Australian Broadcasting Corporation 7:30 Report
Broadcast: 26/01/2009
As Australians today celebrate more than 200 years since the arrival of the First Fleet, residents of the Kurnell Peninsula are continuing to fight big industry to reclaim the beauty of the land.
Video: http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200901/r333430_1507465.asx
Transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2474453.htm
ALI MOORE: As the nation marked the anniversary of the first fleet's arrival more than two hundred years ago, the residents of Sydney’s Kurnell Peninsula continued their fight to preserve an important part of Australian history.
Once a treasure trove of the natural beauty Botany Bay was named after, the Kurnell Peninsula is now an industrial eyesore. With an oil refinery, sand mining operation, and the city's new desalination plant all on its doorstep.
For more than half a century, the community has battled big industry to try to reclaim the land where Captain Cook took his first steps on Australian soil.
While the residents might feel they're fighting a losing battle, decades of protest have forged a strong and close-knit community that refuses to give up.
Kirstin Murray reports.
GRAHAM QUINT, NATIONAL TRUST: My family went to Kurnell for the day out, it was that spot, that wonderful iconic spot, playing on the sand hills, seeing the bushland and the Headland, people go out fishing there, it was a wonderful spot in people's memory.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: The Kurnell Peninsula at the southern end of Botany Bay was once a favoured destination for Sydney day trippers. A place where families could enjoy the same shore line captain Cook did when he landed years before.
Fifty years on, those memories are fast fading. This once treasured land has become a sorry stretch on the city's door step.
GRAHAM QUINT: Kurnell has essentially become a wonderful jewel wrapped in noxious industry and every type of development that isn't wanted in other parts of Sydney.
ANNETTE HOGAN: Sharing with an industrial theme park I think has become part of their way of life.
BERNIE CLARKE, ENVIRONMENTALIST: When I was a young fella I used to play here. There used to be Christmas bells, beautiful flannel flowers, banksias and acacias, lovely place. Now look at it.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: Retired fisherman Bernie Clarke waged a lifetime conservation battle to protect the area from the onslaught of industrial development. He is not alone.
Since the 1950s the National Trust's been campaigning with locals to halt development. Its Conservation Director Graham Quint says every Australian should be saddened by what Kurnell's become.
GRAHAM QUINT: The voyage of Captain James Cook back in 1768 was the first scientific voyage in the world. When he arrived here it was the first zoological investigation on the east coast of Australia, it all happened here at Kurnell.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: It's here on the Kurnell Peninsula Captain Cook first stepped foot on Australian soil. It was his enthusiastic description s of fertile meadow that is convinced his superiors New South Wales was the ideal place for settlement.
But the shores that held so much promise were quickly abandoned by the First Fleet and just as quickly forgotten.
LOCAL: When Captain Philip arrived, he found Botany Bay too shallow, moved on to Port Jackson, found one of the greatest harbours in the world and since then Kurnell was overlooked for many years.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: Two centuries on it's a very different bay that greets visitors. With some of Sydney's more noxious industry now calling the peninsula home the Botany's been driven from the bay.
The fresh water lagoon where Cook slaked his thirst has turned saline, erosion's causing the once mighty Banksia trees to slide into the sea, most migratory birds which came here to feed have moved on.
BERNIE CLARKE: If I was to stand on that same beach area today, the same month of the year, there would be no birds, the full length of the beach. Where have they gone?
KIRSTIN MURRAY: In what would be the first of many protests Bernie Clarke set up a road block in the early 1950s when plans for an oil refinery were announced.
BERNIE CLARKE: I was there at the opening, biting my tongue when I heard the chief of Caltex saying that it was so state of the art that there would be no oil spills. Within the first 12 months we had oil spills.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: As industry continued to encroach on the bay, Bernie Clarke's opposition became more vocal.
BERNIE CLARKE: We have this dredging go ahead it will destroy the source of food...
About time governments put a price tag on our beaches...
It's emptying something like about five tonne of hydrocarbon a month over the bay...
Look at this beautiful banksia, that was alive six months ago, that's 150-years-old...
KIRSTIN MURRAY: One of the peninsula's more controversial industries has seen its most recognisable landmark all but disappear.
By the 1960s, Kurnell's towering sand hills were being mined to feed Sydney's insatiable construction industry.
ANNETTE HOGAN, DUNES & WETLANDS PROTECTION ALLIANCE: I can remember the dunes being so high you would think you could never reach the top. It was something that's unusual in the middle of a major city in the world, a towering sand dune. So it was fantastic place to grow up.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: Four decades on, just one large sand dune's been preserved for locals to enjoy.
ANNETTE HOGAN: It looks pretty devastating when you look at it from the air. It's just big fresh water pools where the great majestic dunes used to stand with a few remnants in between.
GRAHAM QUINT: That's 1994, that's when the public concern about this issue arose and council began investigating the issue.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: Such is the rate of mining there has been concerns raised about its sustainability. Only one mine company remains but they've told the local council they'll be there for another 15 to 20 years.
ANNETTE HOGAN: I think we've got a real big concern looking at those recent aerial photographs of what's left there now. What would be left there in 20 years? It may be just one big pond. There would be nothing left there to revegetate or rehabilitate. I think we need to work with the government quickly and get a solution to this problem.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: There have been some wins along the way. Like the day Bernie Clarke successfully convinced a former New South Wales Premier a large oil spill had caused significant environmental damage.
BERNIE CLARKE: It was my day. Here I had these four politicians you see in the palm of my hand. I told them what footwear I wear and who clothes. Nobody gave that information to Bob Carr. Here he is in mud nearly up to his knees, tramping through that. He wasn't too happy with me.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: That close encounter with nature that day certainly had an impact on Bob Carr. His government upped the fine for oil pollution from $5,000 to $250,000.
GRAHAM QUINT: Some of these areas have been protected. Towra Point was set aside by the Whitlam Government as a nature reserve. It was intended to be an international airport at one stage and residential development. We've had nationally listed and state listed areas set aside, an aquatic area protected and the dumping that used to occur at Kurnell that no longer occurs.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: Triumphs like these are few and far between. That hasn't dampened the local community spirit.
SUSAN DAVIS, VOLUNTEER: I moved here three years ago and straight away my husband and I noticed this feeling amongst the people that they belong to each other. That they fought for the same purposes and they did things together that you might not find in other community.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: The state Water Catchment Authority is drawing up plans to sustainably restore the habitat by 2020. How they'll achieve this especially with work progressing on a controversial desalination plant opening next summer remains to be seen.
BERNIE CLARKE: The last nail in the coffin of Botany Bay. How did I feel? Pretty helpless and hopeless. And ah, disillusioned and disappointed.
KIRSTIN MURRAY: Eight years ago, Bernie Clarke decided he had enough, packing up his family and moving south, he left behind the bay where he'd lived for almost 80 years.
He now fishes the more peaceful waters of Sussex Inlet, three hours south of Sydney. At 87 years of age, he says it's now the right of future generations to continue the battle.
BERNIE CLARKE: When you come into this world, surely you are entitled to clean area, clean water, and if there are challenges to your lifestyle, to your freedom of speech or your freedom to breathe clean air, you're entitled to fight the person that's going to take that away from you.
ALI MOORE: The New South Wales Government says it's committed to phasing out sand mining but so far hasn't given a firm time frame.
Kirstin Murray with that report.
No comments:
Post a Comment