vegetation as fuel that needs incinerating with so that it cannot burn in the future. Backburning often leads to out-of-control blazes. Hazard reductions take place in nature refuges around cities and ever growing settlements in bushfire-prone areas. Arsonists and thoughtless cigarette tossers do their bit.

It is soothing to know ...

That Australia's 25,000 plant species have found a safe habitat in perpetuity in the freezer.

That Australian wildlife threatened by climate change will be relocated.

That "a refusal to implement the Kyoto Protocol or do something about CO2...calls for a new approach to deal with people displaced by climate change." Both overseas and local climate refugees.

That there is a "fires near me" app.

Images:
Public transport station

Updates:
The refusal to make the link between the fires and climate change will condemn more people to the inferno The Guardian
Heed the warnings on the new climate reality, The Guradian 

Waterfall Way - Lining the Pacific Highway with Crumbled Mountain

Speedy motorist society requires lining the roads with stuff. Mountains disappear and the Pacific Highway gets 'upgraded' with gravel. Bellingen Shire Council has just consented to expand a quarry at Dorrigo. Dorrigo is 731 metres above sea level. All mining trucks will wind their way down steep Waterfall Way. It is also New South Wales' best and Australia's third most beautiful tourist drive. And it is steep and narrow!  "Approval was for 100 trucks and adding an extra 200 trucks each week - many of them with dog trailers... Another concern is any potential instability of the mountain side due to heavy rains that may turn into a landslide under the weight of substantially increased larger truck movements. "

This would mean increased truck movements up and down Waterfall Way and through residential streets. Bellingen is structured like a drive-through town, with logging and smelly cattle trucks already roaring through the village. Car fumes and vehicle noise already prevent one from lingering or shopping.

Traffic is not just noisy and deadly but also has an impact on (residential) property values. "It is estimated that traffic involving trucks can decrease property value 150 times faster than strictly car traffic"

Sources:
Bellingen Council backflips 6-1 on controversial quarry bid

The development application includes increasing truck activity to 400-movements a week, to and from the quarry along Waterfall Way.

EPA stops gravel extraction from Corindi 

Updates:
200 extra laden truck movements through Bellingen. Meeting to discuss heavy traffic impact on Waterfall Way to the Pacific Highway. Bellingen Courier 101113

Waterfall Way Rd. Over the past five years there have been 81 accidents: resulting in one fatality and 133 injuries... It’s believed that approximately 20,000 tonnes per month will be carted down the mountain by 600 loaded trucks...This means that a total of 120 trips per day, or if curtailed to a five day week, 140 truck and dog vehicle movements per day. Bellingen Courier 062014 


400 Bellinger River turtles have been found dead or dying, see especially 2.6.2015 update on petrol contamination from vehicles to build more Roads to Ruin,

Retreat

A long weekend in a retreat (60-something kms from Bellingen). Multiple huts in a rural landscape.

On arrival multiple fossil fuel powered machinery made the landscape 'tidy'. The disturbing and excessive noise and dust pollution hogged the attention.

On opening the door to the premises, one was hit by an intense cloud of synthetic fragrances that was cooking on a power point. All textiles were drenched in these potentially hazardous synthetic chemicals. Curtains and furniture seemed to be dipped in fire foam and flame retardants. The bedsheets smelled perfumed. The kitchen cupboard had, as in most Aussie kitchens, the well-used spray can of pesticide handy. The water, without a filter, tasted foul and metallic.

The closeness of the  neighbouring huts tried to emulate a feeling of a tight-knit sub-urbia back home. Families wanting a "getting away from it all" feeling ended up in the confinement of 'family cabins'. "Loudness-as-an-inalienable-right “(Wallace, David Foster) of families one might add. Large unplanned families with the full package of pets and all the baggage. Parents intensely interacting with their wearables. Many mouths scream. The child that cannot use language cries and screams.

The dads of instant culture pour petrol, meths or other accelerants on the meat altar. The incinerated meat stands in the form of cows not far off. They are usually pre-cooked in the shelter-less Australian sun.

The toy pets bark and squeal from the abuse of being mistaken for a horse. Agitated the free range dog chases the only Australian native fauna in sight, a brush turkey. For short minutes distraction culture goes sensation seeking and then they sprawl and sprawl.

The use of the veranda is impossible and the hut smells toxic. The entire night the resident rooster claims his territory over the visiting Koel and the array of family dogs bark and yap and yap and yap.

Next idyllic morning the neighbouring fence is being drenched with toxins trailing in a large dust drift. The posts are meters away from the line of huts. Copious amounts of herbicide/pesticide is being doused, the diesel of the tractor fills the 'shelter' up with thick clouds of diesel fumes.

We retreat to a coastal eatery.  A deafening aural ambiance from families being fed. In the food preparation area a white, plastic auto mist box disperses pesticides totally unmanned round-the-clock! At short intervals poison is being released on to 'bugs', staff and customers. Enthusiasts of old car wrecks generously share the fumes of their old timers which fill the entire cafe.

People just seem to tolerate the ubiquity of pesticides and noise pollution

We disappeared through the sanitised, chemicalised agricultural acres which stretch for mile upon mile. Australian flora and fauna has been eradicated or only fragments are left as retreats.

Images: 
Cicada, domesticated silkmoth, Bombyx mori and a diversity of flies, Alfred Brehm,  Brehm's Life of Animals

Even ‘environmentally protective’ levels of pesticide devastate insect biodiversity. 
 Common insecticide used in homes associated with delayed mental development of young children

Update
Pyrethroid insecticides exposure increasing in homes and people, 07022014

A Society Tolerating Dog Attacks

And again a small child was mauled by a pet. A five-year-old girl was badly injured in a dog attack on the NSW mid north coast. The dog bit her face taking off part of her nose. The little girl is in a stable condition but traumatised for life. abc 1.10.13

A strange society privileging meat-eating carnivores over their own offspring... 

Declaring the dog "Man's best friend" and rejecting Australian fauna.

Update:
Wild dog pack ‘hunted’ down grandmother at Casuarina beach, NSW 24.03.2015

Related
Dangerous Animals of Australia
Australia has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world
Repurposed Zebras, Ostriches and Australian fauna into Dog Poo
Pet owners go barking mad over controls push
Rejecting the local environment: Australian fauna. Biodiversity decline in Australia.

Image
Graffito artist unknown,  On CO2 concrete jungle

And a Pheasant Coucal crossed the road slowly...

Driving along Hydes Creek Road a Pheasant Coucal walked across the wide road very, very slowly, keeping a good eye on the car. Then a quick dash under the barbed wire fence and the dense sedges. The Centropus phasianinus is a large 'pheasant-like', ground-dwelling cuckoo. Audio , AV cuckoos.

Image:
Alfred Brehm,  Brehm's Life of Animals (Possibly one of the 9,000 dead birds collected?)

The Bellinger River and dairy

New Zealand-owned Raleigh Dairy Holdings operates two farms at Yellow Rock and North Bank south of Coffs Harbour. The directors want to realise the asset and focus on their New Zealand operations. The company has approval from the Bellingen Shire Council to expand operations at its North Bank Dairy.

In 2011, it withdrew a development application for expansion of its Yellow Rock site, following community concerns over the possibility of effluent run-off during floods polluting the adjacent Bellinger River.

abc rural, Major NSW dairy for sale 17.0.913

Update:
abc 15.04.2015  "The (Norco) Raleigh operation recently celebrated 12 months exporting cold milk to China. It's currently exporting between 5000 and 20 000 litres a week.... The next financial year they expect to export between three and five million litres of cold milk to China." 

Images:
Marc, Franz, The yellow Cow, 1911
Gogh, Vincent Willem van, Lying Cow ,1883

Rejecting the local environment - Let's go pink

"The first bunches of commercially-grown Australian peony roses hit the Sydney flower market this week." abc

Finally another pink thing from Elsewhere to brighten up the 'drab Australian bush'. Azaleas and Rhododendron already frame the real estate, now Paeonia will blossom.

It seems to be a heritage of the settlers then and now to hurl exotic plants either intentionally or unintentionally. A huge horticultural industry and the blind eye of regulation are structurally aiding the dispersal of exotic plants.

"…Most gardens reject the local environment." 

Why is this so in Australia?

The mostly female desire for pink might be the need to be in the pink.

Images:
Macke, August, 1910, Azaleas
Manet, Edouard, 1864, White Paeonia
Corinth, Lovis, 1921, Pink Clouds

Dorrigo

The town of Dorrigo is on the the Dorrigo Plateau , the traditional country of the Gumbaynggirr nation. Today endless paddocks and European flora cover the landscape.

Gondwana rainforests in the form of Dorrigo National Park, World Heritage Area still clings to the edge of this plateau. Sub-tropical rainforest and a large array of animals find refuge there.


In town a collection of black trains, some from 1878, stand out. The private Dorrigo Steam Railway and Museum seems rarely open to the public.

Mining is on the agenda here. The Pacific Highway needs to be lined with stuff from the mountains. Heavy haulage would shoot down Waterfall Way and increase the traffic burden even more. 


A Chinese company also has several exploration licences for minerals including gold and copper northwest of Dorrigo. The Dorrigo Environment Watch Inc. are residents concerned about their local environment, water quality and the effects of antimony mining.

The Gleniffer Quilt and Craft Fair

Quilting, beading, fabric dying and rug making in the Gleniffer Hall
For 2015 see here. 

Celebrating Fossil Fuel Culture on Forest Roads

The International Automobile Federation is showcasing car culture on forest roads in the Coffs Coast region. The spectacle of conspicuous consumption of fossil fuel will attract 10,000 motor enthusiasts arriving with their vehicles to enjoy the "quiet country roads and an endless network of forest trails, lush green hinterland roads, creeks and rainforest drives." They will encounter "a variety of beautiful bush settings and will find tranquil spots in the towns of Nana Glen, Glenreagh, Lowanna, Bellingen, Valla, Raleigh and Bowraville and Argents Hill." There will be the breath-taking landscapes of the Newry State Forest, Tuckers Nob State Forest and the Wedding Bells State Forest


The Mid North Coast of NSW, still has various protected refuges for Australian fauna and flora. The rich biodiversity of life is able to coexist in more or less fragmented habitats. Sprawl and the arteries of automobile dependency etch their way through 'the bush'". Logging, mining and speeding cars already encroach on the environment.

Residents living in little towns, rural dwellings or bush blocks seem to be used to the roar and dust of speeding vehicles and the local wildlife smeared across the roads. The noise pollution generated by racing cars might hardly outdo the daily chainsaws/slashers/mowers/whippersnippers/trail bikes etc.

One just tolerates things in the country...

Once the bushfire smoke from three hundred and fifty escaped hazard reductions has dissipated motorised business as usual can continue.

Traffic-Related Air Pollution, Particulate Matter, and Autism
Exposure to traffic-related air pollution, nitrogen dioxide, PM2.5, and PM10 during pregnancy and during the first year of life was associated with autism. Further epidemiological and toxicological examinations of likely biological pathways will help determine whether these associations are causal.

See also
Staging Car Races in Nine State Forests of NSW, 2014 

Noise Pollution and Vibration in the Bellingen Shire, 2015 

Update
One child dies and two other children injured in Rally Championship spectacle, the guardian 10.05.2015

Dangerous Animals of Australia

After wolves and bears have been nearly eradicated, people fear the shark as a man-eater.

Most human habitats are now free from dangerous animals. Modern dwellings are now being filled with a menagerie of pets. It seems like a return to the times where people and animals cohabited in stable-like (byre-dwellings) homes. A billion $ industry and the media nudge all to take on more ballast. Isolation and deprivation make people acquire a pet or a whole pack. For some they are a fashion accessory or just a cheap thing to keep the kids busy.

Dogs maul (children to death) on a regular basis without real consequences in society at large.  'Minor attacks' happen on a regular basis.

Livestock is also attacked by the abandoned, unfashionable or 'surplus to requirements' pets.

Pet owners choose to sponsor these meat gobbling pets over unique Australian wildlife.

" In the five months to January 31, paramedics in NSW treated at least 237 people for dog bites and attacks and 22 people for incidents involving cats."

sunshinecoastdaily, 7.2.13

Hungry Head Beach Going to the Dogs

Cars shoot through Hungry Head Road, killing wildlife to get to the beach or lookout quickly.

Coastal sprawl pushes into the endemic bush sprouting lawns and exotic flora, fauna and packs of dogs.

At the beach off leash dogs run riot, most pet owners are entertaining 2-3 often large dogs. The dogs urinate and defecate as they go along the beach. Large packs of dogs roam the dunes for any possible Australian wildlife surviving there. Sunseekers do not seem to mind baking in the drenched sand.

Severe erosion, 2- 3 m high the sand has washed away. Very large wildlife supporting banksias collapse onto the beach. Black Cockatoos feed in the last remaining tall trees.
The Surf Life Saving Australia building seems to be melting into the beach. A few rocks thrown at the supporting stumps might not halt the sea level rise.  Collapsed stairs will soon provide easy access for motorists and their dogs again.


At all points of entry are huge signs that dogs are not allowed in this delicate area. The pet owners arriving via fossil fuel power to empty their dogs where others swim or surf must be either illiterate or lawless.

Enforcement does not seem to go further than the signs as with each year the number of exotic canines relieving themselves seems to double.

Gone are the days of Bluetounge lizards racing over the beach sand, sea shore birds resting or even nesting. Biodiversity is sacrificed to a monoculture of 'man and his best friend' from suburbia.

There is always a slight unrelaxed feeling walking along the beach as it is really a highway. Fast and powerful SUVs fly in all directions endangering the life of walkers, beach users and wildlife.

Update:
Wild dog pack ‘hunted’ down grandmother at Casuarina beach, NSW 24032015

See
Valla Nature Reserve and Urbanisation