Sunday, September 15, 2024

On the Western Australian State Government's Refusal to Effectively Protect Julimar 'State Forest' from the Threat of Mining (and other exploitation)

 

Herald Patches

 

(i) 2024: now

 

The minister for environment considers

Julimar forest’s availability for mining

 

            more important than its preservation.

            The chief executive officer of Chalice

 

couldn’t agree more, and praises

the official refusal to ‘sterilise’

 

            the forest’s ‘potential’. This is not

            surrealism but a radical departure

 

from the unconscious. There is violence

in city offices that spills out beyond

 

            low maintenance office plants, spills

            into the forest where fewer images

 

move as marsupials, lift as cockatoos.

Rhythm heralds consciousness.

 

 

(ii) 2019: prior

 

Rhythm heralds consciousness.

We seed an awareness in the vibrissae.

 

            Each livid patch, each resounding itch

            brings attention to the greater body.

 

One appears, then others. They will

scratch till the skin is damaged

 

            beyond repair. Make holes that can’t heal.

            A full scale ‘green’ battery industry

 

charges the assault. It’s a psychology

that goes back years. Take the 2019

 

            Indo-Pacific Defence Conference

            held at Crown Towers in ‘Perth’,

 

with a keynote on ‘defence industry

applications for WA's battery

 

            minerals and resources expertise’.

            ‘Green’ revolution destroying

 

all it contacts then making atopic collapse.

A minister’s or miner’s dream journal.

 

            A billionaire’s spacewalking view

            of Earth. A dermatologist’s similitude.

 

 

(iii) now unto ‘the future’

 

A dermatologist’s similitude.

Lost trees heaped for burning

 

            when up on the rise the house

            of the Big Whites overheats.

 

Largesse in the ore. Workers’

accommodation. Minesite infra-

 

            structure heralding State sanction.

            Words on the signs or the signs

 

themselves can be changed ipso facto.

Skill set. Application. Blue pencilled,

 

            each patch is forgotten. Bubble chart

            of raw data. Species lists. Red list data.

 

Environmental scientists, technicians,

supervisors, co-ordinators: on payrolls.

 

            Higher education for the conscious

            and unconscious. Illustrators.

 

Consumers. And open cut or under-

grounded into  the discursive,

 

            the body map

            is drilled into place.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

 

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