Kimberley Exhibition opens tonight
- Adam Monk
- Oct 20, 2011
- 3 min read
The exhibition is up on the wall, the programs are all printed and its only 3pm, i’ve got time to spare… so i thought i’d share what i’ve put on the wall at the beginning of the images. I’m sure i’ll offend somebody, but, some people are just easy to offend. lets see.
James Price Point looking South towards the Gas Precinct… This is where they want to put it!
The Kimberley – A Photographic Exploration
The Kimberley gets into your blood with the red pindan, it simply becomes a part of you, and you become a small part of it. It is a difficult place to leave and it will always call you back.
The Kimberley is unique in the world, a region of raging rivers and waterfalls, vast sweeping grass plains, dry sandy deserts and pockets of hidden rainforest complete with bubbling streams and big blue winged butterflies.
It is also one of the last great expanses of unspoiled wilderness left, one of the last places in Australia where you can still drink the water from the rivers (I think this is a bizarre statement) and its one of the last refuges for much of Australia’s unique and treasured wildlife.
Some of the best National Parks in Australia can be found in the Kimberley, Mitchell Plateau and Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles) to name two. But National Parks don’t exist in isolation, a National Park surrounded by mining and heavy industry will soon become a National Park in name only. Whales don’t understand marine park boundaries and neither do oil slicks; Bulldozers and Bilbies cannot coexist.
Australia currently has the worst mammal extinction record in the world, in just 200 years we have wiped out 22 unique mammal species from this continent. None of these extinctions have so far occurred in the Kimberley.
We can’t stop the multinationals from wanting to mine the Kimberley, we have little or no control over their desires, but we can stop them from actually doing it. Controlling the behaviour of large corporations is the roll of the government, the government elected by us to represent us and enact our will, not the will of the big corporations.
Don’t be fooled by the current proposed gas hub at James Price Point, it will not be a “pinprick in the environment”, it will be a massive 35 square kilometre polluting giant with 4km long seawalls dynamited out through the reef, creating a 50km marine “dead zone”; it will squat like a toad in the landscape belching out poisons into a pristine and unspoiled environment. It is also the thin edge of the wedge; this development will be the foothold at the edge of the Kimberley from where the march of destruction will begin.
Don’t let the Kimberley become like the Pilbara, one industrial wasteland in Australia’s North West is enough. Make sure our Government represents us, the people of Australia, not the multinationals; they are not people and they don’t have the right to vote.
If enough of us say no to this madness then it can be stopped. Stand up and be heard in the only way we can make a difference, so no to the James Price Point Development and say no to the current State Government’s plan to industrialise the Kimberley.
There are alternative means to process this gas elsewhere without ruining one of the most pristine coastlines on the planet – pipe it to existing infrastructure in the Pilbara, process the gas on site 400km off the coast, or leave it in the ground for future generations. Write a letter to the Federal environment Minister, become an online activist and go and visit James Price point and see for yourself – what Broome, the Kimberley and all of us stand to lose.
What is left after the whole of the environment has been pillaged, when all that is unique and beautiful in the world has been despoiled and polluted? Would you want to live there?