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Never mind the devastation; look at the vista

9/4/2022

10 Comments

 
PictureCartoon: Colin Suggett
By Catherine Watson
 
TWENTY years ago, newly arrived in Bass Coast, I remarked on “the beautiful rolling hills of Gippsland” to a new local friend. Richard is a pacifist so he didn’t yell at me. He merely said “I can’t look at them without thinking of what used to be there.”
 
I’ve thought about that many times since. Of course!  When we look at those rolling hills we are looking at a skeleton. In just 150 years they’ve been cleared of forests and groves and native grasslands. A few landholders – sometimes the descendants of the original land clearers – are valiantly replanting the hills but it’s a long road back from that scale of land clearing.

I forgave myself my own naivety, but it is disturbing to see my ignorance repeated in the draft policy documents published last month as part of the Bass Coast Distinctive Areas and Landscapes (DAL) project.
 
When Premier Daniel Andrews announced the DAL project, just before the 2018 state election, he promised it would protect Bass Coast’s “environment, landscape and local lifestyle”. It is disconcerting to see the draft policy interpreting “landscape” narrowly as vistas, and almost entirely from the point of view of a visitor driving along the Bass Highway towards Phillip Island.
 
According to the report, this visitor would be entranced by “picturesque rural scenes across paddocks towards the Bass Hills, especially where the Bass Highway travels close to the hills. This is a highly valued landscape and an important part of the experience of travellers to the Bass Coast.”
 
I don’t know about you but this is what I see when I look from the highway to the Bass Hills:
Picture
“By way of contrast,” the landscape report goes on: The Gurdies Hills on the other side of the Bass River Valley are lower and less visually arresting than the Bass Hills. They undulate beneath large areas of remnant forest and woodland, particularly on the western side, providing a heavily vegetated edge to the Bass Highway and a bushland backdrop to the hamlets of Pioneer Bay and The Gurdies.”
 
Put aside for a moment that what matters is the life in the woodlands. The denuded Bass Hills are more visually arresting than the ancient Western Port woodlands? 
Picture
“To walk in the woodlands is to be reminded of the wonder that must have gripped those first Europeans.” Ed Thexton
This is some crazy stuff to be coming out of the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. The subtext seems to be that the trees are actually spoiling the views, except when they perform the valuable service of hiding sand mines and other unsightly things.
 
On the basis of the beautiful vistas of the nude Bass Hills, they have been included in a proposed Significant Landscape Overlay. The overlay carefully skirts the Western Port Woodlands (here referred to as the Gurdies Hills), perhaps because all those trees are spoiling the view.
 
Or could it be because of the sand that lies beneath them?

​There are 10 working mines in the forest corridor between Lang Lang and Bass, including five in nature conservation reserves. Another nine work authorities for sand mining have been issued but not yet activated. Another seven work authorities are under application. 
​
Picture
The Holcim mine at Grantville
There is nothing in the DAL policy documents about how to protect the woodlands. There is, however, plenty about to protect the sand resource from “encroachment by incompatible land uses".
 
The draft planning policy report adds a reassuring note. “Extractive industries are temporary land uses that require appropriate buffers during and rehabilitation at the end of their operating life in a way suitable to the surrounding landscape character, thereby providing a net community benefit.”
So the landscape will be in better shape after it’s been mined?

​This is to wilfully misunderstand ecology. The woodlands are not simply the trees and understorey. They are the sand, the fungi, the vast network of orchids and their insect pollinators, the ground covers, the animals that burrow, the birds that nest in tree hollows.
 
In The secret life of orchids, Dick Wettenhall, an orchid lover and professor of microbiology, describes driving past the sand mine-scarred bushlands along Western Port’s shoreline:
“Disturbingly, this is one of Bass Coast’s few remaining areas of remnant bushland, and home for some of Victoria’s rarest orchids.   The survival of these orchids is the product of millions of years of evolutionary adaptation to the extraordinarily intricate underground ecology of dry, nutrient-poor soils. Tragically, it only takes seconds for sand mining bulldozers and excavators to irreversibly destroy these remarkable ecosystems.” 

​In 1996, the State Government endorsed the Lang Lang to Grantville Regional Sand Strategy. After years of conflict between the sand mining industry and local people, it was a compromise: sand mining would be permitted in less environmentally sensitive areas but a network of conservation reserves would provide habitat and biolinks for threatened species.  The strategy also recommended strategic purchases of high value remnant vegetation to strengthen the forest corridor between Lang Lang and Bass.
How you can help
Almost 4000 people have signed petitions to the State Government calling for an end to sand mining in this woodland corridor. If even a proportion of them put in a submission, we can save our woodlands.   

We have 20 days left to convince the State Government that ripping out woodlands for sand makes as much sense as burning down the house to keep warm.
Submissions on the DAL draft policy close on April 29 and must be lodged through the Engage Victoria platform.

Save Western Port Woodlands is running two submission writing workshops via Save Western Port Woodlands is running two submission writing workshops:
Sunday, April 10 @ 10:30am
Zoom link
Meeting ID: 816 2125 7647
Passcode: 325216
One tap mobile 61 3 7018 2005
Monday, April 11 @ 7pm
Zoom link
Meeting ID: 897 8426 3118
Passcode: 834954
One tap mobile 61 3 7018 2005 

You’ll find plenty of background information at Save Western Port Woodlands. SWPW members are also available to answer questions:
Neil Rankine, Ph 0490 418 739
Gerard Drew, Ph 0403 135 093
Catherine Watson, Ph 0401 817 796

​It is the only contract ever signed by the Government, the community and the sand mining industry. And it has been totally ignored ever since.

 
This week, the State Government announced a $31 million program to revegetate and restore 20,000 hectares of private land to provide habitat for Victorian wildlife. At the same time, they continue to permit sand mining in Bass Coast’s nature conservation reserves and on private land with high biodiversity value. Something is missing.
 
South Gippsland Conservation Society president Ed Thexton has been involved in riparian revegetation projects for most of his working life. In The wonder of the woodlands he writes: “We struggle to retain or rebuild our natural heritage by reproducing pale facsimiles at great effort and expense. The utter irony is that here intact is a place with the lot. To top it off the woodlands retain not just the flora but the fauna – the goannas, the bandicoots, the antechinuses.
​
“Talk about fiddling while Rome burns! The Western Port woodlands are the main game, the rest a mere sideshow. Come on, Victoria. If at this time in this place we can’t adjust our priorities to retain these woodlands then nothing we do in conservation has any real meaning.”   

Catherine Watson is a member of Save the Western Port Woodlands. 
10 Comments
Anne Heath Mennell
9/4/2022 12:52:02 pm

Thank you for this succinct summary, Catherine.
I'm about half way through my first draft of a submission and your words and quotes are helpful in distilling my thoughts.
Thank you for all you do and thanks to the rest of the organising group and supporters.
Together we can do this!!

Reply
Geoff Ellis link
9/4/2022 01:11:08 pm

A brilliant expose of the controlled annihilation
of everything we should be holding on to for future generations.

Is nothing as sacred as a hole in the ground ?



Reply
Mark Robertson
9/4/2022 01:15:36 pm

It constantly astounds and saddens me that those tasked with ( and paid handsomely) to care for our natural wonders are so pathetically impotent when those wonders get in the way of the holy dollar. All power to you, Catherine and the team , shining a spotlight on our latest environmental insult.

Reply
Yvonne McRae
9/4/2022 01:35:27 pm

Catherine thank you for all the info. My old dad used to say never stand between developers and a dollar. Remember the annihilation of the grass trees a few years ago? Many had been growing a hundred years or more before the first white person walked there. But the sand mining bulldozers obliterated them in minutes. The First Nations people were here caring for the land for tens of thousands of years, the clever, greedy whites have destroyed so much in just a couple of hundred years. I agree with the views of the Bass Hills - it is actually a Horst left by ancient lava flows, but hardly a sight to delight the tourists.

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Natasha Crestani
9/4/2022 03:34:44 pm

thank you Catherine. I am sure this will assist many a correspondence to the relevant sources to hopefully make a difference. Nice Midnight Oil lyric Geoff Ellis... :)

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Robyn Arianrhod
9/4/2022 03:37:31 pm

Thanks so much Catherine for another brilliant piece, speaking truth to power, as they say. You nailed it, with the draft report's emphasis on vistas and tourists, rather than on the true value of the whole environment, natural and social - especially for those of us who live here. It beggars belief that the woodlands weren't mentioned, only the sand mines. In a similar vein, I also noticed that the report only mentions Wonthaggi for its coal mine, the "vista" of its wind turbines, and its potential for growth. Nothing about our precious heathlands and wetlands, and the community spirit we have here. They haven't even given us a protective town boundary yet...
Let's all try to send a submission to DAL, in the hope of saving our truly distinctive areas and landscapes before they're all gone.

Reply
Anne Heath Mennell
11/4/2022 03:23:28 pm

Hi Robyn, I'm afraid I've been one-eyed focused on the Western Port Woodlands and hadn't realised that Wonthaggi heathlands and wetlands have also been ignored in the draft SPP. I hope everyone in Wonny makes a submission as the SPP is supposed to protect what people value, which obviously includes those areas. They also happen to be threatened habitats which are disappearing worldwide.

Reply
John Coldebella.
9/4/2022 06:45:44 pm

'Our land abounds in nature's gifts of beauty rich and rare.
In history's page let every stage advance Australia fair'.
The more that time goes by, the more shame and anger I feel at hearing those words. I wonder what our decision makers are thinking and feeling when they put their hands on their hearts.

Reply
Rob Parsons
11/4/2022 06:06:25 pm

Congratulations on this article Catherine. Something that we both agree on. Living right on the edge of The Gurdies Forest I am horrified and dismayed at any attempt to extend the sand mining in the local area. There should be absolutely no extensions to any existing sand mines, and this state government is a disgrace for failing to address this issue and protect the local flora and fauna and their values. Trying to work through the paperwork on this issue is a nightmare and I congratulate you and your group for everything that you are trying to do. Well done.

Reply
Yvonne McRae
14/4/2022 12:46:24 pm

I have done my submission and truly could not see ANY positives in the draft proposal. But Rob P. ALL governments of red or blue persuasions seem focused on the mighty dollar - development, tourism, etc. Just today in Tasmania Scott M. is pledging more money to the forestry industry and berating State governments who are daring to lock up native forests!!! Roll on Brave New World. I am in the age group who won't see it but at the rate the world is going famine and not enough water will wipe out much of the human population. Possibly down the millennia some small creature will realise rolling a pebble down the hill makes it easier to shift things and another evolution will begin. Enjoy our wonderful bush land, heath land our clean seas near our town while you can.

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