Save Walwalinj ('Mt Bakewell') from Further Exploitation and the Destruction of Rare Habitat

 Dear Shire President (of York, Western Australia)

I wish to vigorously protest the plans to exploit the sacred and exceedingly rare and fragile environment of Walwalinj ('Mt Bakewell') as indicated by your declarations to the ABC. The mountain has already been placed under stress by clearing for 'recreational' as well as agricultural purposes, and the habitat will not cope with more stress. There are orchids so rare up there they exist nowhere else. The environment should be protected and not exploited, and its sacred essence respected. 

I have spent my entire life writing the region and known the environment of the 'Dyott Range' (another inappropriate renaming) and surroundings intimately. This is a 'greenwash' act that claims 'nature tourism', which would simply mean further degradation of a fragile and unique ecosystem. 

Cautious walking and care are one thing, but to 'open up' to mountain biking is to consign the bush to destruction. Recently talking on the email with an environmental officer regarding degradation of Perth Hills forests, they noted that the greatest damage came from mountain biking. This opens the door to so many abuses of the habitat. Walwalinj isn't a 'resource' to be 'capitalised' on. In a world suffering under the weight of such exploitation, surely an effort can be made to conserve rather than exploit?

I ask you to reconsider and take this informed protest on board. I will certainly use all my energy, contacts and writing ability to protest this constantly. It is a wrong thing you are aiming to do.

I will speak about this at every public opportunity I get in the wheatbelt, and that will be sooner than later — that is my responsibility, and I take it seriously.

Sincerely,

John Kinsella

Save Lemnos Street Bushland: Perth, Western Australia

It's essential 'corridor' (and all) bushland is saved in Perth, a city whose remaining green and 'natural' spaces are being eaten by development. Here's a petition people long committed to the saving of the Lemnos Street bushland have created. And here's a 'save the place' poem:

Lemnos Street Bushland

Exemplar of life, linkage, corridor

to hold the underpinnings of all aliveness —

the banksia leaves serrate the breeze

channelling through, honeyeaters

decrypting lanterns far more

illuminating than LEDs.

If deleted, the fill-in reduces breath

and sight, limits every exchange

we make within and beyond the self.

Let live so you — we — live. Skink

in sunlight is rapture. And listen

to the ensemble of leaves, stalks, branches!

We come down from the wheatbelt

every week to take our son to a language

class just down the road from Lemnos Street —

I say, They’re going to delete all that bush,

it’s so easy for them to do. Each week we watch.

A fortnight ago, heading down, we saw three

Carnaby’s cockatoos dead on the highway —

hit by a truck, then no doubt a questioning

bird, lost, was hit searching for flight. Traffic

rolls on. Why do we learn to speak?

The answers come quick, in what

is learnt, what has been taught.

React. Distress. Recover. Forget?

Exemplar of life, linkage, corridor

to hold the underpinnings of all aliveness —

let live so you —we — live. Cockatoo

in sunlight is rapture. And listen

to the ensemble of birds! And listen

to banksias reach further than light.

            John Kinsella

The Great Western Woodlands

IMM Veronica Brady

I merit merrit and what names

stood longer and will stand again

thin rising to blue sky to charred crow

to red wattlebird and honeyeater

to drown at the foot of waterbush.

Driving east into the Victorian

Mallee, and then the emptiness

of grassed plains that weren’t

grassed plains, where trees

are windbreaks to be harvested,

the essence of the Western

woodlands is clarified.

Its loss would be

an act of terror:

those emptying ‘farms’

that would come in its stead

blank slabs of old-before-their-time

graves, all creation knocked down.

Quandong is a shrub I was

overly familiar with as a child.

In the woodlands I cherish

it for its fruit, and for itself.

It speaks — listen, listen.

It wants its own space,

gets on well with its neighbours,

can take human projections.

But to be deleted is not in its vision.

It hears the pain of loss

as sandalwood does.

We see a lone emu —

we see a lone roo —

we see a lone eagle —

we see a lone ant

making its way home.

They are going somewhere,

having somewhere to go.

This is more than human

intuition. This with the certainty

of a Dundas mahogany

rising out of quartz,

feeling the workings

of the hole-in-the-ground

nearby. Nibbling away.

This great lung,

this great mind,

this great flesh and blood

and cellulose entity

is the powerhouse

of body and soul —

it is the vastly regional,

it is the specific and inclusive,

it is the everything we are.

            John Kinsella

This poem appeared in print version of The West Australian newspaper in September, 2015.

Great Western Woodlands under threat

By John Kinsella

This is something all of us should be resisting -- it will not only devastate large areas of Western Australia's bushland but threaten the entire biosphere. It must be stopped before it begins. I am going to be there in front of the bulldozers -- poetically and literally -- I hope others will join me.