Broome... ah Broome, usually a quiet, relaxed town with a resident population of around 13,000 people of all different cultures, backgrounds, colors and creeds, a hodgepodge of inter mixing of cultures and people. Broome is a small country town on the far north west coast of Western Australia, a harsh landscape rich in Aboriginal culture and law, a beautiful stunning place where the deep rich red of the pindan soil reaches to the soft white sands of the Indian Ocean, a stunningly beautiful area of the Kimberley area of the state. Pristine wilderness, full of wonderous animals, mammals and birds, its incredible azure blue coast hosts an incredible array of wildlife.
Humpback whales migrate from the far icy waters of the Antarctic every year to birth their calves, spending months in the warm waters they are often seen breaching, frolicing and gently rolling as they move along the coast, dugongs strange creatures of the sea move and live on the sea grasses of the shores, turtles 7 species in all come ashore from Cable Beach to James Prices Point to lay their eggs every year, as each has done for millinium.
A place rich in the mineral wealth that man so craves, a land full of copper, uranium, silver, diamonds and all manner of minerals, minerals the huge conglomerates of multi national business clamber and slobber for.
And governments in their greed, polititians in their ever self absorbed manner seek to garner financial wealth and allay their ever growing egos from the companies. Nievity reigns supreme in the communities these governments and companies seek to exploit.
In Broomes case the nievity goes beyond government and multi national companies to the bodies acting on behalf of the indiginous peoples of the area, signing "deals" without approval or acceptance from the local law makers of the tribes, without consultation with either those directly concerned or the local community itself.
It is this that has the community of Broome up in arms. Its the lies, innuendo and complete falacies that have been perpetrated upon all the people of the community.
The local shire giving approval for the company Woodside and its joint venture partners Chevron and Shell tacit approval for them to begin ripping up the land clearing sites installing accomodation drilling and creating large dams, approval given tacitly without any consultation with either the indiginous or local broader community.
On the 16th October 2010... over 2000 members of this small community of just 13000 people turned up to march from the Male Oval in the middle of town to Town Beach roughly 3 miles away, a peaceful demonstration to show solidarity and objection to this government under the present Premier Colin Barnett's intention to "resume the land at James Prices Point" this entails forcibly taking the land and offering it directly to Woodside and its joint venture partners.
The whole thing revolves around the offshore area known as the Browse Gas Basin, an area rich in gas among other things these companies crave, the intention is to pipe the gas to James Prices Point and set up a huge industrial area, said to be the largest ever created in Western Australia surpassing areas south such as Karratha, a well established mining and industrial area. An area readily accessable to the joint venture partners, an area that the prevailing shire councils have come out and said they want to use for the gas industrial area ear marked for JPP. An area with all necessary infrastructure INCLUDING a disused gas plant in place.
This government under Colin Barnett has not only refused to consult with the local communities, but has also refused to seriously consider areas such as Karratha, but has firmly set its sights on Broome and JPP.
The message the local community continues to send to Colin Barnett, Woodside and its joint venture partners AND the wider community is not that we dont want development not that we are against all development and not that this Browse Gas Basin should not be given the go ahead... for until man decides to stop being reliant upon oil and gas products this sort of exploitation of the land and sea will take place... but that it is as viable to the companies involved to pipe it the extra few hundred miles to the south to an area already an industrial wasteland and not destroy one of the last natural wilderness in Australia.
The lies? First there was the initial quote of the size of the required land of 50 sq hectares and 500 meters of the seabed for a jetty, then that grew until at the signing of the so called "heads of agreement" between the government, Woodside and the KLC (Kimberley Land Council) when that land amount had grown to over 5000 sq hectres and almost 1 and a half kilometers of seabed, now some month later the last estimates given were for OVER 10,000 sq hectres and over 3klms of seabed!!! One of the joint venture partners recently made public their present building of a super tanker of over 400meters in length for use at this site!
The fact that IF the land is resumed and given to the joint venture partners, they will fence it in its entirety thus locking out the local indiginous community from burial grounds, sacred sites and tribal lands for hundreds of kilometers of pristine coastline, but will fly in fly out their workforce and truck in from other areas the machinery and equipment needed and also their required goods and services.
The fact that several years ago in the town of Karratha Woodside on requiring extra land to extend their operations there, informed the local indiginious community in Roebourne that they would move any sacred sites, tribal paintings and rock paintings thousands of years old and part of the culture of the people to an area that would enable them to visit and utilize them for their culture and law, but when they moved said items they simply broke them up and put them behind a 10ft high fence and padlocked it shut! effectively destroying part of that tribal culture forever and disallowing the tribal elders or anyone else other than Woodside employees access to sacred objects, paintings and culture.
Woodside along with its joint venture partners Chevron and Shell are world renown for their lack of ecological practices, their lack of respect for cultures of the local indiginous communities, their lack any form of respect for the land, the sea, the underground water tables, and a total lack of conscience for the waste they create. Shell in particular with the Niger Basin oil spill that continues to this day to lay waste to the entire Niger Basin area of Nigeria an area that is now and forever unable to sustain life or be utilized to grow food due to the amount of waste oil under ground and over the surface. Chevron has an equally bad record as has Woodside itself.
We have an area that is not only pristine wilderness, but has one of the most diverse eco systems in the world, its beauty is breathtaking, some of its flora and fauna is found nowhere else in the world.
Yet in a speech in support of his governments intention to resume the land at JPP Premier Barnett made the comment that JPP is an "unremarkable" area of the Kimberley.
I show you how "unremarkable" JPP is... YOU BE THE JUDGE!! Is James Prices Point worth saving? Worth fighting for? Worth standing up and saying ENOUGH!
Shane ala the wayward walkabout
