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The Battle for Bylong

Bylong's world famous Tarwyn Park, home of Peter Andrews' Natural Sequence Farming, is under threat from a coal mine proposed by Korea's KEPCO.

Australian Story

ABC’s Australian Story will feature Tarwyn Park in its broadcast on Mon 5/5, titled “The Battle for Tarwyn Park”. This is Part 1 - Part 2 will follow on 11/5.

There has been quite a bit of media coverage one way or another about this in recent days.

Program details are here.

A story from Saturday’s Newcastle Herald is here.

A report from ABC where a Uni of Newcastle study calls for Tarwyn’s heritage listing is here

Stuart will be participating in the online forum after Monday's program.

Premier Baird's invitation to visit

A couple of weeks ago, we invited Premier Baird to visit Bylong, meet the locals and have a guided tour of Tarwyn, hosted by Stuart. The response from his office was that he was too busy.

The invite and the “no thanks” generated a bit of media interest, given the Premier’s commitment to become an “expert” in mining issues and his visit to Bulga:

Residents are ready to meet Premier
Premier's interest excludes Bylong

If you feel inclined to drop a short note to the Premier saying you think he should reconsider and visit Tarwyn after all, it's very, very, very easy to leave a message via his contact form.

Or maybe Facebook or Twitter are more your style.

Or maybe even – heaven forbid – snail mail or the good old fashioned telling bone:

The Hon. Mike Baird, MP
GPO Box 5341
SYDNEY NSW 2001
 
(02) 8574 5000

And maybe some of you enterprising types would like to suggest to Alan Jones he should make some fuss. :-)

Finally, if you’re going to make a noise, remember: be loud, be proud.

The horror, the horror

The dark blue is land now owned by KEPCO in Bylong (to the best of our knowledge, as at 05-05-15). The total is only a little shy of 75sqkm - more than the island of Manhattan (59sqkm). [CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE]

KEPCO land ownership in Bylong (as at 05-05-15)

And here's where the property Tarwyn Park (bright blue) overlayed on KEPCO's conceptual mine plan. The grey areas are proposed open cut pits, the yellow overburden emplacement, the red-brown is various infrastructure and the outlined area between Tarwyn and the National Park is the proposed longwall (underground), which is mostly under the Bylong State Forest.

When KEPCO says it is preserving Tarwyn, it means there are no plans to mine on the area where Peter's work has mostly been done. But can you honestly believe there won't be impacts when neighbouring pits are so deep and the projected water use from the mine is so very large? No? We don't either.

Tarwyn Park (light blue) overlaid on KEPCO conceptual mine plan

And, finally, here's what KEPCO's conceptual mine plan looks like when overlaid on Sydney. It covers all of the CBD and south to the airport. It ain't pretty.

KEPCO Bylong conceptual mine plan, overlaid on Sydney

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