The Bentley Blockade: Weeping for the Earth

The text!

 

It would have looked better if I were digging out the composting toilet or planting organic veggies. But the truth is I was half-way into an egg and sausage McMuffin in Casino when the text came from Bentley.

 

I had to ring Yollana to make sure I had it right.

 

We’d won at Bentley.

 

Or at least, a major victory had occurred. (I’m too old for complete acceptance that “all is now well.” The Bentley Blockade had succeeded. Metgasco’s license was suspended and they were referred to ICAC.

 

But, you know, your body speaks its mind and in a second I was weeping.

 

I was weeping in Maccas in Casino.

 

It took me a while before I realised how much I love this country. How much I love this Earth. Since I migrated to Australia in 1968, I’ve had a few `falling-in-love-with-the-Earth” moments. Deep Ecology rituals specialise in helping that response emerge in reluctant humans.

 

Tall Tree Country

 

Nevertheless, having grown up

in “tall tree country” in Canada, I spent a long time coming to love this part of our Earth. It’s not what I was used to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A year living alone in the bush at Humpty Doo helped a lot and generated a PhD thesis on caring for Nature: https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/289/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And fog in the valley in Nimbin can do it.

 

https://sarkissian.com.au/wendys-blog/posts-from-the-bush/fog-in-the-valley/

 

 

But this weeping in Maccas?

 

Something else altogether.

 

• Weeping for gratitude to many protectors who braved discomfort and hardship to keep the vigil at Bentley for so many weeks.
• Gratitude to the canny politicians and wise negotiators who kept seeking a political solution when many thought that was impossible.
• Blessings on the parents who brought children to the dawn gatherings on the hill when warm beds beckoned.
• Gratitude to a brave landowner who made his property available to the protectors.
• Close friends of mine who put their lives on hold to give all they could.

 

Yollana had another insight into why I was weeping in Maccas.

Community consultation

 

All of the press reports – and the Bentley Alert text – identified inadequate community consultation as the key factor it the Government’s decision.

 

OMG!

 

Yollana writes me:

 

 

Does anybody really care about that? Community engagement has been my life’s work. I’ve written eight books about it.

 

I often feel like a boring old fart. Banging on about community engagement.

 

Who cares?

 

Well — yesterday morning — someone cared about community consultation.

 

That’s

enough to keep me banging on for another 25 years.

 

Go Bentley!

 

 

 

Bentley CSG Blockade: You Can’t Just Take My Dreams Away

 

Nimbin, 28 April 2014

 

It was bucketing rain at dawn at the Bentley Blockade this morning. The blockade against unconventional gas mining. No guitars or drums because of the rain. There were lots of people there but not a lot were singing.

 

Then, magically, about 5 am, a woman with a strong, melodic voice began a song that only a few of the older women followed. I was among them.

 

It’s a song by my hero, Holly Near. One of my favourites: “Mountain Song”.

 

Mountain Song

I was delighted to hear Holly’s song in our blockade. Hers is a powerful voice for change. After 30 years of work in social change movements, Near’s historical perspective, as well as her contemporary activism, continue to challenge and inspire.  I last heard her perform a year ago in Berkeley. She made me cry.

 

This morning, the woman’s song resonated deeply within me as I stood on the hill and watched the darkness fade and a new day begin:

 

I have dreamed on this mountain
Since first I was my mother’s daughter
And you can’t just take my dreams away ­– not with me watching
You may drive a big machine
But I was born a great big woman
And

you can’t just take my dreams away ­– not with me fighting

This old mountain raised my many daughters
Some died young – some are still living
But if you come here to take our mountain
Well we ain’t come here to give it

I have dreamed on this mountain
Since first I was my mother’s daughter
And you can’t just take my dreams away ­– not with me watching
No you can’t just take my dreams away ­– without me fighting
No you can’t just take my dreams away

 

 

https://www.songlyrics.com/holly-near/mountain-song-lyrics/

 

 

My dreams

I have been visiting the Northern Rivers since the early 1980s and have lived in Nimbin since 2001. My husband and I shelter our dreams here and, truly, Metgasco, wherever you are and whoever you are, you may drive a big machine, but “you can’t just take my dreams away – not with me watching.”

 

With many of my neighbours, I am watching. I am bearing witness. Like many principled and concerned people in this region, I am on high alert.

 

This mountain is not for taking.

 

Metgasco, hear me! You have no social license to mine and destroy our land, our water, our health and the health of future generations of all species.

 

Not only are we watching, we’re also fighting. We’re fighting for our lives here in the Northern Rivers.

 

Please, neighbours, if you possibly can, join us. Join us now.

 

We need you now – before it’s too late.

 

 

Before the big machines take our dreams away.

 

 

 

 

The Bentley CSG Blockade: Something Changes in Me

 

 

A song has been going round in my head today, after greeting the dawn at the Bentley Blockade (https://northernriversguardians.org/).

This is a blockade to prevent Metgasco from drilling for unconventional gas in farmland near Bentley, NSW.

 

 

It’s Holly Near’s “Change of Heart”:

Something changes in me when I witness someone’s courage
They may not know I’m watching, I may not let them know that
Something changes in me that will last me for a life time
To fill me when I’m empty, and rock me when I’m low

Something changes in me anytime there’s someone singing
All the songs I’ve never forgotten, let our voices sing them strong
Something changes in me anytime there’s someone standing
For the right to

be completely all the good things that we are

Chorus:

There’s a

change of heart
Anytime there’s someone counting
All the lives that won’t be thrown away”¦

Gathered in the glorious misty dawn around a campfire outside the Bentley property targeted for unconventional gas drilling, several hundred of us bent forward to hear the wise ones offer guidance about Non-Violent Direction Action (NVDA). Our hosts are the Northern Rivers Guardians.

 

“Look into their eyes,” begged veteran activist and therapist, Ruth Rosenhek.


“We are here for peace, not violence.”

 

And then the role plays and practice began.

My mind flew away. No longer a mere 40 kms from home, I was transported across the Pacific to another time and place where environmental devastation was planned in the guise of “clean energy”. That time it was nuclear power.

As I leaned back in my chair, I remembered how my heart broke open the first time I encountered NVDA. It was early August, 1978. With Australian activist, Peter Hayes, I’d driven from Berkeley down the central California coast to the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor in San Luis Obispo. For two days Peter facilitated and I observed the Abalone Alliance NVDA training. Like a dance.

 

The police, we were told, would receive the same training.

Those who agreed to climb the fence and enter the reactor property received special attention, guidance and counselling. They role-played the experience of going over the fence: playing themselves, the police, and the reactor personnel. They simulated getting arrested, going to jail. They spoke softly about how it would feel – how to handle yourself. Importantly, how to be peaceful when threatened.

Observing the training, I learned a lot about NVDA and the Abalone Alliance, established the previous year and operating until 1985. It was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PGE)  (known fondly Pigs, Goats and Elephants) Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Amazingly, it was sited on an earthquake fault. They modelled their affinity group-based organisational structure after the Clamshell Alliance, then protesting the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in coastal New Hampshire.

The group’s name, “Abalone Alliance”, honoured tens of thousands of wild California Red Abalone killed in 1974 in Diablo Cove when the Plant’s plumbing had its first hot flush.

This was their second blockade. The really big

one, with over 20,000 participants, was

the following year. But I was elsewhere that August — running a feminist summer school in Colorado.

They were busy, activist times.

For me, at 35, the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor blockade was a life-changing experience. Over 5,000 people gathered on the sun-drenched beach on a weekend summer day. It was California in the seventies but there was an air of anticipation and anxiety among the otherwise festive participants.

 

 

 

I remembered the instruction: “Look into others’ eyes”.

I photographed these two women as they prepared to go over the fence. They’d been trained to look into others’ eyes but when they did so – with each other –and when they embraced – I felt my heartstrings tug.


I was photographing courage.

Holly Near

My heroine in those days – and still today – is American feminist and activist singer-songwriter, Holly Near. About the time we were assembling on the beach, she was writing “Change of Heart”:

Something changes in me when I witness someone’s courage”¦

My dawn visit today to the Bentley Blockade did not change

my heart. Not exactly.

It reminded my heart.

It reminded me what courage feels like.

It feels like the Bentley Blockade against unconventional gas mining.

 

It looks like my neighbours.

And it tastes like hope.


Postscript: As we prepare for another

week protecting the Northern Rivers at the #BentleyBlockade, have a look at what happened there on Anzac Day in this moving new short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjT8ka5Ekzk

 

The Facebook page is at: https://www.facebook.com/CsgFreeNorthernRivers