Articles/Letters Re-enter the great cycle of life at Belongil
Corina Murray
Story & photo Mary Gardner
Crowds are still cheering how the sea floods 250 hectares at Steart on the mouth of the River Parrett, UK. This is the latest of five national ‘coastal realignment’ projects. The Environment Agency and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust worked with the local townspeople to undo a hundred years of hard seawalls with ‘soft engineering’. This flood protection, which invests in food security and social evolution, may look like a backward step. But it’s actually going sideways and re-entering great cycles of life. Cycles we can still see here in our Belongil catchment.
Nature’s son
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restore the wetlands and manage flooding. Staff includes the Awabakal people. In 2012, 100,000 people attended activities ranging from recreation and tourism to education and research. The site is on the Ramsar list of internationally important wetlands. Such wetland projects prove that people can understand what all the birds and fish already know. Water sustains life and also governs it.
Back in the UK, the Trust started with wetland restoration over at Slimbridge in 1946. Its founder, Peter Scott, was the son of Antarctic explorer Captain Scott. His father’s last request of his wife was that she ‘make the boy interested in natural history’. Whatever did Kathleen Scott do that inspired her son? He went on to become an international leader in modern conservation, founding the World Wide Fund for Nature, creating the IUCN red lists of endangered species. He made Slimbridge not only a world-renowned conservation centre, but a nature centre open to the public. Scott’s trust partnered with wildlife clubs in Newcastle, Australia, helping create their Hunter Wetlands Centre. From 1983, residents and the council worked together to
The latest paper in Nature, published September 21, explains how water rules on the large scale of the Pacific Basin. Seventeen coastal geologists mapped the impacts on 48 beaches during the swings of climate over 1979–2012. Ever stronger cycles of El Nino/Southern Oscillations mean increasing storm surges and coastal erosion first on one side of the Pacific, then the other. In that study, one of the erosion sites was Belongil. Here, rock walls are simultaneously being built on the Belongil shore and challenged in court. Elements of Byron, a resort, wants to counter
Street be ‘considered for continued use as a markets site’. There is still no mention of closing the carpark on market days. On August 27 the council resolved to ‘preference’ placing the machinery depot for the Butler Street bypass on the Community Market’s existing stallholder carpark. The other choice was on part of the existing market grounds. That the losing of our carpark is seen as a victory for co-existence may give an indication of how little power the markets have in this situation. Although the council has resolved to ‘consider’ the markets sharing Butler Street Reserve with the carpark, they have at this time made little attempt to make a policy of co-existence possible. They have so far made it clear that carpark trumps
the 350 stallholders. To gain confidence of the stallholders Council needs to: 1. Direct the workings of the Butler Street bypass to be organised in such a way as to facilitate access to Butler Street Reserve on market days. 2. Resolve that the carpark is closed to parking on Community Market days and an appropriate area kept clear on Farmers Market days. 3. Acknowledge the needs of the markets and that issues such as surface condition of the grounds, stallholder parking availability, pedestrian access and stray cars left on the grounds will all need ongoing pro-active responses. Butler Street Reserve offers over 15,000 square metres of trading space close to town. It is the home of the iconic Byron Markets. Byron
Climate swings
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the elements of the Belongil waterway with more walls of their own. The most vulnerable real estate towards the end of the Belongil spit is up for auction. Further inland, the Belongil heaves with tides and storm surges, running up against the downward flow of Byron stormwater and effluent.
cycles. It would support more wildlife, marine life and fish. Remember, for thousands of years it fed Bundjalung people. In the early 20th century, it fed settlers, who shipped thousands of pounds of fish to Sydney. If, like the other wetlands, it could strengthen its cycles, it could feed people of the future.
Sea edge
New livelihood
In that flow is all the artificial drainage from the former wetlands. The lands are now part of the West Byron ‘real estate’ advertised for sale last week. Seventy-three acres of what has proven to be marginal agricultural land was once a soft edge of the sea. The recent rezoning process has revealed the whole area is still stubbornly a swamp. Flood prone, with acid soils. Where marine animals still return to spawn and grow. Wild plants and coastal forest remnants supporting koalas and other wildlife all somehow persist. Wading birds and croaking frogs outnumber the cows and people who live here. The Belongil, like the Steart and Hunter, still moves in
Resident scientist Gavin Greenoak believes that, on some level, evolution is transforming us humans from caterpillars into butterflies. We can recognise disabled wetlands and see in their rehabilitation a new livelihood and a rejuvenated local economy. We can see the unruly Belongil, like the Tallow, as one of the very few waterways still free of any ‘training walls’ and ‘development’. What we called ‘lack of progress’ is now our greatest asset. From the Hunter to the Steart, communities are renewing themselves as they learn again to respect the great cycles. And here? Start with the Belongil, from the beaches to outer reaches.
Markets belong and should stay on Butler Street. Gyan Moyes Tyagarah
According to the NGO Justice for Men and Boys and the Women who Love Them, 28 men a week in Australia commit suicide. Some of these unnecessary continued on page 12
Men count, too
The initiative by the PM to combat violence against women in his first week in office is commendable. It is totally unacceptable that more than one woman a week is bludgeoned to death by enraged, cowardly men who take out their thwarted power trip on the ‘weaker sex’. However, the PM, as a lawmaker by training, should also be aware that many men suffer in silence, often taking their own lives from the despair of being denied fair access to their children and unfair maintenance payments by women who manipulate the system, the Family Law Court, which needs major overhauling.
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EN! P O RE WE' The Byron Shire Echo September 30, 2015 11