Tuesday, October 21, 2014
As dawn broke and mist lifted off the Avon River, six police vehicles rolled down Fairbairns Lane towards us, eight kilometres from Gloucester. Outside the gate shielding the river paddock where AGL’s gas hub is hidden behind a fifty metre square fortress, around 30 protesters tensed in the chill air. Continue reading “Gloucester Dreaming”
I attended the 80th birthday party of Valerie Axtens, a delightful and much loved Lismore matriarch, a few years ago. Midway through the afternoon the modest party was enlivened by the mayor, Cr Jenny Dowell, who marched briskly in and began greeting everyone warmly by name. I was astonished when she knew my name and enough about to have a short but genuine conversation – but that’s the kind of person the mayor of Lismore is. Continue reading “A woman of substance”
Nick Hanlon had already lived several lives when she decided to take on gas miners through the power of music. The fearless promoter of the hugely successful Rock the Gate and protest camp Pop-Up concerts grew up singing and acting and, having trained as an opera soprano, won Sydney Eisteddford singing in Gaelic. Continue reading “Rock promoter pops the gas bubble”
When I spoke to the unstoppable law enforcer Sue Higginson she was still in the office at 10pm on a Tuesday night. After a landmark win over Whitehaven Coal to stop the slaughter of native animals with a brutal winter tree clearing in Leard Forest, she was celebrating with a single glass of champagne and a few more hours work. Continue reading “The law of the land”
In response to a recent story in the Womens Weekly magazine I’ve decided to run some of my own profiles on prominent women in the anti-unconventional gas and coal social movements. These are from interviews I conducted for the WW, when they agreed to hire me as a researcher.
These stories however, are a little more in-depth and dare I say it, political, without the constraints of that mainstream publication. It’s interesting to note that all these women remark upon the unifying effect of these campaigns upon communities – surely one of the truly positive knock on effects, and one that has corrupt politicians and corpulent corporations shaking in their boots.
The first of these is on Julie Lyford, of Gloucester NSW.
Mick Daley - Musician and Author. 