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

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.