Brisbane’s sustainable House and garden

Big Solutions Create Bigger Problems

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:42:20 +1000

ABC news on line reports that the Queensland Premier believes that the proposed Traveston Crossing dam at the Mary River Valley is a cheap solution for SE Queensland’s water needs.

The truth is somewhat different: as Oscar Wilde said “The cynic knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing”...

The Traveston Dam proposal was a political stunt, delivered by a premier who intended to retire. Despite the CSIRO evidence of decreasing rainfall in South East Queensland in his hands, his desperation to appear decisive and capable of managing the region’s water crisis won out.

Queensland has a new premier, one who is probably not planning to retire. Is Anna Bligh another instance of the longstanding Labor tradition of installing women leaders to lose graciously after the boys have made a mess?

But more is at risk than mere party politics.

If Traveston proceeds, it will exterminate the last significant breeding grounds of the threatened Australian lungfish, one of the world’s most ancient extant fish, a species allegedly protected by law. Surviving numerous changes in climate, a species spanning time beyond our imagination, is about to be extinguished. Other supposedly protected threatened species include the Mary River Turtle (a recently described, endangered species) and the Mary River Cod (also endangered).

Broadscale landclearing, also apparently illegal, will occur through the erasing of an entire landscape, alienating both traditional and contemporary landowners. Anything held sacred by traditional landowners will be immersed under the shallow swamp, currently known as the Mary River Valley. Traditional spiritual beliefs are easily sacrificed when only a minority of indigenous voters stand in the way of a presumably big vote winning capital project like Traveston.

The food security of a nation is under threat, which means the viability and liveability of our nation is equally at risk. Farmers are being driven from the land by Global Warming, those remaining have yet to adjust oil intensive systems of food production to meet the inescapable consequences of Peak Oil. Good farming land near cities will be increasingly important as these two crises combine to make cheap food a thing of the past. Traveston Dam will ruin South East Queensland’s deepest, most fertile, most reliably watered dairying land.

As if this is not enough the dam will simultaneously undermine our international commitments to the Kyoto Protocol, and the coming Carbon Trading scheme, because flooding will generate vast quantities of Greenhouse gases.

Government advisors well know that downstream pollution by water weeds, such as water hyacinth, will guarantee that the government breaches its own weed laws. Below almost every dam in Queensland you’ll see a toxic bed of water hyacinth, one of the world’s most invasive water weeds. Inexorably it creates airless, foetid water unfit for most aquatic native animals. Starved of sunlight, native waterplants also die out and the Lower Mary River will change forever. Traveston Dam’s gift of tainted water to the spawning and fishing grounds of Wide Bay will result in less healthy, less productive and less commercially viable fisheries.

These impacts are understood by Queenslanders, especially those connected to the Mary River Valley and Wide Bay. The Save the Mary campaign has rapidly united citizens, businesses, politicians, farmers, conservationists, families, the young and the old. The credibility of the Queensland government as a whole, not just political parties, is at stake.

Built or not the Traveston Dam is an historic relic of a bygone era. Building it in defiance of a warming climate defines Queensland as a 21st Century failed state. Shelving it in favour of a strong environment supporting our food and water security might yet make us a smart one.

Jerry Coleby-Williams
22nd October 2008

AEF Still SPELLS FAKE

Thu, 9 Oct 2008 18:31:23 +1000

Don Burke is a well known Australian celebrity who blends public relations with gardening. He’s made his name through commercial gardening shows selling product. Since the demise of Burke’s Backyard TV show, Burke’s started selling ideas, encouraging us to destroy our last native forests so the stinking rich can get richer.

"I think Gunns are desperate for some kind of friendly publicity, so it's natural that they'll attract someone to use who's sympathetic to the mill", says Peter Cundall, a Tamar Valley conservationist.

Burke has previously sent a message of support to a pro-pulp mill rally held in Tasmania. Now he reckons "If Gunns came to me and wanted to build it next door I'd have it,"

Last week dust covered Brisbane’s cars, and spoiled our recently dusted television screen. This dust, also known as soil, had been wind stripped from impoverished land. Land dying of thirst and starved of organic matter. Hot, barren land. The cause is to Brisbane’s west where it has long been cleared of its protective, rainfall enhancing, soil conserving, climate cooling, living forest cover.

Is this the time to build a pulp mill? Pulp mills eat indigenous landscapes, vomit dioxins and other poisons into the environment, and then spit out toilet paper. Tasmania: shaved then flushed by the Labor/Liberal/National Coalition of the Ignorant...

South Australia is finally regulating the use of weedkillers that contaminate ground water, where that water is destined for human consumption. The drought has finally lowered Adelaide’s water storage to the point that contamination can no longer be diluted and ignored, something had to be done about the relative volumes of water to weedkiller.

Tumours are appearing on Tasmanian Devils and, suddenly, so many die they become threatened with extinction. Could we handle the news - and still drink Tassie tap water - if those tumours are linked to herbicide or 1080 contamination from Forestry Tasmania and Gunns?

It must take a lot of convincing, not to mention bamboozling, to get a state, at a time that it should be actively reducing its greenhouse emissions, to risk accelerating them.

Remember the Australian Environment Foundation? A fake formerly fronted by a face - Mr Don Burke was their second figurehead president. The AEF likes to promote itself as a ‘science’ and ‘evidence-based’ environmental movement, but these are just weasel words. The real evidence is to be found in who set up the AEF. Jennifer Marohasy ex-sugar industry spin doctor and now chief Global Warming denialist for rabid freemarket ‘think-tank’ the Institute for Public Affairs, was the founder. She drew together the forestry industry, grazing interests and the NSW Farmers Federation.

Sadly for AEF, Australian journalists realised that this was not a real environment group but a front for interests vested in the exploitation and destruction of the environment. Jennifer Marohasy soon moved aside for the better-known and less tainted former tv presenter Don Burke.

The AEF, under it’s figurehead president Don Burke, awarded an ‘environmental prize’ to Gunns. As reported below by your ABC.

The AEF is a smokescreen. It has one purpose: to confuse the non-expert into thinking that they care about the environment in exactly the same way that the tobacco industry set up various fake ‘institutes’ and ‘research foundations’ to create confusion about the links between smoking and lung cancer.

Do not to mix up the AEF with the ACF - the Australian Conservation Foundation. This similarity is, of course, intentional.

Remember that AEF spells FAKE.

Don Burke is no longer officially associated with the AEF, but he certainly seems to be up to his old tricks with Gunns. His production and public relations company is called CTC productions “Cut the Crap” - I really wish he would.

Jerry Coleby-Williams
10th October 2008

Further Reading: AEF on Sourcewatch

ABC NEWS ON LINE
Last Update: Friday, September 29, 2006. 2:50pm (AEST)

“Environment group AEF honours Gunns

Timber company, Gunns Limited, has won a national environmental award for the management of grasslands and an endangered butterfly species in Tasmania's north-west.
The award was given out by the Australian Environment Foundation, which was launched last year.

The foundation promotes itself as a science and evidence-based environmental movement. It has links to the Institute of Public Affairs and the timber industry.

Gunns north-west manager, Brian Hayes, says the company actively manages sub-alpine grasslands in the north-west, which is an essential habitat for the rare Ptunnarra Brown Butterfly.

He says the recognition is an honour, particularly as many people do not associate Gunns Ltd with environmental protection.

"It is very easy for people to overlook the very good work that is done by professional people within the industry, there are many things that are done that don't achieve the public and media recognition," he said.

"I might point out, of our total estate of about 205 thousand hectares in Tasmania, about 37 thousand hectares is set aside for conservation and reservation purposes."

Feeding greed

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 17:27:00 +1000

As Richard Fuld, the head of failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers casually mentions he pocketed about US$300m in pay and bonuses over the past eight years, BBC News on line draws an interesting comparison between the latest economic bubble and that of the 17th century Dutch tulip craze.

The bulb bubble burst when gardeners discovered they could propagate desirable cultivars not just slowly and in small numbers by division, but rapidly and cheaply using home saved seed. I guess I’m just an old fashioned girl in thinking that through universal home food production, also using home saved seed, might burst the current food crisis. It’d certainly reduce Greenhouse emissions and the cost of living.

None of this will prevent the US700 billion lining the pockets of their failed, greedy corporates. I guess Richard Fuld is an old fashioned girl too, as Earth Kitt once sang “The music that excels is the sound of oil wells as they slurp, slurp, slurp into the barrels”

Jerry Coleby-Williams
7th October 2008

Sow Pigeon Peas for Native Bees

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 09:45:40 +1000

Pigeon peas are a 21st century crop. Last spring I decided to grow my own dal. Protein-rich split peas are the main ingredient, also added to soups and stews, and these are dried pigeon pea seed, Cajanus cajan.

Pigeon peas are as useful as maize, but have a far smaller ecological footprint, and are easier, but slower, to grow. They’re a universal food, but India grows 80% of the global harvest.

Indian farmers grow pigeon peas for good reason. They’re short-lived shrubs, 2 - 4 metres high. Their first crop is heavy, so they’re grown as annuals. Unlike maize, they aren’t too fussy about soil type, their roots fix nitrogen, shoots make good mulch and forage for stock. Stems produce firewood for cooking, plants tolerate slightly saline soil, don’t need fertiliser, and they’re drought-tolerant: 600 - 800mm of warm season rainfall produces a crop.

Smallholders often interplant rows of plant pigeon pea with crops, like sorghum, or fruit trees. Dried peas can be eaten green or when brown and fully mature. Pigeon peas are a 21st century crop, especially for poor farmers and marginal land. They’re Climate Change winners.

Cultivars can be early maturing (3 - 4 months) or late maturing (5 - 11 months). I sowed mine in my Brisbane garden in October. Every seed germinated: I thinned heavily. By late March, plants resembled leafy umbrellas four metres tall and the first flowers opened. Mine were a late maturing cultivar, the type traditionally grown. Modern cultivars are early maturing and preferred by industrial farmers.

Flowering lasted six weeks and, curiously, our honeybees seemed disinterested. Native bees found them irresistible, their visits increasing as flowering peaked. Fascinated, one weekend I observed their group dynamics. The first and last to visit were energetic blue-banded bees, Amegilla cingulata. Around midday along came teddy bear (Amegilla sp.) and carpenter bees (Xylocopa aruana). Carpenter bees are divas, large, colourful, energetic and noisy. After drinking deeply, off they zoom.

But most of the action came from fire-tailed resin bees (Megachile mystaceana) and leafcutter bees (Megachile inermis). The leafcutters assertively drove off others, like the blue-banded bees.

Blue-banded bees

Tim Heard, a local CSIRO entomologist and native bee expert, visited my garden in May. Captivated by the pigeon pea scene, he identified another bee of the genus Chalicodoma, working their flowers.

Tim explained how important the blue-banded bee is to horticulture. These are solitary species, but frequently nest in communities. They’re common, occurring everywhere except the NT and Tasmania. Soft sandstone, mud-brick and old mortar are favoured nesting sites. At night, males congregate on thin-stemmed plants, like grasses, resting and holding on with their mandibles.

Commercial tomato growers, through the Australian Hydroponic and Greenhouse Association, have been lobbying for the introduction of the exotic European bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) to increase yields and profit. Conservationists are already alarmed by the recent appearance of the bumblebee in Tasmania, where they are competing with native bees for pollen and nectar. Bumblebees are inefficient pollinators of natives, but pollinate weeds and exotics.

The Australian Native Bee Research Centre has proven the blue-banded bee is superior to bumblebee pollination of avocado, eggplant and tomato. Blue-banded bees are buzz pollinators, using wing beats to vibrate pollen off for collection. ANBRC techniques for establishing new colonies now offer a viable alternative to the bumblebee.

With six bee species working my pigeon peas, every flower set pods. Branches drooped under their heavy burden. Storms further bent branches earthwards, a reminder to space them two metres apart, and possibly stake them too.

Tim Heard was surprised when I told him my blue-banded bees don’t vanish in winter, as they’re supposed to do. They forage on salvias and bedding begonias, proof that we can never know everything about gardening.

Discover more about native bees by subscribing to the free email newsletter of the Australian Native Bee Research Centre.

Jerry Coleby-Williams
7th October 2008

The first day of Crematoria

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:36:53 +1000

The first koel of summer has called, the first mosquito has bitten and the first dust storm has sprinkled Brisbane red ochre. While I’m out there watering, counting every drop as it falls onto the crisped ground, thunderstorm clouds are full of promise yet lacking in rain. It’s the first day of crematoria, south east Queensland’s flexible new season, that bridges that rigid, neat European concept of spring and summer.

Last year crematoria started in late October after a long dry spell. At least this year we’ve had one good fall in our winter dry season, as well as the traditional brief, early spring showers. Now the gauntlet is down. It’s time to complete compost spreading and mulching, a time to finish lifting those winter crops, like my potatoes and daikon.

I transplanted my ‘Preston’s Prolific’ fig tree in August. I’ve just been away: speaking at Armadale’s ‘Sustainable Living Expo’, visiting Bundaberg Special School’s veggie garden, lecturing at a Hervey Bay ‘Transition Town’ event, and nattering away about low carbon gardening at the Landcare Conference in Monto. And my fig has opened its buds. It’ll need regular watering as I had to remove some significant girdled roots during its relocation.

The mangelwurzels and kohl rabi ‘Purple Vienna’ are at their prime, so I’ll feed and water them regularly like my citrus, banana and other rapidly growing fruit trees.

To save some water for the street trees, which haven’t been bucket watered for many weeks, I’ll cease watering my winter crops selected for seed saving. I’ve already saved some huauzontle seed. The Ethiopian cabbage called ‘Women Meet & Gossip’ are heavy with seed and bowed low by killer winds while my ‘First Fleet’ lettuce are pointing tight flower buds at the sky. I should also cut and dry my lush Moroccan mint and that delicious and ferny-looking dill.

The lawn is green and growing, and it’s had it’s quarterly feed with poultry manure, applied when a storm approaches, just in case it gets watered in...

Jerry Coleby-Williams
26th September 2008