A toxic cradle
Memories of the days it rained acid
planet Jupiter than here on Earth. Their worried mums and dads quickly agreed.
As locals, however, we had been repeatedly assured by authorities that the orange sea was perfectly safe, and we not infrequently swam in it. The orange was effluent from the Tioxide paint pigment plant at Heybridge, east of Burnie, which pumped pollution deep into Bass Strait. The flow of the strait would usually disperse the waste so it was no longer discernible from the deep blue.
On some days, however, the sweeping current refused to remove Tioxide’s stain, like a toilet failing to flush, and effluent would flood back to the shore to be trapped by the rolling waves. The pollution would then spread along the coast, sometimes beyond Somerset to the west and as far as Lillico Beach in the east.
That’s what happened the day of the national titles.
The sand on some beaches was stained red from the effluent. Local shop owners made light of it by flippantly selling plastic sachets of “Burnie’s famous red sand” as souvenirs to perplexed tourists, who struggled to discern whether the poker-faced NorthWesters were taking the piss.
The souvenirs were like the best of newspaper cartoons in that they were instantly funny because the subject matter was so poignantly real, but became strangely disorienting and surreal the more you thought about it. Where exactly the joke lies, and who it is on, depends on how deep you look.
At times the light-as-air brown foam created by waves stirring up the effluent was deposited in clumps on the beach higher than a metre. The cloudlike, billowing forms were fun to run through but disappointingly unsatisfying to kick. We made hilarious hats and pretend beards from it. Wind gusts whipped clumps erratically down the beach, mesmerising dogs and kids into endless games of chasings.
Locals were assured the effluent posed no health risk and we demonstrated our trust at the surf carnival, to the cheers of our parents, by running through the foam into the orange with our boards, paddling around the buoys, and racing to shore. Soon most other states were doing it too.
Tioxide was just one factory spewing pollution into Burnie and its surrounds during my, and Leeson’s, childhood.
The pulp mill at Emu Bay, which the filmmaker found caused his eyes to sting, pumped years of effluent into the strait and the vile smelling smoke from its huge chimneys was acrid. On bad days, residents of Somerset, 8km west, were told to keep doors and windows closed to provide respite from the foul and lingering rottenegg-gas stench. It was disgusting.
Then there was the NorthWest Acid plant at Burnie, which made sulphuric acid and in the process created acid rain that killed gardens and ate most other things it landed on, including steel structures like bridges. Some residents were infuriated by the tiny yellow-stained holes that appeared on washing when left to dry on the clothesline on the days it rained acid.
Tioxide and the acid plant are long gone now and the pulp mill is substantially smaller and far less polluting.
It is incredible to think such a toxic childhood — noxious pollution floating in the sea, blowing in the wind and falling in the rain — could produce a filmmaker of environmental awareness and daring.
Perhaps it is precisely because of Leeson’s polluted boyhood he became who he did? I can’t imagine it was easy writing a negative story about the pulp mill in the Advocate, which was infamous for its unquestioning pro-industry agenda. Maybe daring to ask questions of such a protected industry as a cub reporter was the making of the man?
I reckon Leeson learnt early in his journalistic career that questions can be dynamite, and that when questions are being actively discouraged is usually when and where they are most urgently required.