The NSW Northern Rivers region's anger at Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not going away

Byron Bay Shire resident, singer-songwriter Tex Perkins, performed at Sydney's New Year's Eve open-air event bringing in 2020.

Millions of people across the country and around the world saw his performance during the ABC TV live broadcast.

Tex dedicated the song The Honeymoon is Over to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Immediately and very publicly flipping him the bird while roughly facing Kirribilli House where the prime minister and his selected guests had gathered to watch the fireworks.

News Corp's main online media site reported on 1 January 2020:

He was hammering home his disgust at the PM’s alleged lack of action on climate change and leadership as wildfires lash large parts of the country 

The jubilant crowd’s reaction would be painful enough, but Perkins’ aptly chosen song “The Honeymoon Is Over”, which he released as a member of the band The Cruel Sea, features on Mr Morrison’s Spotify playlist titled “How good is Oz Rock! (ScoMo’s Classics)”

IMAGE: The Daily Examiner, 1 January 2019

Latest NSW Rural Fire Service summary of infrastructure losses across the state as of 1 January 2020

By 3.30pm on the afternoon of 1 January 2020 the NSW Rural Fire Service had announced that the day before 170 additional houses had been destroyed by fire in the state.

Taking the toll of houses lost to at least 1,086.

That number is expected to climb.

2020 comes with an altered landscape in many regions across Australia

Fires in the Blue Mountains NSW landscape......

Images from SKYview_Aerial_Photo @SKYview_Aerial

A new year brings old threats to the Clarence River estuary and communities along its banks

Preoccupied with major fire activity since September 2019, it was easy to miss this renewal of cruise industry pressure.....

On 4 October 2019 cruisepassenger.com.au published an article titled 
"FIVE SECRET AUSSIE PORTS YOU’LL BE SOON BE SAILING TO".

This is an extract from that article which will be of considerable interest to communities with environmental, cultural and economic concerns about cruise ships seeking entry into the Clarence River.

"Mayor Cr. Jim Simmons says “We can see a lot of economic benefits for the area…but so far we have had some community angst around the idea and that stems from our experience with large ships in the past. Our concerns are purely environmental concerns, but if that’s all covered, then the community may be very positive.

“Many years ago we had the big timber ships and large vessels coming into the sugar mill – but so far we haven’t had large passenger cruise ships,” Cr. Simmons added.

“If the ships are moored offshore, with passengers tendered in on smaller boats and all of the measures are put in place to protect the ocean environment then this would be something great for Yamba.”

The Clarence Valley mayor has obviously drunk the cruise industry Kool-Aid, if he seriously believes that cruise ships will make any significant contribution to the economies of Yamba, Iluka or Maclean.

There is enough evidence to the contrary coming from cities and towns around the world that have become cruise destinations. Specifically the fact that cruise lines inflate projections of the spending capacity of their passengers which are rarely realised, as a matter of company policy tend to poorly pay local tourism operators for services, charge local businesses a fee for inclusion in ship brochures, seek significant concessions on port fees and cruise ship activity generally tends to depress land-based tourism over time. [See https://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com/2017/11/it-is-being-suggested-to-lower-clarence.html]

As for his suggestion of mooring offshore - there is no sheltered coastline near the mouth of the Clarence River to make disembarking or boarding a cruise ship reliably risk free for passengers.

While characterising community concerns as being "purely environmental", this is a simplistic explanation given a significant Yaegl cultural/spiritual site held under Native Title lies across the entrance to the Clarence River. 

Dirrangun reef showing as a lighter blue crescent in the ocean adjacent to the breakwater walls

Happy New Year 2020

shutterstock.com

*****Greetings from North Coast Voices*****

North Coast Voices 

hopes its regular readers and casual browsers 

have a safe and bushfire free Wednesday, 25th of December

After a short annual break the blog will return on 

New Year’s Day 1 January 2020

THE REALITY OF ECOCIDE: a truth thread from the NSW Northern Rivers. If you read nothing else between now and New Year 2020 read this

This is not an easy read. It may upset you. It will frighten you by the time its import sinks in.

It speaks both lived experience and brutal truth. 

Truth which we ignore at our peril.

Mecurius Goldstein, on Twitter, 19 December 2019:

Ecocide: A thread
---
Bearing witness at Wytaliba NSW, these photos are a response to the neverending know-it-all 💩 from armchair experts since the #NSWfires started in September.
6 weeks and 3 inches of rain later, this is a riverbed.

Here's a creek into the Mann, a tributary of the Clarence River NSW. We're +40 days and there's been rain, but nothing here is coming back. I've had to put up with endless smug woo-woo from online dipshits saying everything would be lovely again in 6 weeks after rain. Well look:

What's happening now. These roos didn't starve, they died from drinking the toxic run-off from rain. The river is full of tar, basically the ashes of hell. Our local Greens group has donated a large % of our funds to food for 65 joeys under wildlife care, but the water is toxic.

What the insta-expert smug online pricks don't get is that in fact, no, these fires aren't "good for the environment", they don't make the forests thrive, there's nothing here but the smell of death. No food, no water, no going back. 6 weeks and after rain, all is still.

A belting flash-flood came through here the last week. There's nothing to hold the water, nothing to stop it churning tonnes of toxic shit downstream. This will all eventually end up going past Grafton NSW. Gravity is like that.

And as for the sanctimonious scapegoating delusions about hazard reduction and back-burning, sit down and listen: Behind those hills a massive back-burn was instigated in September by authorised agencies, thousands of hectares. Made shit-all difference.

Also get this. In September one of those lovely slow-burning ground fires came from the top of that ridge in the back and devoured all the fuel over 3 days it took to travel 800 metres. They're supposed to help but again doesn't make a difference when a crown-fire comes through.

So this whole area that had slow-burnt at ground level in September for days on end, then explosively burnt in November in 15 minutes flat. Smug armchair fuckos think that "burning" will save us from disasters, but they're wrong and they don't know what they're talking about.

Here's but a small patch of the whole perimeter where we did a fun weekend's raking leaves in September. Whole place went up like a torch come November. The ridge in front had been hazard-burned the previous season less than 12 months prior. Do you see now? It doesn't help.

I repeat: Everything you see here had been slow-burnt at ground level not two months before the crown fire came through. Just like the textbook recommends. Just like all the scapegoaters and victim-blamers howl. Not even the large trees survived. We're +6 weeks, and it's over.

Today I realised something important about the scapegoaters and victim-blamers. They're weak and scared. They want to believe this isn't their future, because they would do it differently. They would hazard-burn and back-burn. They would be RFS. Well, that's no escape I'm afraid.

Because this is all our futures if we stay inert, complacent, inactive & disengaged. We need the natural world a great deal more than it needs us, and right now we are being forcibly ejected. Deniers won't turn back until it's too late, will you let them take you down with them?

Humans can survive just about anything, but we can't survive ecocide. It's happened in this community and it will soon happen in yours, unless you take action to stop it. I wonder if you will?