Australia's Rainbow Region Is Ready for Round Two of its Fight Against Fracking

“Should they want to go ahead and drill in this region they will be met with protests and nonviolent direct action,” says Gasfield Free Northern Rivers regional co-ordinator, Elly Bird. “That’s what the people in this region are willing to do to protect our land, our water, and our future. That’s just what will happen. It’s a given.”

Elly, along with other veterans of the Bentley Blockade—last year’s landmark anti-fracking protest in NSW’s Northern Rivers—promise to stand their ground once more if Coal Seam Gas giant, Metgasco makes good on its plans to return to the region and commence mining following a supreme court decision to overturn the suspension of their drilling license.

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The decision by Supreme Court Justice Richard Button was handed down last month and ruled that an order to suspend drilling by the NSW Office of Coal Seam Gas in May last year was “unlawful” as was a follow-up “confirmation” of the decision. The review came at the request of Metgasco, the company’s Chief executive Peter Henderson going on to call on the NSW police to put their support behind his company’s plans to start drilling in roughly three months time.

“When we drill now we know there are going to be protesters and we will need police in there to uphold our rights,” he said. “Otherwise NSW will be the state of anarchy.”

The Bentley Blockade is now considered one of the most significant environmental protests in the nation’s history. Thousands turned out to the protest camp, located on farmland in the northern rivers cattle farming district of Bentley, adjacent to a planned coal seam gas mine. The issue drew support from across the political divide, including famously conservative 2GB radio broadcaster, Alan Jones. “Could you just imagine if it was you? It is a glorious productive valley and these people, like you and I, don’t want it turned into an absolute wasteland, an industrial wasteland,” he told listeners.

Faced with a high-profile showdown between several hundred riot police and an estimated 10,000 protesters, the NSW government was forced into a sensational backdown. Metgasco’s license was suspended due to its failure to “engage in the appropriate community consultation” before the government went a step further and referred the issue to the Independent Commission Against Corruption to decide how a license was granted in the first place.

Related: VICE heads to North Dakota fracking territory to meet the young and wealthy directional drillers who are taking part in the controversial industry.

“The Bentley Blockade is being referred to as the most important blockade of our time,” says Elly. “It was an amazing demonstration of the commitment and resolution of our local people…and the community is still massively opposed to coal seam gas mining. We surveyed 34,000 households and of that 95 percent have said they do not want gas fields in the Northern Rivers.”

Part of Australia’s strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions has been to shift from coal power towards the “cleaner” option of natural gas. For NSW, Australia’s most populous state, the increased reliance on coal seam gas has proved problematic with mines forced to operate increasingly closer to fertile farmland, waterways and residential areas. Since the industry set up here in 1996, it has favored rural backwaters such as Gloucester, Narrabri and the rugged interior of south east Queensland.

Whether by oversight, or as some in the Northern Rivers claim, a deliberate move to rip the heart out of the Australian conservationist movement, they turned their sights on Bentley last year, a town located in the heart of the NSW Northern Rivers—what is also known as the Rainbow Region. Since the Age of Aquarius Festival in nearby Nimbin back in 1973, the Northern Rivers has been the home of all things clean, green, and progressive in Australia. A short drive from Metgasco’s proposed drilling site at Bentley puts you at the site of what another landmark of the Australian conservation movement, Terania Creek, where a rabble of students, residents, and activists successfully turned loggers away from what is now the World Heritage listed Nightcap National Park in 1979.

That win for protesters kicked off a wave of defiance that would change the Australian political landscape forever. The social foment started at Terania fed directly into the successful Franklin River defense in Tasmania a few months later. The experience of which would lead a wiry young man by the name of Bob Browne to form the Greens political party. On the 40th anniversary of Nimbin’s Age of Aquarius Festival, the NSW State Parliament was moved to formally recognize the contribution of the Northern Rivers to the nation.

Rosie Lee is one such veteran of Terania Creek who turned out at the Bentley Blockade. Now in her sixties, she is part of the Knitting Nanas, a collective of elderly women committed to knitting in the face of miners and police. The group has been staging weekly “knit-ins” outside the office of local Lismore MP, Thomas George, for three years now in opposition to the coal seam gas industry. “That determination is still there and after 30 years we know what we’re doing,” said Rosie.

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