Floods and the Perilous March of Australian Sprawl

Australia’s urban sprawl into flood-prone regions presents a profound case of civilisation’s unchecked expansion colliding with the very processes of nature. In the philosophy of organism the world is not a static entity but an unfolding process, a constant interplay of forces. The spread of human habitation into precarious landscapes—buoyed by a reliance on fossil fuels that further intensify climatic volatility—is a prime example of what I have termed the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”: the tendency to treat abstracted human aspirations as if they exist apart from the living, shifting reality of nature.

Cities and suburbs stretch outward in search of economic growth and comfortable living, yet the land itself is not a passive receptacle for human will. The dynamism of rivers, floodplains, and weather systems does not submit to the rigid grids of development. The increasing frequency and severity of floods, driven in part by the very fossil-fuel-intensive activities that enable this expansion, illustrate the failure to integrate our urban ambitions within the deeper rhythms of an evolving planet.

There is an irony here—a civilisation that prizes rational planning is, in fact, perpetuating a chaotic and unsustainable trajectory. This is a problem of abstraction divorced from process. The concrete realities of atmospheric instability, rising sea levels, and the saturation of flood-prone soils are ignored in favor of a narrow economic calculus that sees only the immediate, not the emergent.

What, then, is the remedy? It is not merely a technical fix but a reorientation of thought. True wisdom does not impose an artificial stasis upon a dynamic world but seeks harmony with its processes. A city that respects the patterns of water, that adapts rather than resists, is one that aligns itself with the creative advance of nature rather than standing in opposition to it. If we are to avoid catastrophe, we must cease treating the world as an inert backdrop to human activity and recognize it as the active, evolving reality in which our own future is enmeshed.

(Curated text by Alfred North Whitehead, Process & Reality, Cyclone Alfred, Bellingen Area and ChatGPT.)

Social Acceleration in Bellingen/ Gleniffer Suburbia

After logging machinery has denuded the forest and ploughed up Gleniffer Rd. more fossil fuel monstrosities are widening the road again. This degraded landscape of Bellingen/ Geniffer now attracts high-speed burnouts with boomboxes.

This 'production of space' opened up the space for burning some tyres throughout the night. Far away from civilisation and enforcement the drivers are racing though the denuded koala habitat and residential areas.

It is futile to deliberate whether the suicides of young men are unintentional or intentional. The mobility infrastructure design demands automobility and speed. The active transport desert repels pedestrians and slow (e)mobility. The traffic jam spurs rage and violence.

Society demands the acceleration of the pace of life. Commercial combustion racing events encourage all petrolheads in petrotopia.

Driving always entails a latent ‘suicide risk' in this given system. The ‘integral accident’ is inherently woven into this mode of transport and technological acceleration. It is the 'collateral damage’ tolerated by all.

Mainstream media bombards us with ‘news’ of ‘accidents’. The overexposure to the daily slaughter on the roads leads to its normalisation. Only spectacles and superlatives can demand any attention now.

Daily reporting of a house that has 'collided' with a speeding car. A group of people without armouring that 'collided' with a flying car. Just another hit-and-run. Just another normal hit-and-run. A few walking school kids ploughed off the footpath while mounting the kerb. No road is ever wide enough or has enough bollards to protect living beings from these machine operators on autopilot mode.

The concepts of the all-terrain vehicle (ATV) and the 'Sports Utility Vehicle’ (SUV) destroyed all mental guardrails for the motorist. Roads became 'so yesterday'. The 4x4 combustion machine was liberated to conquer the rugged terrain (car ads) of all non road spaces. A mindscape of ‘without any limits’ was born.

This allocation of space/time means that humans and other animals now have to dodge these ubiquitous flying bullets. Living beings are literally out of a habitat, considering how many cars end up on top of their homes.

Cars doing burnouts at night are just a matter of degree to the ‘normal’ daytime traffic of a commercialised and heavily industrialised sub-urban Bellingen/Gleniffer area now.

Links:

Suicide or accident? The hidden complexities of intentional road crashes in Australia
https://theconversation.com/suicide-or-accident-the-hidden-complexities-of-intentional-road-crashes-in-australia-248673

The Original Accident, Paul Virilio, 2007
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Original+Accident-p-9780745636146

Bellingen's new footpath along Waterfall Way: From the CBD to the Butter Factory

When I hear Waterfall Way (drive) in Bellingen, I think road building, road widening, giant fossil fuel machinery, yet another upgrade, congestion, aggro motorists, speeding drivers, 'accidents', dead motorists and roadkill.

WFW is the main road into the SUV-centric town with either no or very few footpaths and cycle paths. A little town where time stands still, where climate change and extinctions are foreign gobbledygook.

As the population growth outpaces local infrastructure, ongoing 'upgrades' are taking place. The latest is to sink a footpath/cyclepath along WFW, on the tree lined Heritage Avenue between the Butter Factory and the CBD. Trouble is, the 'living heritage' has to go. Anyway, these old trees "reached the natural conclusion of their life cycles" They clashed with the “proposed footpath alignment and infrastructure of power lines and road widening” added to their demise. Many trees will have to go so we can “breathe new life into this important entry statement for Bellingen township.”

Standing in the traffic jam motorists seem oblivious to the numerous fossil fuel machines slowing traffic and engulfing wood ducks and people in dust and pollution.

After the 'living heritage' is ripped out, chopped or mulched, the construction of the 2.5-meter-wide shared cement path for pedestrians, cyclists, and wheelchairs is taking place.

A thick layer of 'the most destructive material on Earth' is smeared over the soil. Carbon dioxide emissions, climate change, topsoil and urban heat were off the agenda in this mobility design. 

Of course there will be an offset for the lost canopy/habitat elsewhere. Where is the energy consumption balance sheet for all the fossil fuel machinery, the concrete, the idling vehicles to make walkability and 'connectivity' possible? Why were permeable surfaces not considered?

I can see golf carts racing along the footpath now and 'enhanced safety' in “the pedestrian-vehicle conflicts near sporting fields," by just parking on the new footpath.

The Western Genre and The Settler Society Narrative

Some readings about the latest Western the entertainment industry has to offer: Killers of The Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese.

The western genre convention usually depicts the 'unbounded freedom' of the individual, the 'Lone Cow-boy' trope on horseback set in a 'wide and open spaces' narrative. The 'hero' operates outside the law on Indigenous landscapes and in frontier towns.

"Unlike the visions of unbounded freedom found in traditional westerns, Martin Scorsese’s new film is a study of a West bounded by the vertical geometry of oil rigs and the violent conspiracies of powerful men.” (source)

It is an “epic about the bloody birth of modern America... An epic of creeping, existential horror about the birth of the American century, a macabre tale of quasi-genocidal serial killings" (source)

The film is “an epic story of greed and betrayal in its examination of Osage life in Oklahoma circa 1920, and the mass murders of the Indigenous community at the hands of their white neighbors.” (source)

Leonardo DiCaprio: “It's still happening...The more work that I've done, certainly in the environmental space, you realise the systematic persecution of Indigenous cultures all throughout the world...It's happening all over the world, in Australia. It's happening in Africa, it's happening in South America...And I keep saying this quote over and over again, those places that are most rich in resources are those that are often most drenched in blood." (source)

The BBC mentions that the zeitgeist how Indigenous peoples are treated might be changing in the 21^st Century: "The film is making a strong statement that it's no longer acceptable to extract valuable assets from Indigenous communities without our consent and input.” (source)

Interesting times when Hollywood actors and their products problematise past massacres of settler colonialism and present day injustices against Indigenous peoples.

As Patrick Wolfe said: Settler colonialism is a “structure not an event” (source)

Update:

Revealing reading regarding mineral and petroleum royalties: For the Osage Nation, the betrayal of the murders depicted in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ still lingers, Conservation

A Cooked Intertidal Ecosystem at Sawtell Beach

Along Sawtell beach to the north, just before the Murrays Beach stairs is a big pipe socialising the terrestrial runoff from suburbia. The coastal pollution leads to some rocks on the beach making up the intertidal ecosystem. As a tough rocky interface between the sea, the land and the sky they provided rich pickings for pied oystercatchers and other shorebirds.

Run off pipe with eyes

The eutrophication from land leads to algae blooms covering the intertidal rocks. Green slime smothers the area. Adding the thermal stress of 'the hottest October on record', the intertidal animals, such as barnacles, limpets and tube worms were all cooked.

At the horizon a fisherman is gathering bait.