Vomiting birds
CHEER up Charles Wooley (TasWeekend, June 15-16)! The feathered locals of Fulham Island near Dunalley may yet triumph over the billionaire purchaser. They may learn from the cormorants of Middle Island in Lake Erie, now part of the Canadian national park system. Humans have lived there for perhaps 2000 years, but noone lives there now except small animals, reptiles and birds — mostly double-crested cormorants in their thousands. The cormorants of Middle Island have beaten off a lighthouse, an airstrip, vineyards, a seven-bedroom clubhouse, a hotel which drew as many as 200 visitors a day in peak season, a basement casino and a stately house of ill-repute. All these ruins are now covered in metres of cormorant guano. Locals on the neighbouring Pelee Island told me that any visitors who attempt a landing are repelled by hundreds of cormorants vomiting vile stinking fishy meals. There are few repeat visits.
Remember Y2K?
TWENTY years ago, the world was warned on a daily basis that we were on the brink of possibly the greatest calamity to ever hit mankind. Aircraft were going to plummet from the sky, catastrophe was going to prevail all over the planet. Of course, the Y2K bug proved to be a figment of the academia classes’ vivid imaginations. Have any of these folk ever taught their millennial students of the brazen and ridiculous hoax, over the two decades that have passed? I thought not!
Rethink mining
THE money situation of Adani and the Government’s reaction and action are well explained by Greg Barns (Talking Point, June 17). The size of this mine has many people thinking. One part thinks of more jobs, the other about the environment. During the past 200 years, holes were dug into the land and contents sold globally, including harvesting oceans. Australians became wealthy with an enviable lifestyle. Because of the world’s pollution, old-fashioned money-making methods of ruthlessly mining need thinking about. Mining of asbestos stopped because of terrible health consequences and data is mostly unknown about health problems from coal mining. The Adani mine will have jobs to begin with, but how many and for how long with FIFO and future automation, who knows. Maybe the time has come to think carefully how, where and why to dig holes and how to create jobs without pollution. Environmental approvals are unjustified because of mining water to wash the coal. Whole countries have been made into deserts because of war and bad methods. Wealth for this country lies in a healthy land with clean water. The indigenous know not to hurt the land, they know it sustains life. Water will become the new gold, the new wealth, it should not be used for washing coal.
Commuter cable car
THERE seems to be a lack of appetite for a cable car on Mt Wellington and a very keen proponent. Instead of a tourist venture maybe they should consider one that might be better received by and of greater benefit to greater Hobart? How about a commuter cable car along the rail corridor from Macquarie Point to Brighton. Reduced traffic, no issues with crossroad intersections, win, win, win! I jest.