Australia’s oldest coal mine blockaded, and three climate camps

500 protest and 13 arrest­ed in peace­ful block­ade of Aus­trali­a’s old­est coal mine

Sun­day, Octo­ber 11, Helens­burgh NSW – More than 500 peo­ple have marched to the front gates of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Col­lieries where 50 Cli­mate Camp pro­test­ers are occu­py­ing the entrance road to the mine. They are protest­ing the mine’s expan­sion and voic­ing con­cerns over water, cli­mate and jobs in NSW.

13 peo­ple were arrest­ed on Sun­day in total. Eight at the block­ade were giv­en $350 fines for tres­pass and will not face court. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed ear­li­er in the day at an action stop­ping work at Den­dro­bi­um mine and charged with tres­pass.

Con­cerned locals showed-up in Helens­burgh in droves despite reports that intim­i­da­tion tac­tics being used in the lead-up and through­out the camp.

“My fam­i­ly came to Helens­burgh 100 years ago, there are four gen­er­a­tions of coal min­ers in my fam­i­ly buried in the local ceme­tery. My grand­fa­thers went to war to fight for what they believe in; I con­tin­ue that lega­cy and believe that we need to stop min­ing coal and fight to stop cli­mate change. That’s why I’m here,” says Matt from
Stan­well Tops.

“While Peabody and the Gov­ern­ment are play­ing the ‘jobs’ card, it is lit­tle more than a fee­ble attempt at a polit­i­cal wedge – the real­i­ty is that the expan­sion of pol­lut­ing indus­tries is being done reck­less­ly and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers will not tol­er­ate it”, says Cli­mate Camp Spokesper­son Jess Miller.

As report­ed in the The Age on Fri­day, Peabody spokesper­son Jen­nifer Mor­gans told AAP, “[The mine expan­sion] would also cre­ate an esti­mat­ed 350 new jobs, dou­bling the cur­rent work­force to 700, while pro­vid­ing about 1000 indi­rect jobs through­out the Illawar­ra region.” How­ev­er accord­ing to Peabody’s own web­site, “[the] oper­a­tional work­force is expect­ed to remain sta­ble at 320 peo­ple” with an “addi­tion­al short-term con­struc­tion work­force of up to 50 peo­ple”.

Coal com­mu­ni­ties net­work Rivers SOS are mount­ing a legal chal­lenge in the Land and Envi­ron­ment court against Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kristi­na Keneal­ly, chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of the min­ing approval process.

Stills and Video Image: 0428367362 (Dami­an Bak­er)
Inter­view 0409 490 711 (Jess Miller)

Cli­mate Camp New South Wales had been tak­ing place for the 3 days before­hand.

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Five peo­ple were arrest­ed after lock­ing them­selves on to the con­vey­or belt at Den­dro­bi­um coalmine at Mount Kem­bla before dawn on Sun­day.

Observers said the pro­test­ers scaled a crane and hung a ban­ner read­ing “Water Not Coal”.

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In sep­a­rate news, Cli­mate Camp South Aus­tralia was held between 24–27 Sep­tem­ber in the Port Augus­ta region, and held a ral­ly out­side a pow­er plant.

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Camp for Cli­mate Action 2009 West­ern Aus­tralia will take place in mid-Decem­ber.