Traumatic landscapes of plastic, pollution and exploitation

The coastline of Spain is known as the ‘Sea of Plastic’ ("Mar de Plástico”) It is the world’s largest plastic greenhouse complex with 350 square km of fruit and vegetables grown by immigrant labour for the horticultural industry. >>
https://www.behance.net/gallery/22272681/Mar-del-Plastico#

Could we do the same thing to the coast of NSW?
NSW Greens to move bill to let councils better regulate berry industry as it continues rapid expansion

“People move into these beautiful valleys for the lifestyle and the environment but then wake up one day and within months they are looking at an industrial-scale blueberry farm."

"Faehrmann’s bill will call for mandated buffers between intensive horticulture farms and homes and waterways, as well as strict controls on spraying, runoff and irrigation and greater monitoring of produce for pesticides."

"Blueberry farming is rapidly expanding beyond Coffs Harbour, where it began several decades ago, into the Nambucca Valley and the Kempsey area to the south, and west toward Grafton and Bellingen."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/31/australia-berry-industry-bill-nsw-greens
#rivers #water #extractivism #pesticides #MidNorthCoast #ChinasOrchard #horticulturalIndustry #regulation #runoff #pollution #plastic #PALM #blueberries #SeaOfPlastics #TraumaticLandscapes #NSWCoast #NSW #CoffsHarbour #Nambucca #Kempsey #Grafton #Bellingen #residents #habitability #NSWLogging

I don't know why they think tougher laws will change anything. Have you thought about addressing why kids are doing this?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-23/kempsey-youth-crime-rally-calls-for-tougher-bail-sentencing-laws/104971194

#News #Crime #Kempsey #Australia #Youth

The Dunghutti people and sand mining

"Uncle Reg was among the many Indigenous people forcibly removed from a camp there at the time. He was six years old when his family's homes were bulldozed and burnt to make way for the sand mine. He said his family were told to "pack a bag and get out of here". We saw them drive up and push the houses over, pushed them to the ground and poured kerosene or diesel over them and set them alight....When the rutile sand mine later closed in 1985, the land became a dumping ground for rubbish and burnt-out cars."

"Uncle Cedric said he would like to have the land returned to his people, or to see them compensated for their loss of home and culture."

#mining #MineRehabilitation #LandUse #NSW #MidNorthCoast #CrescentHead #BackBeach #DunghuttiPeople #CarvedTrees #Kempsey

Unearth the truth
"Multiple sites of possible secret or “clandestine” burials have been discovered on the grounds of one of the most violent and abusive institutions of the Stolen Generations era – Kinchela Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home on the north coast of New South Wales."
"Former residents of Kinchela, near Kempsey, call on NSW government to excavate site after ground-penetrating radar picked up at least nine suspicious anomalies."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/07/kinchela-aboriginal-boys-training-home-secret-graves-burial-sites-stolen-generations-institution-children

‘Taken to hell’: Even today survivors of Kinchela Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home are known by their numbers
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/07/kinchela-aboriginal-boys-training-home-kempsey-burials-graves-residents-survivors
#Kempsey #Christians #Kinchela #children #survivors #MidNorthCoast #AU #CA #IndigenousPeoples

The Great Koala National Park misunderstood
A letter by Grahame Douglas, President, National Parks Association of NSW, Korora.

Excerpt:
"...The current Government committed to the establishment of a GKNP comprising existing national parks (135,000 Ha) as well as areas of native forest (approximately 175,000 Ha).

Currently, native forest harvesting is neither economically or environmentally sustainable, which is why there is a need to invest in genuine plantation forests.

Forestry Corporation currently cross subsidizes native forest logging through its profitable Softwoods Division and direct Government subsidies on the public purse.

Haulers will need to go back to their original areas (hopefully not native forests) rather than the accelerated harvesting occurring around Kempsey, Nambucca and Coffs Harbour.

Clearly the impacts of national parks management are far less than that of FCNSW contractors, which have been fined for breaching logging conditions and even harvesting illegally on adjoining neighbours’ land.

Nearly 90 percent of the NSW timber market is currently supplied from profitable softwood plantations (including Forest Corporation NSW) and would be closer to 95 percent if export woodchips from the Southern Forests ceased.

Pallets, fencing and garden stakes do not need to use native forest timbers from the Mid North Coast. What a waste.

The GKNP is our main hope for the conservation of koala and other native species which is why the public and local businesses support its early establishment."

> Read the letter in full:
https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/opinion-great-koala-national-park-misunderstood
#MidNorthCoast #Kempsey #Nambucca #CoffsHarbour #Bellingen #FCNSW #logging #StopLogging #SaveTuckersNob #extinction #koalas #biodiversity

Really great to see this Murcutt house getting heritage listed: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-05/1970s-farmhouse-in-kempsey-added-to-nsw-heritage-list/102039086
It is a wonderful, subtle design. Touches the earth lightly, as Glenn would say. Well ahead of its time.
I have a strange, minor connection to this house... having visited and stayed there a few times when I was about 11 or 12 years old... and ever since, the spatial memory of that house has become seared in my subconscious, and it makes an appearance when I read novels (as a background setting) - not deliberately, it just is there... as are a few other "memory houses" from my childhood. That house probably spoiled my enjoyment of most other domestic architecture thereafter (other places rarely beat it in terms of quality, peacefulness and ventillation). #architecture #ausarchitecture #glennmurcutt #heritage #domesticarchitecture #kempsey

The“great koala national park”
Environment groups have long called for the #koala park, which would link 140,000 hectares of existing national parks with 170,000 hectares of state forest. The New South Wales Labor party (#promises) will establish a new national park stretching from #Kempsey to #Coffs Harbour in a bid to save the state’s #endangered koala population.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/19/nsw-labor-promises-to-create-great-koala-national-park-if-it-wins-power
#extinction #wildlife #habitat