Lessons from the road: The Stop Adani Convoy

May 18, 2019, originally via Medium

I registered for the Stop Adani Convoy led by Brown Brown as soon as I heard about it in February. I didn’t think twice — I knew that it was something I wanted to be part of. As the date grew closer, I realised I needed to travel from Mullumbimby to Sydney during the same period, and driving in the opposite direction seemed like a silly thing to do. I resolved to limit my participation to the local Mullumbimby rally and convoy just two hours to Brisbane the following day.

The rally on Easter Sunday brought me to tears. Sitting on the grass amongst thousands of Northern Rivers locals with my two small children and listening to the well worn, oft-repeated facts about the future we face, the emotion that welled up inside of me was big. I had grabbed a convoy flag at a stall on the way in, meant only for convoy participants. I stuck it on my car window and used it for a priority exit on the way out, cheered by locals gathered at the gate. It felt right.

Stop Adani rally, Mullumbimby

I was less than an hour out of Mullumbimby, just over the Queensland border when I received my first finger. It was a strong and powerful gesture. Full arm and hand out the car window, like a salute, held in the air for three seconds. The protective shield of my Prado didn’t protect me from the extent of the negative energy directed at me.

The crowd at the Brisbane rally didn’t seem as large as Mullumbimby where we gathered in a small park but as we walked the kilometre to Adani’s office, it trailed for hundreds of metres behind us through the Brisbane CBD. I had thought it curious to host a rally on a public holiday when the city was relatively empty but it allowed us to fill the roads of the city without significant inconvenience to the public and with police support. It reminded me of my time in Berlin where protests are an integral part of the culture and police will willingly close the roads given sufficient notice for what often resembles a party.

Stop Adani rally, Brisbane

I didn’t know anyone at the convoy departure point in Brisbane. The one convoy vehicle I knew, with Byron Councillor Cate Coorey, who led Byron Bay’s declaration of a Climate Emergency in October and former Councillor and Byron Greens convenor Duncan Dey, had headed north early. The girls and I sat alone on the carpark bitumen, listening to some pre-convoy tunes from the stage of a vegetable oil powered truck and surveying our company. I was surprised to not see many small children amongst the group — my two and four year old daughters were amongst only a few.

After adding a few stickers to our car we were lined up ready to start our adventure up the coast. The two most prominent signs that lined the highway on our first full day of driving in Queensland, ‘KEEP PLAYING TRIVIA — IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE’ and ‘MAKE AUSTRALIA GREAT AGAIN’ were revealing. As I spotted my first pro-coal signs in Tiaro, the ‘MORE NEW COAL’ and ‘GO ADANI’ signs in front of a massive orange billboard of Pauline Hansen, I began to feel the divide that this trip would stir, more difficult to grasp from the Northern Rivers.

Tiaro, Queensland

The Caves, Queensland

The handful of supporters who stood with signs out on the highway and on overpasses with during the convoy provided heartfelt moments of hospitality amidst the more hostile occasions. There was much time on the long drives, averaging around five hours a day, to reflect on the landscapes and contexts we were driving through. One Gympie resident, a Frenchman who had resided there for 18 years, asked me what the Adani mine was as it had ‘never been in the news’. A woman waving for my attention from the passenger seat purposefully held out a small, roughly scribbled biro sign as she passed me, reading simply, ‘JOBS’.

I reflected on this topic a lot through my journey. For years, I have loathed the ‘jobs and growth’ motto of our current government, at the expense of social, environmental and ethical values. We have created a system where a town, or even a whole country, can be built around a non-sustainable industry, residents encouraged and incentivised to purchase property in that place, leveraged to such an extent as to create a situation where the unsustainable mortgage-supporting jobs cannot afford to be lost, and re-leveraged such that the property value, based on unsustainable industries, cannot afford to decline. The irony is that the jobs that these mines promise are ones that potentially won’t be able to service these mortgages anyway, as proposed new ‘perma-flexi’ employment categories will have none of the permanency or benefits of traditional full time jobs. Literally permanent contracts with zero guaranteed hours of work.

I hadn’t organised accommodation for our Hervey Bay stop but it turned out that a friend of a friend I had hosted at my art exhibition in Mullumbimby the week before lived in the area, with “lots of room where he is living. Like 10 bedrooms and a quarry”. Being welcomed by a relative stranger into a luxurious ten bedroom home with views of Fraser Island, to which you’d invited four fellow convoyers including two strangers you’d met in a carpark, set the tone of our trip.

Playgrounds in Brisbane and Miriam Vale

As I was travelling with small children, my trip was as much a tour of Queensland playgrounds as anything else, and Miriam Vale won the prize with its $4 million new playground and amenities. We met Bob Brown in the carpark, who was leading the convoy in an electric car and had obviously chosen the same stop due to the town’s charging stations installed in 2017 as part of the Queensland government’s $3 million ‘electric highway’ initiative. I was asked by a local as I returned to my petrol car why we were focusing on Adani and not other mines and why I was driving a fuel hungry vehicle. I didn’t manage a cohesive answer while I was negotiating children and picnic baskets, so I reflect here. As much as I’d prefer to be driving a Tesla, we’ve been led to believe that our small, collective behaviours as ‘consumers’ will make a difference, whilst allowing corporate behaviour to go unchecked. The 3,000km I drive will produce less than one tonne of carbon dioxide. The Adani mine has been predicted to generate 7.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide over its 60 year lifespan. In addition to the scale of the mine and emissions, this particular mine in the Galilee Basin threatens water resources of the Great Artesian Basin; it threatens the health of the Great Barrier Reef and associated tourism jobs, already at risk due to warming oceans; it threatens native title; and it requires $1 billion of taxpayer funds.

I arrived at Emu Park early and unexpectedly drove into a carpark full of male pro-Adani protestors. I was so unprepared for this clash that I stupidly put down my passenger window to better view their signs, dislodging my red convoy flag which was promptly grabbed by one of the men. I wasn’t ready for the full force of their disdain towards me and my little red flag when I jumped out to retrieve it, especially when, opening the passenger door to return my flag to its rightful post let out a pile of coloured cardboard I’d been using to make the girls’ lanterns during our drive. The incident left me feeling shaken and attacked. Other convoyers reported that it was mostly ‘bluff and bravado’ and their heart wasn’t really in it, and some good chats were apparently had.

Emu Park. Image via a fellow convoyer

One of the things that I loved about the rallies at each location along the convoy was how different they all were. The Emu Park event was focused on a lantern parade which culminated in a spontaneous act of over a hundred people singing in the middle of the park. There is a quiet power in peaceful protest in numbers. We showed up. We were present. We didn’t yell or scream or even necessarily try to reason. We were simply there.

I happened to open my social media feed to this quote the following day, shared by a friend:

“There is a river flowing now, very fast. It is great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination. The elders say we must push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above the water. See who is in there with you and celebrate. At this point in history we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves, for the moment we do that, our spiritual growth comes to a halt. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves; banish the word “struggle” from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred way and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

— Hopi Elders prophecy

I deliberately didn’t stop in Mackay on the way further north and had sufficient obscenities yelled at me by a woman in a passing car at playground stop nearby in Koumala. We had been told that we would be escorted by police for sections of the journey through more contentious areas but it was obvious that they weren’t all in favour of our journey. Heading off early from the Arlie Beach rally, I was stopped for a random breath test and questioned about my destination due to my convoy flags. After acknowledging that I would be heading to Clermont, I was told that they needed to record my drivers licence details as a precautionary measure since they’d ‘had issues with Stop Adani protestors in the past’. I questioned this, since Bob Brown’s convoy was unprecedented and needn’t be linked with activities of other groups. “Well I don’t like Bob Brown”, I was told by a police officer who used to live in Tasmania and apparently didn’t like what Bob had done there. Not being a Tasmanian, or particularly knowledgeable on its politics, I watched as two policemen tried to record my licence details on their large iPad, whilst another took extensive photos of my plates. I was told to move to another queue so the cars behind me could pass, then waved onwards for another ‘random’ drug test. By then my four year old, distressed at being stopped for so long, was yelling at me to ignore the cop and keep driving, waking her sleeping sister. Not my favourite moment. Apparently I’m on a watch list now. One that I’d like to know more about.

I arrived at the Frontline camp Binbee slightly shaken after the incident and was promptly brought a tea and fruit for the girls. Despite knowing no one at the camp, the warmth of their hospitality and experience at inclusion was like salve. I had been in contact with one of the Frontline Action on Coal members earlier to check the suitability for children and had been happy to hear that she had a three year old. Two of our other little friends met at Arlie Beach arrived soon after us and the kids were soon happy playing in the official children’s area of the camp.

We were asked to delay our arrival in Clermont the next day until late afternoon to avoid the Protest the Protestors event with Clive Palmer, Matt Canavan, Bob Katter and friends, and follow a specific route. Our route from Collinsville was like a private tour of coal mines; extensive tailings interspersed with kilometre long coal trains. Such was the extent of takeover of the landscape, that a private road, with a large sign declaring NO ENTRY on our route made me feel like I was driving through a different country, in which I didn’t have a passport.

Coal country

Moranbah’s red bucket, purchased from a mine for $1 million

When we arrived just outside Clermont, we were stopped by police and directed a specific way to the showgrounds. Drunk locals on the road in our path tried to misdirect us away from the police and towards the centre of town. As we approached the road to our destination, a dozen police held back a hundred or so locals on the street. As we reached the line of convoy cars waiting to enter the showgrounds, we were greeted personally by Bob. I had switched cars with Duncan to take a break from driving and was keen to check how the girls had fared driving in. Apparently they had put the windows up themselves when they approached town and were grinning from ear to ear as Duncan shared that he had sung ‘three red buckets’ the whole way in. They thankfully seem to have missed the other entertainment.

The Queensland media reported the convoy’s day-long congregation in Clermont as a protest but it was rather a day of celebration and solidarity with the original people of the land. The Wangan and Jagalingou families, led by elder Uncle Adrian Burragubba, hosted a cultural celebration with music, dance and speakers. They asked us to consider the issues of native title in their country and more broadly in Australia and it was good to be reminded of this as much of my focus until now had been on the climate effects of the Adani mine.

Wangan and Jagalingou country

Clermont

As a mother, one of the things that struck me most from our hosts’ speeches was the constant references to the ‘gundoo’ (children). In contrast to other events, where I had felt the need to keep my children quiet during speakers, the intentional acknowledgement of their place here, and their future, felt to me like a personal invitation to be children. And it was evident in their behaviour. We felt held in this place.

Halfway through the afternoon, as we were listening to Neil Murray play, a man on horseback rode into the arena, whooping and yelling. My four year old was about to step out onto the green as he rode in and I called her back just in time. She had been dancing with other small convoyers and members of the Wangan and Jagalingou families throughout the day within this safe space that had been created for and by us all. It was pure luck that they weren’t in the horse’s path at that moment. The rider had the intention to harm. In addition to riding his mount into a gate surrounded by people, and harming one, he had apparently slapped people on the head as he entered and departed the area.

The horseman

Our Monday 10am departure from Clermont, in convoy led by police, was uneventful and I literally didn’t see one person on the streets. The journey out of the region was quiet and sombre after the last day’s events. It was the most difficult day of the convoy. The girls were fighting, and less comfortable travelling than they had been until now. I kept feeling like I wanted to cry, a feeling that was echoed by my fellow convoy traveller at a Rolleston stop. The focus that morning had been on getting out of Clermont, and now that we were out, the general feeling was of shellshock. A small taste of what Indigenous people have felt for hundreds of years. Witnessing the fear and rage in Clermont was an interesting prelude to the social unrest we are likely to see as the combined effects of climate change and likely recession in Australia kick in.

My experience has left me feeling for the pro-coal locals. They are scared. They are inundated with pro-mining propaganda from local politicians, unions and media. Their towns, their jobs, their mortgages and probably their car loans are leveraged to this one industry (the median property price in Clermont rose 33% in the past year and 42% in 2017). Their landscape is one of coal mine after coal mine, amidst degraded land and dried up river beds. I didn’t see any sign of productive agriculture in this part of the country and the stores were full of packaged produce. Their fear is fuelled by vested interests and misinformation and has become rage. Locals gave me and my small children the finger and shouted obscenities. The CEMEU was reportedly directing the action at Clermont, blocking cars and giving instructions to the pro-Adani protestors. The local pub in Clermont apparently served free beer on the day our convoy drove in, to further fuel the divide already incited by corrupt politicians earlier in the day.

This wasn’t just a Stop Adani rally, it was an exercise in community, in looking out for one another, and for country. The network of convoyers became like a web around us, holding us in our journey. A few days after we left the party, my girls continue to ask me where all the red flag cars are, and the friends that they made along the way. We have started something that no one wants to stop.

The Convoy

Isla Gorge campground

Many of my peers have spoken recently of an increasing anxiety and grief about the climate crisis and the possibility of near term extinction. The Byron Climate Emergency group that I am part of is more focused towards resilience and adaptation in an environment that we now know will likely get worse before it gets better. Artists around me are beginning to hold sessions to speak of that grief and I have heard others speak of action as the useful tool for expression of such despair. The Stop Adani Convoy was my first significant physical action. Its peaceful focus made it appropriate to participate in with my children. And I realise that through it, my despair at the state of the world has lifted.

I thank Bob Brown for showing me the power of action.

“We must be honest with ourselves… We’re not here to live by unjust laws… We must ask ourselves, are we really doing enough? Honestly are we doing enough?… For the most part we’re still playing by the rules of a game which is rigged for us to lose… We must step into this movement together. The time has long past come for us all to act in civil disobedience.”

— Shane Primrose, Frontline Action on Coal member and high school teacher