Friday on My Mind Archives - Page 15 of 31

Fifty years of Cabinet secrets and media leaks

Cabinet-secrets-media-leaks — The magnet to the left of “Cabinet secrets — keep locked’ reads ‘The more people I meet the more I like my dog”.

The Australian Federal Police ‘raids’ on the ABC and a lone News Ltd journalist have been taken to signal a new era of scrutiny when confidential government files are leaked to the media. The media has gone overboard on the ‘journalism is not a crime’ front. As a former journo, I have adopted the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) Facebook frame in solidarity. But it is interesting to learn that that on June 5, the AFP was unable to rely on the much-feared espionage and foreign interference laws. An AFP spokesman confirmed that the revised secrecy offences inserted into the Criminal Code did not apply as the ‘alleged conduct’ occurred before the new law was enacted (in late 2018). The same can be said of a separate ‘raid’ on the home of News Ltd journalist Annika Smethurst.

The AFP said in a statement there was no link between the Smethurst and the ABC search warrants, which relate to separate allegations of publishing classified material ‘contrary to the provisions of the Crimes Act 1914’.

Barrister Gray Connolly, commenting in his blog Strategy Counsel, argues that the events of June 5 hardly constituted a ‘raid’. Much like the time on February 1, 2018, when ASIO visited ABC headquarters in Brisbane and Sydney to retrieve classified documents which had ‘accidently’ ended up there, the ABC knew the authorities were coming. On June 5, AFP officers signed in at the ABC front counter and the search was conducted peacefully.

Connolly also argues that just as the media claims it has rights to publish in the public interest, the government has rights and indeed a moral obligation to protect secrets, particularly those applying to Defence matters. And he exposes the folly of media calls for a US-style Bill of Rights to protect journalists, pointing to successive US governments pursuing whistleblowers, itself a threat to press freedom.

Law lecturer Rebecca Ananian-Welsh of the University of Queensland argues that the raids on Australian media present a ‘clear threat to democracy’. Ananian-Welsh, writing for The Conversation, said these developments were hardly a surprise, given the expansion of national security laws, notably enhanced data surveillance powers and the ‘secrecy’ offences introduced in late 2018.

“The crackdown of the past few days reveals that at least two of the core fears expressed by lawyers and the media industry were well-founded: first, the demise of source confidentiality and, secondly, a chilling effect on public interest journalism.”

Former head of ASIO Dennis Richardson told ABC Radio that (government) agencies needed to be “cautious” about referrals to the AFP.

“If you refer a matter to the AFP they take control of that, and it goes where it goes – they drop some, they pursue others,” he said.

Richardson understood the emotional reaction to the raids, but said it was “misplaced” to suggest the AFP was trying to intimidate the media.

“It might have had the consequence of that, but everything I know about the AFP would lead me to believe that the AFP is not in the space of deliberately setting out to intimidate the media.”

Nevertheless, the new secrecy laws have teeth, even if so far they have not bitten anyone. In an unprecedented display of bipartisan muscle, 15 competing media outlets and the journalists’ union last year lodged a submission to Parliament attempting to circumvent the espionage and foreign interference laws. Media publishers unsuccessfully sought an exemption for working journalists and now have to rely upon a ‘public interest’ defence. The new laws expanded the definition of espionage to include mere possession of classified documents, rather than the old offence of ‘communicating’ secrets.

This arguably makes working journalists, researchers and indeed anyone who physically handles leaked documents vulnerable to prosecution. Journalists are also fearful of controversial laws introduced last year which allow authorities to co-opt telecommunications companies to assist them in their investigations.

It’s a long way from the unruly 1970s, when Canberra leaked like Tim Finn’s lyrical boat. Political journalists made free with Cabinet secrets and leaked confidential information, earning the 1970s the sobriquet “the Xerox era”. This was because so many of the leaked documents were photocopied and furtively passed on.

One notable leak was Mungo MacCallum’s detailed story in 1972 of Australia’s rising opposition to the Vietnam War. The story was based on highly classified cables recording the Whitlam government’s criticism of US bombing operations in Vietnam (and the US government’s response).

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Philip Dorling, in a 2013 feature about famous political leaks, explained how MacCallum was so careful to cover his tracks he flew from Canberra to Melbourne to deliver the story in person to his then employers, The Nation Review. As Dorling described it, the story was “the equivalent of a political and diplomatic hand grenade”. Dorling says MacCallum was interviewed by the Commonwealth Police (forerunner of the AFP), and asked to reveal his source and hand over the leaked documents. He did neither, telling Dorling the affair was investigated in a ‘desultory’ way. The source of the leak was never uncovered.

If there’s a point to this, MacCallum, 77, is still writing fearless commentary about Australian politics. Dorling, a senior writer who has himself been raided twice by Federal police, made this prophetic observation in April 2013:

“Given the pervasive use of electronic devices and the evidence they produce, it is probably only a matter of time before a journalist is prosecuted for the little-known federal offence of knowingly receiving an unauthorised disclosure of Commonwealth government information.”

There were no such constraints involved with the 20^th century’s biggest political scoop. In 1980, political journalist Laurie Oakes climbed his way to the top of the Canberra Gallery flagpole by publishing the entire Federal Budget, the day before PM John Howard was scheduled to table the document in Parliament. Oakes told The Drum how he delivered one of the biggest leaks in Australian media history.

“I had a copy in my hand for a total of 15 minutes and garbled into a tape and read the whole budget. Later I had to transcribe my own garble, which was quite difficult.”

Governments have themselves been to blame for unauthorised leaking. Last year secret Federal Cabinet files dating back 10 years were found in two old filing cabinets, bought from a second hand shop by an ACT farmer. The farmer handed the documents over to the ABC. After some judicious publication, ASIO ‘raided’ the ABC to secure the Cabinet secrets. The ABC subsequently negotiated the return of the documents.

An investigation by the AFP found there was no criminal or malicious intent involved as the department had simply ‘lost track of’ the files. While the AFP investigation was not made public, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Martin Parkinson reported the results of the AFP probe and released a review by former Defence Secretary Ric Smith, urging reforms to security measures.

Smith’s review, which seeks to prevent a repeat of accidental leaking, reveals much about the strengths and weaknesses of government protection of secret data. Not the least is difficulty in recruiting, retaining and training staff. Smith also warns of the potential for similar incidents to occur in every government department.

The more serious implications of accidental leaking are the risks for innocent outsiders being caught by the new secrecy laws. Consider this a warning, should you ever find confidential documents at the local tip.

FOMM back pages https://bobwords.com.au/keeping-cabinet-secrets-safe/

Readers guide to Friday on My Mind

Friday-on-My-MInd-Bob-Wilson — “Retired” journalist Bob Wilson with five years’ worth of Friday on My Mind. Photo by She Who Rarely Gets A Mention

A few weeks ago I promised you an overview of the past five years’ worth of Friday on My Mind missives, but the Federal election got in the way. Sorry about that. Today it’s a mostly politics-free zone.

I started this weekly column (it was supposed to be a one-off) with my theory (and not at all an original idea), about taking refugees and asylum seekers off Nauru and Manus Island and resettling them in small Australian towns.

But ‘The Pittsworth Solution’ wasn’t the first to get a run.

Other topics got in the way, like explaining why Morris dancers dance up the sun on the first of May. That was episode No 1; and not only have I written about this pagan ritual since, I have actually participated.

I write on random topics, often mixing subject material so if you have specific interests (solar energy, travel, politics, refugees, media analysis), use the search function to find stories.

We were travelling the outback in 2014 and on many occasions since, so there are many road travel adventures. In my naivety, I wrote about crossing the Nullarbor as if no-one had ever done it (or written about it) before.

Some of the outback posts were popular, including one about people dumping garbage (Kiljoy was here) and the time we met the Black Dog Ride, a gang of motorcyclists circumnavigating the continent to raise awareness about depression and suicide.

Some 264 episodes (316,884 words) later, I’m still FOMMing (the weekly missive is known among hard-core fans as FOMM).

Thanks to my elder sister who lives in New Zealand, I have five ring binders crammed with hard copies of Friday on My Mind. She does not have a computer so every two months or so I print out the latest and mail them off. I got in the habit of printing two copies so now have a filing cabinet drawer full of fat FOMM folders. (Downsizing, dear, remember the promise about de-cluttering. SWTSO (She who throws stuff out)

Those of you adept in the online arts might scoff to learn it took me a couple of years to discover I could insert a search function into the website. This is a very handy way to check if you are about to repeat yourself, which is not hard to do when you’ve been maintaining a blog for a long time. One of Australia’s longest-serving bloggers, economist John Quiggin, had one solution for this, posting at Christmas 2015:

“Here’s a Christmas post from my blog in 2004. The theme is that nothing about Christmas ever changes” (although he does go on to discuss the “war on Christmas”).

This is billed a readers’ guide to FOMM, as at last two thirds of readers receive the weekly email and have no need to visit the website other than out of curiosity or because I have linked an old (but relevant) article. Tip: Links to other articles are coloured blue.

I had occasion to update my curriculum vitae (CV) the other day and found that, yes, you can teach the old dog new tricks, as 107-year-old Swedish blogger Dagny Carlsson put it, after taking her first computer lesson at 99.

Under ‘other skills and experience’ I can now add webmaster, after designing and maintaining two WordPress websites with little outside help.

When you first visit the <bobwords.com.au> website, click on ‘Bio’ in the header. This is where I talk about myself in the third person, which, as any clinical psychologist would tell you, is not a healthy thing.

Nevertheless, here’s a line from my self-penned bio which has been quoted elsewhere. I said I’d started FOMM mainly from a sense of exasperation with the sins and omissions of the daily media.

“ As Bob (that’s me) told a fan: “not that I want to bite the hand that used to feed me, but I think intelligent readers want more than a picture of Kate Middleton’s bum.”

Amen, brothers and sisters.

My Recommended Reading section keeps evolving. The website statistics manager tells me it has had 199 visits of late, so hopefully some of you will also become fans of writers suggested there.

Some recommended blogs disappeared as they fell victim to blogging deficit syndrome. I’m not aware of anyone who keeps actual track of the world’s 500 million blogs, but it’s a fair guess at least half of them were single-use, short-term or, if they started out with ambitions of longevity, fizzled out after a year or two.

I have written a couple of pieces about blogging, including the one when I stumbled upon Dagny Carlsson and explored the wonders of Wikipedia.

In this one, I discovered how blogging in some countries can be a life-threatening activity.

I started off quietly, emailing the weekly rant to a small email list which grew and grew as people shared with their friends. Then, as the list got larger, I enlisted MailChimp, which somehow evades spam catchers and also schedules delivery if you are not going to be home on the day you would normally send the email. MailChimp also tells me how many of you actually opened the email!

FOMM is neither a blog nor a citizen journalism site as it mixes news, research and whimsy with a fair amount of (small l liberal) opinion.

I had a conversation on election day with a former colleague. We bemoaned the absence of what was once the journalist’s mantra – “tell both sides of the story”. Hard to believe there was a time not so long ago when one would never put personal opinion into a news story, or the news pages for that matter.

I regard Friday in My Mind as a newspaper column without the newspaper. Some columns provoke a torrent of emails; other times there is a lamb-like silence. If I make a mistake and SWTSO misses it too (uncommon), I am certain to find out about it from an alert reader, sometimes within minutes. The beauty of being online is you can correct it right away.

Few people post online comments, but those who do are inevitably adding something relevant to the topic. Despite the relative lack of feedback, my website statistics show a fairly consistent readership. Inexplicably, the most-read column of the past five years is this one about bipolare disorder and gout, where I found research that made the connection between one and the other.

Other popular reads were first-person accounts about adverse reactions to paralysis ticks and at least six items dealing with depression and anxiety.

Readers liked my recent take on the Christchurch tragedy and, going back a while, tributes to David Bowie and Gough Whitlam.

So if you have joined the FOMM flock in the last year or two or more recently, there’s quite a trove of documented journalism and comment to explore.

For example, if you enter ‘David Bowie’ in the search window you will be rewarded with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s celestial performance of Space Oddity.

Depending which boxes you ticked below the line on May 17, you may have to take the ‘leftie rubbish’ with a grain of salt, as a few long-term conservative readers apparently do.

We can thank Pliny the Elder for translating addito salis grano. In the modern context it means to view something with scepticism or not to interpret something literally. A good motto for Friday on My Mind, I reckon.

Moving North Queensland water to Murray-Darling

North-Queensland-Water-Murray-Darling — Barron Falls demonstrates North Queensland water excesses. Photo by Coral Sea Baz

Australia’s mismanagement of water is coming home to roost now, with the highly visible deluge in North Queensland in sharp contrast to the water-starved Murray-Darling Basin.

Far North Queensland residents and emergency workers are still struggling to cope with the worst floods in living memory. Tully, arguably the wettest place in Australia, had 955mm over 27 days since New Year’s Day, about a quarter of its annual rain. Townsville broke all records with 1,200mm falling in just nine days, which accounted for unprecedented flooding and the decision to open the floodgates of Ross River Dam.

Residents of the seaside Townsville suburb of Balgal Beach, seemingly impervious to flooding, found out otherwise.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) recorded North Queensland rainfall totals in January and the first week in February ranging from 1,036mm (Cairns) to 1,325mm (Townsville) The highest weekly total in January was 766mm at Whyanbeel Valley. Crikey, that’s a few millimetres more than the annual rainfall for Australia’s second-largest inland city, Toowoomba.

Last time we were in that fair city (September), the only green grass around was in the city’s three parks, watered by Council to celebrate the Carnival of Flowers. That was the month parts of the Western Downs were added to the 53% of Queensland’s drought-declared local government areas.

Meanwhile in Southern states, BoM made the telling observation that annual rainfall in 2018 was the seventh-lowest on record (since 1900) for the Murray-Darling Basin. Rainfall was low over the south-eastern quarter of the mainland in 2018, with much of the region experiencing totals in the lowest 10% of records.

This is brought into sharper focus when we are told that parts of Australia’s mainland from around Newcastle in NSW to Euroa in Victoria are now included on the United Nations’ list of the Top Ten Global Water Hotspots (see further reading).

Many readers will be familiar with the crisis facing the Murray-Darling system: blue-green algae, millions of dead fish, the Darling River drying up; water being diverted for irrigation to grow water-intensive crops like cotton and rice. The recently published report by the South Australian Royal Commission found that the 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan must be strengthened if there is to be any chance of saving the river system. Professor Jamie Pittock of the Australian National University writes that the Commission found systemic failures of the Basin Plan, adopted in 2012 to address over-allocation of water to irrigated farming. The Commission’s 111 findings and 44 recommendations accuse federal agencies of maladministration and challenge key policies that were pursued in implementing the plan.

Amid revelations of water theft, the awful legacy of dead fish in the oxygen-deprived Darling River and outback towns running out of water, plenty of people are having their say.

This week, South Australian independent Senator Rex Patrick dared to confront the cotton industry, demanding that growers justify the use of water and the right to grow that export crop. (The same could be said of rice, Ed.)

This is a long-running saga. In 2011 an article published by the Permaculture Research Institute explored a report that revealed Australia as the world’s largest net exporter of ‘virtual’ water (exported virtual water is defined as water consumed to create crops, livestock and industrial products for export). The report blamed the agricultural sector for the vast majority of the total volume of water exported from Australia in this way (72,000 gigalitres of virtual water exported overseas every year).

I’m not a scientist, hydrologist or environmental engineer, yet the answer seems desperately obvious. We need to channel and export North Queensland water to the arid south-eastern states and inland Queensland, NSW and South Australia.

One only has to think for five minutes about the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity/irrigation scheme to see we are more than capable of funding, building and maintaining large and ambitious infrastructure projects.

Sydney food technology engineer Terry Bowring told The Courier-Mail in 2010 about his $9 billion plan to move water from the Burdekin and other north Queensland rivers to arid parts of inland NSW, Victoria and South Australia. Mr Bowring’s plan involved channelling about 4,000 gigalitres of water a year. The water would be transported 1,800kms by canals, with 60% of the water sold to irrigators. The rest would go to cities such as Toowoomba and Brisbane for domestic use.

Mr Bowring told FOMM yesterday the plan was similar to the Bradfield scheme proposed in 1938. Until Mr Bowring’s plan surfaced (he’d been working on it for years), no-one had taken Dr John Bradfield’s scheme forward to include costings.

Mr Bowring said the costings were based on experiences from the US, where he worked for some five years. The system would take six years to build but only four or five years to recover costs.

As with the Bradfield scheme, critics said the Bowring plan was uneconomic and impractical. The telling thing is that it would only take about 13% of the water that flows from the Burdekin to the ocean. Typically, more water flows to sea from the Burdekin than the Murray-Darling Basin and all city dams combined.

Mr Bowring, who is in his 80s, said he has no intention of pursuing the plan, but will make his research available for future use.

The other side of this argument was provided by the (then) Federal Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.

The 28-page report generally scotches the idea, which is often raised when there are weather extremes in the north or the south.

“Moving water long distances is costly, energy intensive, and can have significant environmental, social and cultural impacts,” (item 1 under Key Facts).

“Using water that is locally available is generally more cost effective than transporting water long distances. Current studies show that local options, such as water conservation, desalination and recycling, cost around $1–2 per thousand litres; a supply from 1500 kilometres (km) away would cost around $5–6 per thousand litres.”

However the immediate problem is to make the Murray-Darling system a Federal and State priority, no matter the financial or political cost. It is shocking to consider that outback towns like Walgett, Wilcannia and Bourke have either run out of drinking water or are under extreme water stress. These events seem to have flown beneath the media radar that picked up on the early 2018 water crisis in Cape Town (South Africa).

The real danger is the risk to the fragile ecosystem of a river system that spans 77,000 kilometres of rivers over one million square kilometres across four States and the ACT. Environmental challenges include excessive water being diverted for agricultural, the blue-green algae that killed millions of fish, and salinity (in 2016-17, 1.84 million tonnes of salt was flushed out to sea through the Murray mouth).

As the Australian Conservation Foundation summed up, in an advertisement posted on social media:

“The heart-breaking death of these fish is no natural disaster. Powerful corporate interests and their cashed up lobbyists are bleeding our rivers dry. For too long, state and federal governments have let them get away with it.”

Further reading: https://www.fabians.org.au/australia_s_water_crisis (a (long), technical article by Watermark Australia’s Dr Wayne Chamley).

FOMM backpages:

One person’s rubbish another’s treasure

kerbside-rubbish-collection-treasure — Kerbside rubbish in Stirling WA, photo by Henry Kujda https://flic.kr/p/bNqCRz

During a recent stay in a Brisbane bayside suburb, a kerbside rubbish collection was in the offing. You could tell by the untidy piles of trash lining the footpaths of suburban streets. On my daily dog walks, I became aware of a steady stream of cars with trailers doing the rounds, beating Council trucks to the treasure.

Scavenging from kerbside collections is a time-honoured tradition. Whole generations have furnished their share houses with the kerbside rejects from other people’s homes. We are talking here of household items too big to fit into a wheelie bin, but none so large two people could not lift them. So a fridge is OK, a barbecue (sans gas bottle) probably OK. The large dead limb off the ghost gum that fell on the shed is probably not OK. Most Councils have lists of items you can leave on the kerb and things that won’t be collected (like old tyres, fuel cans, pesticide spray containers, gas bottles, fire extinguishers and so on). Anything made of MDF will probably be left for Council to collect, especially if it rains before collection day.

I helped my brother-in-law carry surplus items to the kerb (an old office chair, a baby’s car seat, a single foam mattress, a dismantled bed frame, a (new) security window frame and so on). No sooner had items been placed by the kerb, a car and trailer would pull up and the driver would start throwing things into the trailer.

Further up the road the same thing was going on, with a certain frisson of tension between scavenging crews. In some ways, it seemed singularly distasteful and desperate, on the other hand, why would we care – we were the ones throwing the crap out.

As part of its War on Waste series, the ABC’s Alle McMahon looked into how different States and Territories viewed the practice of kerbside scavenging. For example, the ACT only provides kerbside collections for seniors and concession card holders. As such, it is illegal to leave items out on the verge or nature strip.

The City of Sydney carefully states: “Our legal advice is that anyone who picks up items left outside for bulky waste pick up is doing so at their own risk.”

As the saying goes: Caveat Emptor, or in this instance, Seminiverbius Emptor.

There are signs that some Councils are abandoning kerbside collections in favour of recycling stations at their local landfill. Up to 60% of waste collected in Australian is recycled, although more than 20 million tonnes of solid waste per year goes to landfill.

While the independent Noosa Shire Council still has a kerbside collection every year, the neighbouring Sunshine Coast Regional Council dumped the practice, which it deemed to be “outdated and environmentally harmful”.

Free annual kerbside collections stopped once the Sunshine Coast Councils amalgamated in 2008, but there has been some pressure to resume. Noosa Shire de-amalgamated and started kerbside collections again, the two Councils tabling vastly differing sums as to the cost of kerbside collections.

Cr Jenny McKay told FOMM she had always been a supporter of the kerbside collection concept but other councillors and staff disagreed for a number of reasons.

“A low percentage of people across the region actually take up the offer, thus making the cost per property very expensive.”

Cr McKay pointed out the council waived fees on some large items (e.g mattresses), when taken to waste facilities.

Early January is the traditional time for household clean-ups. We all warm to the task as a result of disposing of after-Christmas detritus, including careful disposal of prawn shells; the merry rattle of bottles and cans being tumbled into the recycling bin.

But all too often the cycle of change signalled by January 1 prompts people to revisit concepts of decluttering and downsizing, adding specific items to their New Year resolutions.

January often signals the impending departure of the elder child to university or the workforce. If said child is leaving home, there is often a recycling of family junk; the student gets the old fridge and the non-smart TV while the parents go to a department store and buy brand-new everything.

For older people, children long gone and developing their own hoarding habits, it becomes a tussle between feeling comfortable with the familiar and needing to let go for reasons of space and relevance.

Empty-nesters and retirees contemplating a move to a smaller living pace have a different set of problems. If they are moving from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom unit, then they will need to get rid of two sets of bedroom furniture as a bare minimum.

The options are: hold a garage sale, list the items on Gumtree or your favourite Facebook free ads site, donate them to charities like the Salvation Army or Lifeline. In many locations, the bigger charities will come and collect the items.

If you are in a state of flux and need to store your household goods for a while, there are no shortages of businesses ready to rent you a lockable storage space.

The self-storage industry large warehouses housing hundreds of lockable storage units – is a $1 billion+ business in Australia, busier than ever as more people relocate from large houses to small units.

But just as EBay and Gumtree disrupted the second-hand store sector, the digital sharing world has caught up with self-storage.

Spacer.com.au acts as a broker for people wanting to store personal belongings, hooking them up with citizens who have spare rooms or garages.

Spacer co-founder Mike Rosenbaum explained what his then year-old business was aiming to do in an article for Domain. Spacer’s customers are typically looking to store household goods, business stock or large items like recreational vehicles, sporting equipment or even nursery items.

“What we’re finding is [extra storage] allows people to live the lifestyle they want to live – typically close to the city or closer to amenities,’ Rosenbaum said.

The average user spends about $250 a month renting space, which typically pays for a single lock-up garage in Sydney or Melbourne.

Spacer now claims to be the largest renter of storage space in Australia, with more than 30,000 units.

The bottom line for anyone who is paying to store household goods off-site is whether the outlay (over the time kept in storage), exceeds the cost of replacement.

For those whose circumstances demand that they scour suburban streets to claim household items ahead of what is sometimes called Hard Rubbish Day, that debate is completely academic.

The Band Who Knew Too Much summed up the life of kerbside scavengers in their pithy song Hard Rubbish Night in Kew.

“This tele’s just a beauty, it’s just like the one at Mum’s, it’ll be great for watching footie; though it’s missing just one leg, I suppose I’ll have to watch it from the broken rocking chair.”

Happy New Year to all FOMM readers, wherever you are.

Revisiting a New Year call for compassion

Here’s a look back in time to my first New Year blog, January 2, 2015. I was eight months into writing the weekly essay and feeling brave. What’s ironic about this New Year call for a little more compassion among Australians is that four years later (in government at least), nothing much has changed.

This is the first edition of Friday on My Mind to link you to my website, www.bobwords.com.au. All mailing list subscribers will automatically receive the weekly posts from now on. So you don’t have to do resubscribe. If you don’t want to receive the blog you can of course unsubscribe.

I’d like some feedback on the website as it is being thoroughly reviewed in coming weeks. I already had a suggestion that the font is a bit small on mobiles, so I’m looking into that. For those of you who just joined, or those who’d forgotten I wrote this, enjoy. I’ll be back next week.

New Year compassion – photo by Eric Parker, flickr

January 2, 2015: There was a fellow selling lottery tickets in Kuranda Village last week. He was trying to gain the attention of passers-by, 99% of whom rushed past, oblivious. Sadly, I count myself among the rushers-by. I had just dropped my wife and son at the Skyrail terminal and was on a deadline to drive down the mountain to Cairns, fuel the hire car and pick them up at the other end. Mission accomplished, but now I’m feeling a teensy bit guilty about ignoring the ticket seller (I deliberately walked behind him on the way back, to avoid the crowded village streets). On reflection, I often walked past a chap with cerebral palsy who was a Queen Street regular when I worked in Brisbane and not once bought a lottery ticket. Was I just being a cheap-arse? Or did I find cerebral palsy confronting? Did I object to this fellow’s tactic of pushing his wheelchair just far enough forward that you had to make a conscious effort to go around? Perhaps I was just lacking in New Year compassion.

It appears to be an Australian character trait, although the 6.1 million people who volunteer for sporting, neighbourhood and charitable organisations would give me grief about that statement. Compassion is all about making room in your head and your heart to care about someone less fortunate than yourself. We’re a weird mob like that. We’ll run florists out of roses to fill Martin Place with tributes for three people we didn’t know who were killed in a hostage situation. But tens of thousands of Sydney workers brush past buskers, beggars, drunks, addicts, homeless people and Big Issue sellers every day of the week. What’s that all about?

The Federal Government isn’t helping us become more compassionate. The Abbott Government’s year-long reign so far has shown callous disregard for those less fortunate than themselves.
The new Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, seems hell bent on taking the razor to welfare, ostensibly to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme, although the Labor Opposition says is already fully funded. In 2008, the new Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, became the only Liberal front bencher to boycott the apology to the Stolen Generations. This stance alone must raise questions about his empathy for asylum seekers and those in detention centres.

New Year compassion missing in action in WA

The West Australian Government could be said to be lacking in compassion, given its plans to close 100 small Aboriginal settlements in remote parts of the state. Premier Colin Barnett admits that closing communities is not a good option, but says the lack of a better one has tied his government’s hands. The Commonwealth Government has been the major funder of the 274 existing Aboriginal communities in WA but is “transitioning” that responsibility to the State over the next two years.

So here we all are, a kilo or two overweight from eating prawns, ham, pork, turkey, chicken and duck followed by Christmas pudding, fruit and custard, cream and pavlova and probably drinking more than usual if we knew we didn’t have to drive somewhere.
Did we stop to spare a thought for those who cannot afford to celebrate festive times like Christmas and New Year? Hands up those who dropped some festive fare into collection bin outside the local IGA, or who donated some money to one of the several charities collecting on behalf of needy families.

And can anyone imagine what it’s like working in an accident and emergency ward at this time of year? As of yesterday, 22 people had been killed on Australia roads over Christmas and New Year. More importantly, proportionately more people were seriously injured in car and motorbike accidents and admitted to hospital. We don’t have this year’s statistics yet, but in Queensland alone 6,173 victims of car and motorcycle accidents were admitted to hospital in 2013. Another 379 were cyclist or pedestrians, the latter two categories usually presenting with worse injuries than those who had the benefits of seat belts and air bags. So the survivors and their families need compassion as much as they need medical attention.

Since January 1, 2012, all Australian hospitals have had to admit or refer emergency department patients within four hours. This cruel deadline creates stress among medicos and nurses who routinely work 12 and 16-hour shifts. At least one of the politicians who imported this four-hour rule from the UK ought to go and spend 12 or 16 hours in the A&E of a busy city hospital and see how the workers cope with this added burden, while dealing with the human wreckage which survives road accidents.

Meanwhile we make our way in the world, perhaps developing a cynical shell from big city experiences with those less fortunate. In Adelaide last winter, a street vendor approached me waving the Big Issue. As street vendors go, this fellow was a little the worse for wear. I handed him a $20 note (the Big Issue costs $6) and he muttered something about having no change, so I left him with it. Ripped off?
A friend who has lived in Sydney for decades says professional beggars and hustlers feign homelessness in a bid to separate people from their hard cash. They can make up to $200 a day, he says, and maybe he has good reason to assume that all street beggars (Americans call them panhandlers), are on the make.
We stayed at a boutique hotel in Potts Point in March last year and were twice hustled by a women who looked a lot like the “after” photo on the posters you see of how a beautiful, bright-eyed girl turns into a smack addict. Her pleas for “Any spare coins” turned into invective after a fruitless pass along the street and back again. “Youse are all a bunch of tight-arses,” she complained.

You don’t have to give money to street people who ask you for it, be they beggars, buskers, raffle ticket sellers or Big Issue vendors. But if you allow compassion to overtake your indifference, you may at least start thinking about those less fortunate: for example, the one in 200 Australians who have nowhere to live.
There are many reputable welfare agencies which help people in need and could use donations. Or you could join the volunteer army and make a difference.
Continuing my endeavours to get my head out of the dark place it has been lately, I’ll let you know you how I’m going with my New Year resolution to show more compassion in 2015.

Self-service gets our enterprise for a bargain

self-service-checkouts-fuel — Self-service checkout, photo by eltpics https://flic.kr/p/p57BLf

You may call me a peevish old man, but these self-service supermarket checkouts give me the pip. I only encounter them when venturing out of the village, as our service-oriented IGA does not as yet have automated check-outs.

Not so a certain Brisbane supermarket which, around 5pm, seems to have nobody staffing its numerous checkouts and only one person ‘helping’ people scan their own groceries. I usually ignore the self-service corner and will wait an inordinate time to be served by a human being. Last time I was in the 12 items or less line at the same supermarket, the poor woman was switching back and forth between checkout customers and those at the cigarette counter.

Management textbooks would tell you this is successful multi-tasking and making efficient use of a staff member over what is probably a meal break. Decency would say put two people on at this location.

American Facebook page Union Thugs has a bit of a campaign going against self-service, observing that the machines (a) they kill jobs (b) they do not contribute to payroll tax and (c) they are really not that convenient.

The latter was certainly true when I returned from shopping in the city a few weeks back to find I’d charged myself twice for the same item. So back I went, burning more fossil fuel, to queue up at the lightly staffed counter where one person was multi-tasking between selling cigarettes and dealing with complaints like mine.

IGA Maleny director Rob Outridge knows the downsides of self-service checkouts but can see a time when he may be forced to introduce them. Supermarkets operate on skinny margins and the biggest fixed cost is wages, which keep on rising. So while Maleny IGA still exclusively hires people to serve at the checkouts, there may be a time when competition and the bottom line force his hand.

“The problem is your labour costs keep going up and there is no increase in productivity.”

I suspect Rob Outridge knew I was going to take a Bolshevik approach to the subject of automation doing people out of jobs. Nevertheless, he handed me his card and in that pleasant, management-by-walking-around way of his said: “Just let me know if you have any other questions.”

It’s not just that a machine replaces a worker. You (the customer) are doing the checkout job yourself – for nothing. Of course it does not stop there; we do the job of a retail employee at the ATM, the fuel pump, at toll points and just about anything someone would help you with offline is now done (by you) online.

The online world has transformed the way businesses interact with customers. In the online world there are myriad stories of businesses getting our enterprise for a bargain, as they con us into signing up for electronic bus and train cards, gadgets on your windshield which go ‘ping’ when you pass through the toll gates and so on. Last time I parked under the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition and Centre, I had to go to a machine and pay for the parking then pop it in the slot at the boom gate. There were no attendants to be seen.

It hardly seems like nine years since the toll booths closed on the Gateway Bridge and Logan Motorway. There was something refreshing about that brief interaction when you paused at the collection point and tossed your coins into the tub. When the electronic toll system Go Via was introduced in 2009, 100 toll collectors were made redundant, with 22 moving into management jobs within Go Via. Former toll collector Sharmaine Phelan told the Brisbane Times she had a tear in her eye on the last day.

“Over the years I have been here I’ve met some lovely people, some that I’ve kept in touch with who have come through the toll.”

Tolls were collected manually on the Gateway Bridge for 23 years. As a motorist, you always had to be sure to have a pile of coins ready in the console, but that was all you needed. Today, you need a beeping gadget on your windshield and an online account that has to be kept topped up or you will get a letter in the post demanding payment. Along the way, a system of debt-collecting was invented to deal with people who either didn’t have a bleeping thing on their windshield or kept forgetting to top up their account. If they are people who also ignore mail and such, then eventually the Department of Transport gets involved and pings you for non-payment of tolls.

How is that an improvement on making Sharmaine Phelan’s day, then?

Fuel stations have been exploiting their customers in this fashion for decades. Self-service fuel stations began to spread in the US and Australia in the 1970s, although at a faster rate in America. Mind you, there is still one state (New Jersey) that refuses to allow customers to pump their own gas.

Australia caught on to automated fuel service in the 1970s and the reach has been pervasive. Even in the remote outback you have to pump your own fuel and, between the hours of 9pm and 5am, you often have to go in and pay for it first. One of the downsides of self-service fuel (from the fuel retail owner’s perspective), is the minority of motorists who fill up and just drive away.

Imagine my surprise earlier this year when driving into Longreach (at night) in an urgent search for a fuel station. The only place open was not actually open but had a bowser where you could use your credit card to (a) enter how much fuel you wanted and (b) press the Pay Now button.

You might remember the rockabilly song Harold’s Super Service made popular by Merle Haggard in 1970. I suspect the writer (Bobby Wayne) was perhaps taking a dig at the about to be modernised industry with his song, in which the owner of an old Model A drives in to Harold’s Super Service and insists on getting his money’s worth.

“Gimme 50 cents worth of regular (pronounced ‘reglar’)
Check my oil too if you don’t mind.
Put some air in my tires won’t you mister,
Clean my windows too if you have time”

The National Advanced Convenience and Fuel Retailing magazine (NACS) explains how automation gained the upper hand in the US. In 1969, self-service gasoline accounted for only 16% of sales in the US. By 1982, 72% of gas sold in the US was self-service and it had climbed to 90% by 2011.

I was amazed to find, amidst the proliferating supermarket-owned and franchise outlets, that there are still a handful of petrol stations in Australia offering old-fashioned driveway service. You’ll have to read Mandy Turner’s article to find out where they are, though.

Maybe it’s just that I’m approaching a certain age, but I secretly yearn for that era when the petrol station attendant filled your tank, checked your oil and washed the windscreen at the same time – just like the song.

Harold’s Super Service, Merle Haggard and band (listener warning – it’s an earworm).

https://youtu.be/t2lIMLgB_Sg

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Queensland ramps up renewable energy

For some time I’d been harbouring a suspicion that Queensland was a laggard when it came to renewable energy. That may have been the case in the past – wind and solar generation increased only 3% between 2006 and 2016. But a recent national survey by the Clean Energy Council found that eight of the country’s top 10 domestic solar panel users are in Queensland. Bundaberg, which has some 11,060 households with solar panel installations, tops the list.

The Clean Energy Australia report (2018) said that in 2017, more than 1100 MW of rooftop solar power capacity was installed Australia-wide. This has happened despite the winding back of once-attractive subsidies to install solar, as well as a reduction in the amounts paid for selling energy back to the grid.

At the end of 2017, more than 50 large-scale wind and solar projects were under construction or scheduled to start in the near future. This represents more than 5,300 MW of new generating capacity, $10 billion in investment and 5,750 new direct jobs. Queensland’s share of this new infrastructure will generate 2121 MW, a $4 billion investment creating 3,196 jobs. If all of the proposed projects come to pass, they will generate more than 15% of Queensland’s present day electricity needs.

While some regional Queensland towns (Emerald, Charters Towers, Hughenden), are building solar farms, my observations are that the domestic and business use of solar is hit and miss. We visited shopping centres in regional towns that have gone to the trouble of providing shaded car parks for their customers. These shelters usually comprised heavy duty shade cloth over steel frames. If they’d spent more money, they could have their very own solar farm, protecting shoppers from the punishing summer sun and generating their own electricity.

The lights upon the hill

While it may seem relatively inconsequential, outback Councils and mining companies have adopted outdoor solar lighting, the latter to light pathways within mining villages. Charters Towers Council has spent a lot of money dressing up the town’s main attraction (Tower Hill), with picnic tables and a walkway made from recycled plastic leading to the 29 concrete bunkers which were used to store ammunition during WWII. At night, LED solar lights positioned every 20m or so light the steep path to the summit for the nightly amphitheatre show, Ghosts after Dark, a documentary about the town’s history and legends.

Renewable energy’s been on my mind since returning from 39 nights staying in caravan parks, recreation grounds, farm stays and free camps. The latter attract grey nomads and their generators. We were camped somewhere off grid for a few days, so I put our 120W portable solar panel out in the sun, as you do, while my neighbour primed his generator. It wasn’t that intrusive and he did shut it off at dusk, but when there are 90 vans on one large site…

Meanwhile, after three days off grid, our 12-volt lights and marine fan were still working; we charged our phones and my trusty laptop and all I had to do was to keep moving the panel as the sun passed over.

Until recently, we also had a portable solar light, a simple gooseneck lamp, very handy as an extra light when cooking. It has/had a pop-out panel you can hold in the palm of your hand. Alas, I left it sitting on a tree branch (charging), at the last or second-last camp site. We spent a fruitless hour or so traversing Townsville in search of an Ikea (from whence the light was purchased, moons ago). Alas, lackaday, it turns out there is no Ikea in Townsville. The GPS navigated us to the outer industrial suburbs to a warehouse which acts as a distribution depot for online orders (from outlets which so far have no real estate in Townsville).

Just because you have switched to renewable energy, that’s no reason to forget about maintenance. We have eight panels on the roof and a solar hot water system which pre-dates the panels. When the technician came to give the system its 10-year check-up, the part of the system which converts the sun into energy had given up the ghost some indeterminate time before. Which meant our hot water was being delivered via a 240v booster switch. This partially explained why (a) the water was sometimes not so hot and (b) the disparity in our power bill. So this week we hired a plumber who installed two new solar panels to service the hot water system. This cost a bit, but we are confident of once more returning to the world of smaller power bills.

Which brings us to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s recommendation to wind down the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme by 2021.There are varying opinions as to whether that is a good or bad thing.

Lucy Percival of the Grattan Institute says the ACCC concluded that offering subsidies for household solar was a well-intentioned but ultimately misguided policy.

“Solar schemes were too generous, unfairly disadvantaged lower-income households, and failed to adjust to the changing economics of household solar.”

The SRES subsidy did not reduce as the cost of solar installation fell. So a larger proportion of solar installation was paid for by the scheme, as prices fell (from around $18,000 for a 1.5kW system in 2007 to around $5,000 for a 3kW system today).

In addition, premium feed-in tariffs were well above what generators were paid for their electricity production. Historically, solar feed-in tariffs paid households between 16c and 60c per kilowatt-hour, while wholesale prices were less than 5c per kWh.

Not everyone agrees that the ACCC got this right. Joseph Scales, national director of Solar Citizens said that while much of the ACCC’s report was ‘spot on’, the suggestion to slash the small-scale (subsidy) made zero sense.

“Solar is the best way to guarantee energy bill savings. Our governments should be helping more people to take the power back from the big power companies by installing cost-cutting solar.”

By way of example, New South Wales solar owners saved all of the state’s energy consumers $2.2 billion in just one year.

Meanwhile, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) will meet today to decide whether to support the Federal Government’s controversial National Energy Guarantee.

Solar Citizens and other pro-renewable lobby groups have three main objections to what they see as flawed, old-school energy policy:

The NEG will allow energy retailers to continue to benefit from energy fed back into the grid from customers’ rooftop solar systems (given that many consumers are paid around 11c per Kw, while retailers charge upwards of 32c per Kw) ;
The NEG does not provide incentives for renewable energy but instead props up ageing and inefficient coal plants;
The renewable energy target for 2030 is now so low it will be covered by schemes already planned or under construction.

It’s hard to see the NEG fixing the number one issue – the rising cost of electricity. Meanwhile, some three million Australian households have taken the matter into their own hands, installing solar panels. Now we just have to convert the two thirds of households who don’t have solar that it is the right way to go.

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Confessions of a Tree Hugger

The derogatory label ‘tree hugger’ is worn with pride by environmental guerrillas, the ones who chain themselves to trees in a bid to prevent them being chopped down.

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines tree hugger as ‘someone who is regarded as foolish or annoying because of being too concerned about protecting trees, animals, and other parts of the natural world from pollution and other threats’. Yes, well, that’s objective.

Although chaining yourself to a tree as a form of conservation protest is more often associated with North America, you’ll find many such tree hugger examples in Australia. In Tasmania’s Tarkine forest, conservationists protested logging by direct action. Suburban tree hugger types arc up when councils decide to fell established trees for public liability or other specious reasons.

Trees, as the occasional crossword question will remind us, are the largest plants in the world. They not only provide animals and humans with shade and shelter, they pump out oxygen, suck up carbon, stabilise the soil and provide homes for native birds and animals. Trees are great for children to climb and big ones often support tree houses and swings. And as anyone who lives in a timber house could attest, once removed from the landscape, trees make permanent shelters for humans. Moreover, generations of young lovers have carved their initials in tree trunks. The latter is not world’s best practice, though, as damaging a tree’s skin (bark) can start a deterioration of the plant’s health.

tree-hugger-ooline — Tree hugger paradise – ancient Ooline forest

On our six-week outback trip last month we visited one of the few remaining stands of Ooline forest in Tregole National Park, which only achieved that status in 1995. Tregole’s Ooline forest survives in semi-arid, south-western Queensland, between two of the State’s natural regions, the Brigalow belt and the Mulga lands. As the National Parks website tells us, “the park protects a small but pure stand of ooline Cadellia pentastylis, an attractive dry rainforest tree dating back to the Ice Age”.

Ooline has been extensively cleared and is now uncommon and considered vulnerable to extinction.

In Queensland, a very large northern state of Australia, trees have been under siege and remain endangered by forestry activities and by clearing for agriculture or mining. Only 9% of Queensland is forested, compared to 16% of Australia overall.

The ABC did a fact checking exercise during the last state election, to verify the claim that Queensland was clearing more timber than Brazil.

Some 395,000 hectares of regrowth and old growth vegetation was cleared in 2015-16, a 33% increase over the previous year. Queensland accounts for more than half of Australia’s total losses of native forests. This dire statistic generated critical editorials in international media.

The ABC fact checkers vindicated the claim by the Queensland Greens that more than one million hectares of native bush and forest was cleared in Queensland over four years.

“Land clearing in Queensland is now on par with Brazil,” the Greens said.

Unhappily, the rate of land clearing tends to increase under the management of conservative governments (voted in primarily by farmers, miners and the businesses that profit from agricultural and mining commerce). One of the infamous innovations of land clearing was the ‘ball and chain’ method, involving two bulldozers, a giant steel ball and a ship’s anchor chain. The chain was secured between two bulldozers (with a third bulldozer often following on behind to add weight to dislodge larger trees).

The felled trees were swept up into a giant pile and left to dry for up to a year before being torched (in itself an ecological disaster).

Although the use of a five-tonne steel ball has largely been discontinued, many landowners still engage contractors to use the dozer and chain method to clear light scrub and forest. A good contractor can clear 40 hectares a day.

Fortunately, Labor governments tend to block or reverse the worst of the land clearing excesses. Queensland’s Palaszczuk government passed new legislation in May limiting broad scale land clearing. Farmers demonstrated outside Queensland parliament as the bill was being debated.

Meanwhile, the deforestation of Indonesia, South America and other continents and countries continues unabated. The World Resources Institute says that more than 80% of the Earth’s natural forests already have been destroyed, with clearing continuing at the rate of 20,000 hectares per day.

Tane Mahuta and the risk of dieback

If you have visited New Zealand and saw the country’s oldest and largest Kauri, Tane Mahuta, you were indeed fortunate. Two thousand year old Tane Mahuta, held sacred by the Maori, is at risk of infection from Kauri dieback, a disease which has already picked off many old Kauris in the surrounding forest in Northland and elsewhere in NZ.

New Zealand’s once massive Kauri forests were plundered over the centuries for ships’ masts, houses and other buildings and simply to clear the land for agriculture. In the 1700s, Kauri covered 1.2 billion hectares. Today the coverage is less than 4,000 hectares.

Meanwhile in Maleny, Australia, we ‘small c’ conservationists nurture the native trees on our half acre block, which remains well wooded. We rid the bottom of the block of every bad weed known to man or woman, circa 2002, planted several natives and allowed the area to regenerate as native forest.

The downside is a straggly line of giant camphor laurel trees which straddle the boundary between our block and a neighbour. We felled the biggest and oldest camphor as it was too close to the house, its root system undermining the driveway, massive limbs swaying about during storms. We felt bad about hiring someone to remove that huge old weed tree, imagining its psychic pain as chainsaws did their fatal work.

Did you know the term ‘tree hugger’ can also mean someone who physically hugs a tree to become more at one with nature?

“Good morning, tree.”

“Morning, Elspeth, coffee smells good. Ahem, I don’t suppose I could have a glass of water?”

BBC culture writer Lindsay Baker found that the recent emergence of ‘tree literature’ is no new thing, quoting the likes of William Wordsworth (It Was An April Morn), John Clare (The Fallen Elm) and German poet and philosopher Herman Hesse (Trees: Reflections and Poems).

“Trees are sanctuaries,” wrote Hesse. “When we have learned to listen to trees… that is home.”

New age and literary tree-isms aside, ‘small c’ conservationists can do their bit to save trees without necessarily chaining themselves to bulldozers or a Wollemi Pine (critically endangered, according to the Canberra Arboretum, which hosts 31 endangered species).

In 2014, we set ourselves a carbon-neutral cap after towing a caravan 15,000 kms around Australia. Our carbon footprint for this epic journey was 4.77 tonnes of CO2, based on driving 15,000 kms at an average 14.5 litres per 100 kilometres. This translated to $24.15 per tonne or $115.95. We donated this amount to Barung Landcare, where we often purchase trees, plants and ferns from their native nursery.

Our 2018 outback trip (6,000 kms), which ended on Monday, should cost us around $50 as our version of the ‘carbon tax’. Or we could just wander around the block, hugging trees (hose in hand).

Recommended reading: The Bush – Don Watson, Barkskins – Annie Proulx, The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben.

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Our gorgeous gorges bucket list

Although I clearly remember rubbishing the concept of a “bucket list”, it appears we may have had one all along, namely a list of famous Australian gorges.

This week’s visit to much-lauded Cobbold Gorge, south-east of Georgetown in Savannah country, turns out to be the 10^th gorge we have visited from a debatable list of 14 “must-do” destinations. Despite its remoteness, privately-owned Cobbold Gorge attracted 11,500 visitors last year and judging by our two days staying in the bush caravan park, they’re on track for another good year.

Most Australian gorges of any merit are enshrined within national parks, with Cobbold Gorge the exception, through an agreement with the Queensland Government where a tourism venture is allowed to exist within a pastoral lease. The Terry family own the 330,000ha Robin Hood station, with 4,720ha set aside as a nature reserve. The family run 4,000 head of Brahman cattle on the property, which they have owned since 1964. They are the second European owners, after the Clark family who owned it since 1900 and the Ewamian, the traditional owners.

Robin Hood station, even today, is accessible only by a partially sealed road from Georgetown to Forsayth and then 41 kms of dirt road. The land in this region is cut off in the wet season (December to March). It’s not difficult to imagine the hard life out here before electricity, before a proper road was formed from an existing bullock track.

Like most gorges, Cobbold was formed millions of years by water scouring out a channel through a basalt cap then down into the sandstone and gravel escarpment. This is a narrow gorge, 2m wide in some places, which gives rise to the theory that it is relatively young.

porcupine-gorges-bucket-list — Porcupine Gorge, one of Australia’s must-see gorges

Last week, we spent a couple of days at Porcupine Gorge, a National Park between Hughenden and The Lynd. Porcupine Gorge is sometimes referred to as Australia’s ‘mini Grand Canyon’ as its canyon walls are wide apart, eroded over millions of years by Porcupine Creek, a tributary of the Flinders River. We took the walk down into the gorge, a mere 1.2 kilometres, except for the 1,800-step uphill return walk. It cost about $25 to stay here two nights – stunning location but a bit short on facilities (hybrid dunnies). You have to come prepared, carrying your own water, food and power source.

By contrast, Cobbold Gorge tours have to be booked and paid for ahead of time and there is no alternative to a guided tour. Now that I’ve seen the infrastructure the Terry family have built there and taken the tour, I have no argument at all with the $92 fee (and $41 a night for a powered site). The facilities (the village also has motel units) and amenities are first-class.

Most of the information here was gleaned from a bit of note-taking and chatting to the guide, Graham, after the tour. The owners invested a lot of money to set up this eco-tour without any security of tenure. It was only recently that the Queensland government came to an agreement that the family would be compensated if at some future point the gorge becomes a National Park. As it stands, the nature reserve, a tract of old growth bush, can also be used for grazing and water can be taken from the Robinson River. No felling is allowed though, so the bush is allowed to regenerate.

We put this landmark on our list when last in the Savannah country circa 2007. We’d bumped into old newspaper contacts at Undara Lava Tubes. They told us they’d just come from Cobbold Gorge and said it was a special place and a must-do experience. It seems this natural gorge became a tourist attraction largely by word of mouth. The first white people to see the gorge were the Terry family’s teenage children who apparently drove a truck far enough in to carry a dinghy to the gorge and go exploring. It wasn’t long before friends and family started asking if they could visit and that led to the establishment of the tourism enterprise in 1994 (200 people visited in the first year).

The tour involves a short journey by four wheel drive bus, a walk up the sandstone escarpment to see the gorge from above then a ride on a flat bottomed boat (powered by whisper-quiet electric motor).

The walls rise up to 30m and at times the gorge is so narrow you can almost touch both sides. Spiders sit patiently waiting by their intricately spun webs. There’s Jurassic vibe about this gorge, silent and still except for a freshwater crocodile which retreated beneath a rock ledge as we approached.

Last year, Etheridge Shire Council proposed making an application to have 49,000ha of the shire listed by UNESCO as a Geopark. The ABC reported that local graziers were worried what impact this could have on pastoral activities. The proposal caused deep divisions in the shire, but at this stage the plan has not been progressed.

One could see why Etheridge Shire would want the region to become ever-more attractive to international eco-tourists. The famous Undara Lava Tubes are also within Etheridge Shire, which encompasses an area two-thirds the size of Tasmania. For all its size, the shire has only 1,500 ratepayers and has to rely on grants from State and Federal governments.

Our previous visits to well-known gorges like Carnarvon (Qld), Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge, NT), Wattarka (Kings Canyon, NT) and Karajini and Widjana (both in WA), have mostly involved independent exploration. Hiking in outback gorge country is not without its risks. You can get lost, run out of water, have a fall or be bitten by a venomous snake.

No wonder Cobbold Gorge asks hikers to sign in and out when exploring the bush tracks. They also have a ‘no-selfie’ rule when standing atop the escarpment! It makes you think how the early explorers got by on horseback carrying water in canvas dilly bags, living off damper and bully beef, perpetually in a quest for the next waterhole.

I expect this won’t be the last of our gorges visits on our six-week adventure. There’s Barron and Mossman further north and Cania Gorge on the way back home.

When you visit one of Australia’s remote National Parks, with or without gorges, it is hard not to soak up the timeless influence of the First Nations people. Cobbold Gorge was named after the famous Australian pastoralist Francis Cobbold. The Ewamian tribe were the original inhabitants of this land and there is a section on the gorge tour where guides tell visitors the Ewamian have asked them not to interpret the site or allow people to enter and take photographs.

A few months back, Aboriginal journalist Jack Latimore wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian Weekly, noting that two mountains in central Queensland were to revert to their Aboriginal names.

Jack thinks all Australian landmarks and monuments should revert to their first nation names, but he doesn’t stop there. Boring names like Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide (all named after British Lords and Sirs), should also be given their native monikers. How about Mianjin instead of Brisbane?

The value of inner city car parks

car-parks-value — Image of car parks Palma de Mallorca by Timmy L (flickr) https://flic.kr/p/TR4DFC

As you’d know, one little statistic can send me off on an investigation – like the number tucked away in a Guardian Weekly report that, globally, cars are in car parks 95% of the time.

The statistic emerged in a report about a pilot scheme in Amsterdam to reward residents with a free green space in front of their houses if they give up their parking permits. The car parks pilot scheme being trialled in six streets in an Amsterdam suburb is yet another Dutch idea designed to encourage people to give up cars and switch to carpooling, public transport or bicycles.

Residents’ cars will be stored for free in public car parks and in return something ‘green and pleasant’ can occupy the designated car space. The Guardian reports a fair degree of friction over this idea. Two early adopters (who have been heckled), have already put flower-filled tow carts in front of their houses (a cosy outdoor spot to sit in the sun and have a morning coffee and a plate of warm poffertjes).

This is not the first time Amsterdam’s Stadsbestuurders have tried to rend asunder the city’s love affair with the car. Amsterdam is widely known as the bicycle capital of the world because it is relatively compact and the narrow streets and canal bridges make driving more difficult than in other cities. When I spent time in Amsterdam (wishing I could forget what I can’t remember), the city was then trialling Sundays as a no-car day. I looked that up yesterday and find that it is 45 years since Car Free Sunday was introduced. As this blog explains, something changed in the Dutch mindset when the measure was introduced in 1973 (to dampen oil consumption amid the 1970s Oil Shock). Since then cycling with or without clogs has clearly become a lifestyle/clean environment movement.

The Netherlands leads other European cities, with 27% of all trips attributed to cyclists, a figure that has been stable for a decade. How could it be anything less when Amsterdammers own 22.5 million bicycles (1.3 per resident). Evidently Mum, Dad and the kids are in on the trend. Denmark is a close second in Europe’s bicycle stakes (0.8 per resident).

Australians are fairly keen on bicycles too, with 3.6 million using one every week, The Australian Cyclists Party says the average Australian household has 1.5 bicycles in working order, although if you wanted to be pendantic, you couldn’t ride half a bike very far. You could of course turn it into a unicycle, learn to juggle, sing and play the ukulele at the same time and apply for a gig at the Woodford Music Festival.

Digressions aside, Australians are as deeply committed to the combustion engine as the global leader (America). The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics motor vehicle census showed there were 18.8 million registered vehicles in Australia as of January 31, 2017, a 2% increase on 2016. The 2016 Australian Census showed there were 2.95 million one-vehicle households, 3.02 million households with two vehicles and another 1.50 million households with three or more. The same Census revealed that only 1.1% of Australians rode their bikes to work. The sole occupant car dominated work trips – from 65.6% in Sydney to 79.9% in Adelaide.

The notion that cars are parked 95% of the time is a figure largely calculated on public car parks which are utilised 85% to 95% of the time. Just dwell on that next time you are doing laps in one of Brisbane’s large shopping malls, waiting for a spot.

Last Saturday we went to a Queensland Ballet double bill (Carmen and The Firebird) which, I must say, we enjoyed more than the reviewer in The Australian did, apparently. There were three curtain calls.

Afterwards, we walked back to the multi-level car park where I realised (despite my disdain for automation), that I had no option but to pre-pay as there were no humans in the parking booths. The machine hungrily gobbled my $20 and dispensed the ticket. You should all know the routine by now – drive to boom gate 1, insert ticket and the boom (should) automatically rise to let you drive out.

Them were the good old days, mate

Not that I want to return to days of yore, but when we first started going to the ballet in 1988, you could quite often score a free car park somewhere in South Brisbane or West End. We’d leave home early and sometimes snag a space in Fish Lane. Ah, those were the days. Now we usually park in the Brisbane Entertainment and Convention Centre car park as it has 1,500 spaces, so is the place least likely to be full around South Brisbane’s entertainment and dining precinct. If I recall, when this complex first opened in 1996, parking 2-4 hours cost $8. That’s inflation for you.

A Colliers International white paper in 2015 predicted city parking would become more expensive in Australia, as no new multi-storey car parks were being approved. Some, in fact, have been demolished to make way for new apartment buildings. The other factor in parking becoming more expensive is that many cities now impose a congestion levy on property owners.

New technology is set to disrupt the parking business model though; one example being Divvy Parking, a digital start-up which hooks up motorists with under-utilised car parks within commercial office buildings. In late 2016, New South Wales car insurance company NRMA took a 40% stake in Divvy Parking. An NRMA study found that 30% of urban traffic congestion was caused by people driving around looking for a car park. And, according to NRMA, a third of parking spots within centrally-located commercial buildings are under-used. NRMA Group chief executive Rohan Lund told the Australian Financial Review that smart technology would be as crucial to solving Australia’s mobility issues as bricks and mortar infrastructure.

All over the world, cities are introducing measures to thwart or discourage drivers from bringing their vehicles to the inner city. These range from London’s Congestion Charge to Madrid’s blanket ban on non-resident vehicles. Only locals, taxis, buses and zero-emission delivery vehicles are allowed within Madrid. This is not the first time the padres de la ciudad have tried to beat congestion and pollution within Madrid’s city centre. In 2005, a pedestrian-only zone was introduced in a densely-populated inner city neighbourhood.

Interestingly, there are no Australian cities named in Business Insider’s recent article on 13 cities planning to ban cars to one degree or another. Most of the cities are in Europe (Oslo, Berlin, Paris, Hamburg, Copenhagen) but also China, Mexico and South America. Many of the plans are based on making it easier to walk and cycle. Several cities are planning to build bicycle-only super-highways.

Ah well, next time I go to the ballet maybe I’ll take my half a bicycle and wobble on down to the train station. (She Who Broke a Bone Falling on the Stone Steps) “Don’t forget your helmet, dear.” More reading: