Rich land, Wasteland

How coal is killing Australia

by Sharyn Munro

For nearly a year Sharyn Munro travelled through rural Australia, visiting the communities in the coal-mining areas. She found a war zone. Here, ‘at the coalface’, towns and districts are dying — homeowners and farmers forced out by mining, broken in spirit and in health, or else under threat, in limbo and battling the might of the multinationals. Incidences of asthma, cancers and heart attacks show alarming spikes in communities close to coal mines and coal power stations, yet the government seems powerless (or unwilling) to act.

Once reliable rivers and aquifers are drying up or become polluted, once fertile agricultural land is becoming unusable. But the big mostly foreign-owned mining companies continue to push on with their coal rush and government continues to assist and protect them: ever more mining licences are granted, ever bigger mines are opened. In this life-changing book, Sharyn exposes the real story of coal: how people are hurting, and rebelling, as coal pushes into hitherto unthinkable areas; how the true costs outweigh any benefits; and how all of us will ultimately pay the price.

Review

This is the story of the terrible way the coal mining and coal seam gas industry tramples on the land and people.  It just seems shocking that this industry can have access to private land.  The book is written from the victims perspective.  When travelling through the Hunter region of NSW I was appalled at the coal mines size and felt that it is not right that such scars should be permitted, I had  read elsewhere of locals trying to stop these companies coming on their land, but didn't realise how terrible this industry is nor the extent of how Governments bend to the wishes of the miners at the expense  of the lives of citizens and the land.  It seems Governments are even worse in doing their job than I thought.

Rating 4/5

King Brown Country by Russell Skelton

The Betrayal of Papunya

Background
Walkley award-winning journalist Russell Skelton presents a devastatingly revealing portrait of Papunya, a Western Desert community that once showed such promise, now a community in severe crisis. Set with the backdrop of Papunya, a Northern Territory Aboriginal community whose history showed so much promise but whose dysfunction is now more prominent that its famous artwork, King Brown Country is a book that has to be published. It goes to the core of Indigenous issues today to expose unmitigated misery, shocking levels of domestic violence and sex abuse and extreme alcohol and substance dependency. But above all, it reveals how a powerful fiefdom was allowed to rule unchallenged and unchecked to the great detriment of a once secure community and explains why the intervention was necessary, and why it may not work. King Brown Country is a powerful and shaming portrait of a community in crisis. Papunya remains an emblem for the failure of all Australians to come to terms with the continent's oldest inhabitants.

Review

In the main this book deals with the failure of bureaucracy to check on the failings and use of government money by the indigenous community running Papunya.  It names and provides details of a number of individuals who used the money to their own advantage, and at the same time doing nothing concrete to help the communities they are supposedly looking after.  While this happening the government agencies charged with the oversight just turn a blind eye. The book made compelling reading was well written and I got through it in pretty quick time.
4/5

The Biggest Estate on Earth

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia

Synopsis

Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, THE BIGGEST ESTATE ON EARTH rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind.

My Review

This was an interesting book that demonstrated pretty convincing evidence that a lot of Australian bushland was quite open before white settlement.  A great number of references to the park like land that the early white people documented along with the numerous fires that the aborigines lit is in the book.  In fact this theme is a common thread through the book, partly because Bill Gammage wanted to  provide a strong case for his assessment what the land was like as some academics do not want to believe that aborigines were capable of sophisticated land management.

That aborigines had a close connection to the land is beyond dispute, but the evidence in this book was enough to convince me that they believed that looking after the land was of the utmost importance, and that they managed it by taking into account the type of country and the flora and other conditions present.

The Kings Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

Book Details

One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century – amazingly he was an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed ‘The Quack who saved a King’.
Logue wasn’t a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied, Duke of York into the man who was capable of becoming King.
Had Logue not saved Bertie (as the man who was to become King George VI was always known) from his debilitating stammer, and pathological nervousness in front of a crowd or microphone, then it is almost certain that the House of Windsor would have collapsed. The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy is the previously untold story of the extraordinary relationship between Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI, written with Logue’s grandson and drawn from Logue’s unpublished personal diaries. They throw extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men – and the vital role the King’s wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played in bringing them together to save her husband’s reputation and his career as King.
The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy is an intimate portrait of the British monarchy at a time of its greatest crisis, seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.

My Review

After seeing the film I thought it would be interesting to read about Lionel Logue.  The book is not the story of the film, but a biography on his life, although of course it covers the episodes that are the film.  It is quite an easy book to read and I did not find it became tedious at all.  It is just about the right length for such a book.

Rating 3/5

Into the Unknown - The Tormented Life and Expeditions of Ludwig Leichhardt by John Bailey

This book gives a good insight into the character of Ludwig Leichhardt and his eventual explorations in Australia.  It is a well written and informative book and easy to read.

In his formative years Ludwig Leichhardt decided he would like to explore and find new areas, but he spent this time studying range of subjects, including medicine.   However he did not sit for exams and although very knowledgeable, never gained formal qualifications. 
When first coming to Australia Leichhardt wandered about the bush, marvelling at a land so different from Europe.  He would study the plants, animals and geology of areas and make copious notes.   It is from his notes and diaries that John Bailey has tapped into, to tell the story.

The expedition Leichhardt arranged to cross from Brisbane to Port Essington, on the Northern Territory coast not that far from the current Darwin, took an great deal longer than expected, partly due to mishaps and partly due to Leichhardt spending time investigating things.   Some of his descriptions and that of John Gilbert, who was one of the 10 members of the party) described in glowing terms the beauty of many of the spots they passed through or camped.   Gilbert in particular worried that this beauty would all change once white settlers reached these spots.

On return to Sydney Leichhardt began to set up a second expedition with the plan to follow the start of his previous one then turn west and south the cross the continent to the Swan River settlement  in Western Australia.   This was a total disaster with a large number of the expedition animals constantly wandering off at night, continuous rain and long periods of illness among the party; most likely caused by rotten meat.   There was very little harmony in the party and with the loss of so many animals and insufficient supplies Leichhardt had little choice to abandon the trip.   He very soon set up another expedition in an endeavour to  achieve his objective, but, once the party left the last outpost, was never heard of again.

 

Rating 4/5