Nuclear dump divides town
A giant grey and rosy pink bird towers over travellers as they enter this dry, isolated rural town on the edge of a vast grain-growing belt in South Australia.
The aging eight-metre statue, of a local species of cockatoo called the galah, marks a roughly midway point between the eastern and western coasts of Australia. Standing in front of the Halfway Across Australia Gem Shop, the Big Galah is all Kimba was ever really known for — until about a year ago.
That’s when two local farming families offered their properties to the federal government as potential storage sites for Australia’s nuclear waste.
Now, as the federal government considers whether to build the site on one of these two farms, this community of about 650 people finds itself divided and angry. The prospect of jobs and subsidies that the site would bring has split locals between those who want to preserve rural Australia’s way of life and those who say the glory days of farming are over.
“People say it’s a really thriving town, but underneath people are paddling like hell to keep up,” said Annie Clements, in her 70s, and a member of the Working for Kimba’s Future Group that supports the nuclear dump. “This would be something not reliant on agriculture and that’s what we need.”
Located near the centre of one of the world’s most productive wheat-growing areas, this small farming town on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is filled with old stone homes from when it was settled more than a century ago. Despite the distances, locals say Kimba always had a strong sense of community, at least until the nuclear site was proposed. Some said the allure of millions of dollars’ worth of grants and subsidies that the government was offering the host community blinded people to the risks.
“If it wasn’t for the money that the government’s offering, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Austin Eatts, 89, said on the large wheat farm just out of town where he has lived all his life.
Eatts, from one of the town’s original families, is a neighbouring landowner to Michelle and Brett Rayner, who have nominated their farm as a potential site for the nuclear dump.
“I share a pipeline with them; I don’t want to share a nuclear waste dump with them,” Eatts said.
The public battle over where to store Australia’s growing pile of medical nuclear waste stretches back years, and several aborted sites. But as the federal government narrows in on this tiny community as one of two potential host communities, fear and outrage about the potential effect of it on Kimba’s farming land has grown.
Despite the fractures, residents have one thing in common: They want the best for their town. They just can’t agree on what that might be.
The farms being considered for the proposed site are 16 to 24 kilometres outside town.
The site is expected to bring more than a dozen jobs, leading supporters to call it a much-needed alternative to agriculture for the local economy.