QotD: Vacation All I Ever Wanted

Where do you want to go on your next vacation?
Submitted by beth.

Well after watching a recent Four Corners program called Bran Nue Deal about proposed natural gas mining and transport off the Kimberley Coast of Western Australia, I feel an urgent need to go and check out that part of the world, which includes a 'maternity ward' and 'nursery' for humpback whales, while it is still relatively undisturbed. 

Bran Nue Deal

Reporter: Matthew Carney

Broadcast: 22/09/2008

To most Australians it’s squiggles on a map... a wild and jagged shoreline hewn over millions of years: towering cliffs and gorges pummelled by powerful tides. Home to dugongs, turtles and crocodiles, a humpbacks' maternity ward, the Kimberley coast is nature's catwalk.

Its seabed contains even more ancient bounty: vast natural gas reserves rivalling the famed North West Shelf and worth untold billions of dollars as refined export LNG.

This gift of nature is eyed warily by some Kimberley people. They look southward and fear that new pipelines, an emissions-chugging 10-square kilometre refining plant and a fly-in, fly-out workforce will "Pilbarise" their region.

But development seems almost unstoppable. Even mainstream green groups support it – reluctantly – dragged in the wake of the powerful indigenous body, the Kimberley Land Council. Just about everyone is up for a deal – conservationists to minimise the environmental impact, the KLC to reap maximum economic benefit.

Now the race is on to finalise a single site for the massive on-shore refinery, and Four Corners is there to witness as the pressure builds.

KLC boss Wayne Bergmann shuttles between communities, feverishly working to forge consensus on a site by an end of October deadline. If he fails – or overplays his hand by demanding too much from developers – he might blow a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars to his people. Woodside might decide to pipe the gas south to the Pilbara. The other big developer, Japan’s Inpex, is considering a huge pipeline to Darwin. "This project is about creating our own opportunities," says Bergmann. "We can’t have a situation where all our mob live in poverty, in Third World conditions, with high suicide rates and low education standards while our environment is the most pristine wilderness where we don’t have any development."

Dissenters like Albert Wigan, an Aboriginal man who is raising his young family in one of the likely development sites, find themselves sidelined. He worries about being flooded with money: "It’s going to divide us because that’s all money has done to my people… it’s made my people greedy. The more money, the bigger the tension."

Wigan has an ally in Save the Kimberley, a small band of greens and tour operators trying to mount a nationwide "Save the Franklin" style campaign. "If industrialisation of this scale was going to happen around Uluru or on, let’s say, Great Keppel Island, Australians would be up in arms," says Save the Kimberley’s Peter Tucker.

To make it case Save the Kimberley points to one of the world's biggest humpback whale nurseries off the Kimberley coast. Its magnitude only recently has been established. Four Corners' report features mother and baby whales at play in what is believed to be the first detailed footage from the nursery.

The whales are a spectacular symbol of the Kimberley’s natural grandeur – but how much are they and their wider habitat under threat from shipping, pipelines and a large on-shore refinery? And what if development is stopped – where lies the economic future of Kimberley Aboriginal people? Reporter Matthew Carney looks at the beauty and the billions at stake in a "Bran Nue Deal" - on Four Corners 8.30 pm Monday 22 September and about 11.35 pm Tuesday 23 September (also 8am Tuesday on ABC2).

My husband and I spent part of our honeymoon in the Kimberley but only in the more accessible places like Broome and Kunnunurra.  We also hired a four wheel drive for a few days to go camping in Pernululu National Park (aka the Bungle Bungles) and to go driving along the Dampier Penninsula.  This was back in 1998 and I understand these areas are a lot more touristed now.  Back then though, the feeling of glorious isolation was quite amazing.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), the isolations make it quite an expensive place to visit so doubt we could afford to go and get too far off the beaten track. 

I understand that since the Bran Nue Deal program went to air, a decision was taken to locate the gas refinery in Darwin.  This will still mean pipelines going through the humpback whales' territory and who knows what other damage to the marine environment.

While I understand that there is a need for new sources of energy and gas is a relatively 'clean' alternative to some kinds of electricity, I don't think that in reality, this proposal would do anything much to benefit the local people or even Australians as the plan is for the gas to get converted to a liquified form and exported overseas by a foreign company.  The only benefits to Australians will be from the employment opportunities and even those are a mixed blessing as shown by a previous Four Corners program on the Pilbara mining community called The Money Pit. 

 This whale footage is not from the program or even from the same area.  Still worth watching to get an idea of how huge and majestic these whales are.  The footage of Albert Wiggan is not from the program either but is worth a watch.  You can also watch the entire program on the Four Corners website here.