Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast 0745338275, 9780745338279

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Boomtown

Also available Overheating An Anthropology of Accelerated Change Thomas Hylland Eriksen Identity Destabilised Living in an Overheated World Edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Elisabeth Schober Mining Encounters Extractive Industries in an Overheated World Edited by Robert Jan Pijpers and Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Boomtown Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

First published 2018 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Thomas Hylland Eriksen 2018 The right of Thomas Hylland Eriksen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978 0 7453 3827 9 978 0 7453 3826 2 978 1 7868 0306 1 978 1 7868 0308 5 978 1 7868 0307 8

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America

Contents List of Illustrationsvii Abbreviationsviii Prefaceix Prologue: The High Point of Extractive Industrialismxiv PART I  CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS 1.

A City No Longer in Waiting3 The First Century 5 Queensland Alumina Ltd and Beyond 9 The Expanding Port and the LNG Adventure 11 Promotion of the Gladstone Region 17

2.

Australian Identity and Its Double Binds20 The Cultural Grammar of Australia Day 20 Egalitarianism and Inequality 24 Diversity, Exclusion and Hierarchy 29 Mining and Pastoralism in Australian Identity 35 Water and the Double Bind 39

3. Change in Their Bones44 Living Amid Accelerated Change 47 The FIFO Issue 50 Accelerated Structural Amnesia 57 A Module-based Identity 61 Ambivalence 64 Temporality and the Future 67 4.

The Boomtown Syndrome and the Treadmill Paradox72 The Boomtown 74 Gladstone as a Boomtown 77 Gladstone and Treadmill Capitalism 98

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PART II  CLASHING SCALES 5.

Green Voices109 Environmental Ambivalence at the Epicentre 111 The Gladstone Conservation Council 116 Silencing and Ambivalence 120 A Typology of Environmental Engagement 122 Scale and Green Activism 132 Corporate Social Responsibility: Offsets and Lightning  Conductors 135

6.

Dredging the Harbour145 Positioned Knowledge and Unequal Power 149 The End of Commercial Fishing in Gladstone 151 Conflicting Expert Knowledges 157 The Bund Wall Scandal 161 Trust, Power and Knowledge 168

7.

Slow-Burning Overheating at the East End Mine171 The Mine and the Farmers 173 The East End Mine Action Group 175 Knowledge about Mount Larcom Water 177 Scale, Knowledge and Power 183 Alec Lucke’s Story 186

8. The Demise of Targinnie190 Fruit and Industry 191 Shale Oil: The End of Targinnie 193 Retrospections 199 Scaling Up and Cooling Down 212 9. Clashing Scales: Globalisation, as We Know It217 Epilogue: A Boomtown in Decline229 Appendix 1: Anna Hitchcock’s submission regarding the further expansion of the State Development Area in Gladstone in 2014232 Appendix 2: Letter to Coordinator-General from Cheryl Watson233 Bibliography235 Index242

List of Illustrations figures 1.1 The GAPDL logo gives pride of place to the sky and the ocean, while industry is granted a mere speck 19 3.1 From Vicki Johnson’s installation Crime Scene (2013)60 3.2 From Vicki Johnson’s installation Crime Scene (2013)60 3.3 From Vicki Johnson’s installation Crime Scene (2013)61 6.1 Dredge spoil leaking out of the bund wall in 2011 148 6.2 Before and after dredging 162 6.3 Private photo from Gladstone harbour 164 7.1 East End Mine Action Group protest poster against QCL mine expansion 171

maps 0.1 Australia, with Gladstone located between Bundaberg and Rockhamptonxv 1.1 Gladstone on the Queensland coast 4 2.1 The Gladstone region 21 3.1 Existing and projected major industrial operations in Gladstone in 2015 48 6.1 Location of Gladstone in relation to the LNG terminals and Fisherman’s Landing, indicating the shipping channel about to be doubled and extended following dredging 147

Abbreviations ABC APLNG CBD CSR CVA EEMAG EIS EQIP FIFO GAPDL GCC GLNG GPC GRC GREAN LNG NGO NIMBY NSW QAL QCL QCLNG QGC SDA SPP STS WIN

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Asia Pacific LNG central business district corporate social responsibility Conservation Volunteers Australia East End Mine Action Group Environmental Impact Statement Education Queensland Industry Partnership fly-in fly-out Gladstone Area Promotion and Development Limited Gladstone Conservation Council Gladstone LNG Gladstone Ports Corporation Gladstone Regional Council Gladstone Regional Environmental Advisory Network liquid natural gas non-governmental organisation not in my back yard New South Wales Queensland Alumina Ltd Queensland Cement & Lime Queensland Curtis LNG Queensland Gas Company State Development Area Southern Pacific Petroleum Studies of Technology and Society Welcome International Neighbours

Preface

This book is an outcome of ethnographic research carried out as part of the European Research Council Advanced Grant project ‘Overheating: The three crises of globalisation, or an anthropological history of the early 21st century’, ‘Overheating’ for short, running from 2012 to 2017. The project’s aim has been to explore and account for local responses to global, accelerated change through a number of case studies from around the world – Peru, Canada, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Western Europe, Sierra Leone, Australia – plus more than a dozen smaller projects carried out by MA students doing fieldwork in as many locations, from Corsica to Nepal. Although it is based on ethnographic studies and carried out by anthropologists, the project has interdisciplinary ambitions, aiming to bring statistics, political economy, macrosociology and history to bear on the anthropological microdata. Just as the phenomena we study are multiscalar, so are our research methods. In an early position paper (Eriksen 2013), I explained overheating as follows: The accelerated and intensified contact which is a defining characteristic of globalisation leads to tensions, contradictions, conflict and changed opportunities in ways that affect identity, the environment and the economy.… change takes place unevenly, but often fast and as a result of a peculiar combination of local and transnational processes. Such forms of change lead to ‘overheating effects’ in local settings worldwide: Unevenly paced change where exogenous and endogenous factors combine to lead to instability, uncertainty and unintended consequences in a broad range of institutions and practices, and contribute to a widely shared feeling of powerlessness and alienation. People perceive, understand and act upon the changes in widely differing ways depending on their position in the locality (class, age, gender, etc.) and on the characteristics of the locality as well as its position within regional, national and transnational systems. In order to understand globalisation, it is necessary to explore how its crises are being dealt with in local contexts – how people resist imposed changes, negotiate their relationship to global and transnational forces, and which strategies for survival, autonomy and resistance are being developed. These explorations must take the genius loci of the locality

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seriously, situate the locality historically and connect it to an analysis of global processes. Finally, in order to demonstrate the ubiquity of overheating effects, systematic comparison between otherwise very different localities is necessary. (Eriksen 2013: 1) This perspective is elaborated in my more recent book Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change (Eriksen 2016a; see also Eriksen 2016c). This book has its focus on one of these ‘hotspots’ or hubs of overheating. Gladstone, Queensland, Australia is overheated, it is fraught, and it is ambiguous. It is a potent symbol of fossil-fuel-driven industrialism, as one of the largest coal ports in Australia and recently also one of the largest ports for exporting LNG. Yet the city, in spite of its location on the coast of Central Queensland, is conspicuously unmarked in the collective Australian psyche. In spite of its rapid growth and very considerable contributions to the Australian economy, the city doesn’t even figure in the national weather forecasts on TV, and many Australians are only dimly aware of its existence, in spite of the fact that Gladstone is at the epicentre of the mining boom which has transformed the Australian economy and, until the steep decline in fossil fuel prices in 2013–14, shielded it from recurrent economic crises affecting other parts of the world since the turn of the millennium. Environmentalists in the large cities may ultimately want to shut down key industries in Gladstone, as it is a major contributor to Australia’s massive carbon footprint. Yet tens of thousands of people depend on Gladstone’s energy-intensive industries and there is no easy way out, ‘not a magic button to press’, as a thoughtful schoolteacher in Gladstone pointed out during one of our conversations. There are, in Gladstone as elsewhere, genuinely mixed feelings about, as a gas worker put it, ‘what we are doing to the planet’. This book explores this ambivalence by telling the story of Gladstone and relating it to the larger forces of economic globalisation. I shall talk about double binds, clashing scales, dissenting voices and happy immigrants, remoteness and proximity, boomtown syndromes and environmental challenges. Part I describes the ascent of Gladstone from backwater to industrial powerhouse, indicating how the widespread eagerness for development and coal-fuelled optimism make the city a quintessential expression of industrial modernity and a belief in endless growth. In Part II, I analyse some of the contradictions and sometimes catastrophic side-effects resulting from a single-minded emphasis on growth and development as well as structural conflicts between largescale projects and small-scale lives. There are three major case stories in the book, narrated in chapters 6, 7 and 8, and, along with the other

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material presented, they form a pattern and tell us something important about contemporary neoliberalism and local consequences of economic globalisation. Fieldwork took place in 2013–14, when Gladstone was perhaps at its historical apex as an industrial powerhouse. Unemployment was negligible, optimism for the future was almost ubiquitous, and the politicians did not foresee an imminent downturn. After the completion of my fieldwork, the city went into an unprecedented and unanticipated slump. This book, then, is the story about the boomtown immediately before the bust. Few saw the storm coming, and it came with a vengeance, with serious consequences for the lives of Gladstonites, their private finances and their collective self-understanding. The real estate market has all but collapsed, dramatically slashing people’s lifetime savings; there is no longer a shortage of labour but of jobs; and the upbeat optimism still near-universal during my fieldwork has been dealt a severe blow. Based as it is on fieldwork in Gladstone from November 2013 to March 2014, this book is written from the vantage-point of the ethnographic present. Yet the reader should be mindful that fast change, in an industrial hub like Gladstone, does not just lead to overheating, but can also result in cooling down. The Epilogue outlines some of the post-boom characteristics of Gladstone, a city which had been accustomed, in the last generations, to growth and industrial development as natural. Many wonderful people are to be thanked for their contributions to this book, and I have tried to write it in such a way that it might be of interest to those who have contributed to it, Gladstonites and others – as well as being a book that I might have wanted to read myself. First and foremost, research in Gladstone would have been impossible without the collaboration of the local population, and I was at the receiving end of an extraordinary amount of kindness, hospitality and generosity from almost everyone I met. I was invited into homes and on excursions, had lunch or coffee with innumerable Gladstonites old and new, took part in meetings and receptions, many of them by invitation only, was met with friendliness and openness whenever I – sometimes a tad rudely – intruded into people’s lives, and I had a field day as an ethnographer from beginning to end. I would especially like to thank – in no particular order – Matt ‘Charlie’ Cameron, Ren Lanzon, Jim Ellis, Kezia Smith, Jan Arens, Karen Arens, Colin Chapman, Matt Burnett, Gail Sellers, Andrew Jeremijenko, Liz Cunningham, Melanie Achilles, Anthony Esposito, Paulette Flint, Crystal McGregor, Lyndal Hansen, Rick Hansen, Ian Woodhouse, Luisa, Marguerita Dobrinin, Paul Tooker, Captain Guru, Veronica Laverick, Mike Lutze, Betty and Jim, Michael Bloyce, Peter Harland, Yvette Luckock, Craig Butler, Michelle Butler, Marnie Campbell,

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Lyndal Gilson, Alec Lucke, Mrs Kendrick, Mara Pattison-Sowden, the librarians at Gladstone City Library, the people from WIN (Welcoming International Neighbours), Conservation Volunteers Australia, Bechtel, the Gladstone Corps of the Salvation Army, Gladstone Ports Corporation and Rio Tinto Alcan, Rotary Sunrise and Central Queensland University. However, I must extend a special thanks to a few: Cheryl Watson (for her world-class hospitality and for sharing her beliefs in a greener world), Vicki Johnson (for her exquisite ethnographic sketches), David Harvey (for good times and mateship), Peter Brady (for being such a great companion and guide), Luis Arroyo (for sharing his knowledge and friendship) and Alison Liefting (for excellent research assistance). A very special thank you goes to Anna Hitchcock, who was not only an invaluable conversation partner in the field, but who has subsequently read and commented critically and constructively on the first draft. She has saved me from many an embarrassment through her excellent comments. I am also grateful to Pluto’s three anonymous readers, all of whom provided important comments on the first draft. I have followed common anthropological practice regarding anonymisation. Most of the Gladstonites are anonymised. Public figures making public statements are not. Some others also feature with their full names, in cases where anonymisation would not have been possible, credible or even desirable. They have all been consulted. I have tried to be fair to everyone, but the analysis and conclusions are naturally my own. At the University of Queensland in Brisbane, I have particularly benefited from the criticism and encouragement of my colleagues Kim de Rijke, David Trigger and Sally Babidge. It was Sally’s idea that I should do fieldwork in Gladstone in the first place – an excellent suggestion, as it turned out. Greenpeace Australia and Greenpeace’s Save the Reef campaign in Brisbane helped me to get started. At home in Oslo, the Overheating research group has been a constant intellectual presence, and its members have been part of the conversation from the beginning, so I would also like to express my warm thanks to Astrid Stensrud, Elisabeth Schober, Wim van Daele, Henrik Sinding-Larsen, Cathrine Moe Thorleifsson, Chris Hann, Robert Pijpers, Lena Gross, Maria Guzman-Gallegos and Irene Svarteng, as well as our many excellent MA students. Towards the very end of the writing process, I received important input from Hedda Askland. Needless to say, I am also grateful to the European Research Foundation for having funded the Overheating project. Finally, I must thank my family – Kari, Ole and Amanda – for bearing with my long absence in distant Queensland. I hope it was worth it.

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* * * There is some overlap between three of the chapters and previous publications. Part of chapter 3 was published in Eriksen and Schober (2016), part of chapter 5 in Ethnos (Eriksen 2016b), and a condensed version of chapter 6 in the open-access publication Contested Knowledges (Eriksen and Schober 2017). Oslo, January 2018

Prologue: The High Point of Extractive Industrialism

In Gladstone, even the sunset is sponsored by the fossil fuel industry. To watch the sun setting in the west, you must also simultaneously stare at the three tall, symmetrical columns of Gladstone Power Station. The largest in Queensland, the power station feeds on black coal from the interior of the state and, doubtless by coincidence, it was placed in the exact spot where the sun sets. Gladstone is the undisputed industrial hub of Central Queensland, but it began to develop as an industrial town only in the 1960s, leading its population to mushroom from about 5000 in 1950 to 12,000 in 1971 and 33,000 in 2014 (70,000 if the greater council area is included). In 2013, the statisticians of the Queensland government anticipated a doubling of the population by 2036. Until the 1960s, the city was, by and large, perceived by residents and outsiders alike as a stagnant backwater or billabong. Just a couple of decades later, the city found itself at the epicentre of contemporary industrialism, with its large-scale electricity production, alumina refineries, aluminium smelter, cement factory and expanding coal port. The expansion continued until the end of my fieldwork in March 2014, when boom turned into bust. This is a book about the boomtown Gladstone, however, and the subsequent slump will be dealt with only briefly in the main text, and slightly less briefly in the Epilogue. From 2010, massive construction again took place in Gladstone, bringing money, infrastructural changes, environmental protests and temporary workers into the city yet again. On Curtis Island, across a narrow channel from Gladstone CBD (central business district), three large liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals were constructed by the American engineering firm Bechtel. The gas plants themselves are owned by three different conglomerates. Approved plans to build a fourth LNG terminal were eventually cancelled, or perhaps just postponed, in early 2014, owing to market uncertainties. In addition to the LNG terminals themselves (which are located on an island that, strictly speaking, forms part of the Great Barrier Reef region), thick pipelines connect the terminals with the gas reservoirs in the coal seams in the Queensland outback, 500 km away. Simultaneously, in a bid to increase coal exports,

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Map 0.1  Australia, with Gladstone located between Bundaberg and Rockhampton1

a third coal terminal has been built at Wiggins Island, a few kilometres north of the city, as the international coal markets have been booming, especially in East Asia. Although coal prices declined sharply in 2014, the logic of expansion and economies of scale continues to apply. The reasoning is that if the mining companies and Queensland government are to make comparable profits in the future, with anticipated unstable coal prices, it will be necessary to continue increasing production capacity and expand the ports. Gladstone is a bustling, hectic, noisy place epitomising the immense power and sheer energy of industrialism – but it is also deeply marked by ambivalence. City councillors, industry leaders, members of the ‘fluoro brigade’ working on Curtis Island across the Narrows, motel hosts and housewives express optimism, but also ambivalence, uncertainty, a muffled anxiety which sometimes turns loud and explicit. 1.  All maps were drawn by Maria Kartveit, using public domain sources.

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* * * Approaching Gladstone airport in a smallish propeller plane from Brisbane, you cannot fail to notice the contrast between the serene greenery of the remaining forest cover and the raw brutality of the small open-pit mines and construction areas breaking up the lush landscape; the clash between the blue Pacific ocean and the crimson pools of bauxite refuse from the alumina refinery; green pastures next to barren fields of red wasteland reminiscent of Martian landscapes; beaches and suburbs rubbing shoulders with smokestacks and warehouses. Before landing, you catch a glimpse of the industrial port facilities defining the boundary between city and sea, the hundreds of empty coal wagons on railway side-tracks, the chimneys of the power station and, perhaps, the distant metal structures of the LNG terminals on Curtis Island, the cranes at the wharf and the foreign cargo ships lined up off Facing Island on the Pacific perimeter, waiting to load. A first whiff of ambivalence came my way during the taxi ride into town from the airport in November 2013. It took a short eternity for the taxi to arrive – this was later explained as a function of the high cost of living in Gladstone, making it hard for a taxi owner to break even – and when it was finally my turn, I offered to share my taxi with the couple next in line. They were middle-aged and looked as if they might be on holiday. The lady happily got into the front of the car, while her husband entered the back seat next to me with some more effort, since I had already filled up the trunk of the sedan with my suitcase, which meant that he had to place his only slightly smaller suitcase on his lap, which he did without complaining. Off we went, and it soon transpired that the gentleman next to me, who introduced himself as Mike, was employed on Curtis Island, where no less than three LNG plants were currently being built, to the exasperation of many locals, as well as environmental organisations in remote places such as Brisbane and Sydney. ‘So,’ I said, ‘good job you’ve got over there?’ ‘Well, yes,’ he replied, ‘it’s four weeks on and one week off. A few days off in-between as well. But,’ he added without any prodding on my part, ‘we don’t really know what we’re doing to nature. You know, the gas was there for a purpose. And we use explosives and chemicals to get it out. Who knows how the land is going to respond?’ Mike refers to coal seam gas, teased out of the crust of the Earth in the interior of Queensland, either by pumping water out of the coal seam in order to release the gas or, if the gas is trapped in rock, through fracking, by creating tiny earthquakes underground (see de Rijke 2013). In the latter case, the process can be compared to shaking a soda bottle, then

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removing the top and sucking in the CO2 which bubbles up. In a word, the earth has to be shaken a bit for the gas to emerge. The taxi driver, a white Australian, joined the conversation. ‘Well, actually I don’t have much time for them greenies,’ he said; ‘I’m in favour of jobs and a sound economy.’ The conversation drifted in a different direction, but the construction worker’s perspective stuck. He had a good job with excellent pay but he felt uneasy about what he was doing. Right now, he and his wife were on their way to Yeppoon, further north, for a few days of vacation before spending some time with friends in the Gladstone area. This unease is just as integral to the air of Gladstone as the faint smell of sulphur and the fine coal dust that settles everywhere when the wind comes from a particular direction. Gladstone has been an industrial town since the mid-1960s, but since around 2010 it was as if change had moved up a gear – acceleration accelerated – with very noticeable effects. This acceleration of acceleration, characteristic of twenty-first-century global capitalism, is what I refer to as overheating (Eriksen 2016a). My fieldwork took place when construction activity was at its height, a possible downturn being anticipated by a handful of pessimists in late 2014, when several large projects were expected to be finalised. As a woman in her thirties, a hard-working professional and a mother of two, said to me we didn’t use to have traffic here, and all of a sudden, there are traffic jams on the Dawson highway during rush hour. Or if you have a boat and go out crabbing or fishing on the weekends, you’ll notice the increase in large vessels. So, you know, we are aware that we are an industrial city, but in the last few years, there has been a lot of change. At first, there was one, then there were two; by now, the industries dominating the cityscape are many. It sometimes almost appears as if the government of Queensland had decided, presumably with the complicity of Gladstone Regional Council (GRC), its Engineering Alliance and its Chamber of Commerce, to place as much as possible of the dirty, noisy and profitable resource-based industry of Queensland around Gladstone. Its industrial adventure began in 1967 with the opening of the then largest alumina refinery in the world. The power station came in 1982, followed by the aluminium smelter on Boyne Island nearby. Those were the integrated cornerstone industries of the town at the time, and the giant mining corporation Rio Tinto Alcan was instrumental in making this happen, as owner of the alumina refinery, the power station, the bauxite mine in Weipa, north Queensland and the coal mine at

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Callide which provided the energy. The port was expanded in the same period, and new railway lines transported coal from mines in the west as well as produce from other parts of the state. In the space of a few years, Gladstone became a major coal and multi-commodity port as well as the site of a huge alumina refinery. From the late 1970s, several new industries established themselves – a cement factory, chemical plants, another alumina refinery – and the coal terminal was eventually supplemented with another coal terminal … and yet another. Since 2010, the expansion of the port has continued, and Gladstone harbour has been dredged to make room for larger ships, making the water muddy and, according to the critics, with adverse effects not only for fishing, but also for the Great Barrier Reef (see chapter 6). In addition, the southern part of the nearby Curtis Island, a place of great recreational value to Gladstonites and others, has been transformed. From 2011 to 2015, up to 10,000 workers were shuttled across the harbour to the island on a regular basis. They were engaged in building three large LNG refineries. If you go for a drive into the country north of Gladstone, you’ll notice the railway tracks and a scattering of industrial plants as you go, but you will also see the gas pipelines, meandering their way, wormlike, through the hilly scrubland, across the dry gumtree forest and towards the mudflats leading to Fisherman’s Landing, offering the shortest crossing to Curtis Island. Machines capable of dwarfing almost everything in their surroundings clear the land to make space for the pipelines like thick, shiny snakes carrying gas soon to be used as fuel to electrify homes, factories and sweatshops in China and India. Throughout most of Australia’s settler history, mining has put food on the table for sweaty, hard-working men and their families and money into the coffers of the lease owners; it has attracted migrants from Europe and Asia, provided energy to the industries and households of the country, spurts of growth and prosperity to sleepy towns, glamour to financial districts, busy days to port cities and royalties to state and federal governments. It is also integral to the pioneering spirit of the new country. In the decades after Australia had ceased to be a penal colony, rumours of mineral wealth lured willing English migrants to the remote continent, some of whom did in fact become rich as a result. The Mount Morgan mine, an hour’s drive north of Gladstone, was for decades one of the most productive goldmines in the world, creating wealth still visible in the mansions lining the Fitzroy River in Rockhampton. The hard-working, dusty, resilient, lone miner of the past is an iconic figure in the Australian self-understanding, the current mining boom a recipe for economic stability in a sea of crises. Who could be against mining in a country such as this?

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Mining has been crucial to the Australian economy, demography and identity since the mid-1850s (see chapter 2 for a cultural perspective). Yet the current mining boom is unprecedented in its scope, scale and economic significance. In 1961, mining represented about 8 per cent of Australia’s exports. By the early 1980s, its contribution had more than doubled, representing 20 per cent. By 2010, mining ‘contribute[d] almost 60 per cent of export receipts’ (Cleary 2011: 5). While virtually any known, and valued, mineral in the world can be found in Australia, the economically most important exports are coal and iron ore, although LNG is predicted to have a bright future, in spite of the sharp drop in global gas prices in 2013–14. The mining companies are all privately owned, and major development projects tend to be financed by transnational conglomerates. The mining boom is not without its numerous and vocal detractors. Many of them are connected to the strong and diverse Australian environmental movement (Hutton and Connors 1999; Burgmann and Baer 2012; Flannery 2015; see Munro 2012 for a non-academic perspective). Their arguments are multiscalar, ranging from assessments of psychological stress and reduced quality of life in mining areas (Albrecht et al. 2007; see also Connor 2016) to local environmental destruction and global climate change. From a social and economic perspective, the journalist Paul Cleary (2011, 2012) has shown how the unprecedented resource boom has resulted in increased inequality, partly owing to a lack of political governance. Cleary also shows that the increased public wealth is largely spent on social welfare and consumption, rather than investment in infrastructure or education. He explores the influence of mining companies on democratic processes, pointing out that they are so powerful that, in 2010, they were able to bring an elected prime minister down. Kevin Rudd had proposed a carbon tax on mining, aiming to spend the money on balancing the economy (which showed symptoms of ‘Dutch disease’, that is, overdependence on one booming sector, leading to decline and neglect in other parts of the economy) and investing in infrastructure. The concerted efforts of three mining giants (Rio Tinto, Xstrata and BHP Billiton) eventually succeeded in deposing Rudd (Cleary 2011: 75–7). Ties between politicians and large mining companies are, in other words, very close. Finally, Cleary remarks that one striking feature distinguishing the current resource boom from former mineral booms is the size of the mines. What counted as a mega mine in the 1980s is a normal mine in the 2010s. Since Australia has to be competitive in the global market, its high cost of labour must be matched by higher productivity and efficiency, which is achieved through scaling up the operations and mechanising the production. In effect, mining in

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Australia has increasingly taken on the sociotechnical characteristics of the oil industry. As argued by Timothy Mitchell (2011), coal mining was a nuisance for the established elites throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Miners were numerous, they were unionised, and they could control the flow of the lifeblood of the economy, namely the energy. With the shift to oil, seen by Mitchell as prompted just as much by political motivations as by economic or market considerations, the labour force could be dramatically reduced. Rather than hiring thousands of radical, unionised working-class men, the oil company could make do with fewer, well-paid, skilled workers operating the wells and the pipelines. They were far less likely to create difficulties for the management and political elites. Australian mining has followed this pattern. Although more than half of the country’s export earnings comes from mineral wealth, less than 2 per cent of the Australian workforce is directly employed in extractive industries (Mining Careers 2016). To this must, naturally, be added many more whose jobs would not have existed without mining – from the pilots flying bread into the LNG town of Karratha from Perth to the car rental firms catering to DIDOs (drive-in drive-out workers). Australian mines are now by and large mechanised, open-pit operations. In a not too distant past, the iconic Australian miner would have been a gritty, ragged and emaciated man who went underground with his pickaxe, facing great peril for lamentable remuneration until the day he literally struck gold. The typical miner today may have a very comfortable salary, could be either male or female, and may spend their days operating a very large machine such as an excavator from the air-conditioned comfort of a cabin, accompanied by music from their headset, a cold Pepsi Max on the dashboard. It is not only researchers like Cleary who see the symptoms of ‘Dutch disease’ or resource curse in Australia. In Gladstone, people who have non-industrial jobs also worry for the future of the non-mining sectors in the Australian economy. A typical statement came from a taxi driver, who had previously worked for 15 years in mining: ‘The problem is, mate, that Australia is just becoming the quarry of the world. We’re now importing manufactured stuff from China while selling raw materials to their industry.’ Basing economic policy on the principle of comparative advantage, Australian politicians consistently favour extractive industries at the expense of manufacturing. Yet this policy reduces the overall flexibility of the economic system, making other sectors less viable and other commodities more difficult to export, owing to the strength of the Australian dollar caused by the resource boom.

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Ironically, some of the most vocal and visible campaigners against mining in contemporary Australia belong to a profession that rivals mining as the iconic Australian occupation, namely farming and livestock raising. Australia’s post-contact history can be told as a story of successive gold rushes, mineral discoveries and rags-to-riches stories, punctuated with stories of hardship, failed searches and brave men who perished in the vast deserts of the interior, in search of a better life for themselves and their families. But it can also be narrated, credibly to many, as a story of equally heroic men braving an unpredictable climate, hostile Aborigines, isolation and loneliness, but inch by inch, acre by acre turning the semi-arid outback into productive farmland. Many of the English migrants who arrived in the pioneer era were not miners, but sheep farmers. In Queensland and New South Wales, the outback is defined as the region between the Great Dividing Range (a string of low mountains separating the relatively well-watered coastal strip from the dry hinterland) and the desert. Owing to underground lakes and aquifers, pastoralism and agriculture are possible in areas that receive only scarce and unpredictable rain. Since the turn of the century, numerous local conflicts between farmers and gas companies have spread from the coast into the outback, especially in Queensland, where gas concessions are more easily granted than in New South Wales. Under Australian law, the owner of a property cannot refuse if a gas company wishes to undertake exploratory drilling. If gas is found, the state government may or may not give the company the right to drill commercially. In Australia, underground resources belong to the Crown (state), so the potential economic benefit for the landowner is limited. Many farmers are frustrated and angry about the situation, and many have joined the Lock the Gate Alliance, formed in 2010 at the initiative of the academic and environmental activist Drew Hutton, which uses civil disobedience (locking the gates, literally) to prevent the resource companies from exerting their legally sanctioned rights. Australian environmentalists are also concerned with the way mining transforms the landscape and contributes to ecological damage and climate change. In 2003, the Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the word solastalgia (Albrecht 2005), which refers to the distress experienced by people whose immediate environmental surroundings are being transformed without their consent. His source of inspiration was the rapid expansion of open-pit coal-mining in the Upper Hunter Valley in central New South Wales. More recently, the anthropologist Linda Connor (2016), who has collaborated with Albrecht, has developed his

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perspectives further, emphasising a holistic approach taking in humans, communities, myths, nature and other elements in an environment populated by humans. She argues that the transformations of the Upper Hunter can only be understood in a global context. These are some of the contradictions with which this book is concerned. It is an attempt to identify and deepen our understanding of some of the basic, contradictory features of contemporary world society. It is about large and small scales, fossil fuels and ecological sustainability, speed and slowness, gains and losses. But it is also a portrait of the boomtown of Gladstone, an almost suspiciously well-kept secret in Australia. In the broader context of Queensland, a cursory comparison of Gladstone with the breath-taking beauty of the south-eastern hills, the lushness of the northern rainforest, the turquoise waters of the Whitsundays and the subtropical idyll of the Sunshine Coast, the glitz and glamour of the Gold Coast and the funky buzz of Brisbane, makes it easy to understand the barely suppressed laughter from a recently arrived journalist when she heard local luminaries speak of the region’s potential for tourism. Gladstone is where Queensland keeps its dirty laundry. But it is also in many ways a microcosm of Australian society and of the contradictions of contemporary global capitalism.

Part I Citius, Altius, Fortius

1 A City No Longer in Waiting

Looking back over the years and remembering what the Gladstone harbour looked like with its endless miles of mudflats, and viewing it as it is today, it surely should bring forth exclamations of amazement at the transformation. Where once was mud and mangroves is now a vast area of reclaimed land, bristling with industry both large and small, a monument to man’s progressiveness and ability to tackle problems big by any standard. —William R. Golding (1979: 353)

Gladstone is a busy node in the global resource economy; it is Queensland’s largest multi-commodity port and the world’s fourth largest coal port. (The largest is Newcastle, New South Wales.) Since the beginning of industrialisation, the city has epitomised global overheating processes (Eriksen 2016a), namely a series of converging forms of accelerated change in the domains of identity and culture, climate and the environment, as well as economy and finance. While economic globalisation and capitalist growth economies based on fossil fuels explain the development of Gladstone, the environmental implications – both locally and globally – of its industries are evident and will be dealt with mainly in the second part of this book. The fast growth of the city leads to concerns about its character as a moral community, the relationship between old-timers and newcomers, and the hinges connecting the past to the present. This is the subject, especially, of chapters 3 and 4. In this chapter, I describe the development of Gladstone from cattle station and fishing village via fledgling port to industrial hub, retelling a narrative of modernity, progress and industry which remains crucial to the collective self-understanding of modern society as such – yet one which today is stumbling and stuttering somewhat, and thus has to be recontextualised and reframed in the light of contemporary climate change and other forms of environmental destruction. * * * Located just south of the tropic of Capricorn, the port of Gladstone lies between Bundaberg and Rockhampton off the Bruce Highway, more

4  .  boomtown

Map 1.1  Gladstone on the Queensland coast

than 500 kilometres north of Brisbane and more than 800 kilometres south of Townsville, along a stretch of country road dominated by eucalyptus forest and sparse human activity, serving as a reminder that Australia remains a thinly populated continent. In spite of its economic importance, Gladstone is relatively unmarked in operative Australian geography. Signposts along the highway indicate distances to many cities, and the nearest smaller towns, but Gladstone does not appear on road signs until just before the exit at Benaraby some 25 kilometres from the city. Nobody, it seems, wants to go there unless for work. Environmental activists further north or south may say, dismissively, that people move to Gladstone exclusively for the money, sometimes adding that they can only bear to live there for a few years. The assumption is that it is an unpleasant, polluted city lacking the picturesque coastlines, inviting beaches and clean air of other cities on the Queensland coast. It has become synonymous with industry and pollution; as a city councillor told me, ‘Gladstone is too often in the [national] news for the wrong reasons,’ meaning that it was only featured whenever there was an environmental problem, or scandal, reaching the headlines. At the same time, Gladstone embodies a history and a present that lies at the core of contemporary Australian identity and its contradictions,

a city no longer in waiting  

.  5

and of industrial modernity as such. The most authoritative history of Gladstone is the Rockhampton-based historian Lorna McDonald’s book with the telling title Gladstone: City That Waited (McDonald 1988), but the most prolific local historian was William (Bill) R. Golding (1890– 1985). Golding, fondly nicknamed ‘Mr Gladstone’, was a towering public figure in his own right: a member of the city council for decades, mayor (1967–73) and board member of the Harbour Authority (later Gladstone Ports Corporation, GPC) from 1932 to 1979, serving as its chair from 1959 till his retirement. Golding’s six self-published books on the history of Gladstone drift seamlessly between autobiography and industrial history, from personal reflections to detailed accounts of politics and industrial development, in which he himself played a major part. Growing up at a time when Gladstone was decidedly a forgotten, stagnant billabong in a remote part of Queensland, Golding reminisces that when he was ‘fourteen and a half years of age [in 1904], Dad said that as I apparently had learnt all that the school could teach, I could leave school, which I did’ (Golding 1979: 286). Upon his second election as alderman in the town council in 1930, Golding reminisces that: in the course of being congratulated by Mayor Ferris when I took my seat at the table, he said that I had come into the council when practically all the work had been finished. What he was actually referring to was that in that year Goondoon and Auckland Streets had been bitumenised, or rather were in the process of being done [sic]. Well, I have been in the council more than 40 years since then, and though the volume of work which has been carried out has been enormous, I have learned that no council ever catches up on its responsibilities, at least not in a growing town like Gladstone. (Golding 1979: 295) The mayor at the time would have been unaware of the forces set free through coal-fuelled transnational capitalism, where change, growth and development would become the secular religion of many societies, including Australia. Golding would himself live to see Gladstone being transformed from a small, rural coastal town into a trading port and, finally, an industrial hub of national – indeed transnational – significance. Upon his retirement, he was well aware that changes would continue, being a fully modern person with change and progress in his bones.

the first century The story of European settlement in Central Queensland until the latter half of the twentieth century can in some ways be read as a potted version

6  .  boomtown

of the history of Europeans in Australia in general, minus the convicts. In remote Queensland, Europeans were thin on the ground, often isolated not only from Europe but also from the larger settlements in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, and sources are unanimous that they felt forgotten and abandoned. They mainly dealt with the traditional landowners, the Aborigines, as one would with wild animals threatening to attack people or damage crops, and it was only with the advent of air travel that they felt fully integrated into the modern world. The fragility of the early settlements in Central Queensland, aborted attempts and thwarted hopes, are reflected in historical narratives about Gladstone as a city that finally flourished against all odds. Although Gladstone looks programmatically towards the future, not the past, there is a strong interest in local history, especially among long-standing residents. The first Europeans to set foot in Port Curtis (later Gladstone) may have been the cartographer Matthew Flinders and his men, who briefly landed in the area in 1802. Only in 1823 did Europeans return, in the shape of the land surveyor John Oxley, who decided that the area was unsuitable for a convict settlement. However, two decades later, in 1846, William Gladstone, then colonial secretary, decided that Port Curtis should be populated by a mixture of ‘expired convicts’ from Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and newly arrived convicts from England. He appointed Lieutenant-Colonel George Barney as the administrative head of the new settlement. Accordingly, the first proper European colonisation was intended to happen in 1847, when the Lord Auckland, captained by Barney, brought a group of 56 colonists to Port Curtis, whose deep harbour was recognised as an asset. Indeed, following a suggestion from William Gladstone, Port Curtis was at the time a candidate for the capital city of all of Northern Australia, including contemporary Queensland and the Northern Territory. However, Barney’s ship stranded, and although the crew was rescued, the project was abandoned, and no penal colony was established. Around the same time, a sprinkling of pastoralist squatters arrived from the south, but officially, the port area was settled only in 1853, led by Governor Charles Fitzroy, who named the town, optimistically, Gladstone, by which time its namesake was no longer colonial secretary. The first semi-permanent housing in Gladstone, preceding Fitzroy, has been described as ‘a hut erected by a party of young men from Maryborough, who, having heard descriptions of Port Curtis, had determined to be the first on what appeared to be a favourable field of settlement’ (Golding 1979: 9). The early European immigrants met already settled people in the region, probably the ethnic groups now known as the Tulua/Toolooa,

a city no longer in waiting  

.  7

Goreng-Goreng and Baiali/Byellee, whose descendants remain attached to Central Queensland. Relying on trade in meat and livestock as well as fishing, the fledgling town of Gladstone – with a few streets and fewer permanent buildings – officially became a port in 1859. Yet, there were promises of profits through transnational trade already then. The first mob of cattle, consisting of 250 animals, had been shipped to New Zealand in 1856. Mail service with the neighbouring towns of Maryborough and Rockhampton was established in 1859. As in many other parts of Australia without a convict population, prospects of finding gold attracted people to relocate, in addition to raising livestock, which in this region mainly meant cattle. Gladstone benefited little from these opportunities. Gold was found on the banks of the Fitzroy River near Rockhampton in 1858, drawing people further north. There was a minor gold rush near Calliope to the west in the early 1860s, leading to the consolidation of that town. Until well into the twentieth century, dreams of gold remained a magnet in the region, but none of the findings would benefit Gladstone, the rich gold deposit at Mount Morgan being closer to Rockhampton. Although little gold was found, many of those who came to Gladstone at the time stayed, and the population grew, if slowly. In 1862, a wharf was built; in 1863, Gladstone became a municipality (although the population barely exceeded 200), and by 1868, the port exported cattle, wool, sheep and gold. The imports, as Golding (1973: 26) drily notes, made the settlement a drinker’s paradise ‘if there ever was one’, consisting largely of alcoholic beverages in his record. It should be added that the gender balance, as elsewhere in the colony, was markedly skewed. The population of Gladstone reached 500 in 1888, two years before Golding’s birth. A vibrant city it was not, but it would grow steadily in the next decades, relying mainly on meat export, fishing and crabbing for local markets and the excellent port facilities. Coal was brought to Gladstone from Newcastle (NSW). Around the turn of the twentieth century, Gladstone slowly turned into a town proper. Profiting from new technology, a meat-processing facility was opened in 1896, a butter factory in 1905. Rail links with Brisbane were established in 1897 and with Rockhampton in 1903, and a steamer began to operate between Rockhampton and Gladstone, plying the shallow waters of the Narrows separating Curtis Island from the mainland. At the same time, minor gold rushes in Langmorn, Raglan, Targinnie and Many Peaks in the Upper Boyne Valley attracted newcomers not intent on becoming graziers. The meatworks, which would operate until 1963, did not provide a secure income. In its early days, it employed 120 men for three months

8  .  boomtown

a year, and it remained a strictly seasonal employer until the end. Other precarious livelihoods also appeared. In the early decades of the twentieth century, several hotels and boarding houses were built, some of them short-lived, such as the Battery Hotel in Targinnie, which only lasted from 1901 to 1917; while the Grand Hotel on Goondoon Street, dating from 1897, is still operating today. There was even an embryonic tourist industry before the Second World War, with Christian Poulson opening his Grand Hotel on the tiny, but unspoilt and picturesque Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef, a popular destination even today. * * * Before industrialisation, the story of Gladstone is one of farming and pastoralism, shipping and mining, thereby embodying two key figures in most standard narratives of Australian national character and history, the grazier and the miner. Indeed, two influential – and controversial, for opposite reasons – Australian historians, who otherwise represent very different views of the country’s history, not least concerning the settlers’ relationship to and treatment of the Aborigines, converge on this issue. As regards mining, the conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey (1994) concentrates on wealth creation and the peopling of the continent, while the postcolonial socialist historian Stuart Macintyre (2004) explores the consequences of the current mining boom. Regarding frontier settlers with their animal herds, both historians agree on their significance while giving different interpretations. Indeed, Macintyre shows that quite a few of the early settlers combined pastoralism and mining for a livelihood. Both the grazier and the miner opened the outback to settler colonisation, both extract value from the land, but while the former attempts to enter into circuits of indefinite reproduction, the latter removes the valuable substance from the land once and for all. Although it is a major coal port, mineral wealth in the Gladstone region is limited, apart from the Callide coalfield near Biloela, about 85 km west of the city. Coal was found there as early as 1892, and indeed, coal was already known to exist in the region in 1844. Commercial exploitation of Callide coal nevertheless began only in the mid-twentieth century, the mine opening in 1944 following the building of the Gladstone–Biloela main road (or highway, as it is officially called). After years of political stalling, a period when the region actually relied on imported coal, the first shipments of Callide coal finally arrived at the wharf in 1946, following a government order of 30,000 tonnes of Callide coal. A local businessman, Leslie Thiess, returned from negotiations with Japanese buyers in 1960 with a contract for between 300,000 and 500,000 tonnes of coal, ‘seventy years after Otty and Petersen sank their picks into this

a city no longer in waiting  

.  9

coal on the banks of Callide Creek away back in 1892’ (McDonald 1988: 318). Coal from the larger mines in more distant Moura subsequently began to arrive, still by truck, in 1961, as Gladstone was on the brink of becoming an international coal port, gradually being integrated into an economic system at a transnational scale. Throughout the history of the Gladstone region, many have tried their hand at mining, the high risk being counteracted by the possibility of fast wealth. Instead of producing mineral wealth itself, however, the region now began to profit from that extracted in the interior of Queensland. This required an upgrading of the port facilities. The jetty at Auckland Point on the northern tip of the town had been built as early as 1885, mainly for shipping cargoes of horses and cattle. Political decisions, doubtless helped by efficient lobbying from competitors, delayed its expansion, the Queensland government preferring to build deep-water ports further north by the estuary of the Fitzroy River. In 1956, the jetty was finally expanded just a few years before the decision that would change Gladstone forever, namely the construction of the world’s largest alumina refinery on its outskirts.

queensland alumina ltd and beyond When my husband and I arrived here, in the 1970s, there were essentially two kinds of people here, namely those who worked for QAL or at the power station, and everybody else. Everybody else meant, in this case, motorbikes, dogs and pregnant women.

—Jenny (teacher)

In December 1963, Swift’s Meatworks closed its doors for the last time. The meat-processing plant had existed since 1897; it had gone through ups and downs, a decided upturn being the great spam boom of the Second World War, when Allied troops in the Pacific required a regular supply of tinned meat. The closure came as a shock to many Gladstonites, to whom the meatworks was an important element in the local identity. As some of my elderly informants point out, there were rumours about the vacant lot becoming an ugly and decrepit ruin, good jobs lost forever in the region. These rumours persisted in spite of the fact that it had already been decided, and announced, that a bigger and better employer was about to take over the property and turn it into an industrial powerhouse. When the meatworks closed and was demolished, the plot and some adjacent land had already been purchased by the mining company Comalco (later Rio Tinto), which immediately set about building what would become the world’s largest alumina refinery (QAL,

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Queensland Alumina Ltd). Employing 2800 men in the construction phase, QAL opened in 1967, followed in the next year by the opening of a railway extension connecting the port of Gladstone to the Moura coal fields, and an expansion of the port itself with the construction of a coal terminal at Barney Point between the city centre and QAL. Other infrastructural developments also took place in the 1960s. The Callide River near the coal mine was dammed in 1963, creating an artificial lake as well as providing water for the Calcap Power House nearby. Closer to Gladstone, the Awoonga dam, supplying the city with fresh water, was built from 1965 to 1970. The population boomed, and Gladstone was no longer a ‘city in waiting’; as the Harbour Board of Bowen in northern Queensland telegraphed to the Gladstone City Council when the alumina refinery plans were announced, ‘Congratulations. Cinderella has found her Prince, any chance of borrowing slipper?’ (McDonald 1988: 342). The telegram from Bowen implicitly referred to the English travel writer H.M. Vaughan, who many years earlier had described Gladstone as ‘the Cinderella of the Queensland ports’ (Vaughan 1914, quoted from Sheahan-Bright 2006). * * * By the late 1960s, it was clear that the fortunes of Gladstone had changed, but in the popular consciousness it remained somewhat in the shadows of its neighbours. One hundred kilometres to the north lies Rockhampton – ‘the beef capital of Queensland’ – in a region whose economy was for most of the twentieth century dominated by Mount Morgan, the site of the gold mine which was at that time the world’s largest, and which contributed substantially to the Australian economy for decades, operating from 1882 to 1981, leaving a toxic wasteland behind. To the south were the sugar and rum capital Bundaberg and the coal port Maryborough, and further south the city which became the state capital of Queensland in 1859, that is, Brisbane. Its main natural asset being its excellent, sheltered deep-sea port, Gladstone shipped modest quantities of meat, grain and miscellaneous produce; its largest economic enterprise was Swift’s Meatworks. Apart from a number of medium-sized cattle stations, especially in the Mount Larcom area to the west (see chapter 7), the Gladstone region also produced dairy products, fruit and vegetables for the regional market, notably in Boyne Valley to the south and the fertile volcanic soil of Targinnie to the immediate north. The unevenness of the fast growth of the town was already very visible during the construction years of the mid-1960s, when thousands of temporary workers lived in tents, caravans and temporary housing

a city no longer in waiting  

.  11

on cricket fields and the showgrounds. The local infrastructure was incapable of keeping up with the influx of workers. It has been calculated that a quarter of Gladstone’s population lived in temporary lodging in the early 1970s. An elderly woman who now lives in a retirement village on the outskirts of the city, remembers the time as a chaotic period: And there was turmoil, I can tell you. People lived in caravans – families lived in caravans. We were incredibly lucky in that we got a five-bedroom house for $201 a week. It was through Bill [William R.] Golding’s wife. Later, we bought the house from them at a very good price. But you can imagine Goondoon Street on a Saturday night, the drinking and fighting … this is returning now with the FIFOs [fly-in fly-out workers].

the expanding port and the lng adventure Gladstone’s transition from a dusty, down-at-heels industrial town to an attractive garden city in a few years is a modern miracle.

—Lorna McDonald (1988: 373)

Although the establishment of QAL was the defining moment for contemporary Gladstone, there have been several later periods of significant industrial expansion as well. The port remains hugely important and continues to grow. The city’s second coal terminal opened in 1997, the third in 2015, and, as pointed out by Burgmann and Baer (2012: 56), writing in 2010, the coal shipped from Gladstone adds 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually (the figure has since grown). The Gladstone Power Station, now the largest power station in Queensland, produced its first kilowatts in 1978, and has since been expanded in several stages. The Boyne Island aluminium smelter was completed just south of QAL in 1982. The largest cement factory in the country is Cement Australia’s operation at Fisherman’s Landing just north of the city; Orica has a cyanide factory in the same area, and a second Rio Tinto-owned alumina refinery was opened at Yarwun 10 km north of Gladstone in 2004. Ten per cent of the world’s bauxite is produced by the Rio Tinto mine in Weipa, northern Queensland. Moreover, the city has many smaller industrial enterprises as well as a broad range of auxiliary activities directly or indirectly associated with the industry, from scaffolding to the building of new suburbs and takeaway restaurants. 1.  Unless otherwise indicated, all dollars are Australian. In April 2018, AU$1 was equivalent to €0.63, US$0.78 or £0.55.

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New industrial estates continue to be established, while the existing ones remain or, in a few cases, are demolished to make way for something bigger or more up-to-date. A thoroughly industrial and industrious town, contemporary Gladstone may give the European or North American visitor the feeling of a time lag or a déjà vu: it represents a confident, optimistic vision of industrial modernity, with its sprawling bungalow suburbs and neat lawns, smoking chimneys, swivelling cranes and thundering truck traffic; its streets lined with drive-through bottleshops, employment agencies, resource companies and skin cancer clinics, patrolled by utes2 driven by muscular men in baseball caps and workman’s clothes. The economic backbone of the city, now all but obsolete elsewhere in the world, consists of a numerous, prosperous, male, white, proud, largely unionised working class. Its masculine, industrial ethos and upbeat optimism echoes and reverberates with the collective memory of cities such as Detroit or Cleveland two generations ago, in their day beacons of modernity and progress, symbols of the future, now decrepit and decaying. * * * A painting depicting a vast army of workers in hard hats, wearing blue and yellow fluorescent jackets, adorns the wall of the mayor’s office in the handsome regional council building on Goondoon Street. When I made a passing comment about the painting, Mayor Gail Sellers nodded towards it, smiling, while explaining that these men were the pride and the future of the city. The men were construction workers building three large LNG terminals belonging to three different conglomerates, on Curtis Island across the Narrows.3 The American engineering company Bechtel was by far the city’s largest employer during the period of construction, which lasted from 2010 to 2015, peaking in terms of personnel and activity in 2013. The total number of workers was then estimated at 10,000, roughly half of whom lived in the area, the other half being FIFOs, whose primary homes were in other parts of Australia. In February 2014, I joined a complimentary boat trip organised by Bechtel for the benefit of tourists and others interested in their work. All three LNG companies were also represented, with one spokesperson each. The comfortable catamaran was nearly empty, the few visitors apart from myself appearing to be pensioners from the region and a handful of 2. A ute is a utility vehicle – a pickup truck. 3.  A fourth project, by Arrow Energy, was eventually cancelled owing to uncertainties in the LNG market.

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.  13

Asian tourists. Leaving the Gladstone Marina, the boat took a northerly turn and glided into the Narrows. The woman from Bechtel took the floor first, followed by the representatives of the three LNG companies – GLNG, QCLNG and APLNG,4 talking to us as we passed the gas terminals. One was Canadian, the other two Australian. Towards the end, the Bechtel representative returned to fill gaps left by the others. The focus was almost entirely quantitative as the resource companies proceeded to inform the public about their activities. We were told that the number of persons transported from the mainland to the island was up to 2800 a day. The number of boat movements in the harbour was typically 22,000 a month. It had been quite a change, the GLNG representative reflected, from the time before LNG, when only a couple of thousand movements a month were typically registered. Bechtel also mentioned the number of cubic metres of cement and steel that had gone into building the jetties, and the number of cubic metres of seafloor removed during the dredging of the harbour (see chapter 6), in order to allow ships up to 220,000 tonnes to pass into the previously quite shallow western harbour. The boat now slowly approached the first LNG terminal, which was being built for GLNG. Its spokesperson explained that the parts for the installation came from a module factory in the Philippines, ‘like a Meccano set’. The construction, now 70 per cent complete, could be compared to ‘two giant freezers, enough to fill up two ships a week’, each of them with space for 140,000 cubic metres of frozen gas. The cargo ships, he added, revealing a flair for the apt simile, were then turned into ‘floating eskies’, the esky being that iconic portable cooler, or ice box, brought on picnics by Australians. The GLNG man also rattled off a few numbers: 300 Ks (km) of piping, he said, 14,000 valves, 150 Ks of wiring, 30,000 tonnes of steel … We then approached the plant belonging to QCLNG. Their representative began to speak of the 543-acre site, construction which came at a cost of $20 billion, and 2500 construction workers. In order to flatten and prepare the formerly rugged, wooded, rocky land, they had removed a volume of earth equivalent to that of the great pyramid of Giza. Their piping would stretch from here to Rocky (Rockhampton), the wiring from here to Melbourne.5 The tanks themselves were the equivalent in size to 100 Olympic swimming pools. Their modules, built in Thailand, 4.  APLNG (Asia Pacific LNG) is owned by ConocoPhilips, Origin Energy and Sinopec; GLNG (Gladstone LNG) by Santos, PETRONAS, Total and KOGAS; and QCLNG (Queensland Curtis LNG) is owned by BG. Ownership is transnational, with only Origin and Santos being mainly Australian companies. 5.  The numbers provided by GLNG and QCLNG seem incompatible.

14  .  boomtown

were furnished with insulating concrete walls that were 1.2 metres thick. And they would be happy to accommodate cargo ships up to 210 metres long. When she reached the point where she made comparisons with numbers of African elephants, I lost track, and the other passengers were unable to help me afterwards. Coal seam gas, she went on to explain, is 600 times decreased in volume when cooled and liquefied into LNG. The company generate their own power on site, and plan to employ 500 people in management and administration once construction was complete. The largest module actually had the same weight as two A-380 aircraft. She added, however, that QCLNG placed an emphasis on community support, funding volunteering, the sailing club and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as WIN, among other things, in an effort to mitigate some of the possible negative impacts on the community. It was then the third LNG company’s turn. The man from APLNG explained that they would produce 9 million tonnes a year. The first 7.6 million tonnes had in fact already been taken by Japanese and Chinese buyers. They expected to send their first shipments in mid-2015. Pointing to a flare on the ground, where excess gas was being burnt, he compared it to ‘a long barbie’ (barbecue). I was later told, by an LNG executive, that they wanted to avoid flaring, as it could be compared to burning $1000 notes. Environmentalists also held that flaring was a bad idea, but for other reasons. APLNG had 2500 people on site; 2200 beds, of which about 2100 were occupied at the moment. They also had three pipelines crossing the seafloor; they also had a tunnel-boring machine, using a different technology from the others. Their modules were built in Indonesia. The woman from Bechtel returned to the floor as we were making our way back to Gladstone Marina. She pointed out that although Curtis Island was male-dominated, there were 1100 women working there (about 11 per cent), and that figure included boilermakers and other jobs one would not normally associate with women. Some 4 per cent of the workers were foreign. In their lodgings, the workers had access to multi-channel television (Foxtel) and the internet, a gym and training programme intended to fill skill gaps, and they even had rotating menus ensuring that they would never be served the same food twice in 28 days. (These services, presumably, were not matched in the module yards overseas.) She then specified the number of meals cooked every day, and confirmed that they did have some mainland housing, but not much. The mini-lectures certainly conveyed the impression that the LNG projects on Curtis Island were really big in every way, but of course, they failed to address many questions that could have been raised. They were

a city no longer in waiting  

.  15

also unable to answer a simple question about the raft-like barges with cranes hovering in the sea near the sites. (They were, I later found out, for constructing the tip of the jetty, as it could not be built from land.) The fact that nearly 5000 people from the Gladstone region work at Bechtel does not preclude rumours about the place, but rather stimulates their proliferation. Some told me that Bechtel were building McDonald’s on the sites. Others claimed that the executives had their own landing strips for private jets. Yet others had heard that Curtis Island currently had the largest pub in the southern hemisphere. It was also alleged, almost inexplicably, that everybody working on the island was a FIFO (in fact, 48 per cent of the workforce was local). Needless to say, none of this was true. But in a fast-changing world, not only tangible and visible phenomena, such as the physical surroundings and economic situation, are being destabilised, but so are truth claims. A theme which has become central to politics, philosophy and social science since the end of my fieldwork is that of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’, where the question raised, plainly, concerns whom to trust and what to believe. To this we return in greater detail in Part II. In addition to the contentious environmental issues surrounding LNG in general and this operation in particular, it was often said that work on the island put a strain on family life, whether you were a local or a FIFO. To this I shall return in chapter 4. What is significant about the way the LNG project was presented by the owners is not their failure to address controversial issues but their almost obsessive use of very large numbers to indicate the importance of what they were doing, or else making mind-boggling comparisons – the pyramid of Giza, from here to Melbourne, African bull elephants. The need to quantify (‘if it cannot be counted, it doesn’t count’) and the temptation to boast about size are endemic aspects of modernity and useful markers of these projects as being wedded to the classic view of progress. Large scale means progress, development, many jobs and much prosperity. In this context it is a paradox, which many do not understand, that gas prices have gone up in Queensland itself following the establishment of the LNG plants in Gladstone. In spite of the recent economic boom resulting from the LNG development, the most influential corporate actor in Gladstone remains Rio Tinto Alcan. As mentioned, the Australian mining and resource company holds a majority of the shares in QAL, Boyne Smelters and the alumina refinery at Yarwun; it owns the Callide coal mine, the bauxite mine in Weipa and currently has a 42 per cent ownership of the power station. Another important economic actor is the GPC, which is still owned by the Queensland government although privatisation has

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been proposed repeatedly since the turn of the millennium. With the expansion of Gladstone harbour, notably the building of a new coal terminal at Wiggins Island just north of the city, the GPC has increased its influence on life in the city significantly. All these major economic actors are transnational in their activities, engaging directly with the global economy and, in many cases, transnationally owned. However, we should keep in mind that the smaller-scale enterprises in Gladstone – from the music shop and the car stereo retailer to the local corner shops and cooperatively owned supermarkets, the hotels and B&Bs, the caravan park and the mechanical workshop – also form part of the same global tapestry, although their threads are shorter. Until the mid-twentieth century, much of the economy of the region, and much of people’s lives, were locally bounded. Locally grown crops were marketed in the region, and the meat at the butcher’s came from locally slaughtered animals. Travel was cumbersome and expensive. Contemporary Gladstone is a node in a multiscalar web of connections, its fortunes and misfortunes dependent on the global resource industry and – in particular – the world of fossil fuels. Should the world shift towards renewable energy, as international climate agreements from Kyoto (1992) to Paris (2015) propose, Gladstone will in all likelihood suffer the same fate as Detroit. There is tacit awareness of this, and perhaps that is the main reason why environmental questions are only at the forefront of local discourse when they can be addressed easily, on a local scale. Gladstone still lives the ‘modern miracle’ praised by Lorna McDonald in the late 1980s, only a few years before environmental issues became a major concern in politics both local and global, and today, the city expresses the central double bind of contemporary civilisation – fossil fuel growth versus ecological sustainability – in an almost ideal-typical way. The LNG companies have invested $80 billion (€53 billion or £46.7 billion) in their infrastructure, and are obliged to ship frozen gas from Curtis Island for many years before they begin to make profits.6 In addition to the ambivalence concerning fossil fuels and the environment, there is a distinctive ambivalence about living in Gladstone, which is usually under-communicated, but sometimes made explicit, not least among people who have moved away from the city, often for reasons of health or quality of life. In a polemical book about coal mining, Sharyn Munro interviews an environmental activist in Bowen, further north in Queensland, who is exasperated to hear that her hometown could 6.  Mainly owing to the steep decline in fossil fuel prices, the LNG companies have lost very large sums since they became operative in 2014–15. This development was acknowledged and anticipated during the final stages of construction, but by then, there was no turning back.

a city no longer in waiting  

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become ‘a second Gladstone’: ‘People work down there a year or two then get out … because they can’t stand it … it’s so polluted’ (Munro 2012: 163). In the belief that this is maybe a common perception, local politicians and businesspeople are concerned to improve the image of Gladstone and advertise it as an attractive place in which to live.

promotion of the gladstone region You will notice the upbeat optimism already when you browse the GRC website. The emphasis there is not on industrial development, but on the quality of life. Aware of the tainted reputation of the city, the council highlights recreational possibilities – fishing and crabbing, hiking and running, swimming (not on the city beaches, but further south) and engaging in a variety of sports for which Gladstone has excellent facilities. An umbrella organisation, GAPDL (Gladstone Area Promotion and Development Limited), was founded in 1983, when, in the words of its chair Peter Corones, ‘our city and our region faced many challenges, including that of overcoming a poor image perception, through misrepresentation by certain southern media, that could adversely effect our growth & potential’ (GAPDL website). A local university student comments, drily, in 2014: ‘Well, if this was the case in 1983, things have gone from bad to worse. Think about the Shen Neng thing, for example.’ She refers to the event in 2010 when a Chinese coal ship, the Shen Neng I, ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef north of Gladstone, destroying a 3-kilometre-long stretch of reef and inflicting further damage through oil spills. It was feared that the ship would split in half, dumping 65,000 tonnes of oil and 950 tonnes of oil into the reef area, but this was eventually averted. To some concerned locals, this accident was not a good advertisement for the current expansion of port facilities along the Great Barrier Reef. GAPDL presents itself as follows in a recent annual report: GAPDL is a not-for-profit, membership based organisation and a Company limited by Guarantee that was originally founded in 1983. Today, GAPDL is a dynamic and enthusiastic organisation representing a strong membership base of in excess of 350 organisations, all tiers of Government, authorities, industries, large and small firms, businesses and community groups. GAPDL’s strategic direction is overseen by a Board of 10 Volunteer Directors, all of whom are passionate about the Gladstone Region and give freely of their time to ensure the organisation remains focused and progressive. (GAPDL 2014: 5)

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It further aims to: • Promote the Gladstone Region as the ‘Region of Choice’ for environmentally responsible business and industry. • Market and develop the Gladstone Region as a preferred tourism, investment and lifestyle destination. • Foster community acceptance of responsible industry and development. • Encourage and foster new sustainable business and industry investment for the Gladstone Region. • Identify and facilitate strategies that will grow existing regional business. • Facilitate programs that enhance the well-being and lifestyle of the Gladstone Region. (GAPDL 2014: 4) Most residents of Gladstone are only dimly aware of the existence of GAPDL, although as a casual visitor one would encounter them in the marina, where they have a souvenir shop and an information centre, mainly for the benefit of tourists visiting Heron Island some 40 km offshore. However, GAPDL is more important to Gladstone than it may seem. Significantly, it simultaneously aims to promote tourism, local community life and industrial development, and through its broad membership base and the composition of its board of directors (where several interests are represented), it seems to indicate the presence of a moral community encompassing local politics, business and civil society. Creating and maintaining a collective identity and a shared vision for the future in a city like Gladstone – turbulent, fast-growing, environmentally challenged – is not easy, and as will become clear as we proceed, the collective optimism expressed by GAPDL is not shared by everyone. Yet it would be fair to say that optimism is far more widely shared in the city population than I expected when I set out to do fieldwork there. There is a pride in and commitment to the industrial identity of Gladstone which is important to keep in mind. It is a modern city with thin roots and a constant need to reinvent itself owing to demographic, social and economic changes. Its inhabitants are, on the whole committed to this vision of modernity. In spite of its flourishing and apparent transformation into ‘an attractive garden city’, there remains a sense in which Gladstone does not have a proper place on the Australian map; this is often mentioned in conversations with local politicians and business leaders. They almost unanimously state that the city is misunderstood, that it can offer a high quality of life, a wealth of job opportunities, a low unemployment rate

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Figure 1.1  The GAPDL logo gives pride of place to the sky and the ocean, while industry is granted a mere speck

and excellent leisure facilities, and that the world has a right to know. To return to the beginning of this chapter, it may be worth noting, as a fact of unacknowledged symbolic significance, that both Gladstone and Curtis Island are named after people who never set foot in Australia. William Gladstone was Colonial Secretary when the settlement was established, but never travelled to Australia, while Matthew Flinders, whose modesty prevented him from naming natural features for himself, named the large, forested island across the Narrows for his friend, Admiral Roger Curtis. In the next chapter, I shall probe the sources of the wavering confidence in Gladstone’s collective identity, and this will be an underlying theme in the subsequent two chapters as well. The next chapter places Gladstone in a national context – it is a risky exercise for a twenty-first-century anthropologist to write about ‘national identity’ in a way that resembles a ‘mentalities’ approach, but it has to be attempted, lest we lose one of our traditional strengths as a discipline, namely the ability to describe cultural variation and show how it is linked to historical change and social life. It concerns Australian egalitarianism and subtle hierarchies and forms of exclusion, the miner and the grazier, and – most importantly for the present analysis – the double bind of a country that is simultaneously one of the most reliable contributors to global climate change and one of its main victims.

2 Australian Identity and its Double Binds

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

—Chant performed at Australian sport events

As usual in all other parts of Australia, the original owner of the soil was ignored by the new proprietor. His tribal laws, his customs, game preserves, and social regulations were treated with heartless contempt. Passing to windward of a mob of cattle or killing half a dozen of the sheep that ate his kangaroo pastures was sufficient excuse for the squatter to drive the tribe back to the ranges or shoot a score of men, women, and children in cold blood. —Archibald Meston (writing from the Gladstone area in 1900)

The major theoretical issues explored through the people, events and stories presented especially in the second part of this book are the double bind between fossil fuel extraction and ecological sustainability, and the clashing scales entailed by massive, rapid industrial development and its encounter with the small scale of everyday life. For the context of these predicaments to be properly understood, we nevertheless first need to look at another challenge for the official Australian identity, namely the tension between public egalitarian individualism on the one hand, and class hierarchies and ethnic exclusion on the other. I therefore begin with an examination of discourses of collective identity and boundaries, then move on to core values, personhood and a juxtaposition between two major symbols in Australian history, the miner and the grazier, before coming to the central double bind.

the cultural grammar of australia day In his influential monograph Legends of People, Myths of State, the Australian anthropologist Bruce Kapferer (1988) analyses Anzac Day, celebrated on 25 April to commemorate the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, a protracted military stalemate on the Turkish coast, which was eventually won by the Ottoman forces, in which more than 10,000 young

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Map 2.1  The Gladstone region

men from Australia and New Zealand (ANZAC) perished. Anzac Day is a solemn affair which brings home the point that nationalism is deeply associated with blood sacrifice (Marvin and Ingle 1999). However, the official national day, Australia Day, celebrated on 26 January, carries a very different flavour and celebrates a lighter and more festive aspect of nationalism. Many dress very casually in shorts, T-shirts and thongs (flip-flops), spending the holiday on the beach, or in their garden in front of the barbie (barbecue), tinny (can of beer) in hand. In public venues, the music of choice is often rock, and the event is rounded off with fireworks at sunset. On the eve of Australia Day, the GRC hosts a festive event where the Australia Award is given to local residents for their outstanding contributions to the community, and where new citizens are formally welcomed to the city and the country. Perhaps inadvertently revealing the working-class ethos of the city, there were in 2014 three awards in sports, but just one in arts and culture. Awards were also given for volunteering and other kinds of community work. There were, thus, awards for individual excellence, but also for selfless community-building. No ethnic minorities or Aborigines were among the recipients of awards that year. Towards the end of the event, Mayor Gail Sellers, a popular and sociable woman, tested the integrative efforts of the newly naturalised citizens by suddenly shouting: ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!’ To which most of the new citizens, having done their homework, replied: ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ Compared to European countries, the official national ethos of Australia

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is strikingly informal and egalitarian. At an earlier Australia Day celebration in which I took part (in Sydney, in 2010), the music blasting over the speaker system in Darling Harbour, framing the prime minister’s solemn speech in recognition of the 50,000 years of Aboriginal history, was by AC/DC (fondly known as ‘Acca Dacca’), the country’s most famous rock band, underlining the egalitarian ethos of the national identity. In Gladstone, Australia Day is part private, part public, unlike Christmas, which is all private, or May Day, which is all public. (Gladstone is one of the few Australian cities which is still able to mobilise enough unionised workers and union leaders to mount a substantial May Day parade.) Whereas most people take the day off to engage in leisure activities, there are also various public events taking place. The official celebration, involving live music, picnicking and speeches from local politicians, takes place in the marina parklands, across a small bridge just north of the city centre. At nightfall, choreographed fireworks illuminate the sky, and the party continues at other venues, most visibly at ‘Yachties’, the upmarket Yacht Club, where a rock and blues band from the region would perform until late at night. At the public event in the marina, titillating aromas from the sausages, burgers and drumsticks on the barbie wafted in the air, but no alcohol was sold, and it was mainly frequented by families – many of them new Australians who may have needed this ritual of inclusion more than others – and pensioners. The somewhat rowdier celebration taking place later in the city attracted a younger crowd of both genders, the majority with visible tattoos, and was – like many informal events in Australia – lubricated with liberal amounts of beer. Australia Day is a relaxed ritual, considering it is the country’s official national day, but it has its detractors. Aboriginal organisations have suggested renaming it Invasion Day, while people concerned with its undertones of nationalist bigotry have proposed Citizen’s Day as an alternative. As of this writing, neither alternative seems likely to catch on among a majority of the population. The grammar and choreography of national days varies between countries (Eriksen 1993; Hutchinson 1994; Lentz 2013), revealing important differences in the ways the formal identity of state nationalism is being projected both to domestic and international publics. For example, Mauritius celebrates its diversity through an array of cultural displays representing each ethnic ‘community’; France is famous for its military parades; Norway highlights its innocence and youth through massive children’s parades; Canada Day is choreographed partly as a ritual of inclusion for new Canadians; and the USA’s Fourth of July combines state displays of power with fireworks and informality. In

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Australia, blood sacrifice and state power are highlighted on Anzac Day, while Australia Day is about celebrating the Australian way of life and its associations with an easy-going lifestyle. It is egalitarian, individualist and informal, but as social scientists have shown (see Kapferer 1988; Hage 2000), it is also an exclusionary identity with invisible fences. The great trauma of Australian identity remains the fact that the dominant settler culture is founded on large-scale land grabbing, genocide and the permanent marginalisation of the descendants of the continent’s original inhabitants. In liberal and radical circles, an underlying sentiment that ‘whitefellas’ do not really have the right to be in Australia sometimes surfaces; that they are themselves like an invasive species insensitively altering the local ecosystem by driving other species to extinction, eating their food and poisoning their blood. The unresolved and fraught relationship between settler society and Aborigines is the topic of debates, policies, rights claims and controversies involving both Aborigines and white Australians, but it is virtually absent in Gladstone. Its Aboriginal groups are small and politically weak, and have so far failed to claim land rights which would release royalties or other forms of compensation from the resource companies. Questions of social inclusion and exclusion in Australia with regard to immigrant minorities were addressed comprehensively by the Lebanese-born Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage in White Nation (Hage 2000), and these issues remain important in Australian social science research. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only British immigration to the country was encouraged. Although the official ideology and policy were gradually relaxed to endorse Irish, Scandinavian, Dutch, German and, later, South European immigration (Melbourne, in particular, has large Greek and Italian communities), the overtly racist policy known as ‘White Australia’ was fully abandoned only in 1973. In recent years, there have been violent incidents in the country that are widely understood as being motivated by racist impulses, such as much-publicised attacks on Indian students and the 2005 Cronulla riots, involving Lebanese migrants and white Australians (Noble 2009). Australian majority identity can be understood in terms of settler colonialism (Hage 2016), where it is framed as a peculiarly European kind of imperialism whereby settler control of the land and its original inhabitants goes together with routine, hierarchical subordination of non-whites. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that Muslims have lived in Australia since the arrival of Afghan camel drivers in the mid-nineteenth century (Kabir 2005), and Australia Day itself may be interpreted as a ritual of inclusion (for immigrants). In Sydney, there is a very

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considerable contingent of new Australians, many of them East Asians, taking part in the public celebrations. Since their inclusion in Australian society cannot be taken for granted, they use this ritual to confirm their belonging in the new country. According to the GRC, the city has residents from 73 countries, but there are no large, non-white groups. Eighty per cent of residents were born in Australia, the next significant national categories being from New Zealand, Britain and South Africa. Nevertheless, the council has developed an ambitious cultural diversity strategy, mainly produced by its Multicultural Community Relations Officer Luis Arroyo (himself an immigrant from Colombia), and organises regular meetings on interfaith issues, questions of integration and collaboration with the industry. The city also has an active NGO called WIN (Welcoming Intercultural Neighbours), funded mainly by the private sector, which organises a wide range of activities meant to facilitate the inclusion of newly arrived migrants into the local community. Among other things, they offer language courses and salsa nights, seminars about traffic behaviour in Queensland and the functioning of local government. A ritual of inclusion is also held at the city library once a month, where newly arrived Gladstone residents are invited for tea, biscuits and welcome speeches from city councillors (see chapter 4 for more details). Yet, as a middle-aged civil servant pointed out to me, the friendly and welcoming attitude towards newcomers of all kinds may conceal less visible mechanisms of exclusion. She argues that there is ‘an incredibly naïve attitude to racism and tolerance around here … people just have to behave like us, and then there isn’t a problem’. A question that remains unanswered for now is whether those who experience exclusion do so because of their culture or religion, their race, or because they fail to succeed economically. I shall have more to say about the mechanisms of inclusion operating in Gladstone in chapters 3 and 4; we will now delve slightly more deeply into the collective self-understanding that predominates in Gladstone.

egalitarianism and inequality According to Bechtel’s own figures, just 4 per cent of their workers are ‘expats’ or foreign workers. The GRC nevertheless has statistics indicating that the number of foreign-born residents living in the city grew significantly between the turn of the millennium and 2014 (GRC 2014: 17), perhaps from 5 to 20 per cent, many of them temporary workers. In addition to the activities organised by WIN and in the library, the council has set up a committee with special responsibility for helping foreigners

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to find their way into the society, and the consultancy firm Amarna runs ‘cultural inductions’ for Bechtel, aimed at their foreign workers. I was kindly invited by Amarna to take part in one of these courses, so I parked my car after clearing security at the Bechtel complex in an industrial estate just west of the city proper, entered a large seminar room, greeted the participants, of whom there were about a dozen, mainly Europeans, and helped myself to a cup of instant coffee. Lyndal Hansen of Amarna first gave the floor to Kezia Smith, who represented the traditional owners of the area. Kezia spoke for about ten minutes about Aboriginal history in the Port Curtis region, their emphasis on kinship and their relationship to the land. Some might call this gesture tokenism. After all, not a cent has been paid from Bechtel or any of the resource companies to Aboriginal groups. Kezia said afterwards that this was better than nothing, since at least their inclusion in these inductions contributed to raising awareness about the fact that there had been people in Central Queensland before the colonial invasion. Lyndal’s Powerpoint presentation emphasised Australian egalitarianism, the work/life balance and the typical kinds of leisure activities engaged in by Gladstonites; she also spoke about possible misunderstandings in which foreigners might typically get entangled. Since her talk gave a succinct insider perspective on a standard Australian self-understanding, I will now summarise it briefly. She first spoke about Australian egalitarianism and their proverbial rugged individualism. • Consider everyone equal and no one person better than others, regardless of title or position, and you should not be subservient to anyone. • ‘Ask’ an Australian to do something and they will give you the shirt off their back … ‘Tell’ an Australian to do something, and you will get a very different response! • Australians communicate in a very direct manner, by saying what’s on their mind without caveats or understatements. Fair dinkum is a typical expression which means honest, straightforward and genuine, not concealing your real agenda. • No one should be disadvantaged on the basis of their country of birth, cultural heritage, language, gender, etc. Lyndal then spoke, through examples, about the fabric of meaning that connects the proverbial Australian to his (or her) network, community and imagined community.

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• We love the outdoors, sports, fishing and crabbing, but we also enjoy a barbie in our own yard. • As you will notice, the parks and beaches are used a lot when people are off school and work. • Green and gold [slide depicting an Australian rugby player]: what does that mean to you? Perhaps not much, or not much yet, but to us it is essential. (She was referring to the colours of national sport teams.) • Mates, volunteering and country pride will get you far. • We believe in a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. But the work/ life balance is important; leisure interests and family are just as important as work to an Australian. Lyndal gave some more anecdotal insight into everyday life in Central Queensland, implicitly drawing on interculturalist theory of the kind typically taught in business schools (see Dahlén 1997 for a critical appraisal). She mentioned the invasive cane toad (see also chapter 5). ‘When you see a toad, get your golf club, wait until it raises its chin, and then give it a proper whack. They’re not native, they’re ugly and useless, so we treat them accordingly’ [Laughter]. ‘Australian men and their eskies are very attached. Anyone here who does not know what an esky is? [A few hands were raised, and Lyndal explained the term.] You keep your beer and food cold in it, and the way the food is placed in relation to the beer is crucial. You can also sit on it.’ Lyndal then spoke about the ‘don’ts’ in local culture. • Don’t talk yourself up, grandstand or exaggerate. • Don’t refer to someone as ‘he’ or ‘she’ – use their name. (When I met Lyndal on a later occasion, explaining to our sideman that ‘as she just pointed out …’ , she immediately corrected me: ‘No, Thomas, it’s as Lyndal just pointed out.’) • Don’t forget to learn what ‘my shout’ means. Internationals often have a problem with the concept of the round. If you go out with five or six people, you have a problem unless you drink quite a lot. ‘ ’Cause if you leave before paying your round, your name will be at the back of the toilet block before you get back to work’ [Laughter]. • And also, don’t leave your shoes outside unless you remember to shake them before you put them on – there may be poisonous redback spiders inside. Emphasising local notions of fairness, egalitarianism, mateship, family, solidarity with those in need, a strong work ethic and the work/

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life balance, Lyndal provided a condensed overview of a dominant Australian self-understanding; arguably somewhat Queensland-centric, it would nevertheless be recognisable to most Australians, at least as a narrative they knew how to relate to. Lending itself easily to the generic criticisms made about interculturalism, it lacked an examination of the subtle processes of exclusion affecting people who did not conform, lacked a gender perspective, had no historical depth, disguised diversity, and failed to address the ways in which social informality masks deep inequalities. As in the USA, the term ‘working class’ is not commonly used in Australia. Yet, Lyndal clearly delivered the goods, providing the new arrivals with useful insights into the dominant Australian, and Gladstonite, way of life. The egalitarian individualism of Australian ideology, about which Kapferer (1988) has written extensively, creates a peculiar kind of cultural hero. In Australia, he is known as ‘the little Aussie battler’, the small guy who successfully fights much larger forces through stamina, determination and sheer refusal to give up. One of the most popular Australian films of recent years, almost completely unknown outside Australia, is The Castle (Sitch 1997). In the words of Gladstonite Vicki Johnson: It’s hugely popular. I absolutely love it because it’s the big story behind what appears to be a small story. To me it epitomises how so often unassuming ordinary people can live rich and sometimes extraordinary lives, and in doing so, they quietly contribute to the good in the world. The plot, briefly summarised, pits working-class Darryl and his family against a multi-billion business conglomerate intent on demolishing his house to expand the airport in Melbourne. After many twists and turns, some of them very funny, the rather naïve and gullible Darryl wins the final court case. Quotes from The Castle have entered the Australian language: ‘Tell ’em they’re dreamin’; ‘How’s the serenity?’; ‘What’s this, darl?’ Overtly about the ordinary man who takes up arms against powerful (and slick, and cynical) business interests, the popularity of this low-budget film, which was never launched outside of Australia and New Zealand, has an especial relevance in the present context. As Vicki perceptively points out, it is about ‘the big story behind what appears to be a small story’, or as I would put it, a story about clashing scales (see also Eriksen 2016a: ch. 8 and this book, Part II). Darryl’s smallscale concerns – his family’s happiness, his towtruck company, the small, ‘tacky’ embellishments he adds to the modest family home – clash with

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the large-scale concerns of the airport developers, whose investments make Darryl, his family and his neighbours come across like an irritating swarm of very small insects to be brushed aside or crushed. Such clashes of scale provide contemporary globalisation with some of its most compelling stories. What is of particular interest here is the fact that the Australian identity contains a recognisable cultural script for attacking large-scale forces with modest means, a belief that the rugged individualism and dogged determination of the little Aussie battler may bring huge, arrogant powers to their knees. In some African tales it may be the mouse chewing away at the feet of an elephant; in Norway, the unassuming Ash Lad (Askeladden) is the unlikely hero of many fairy tales; and in the Caribbean, Anansi the spider is capable of tricking his larger adversaries into letting him have it his way. Gladstonites often discuss the role of the state and large corporations in their lives. On an outing with two friends in their forties – one working for a mechanical firm, the other for QAL – the recent ‘anti-bikie law’ was discussed. Queensland had recently passed a law prohibiting motorcycle gangs from operating, on the assumption that they were all taking part in criminal activities. Richard and Ron were both exasperated, for how could you tell if someone was part of an illegal, criminal bikie gang just by looking at their moustaches and tattoos? They were equally negative about the speed limits on Queensland roads, arguing that people should be allowed to take responsibility for their own driving. Richard added that the drug laws were treating adult persons like children, but here, Ron disagreed. Richard added, for good measure, that he preferred real money, as in banknotes and coins, to cybermoney because he disliked the awareness that someone could theoretically be checking on how he spent his money. Anything restricting his individual freedom, he added, was un-Australian. This term, used pejoratively, is sometimes invoked in order to highlight, through contrast, what ‘real’ Australian values and practices are. However, current controversies involving accusations of being un-Australian reveal some of the difficulties in generalising about an Australian manner or psyche or morality. In August 2017, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton argued that it was un-Australian for law firms to provide pro bono legal assistance to asylum-seekers. The Law Council of Australia argued that quite the opposite was the case, indeed that granting favours and supporting human rights were rather central Australian values (Law Council of Australia 2017). Indeed, as this example suggests, the term ‘un-Australian’ can be invoked to imply opposite meanings. In a study by Smith and Phillips (2001), the authors identify two clusters of signification associated with the term; (1) a violation of common values and norms of civility, and (2) foreign influence on

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the Australian culture or way of life. According to Mr Dutton, lawyers who worked for asylum-seekers encouraged foreign influence, while the lawyers retorted that they defended common decency and human rights. On a later occasion, Stan – a grazier in his sixties – stopped his ute at a petrol station so that we could go inside and buy coffee. Back in the car, I commented that I often seemed to get lukewarm coffee around here. Stan looked at me. ‘You may not know it, Tom, but there is a law prohibiting cafes to sell coffee above a certain temperature.’ The reason, apparently, was that people might get burnt. I later checked, but was unable to find such a law. These views, critical of government intervention, may well come from people who also take a negative view of large corporations over­ running local communities. Criticism of central government and of large corporations may or may not be consistent – the former is typically right-leaning, the latter left-leaning; but both address the problem of scale and the feeling of being overrun and dominated by distant powers. In Gladstone, criticism of large-scale interventions indiscriminately targets (federal and state) government or corporations, which are often seen as two sides of the same coin.

diversity, exclusion and hierarchy The dominance of an egalitarianist ideology does not entail that society as such is egalitarian; it is necessary to distinguish ideology from practice, or, if one prefers, the menu from the food. Even when there is no contradiction, practices matter more than mere talk. In reality, for newcomers to integrate in Gladstone, mowing your lawn, holding a job and helping organise children’s sport on weekends are more efficient integrative devices than anything you might say. Individual autonomy is a strongly articulated value, and the pressure to conform to ‘the Australian way of life’, if implicit, is also powerful in practice. On the GAPDL website, there is a section for newcomers to the city, which mentions boating, fishing, swimming and surfing as typical recreational activities in the region. There are many civil society organisations which can be joined, some (like the Rotary) by invitation only, but charities and volunteering are open to all. A typical Australian fundraising activity, common in Gladstone too, is the sausage sizzle, where grilled sausages in bread, often donated or bought cheaply from wholesalers, are sold to passers-by to raise money for a charitable cause. Schools and sports must also be mentioned as important sources of social integration. Moreover, although being a non-drinker and/or a vegetarian is perfectly possible,

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either of these unusual preferences may present obstacles to full participation in informal social life. The regional council does not consider social exclusion to be a huge problem in a city with an official unemployment figure of slightly less than 5 per cent, many of them between jobs, but the local Aborigines (4 per cent of the total population in the region) often speak of their marginalisation. Two Aboriginal women with whom I spoke about their collective situation, were decidedly downbeat. Both had previously been involved in political work, but they had opted out, saying that it is ‘divisive and attracts greed and power-hungry men’. Four Aboriginal groups are registered in the greater Gladstone region, and they have been unable to present a common platform and common demands to the resource companies. The legitimacy of claims from individual groups, or ‘mobs’, is also being disputed by the companies, who have not found evidence that the groups have an ancient connection to the land in question. In some parts of Australia, notably the Northern Territory, where Aboriginal politics has a much stronger presence than in Queensland, local groups which hold Native Title have negotiated agreements with the resource companies, guaranteeing them employment and royalties. This is not the case here, where an estimated 1 per cent of the workers on Curtis Island are of indigenous descent. ‘But most of them are not local; many are not even Australian, but Pacific Islanders,’ one of the Aboriginal women claims. The two women also point out that there had been no consultation with elders before Bechtel started construction on Curtis Island. ‘We missed the boat on construction. We now have to recover what we can.’ The role of Australian Aborigines in mining areas is complex, and there is an ongoing controversy on the matter (see Langton 2012 for a defence of mining in Aboriginal areas). Some argue that mining is by definition contradictory to Aboriginal identity, which is closely connected to their relationship to the land, while others have argued that mining leases may offer a way out of poverty and marginalisation for many Aboriginal communities. The spokeswomen for Gladstone Aborigines (or at least the largest ‘mob’) stated in no uncertain terms that they were not opposed to the resource industry. Yet, as they conclude, ‘[w]e want the gas companies to go through us. So far, we’ve had no business opportunities, we’ve just been cut out.’ The community health centre for indigenous groups, Nhulundu, is funded by the Queensland government and provides primary health care for the entire region. My main informants among local Aborigines were somewhat dismissive of the centre, pointing out that it was not run by locals. Nhulundu staff confirm that there are certain health

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problems, relating to social exclusion, to which Aborigines are particularly vulnerable. Alcoholism and smoking were mentioned. Some of the less affluent parts of Gladstone, notably Barney Point near the oldest coal terminal, are associated with Aborigines, and I was warned a few times not to venture there on foot in the evening. (I nevertheless did.) The most common attitude expressed in relation to local Aboriginal issues by white Gladstonites was that ‘those people’ should stop demanding help from the government and learn to look after themselves. ‘Perhaps I’m a bit racist,’ a typical statement might begin, ‘but they themselves are responsible for their situation.’ This view is compatible with the ethos of ‘the country of a fair go’, the egalitarian individualism which presupposes autonomy and independence within the parameters tacitly agreed upon by the majority. Common complaints about Aborigines involve preferential treatment and special privileges in the health and educational systems. One said, during a discussion about Aboriginal rights, that ‘Mabo was a big mistake’, referring to the ruling in 1992 which established Native Title for Aboriginal groups. The fact that Europeans initially stole Aboriginal country never enters into these discussions, nor do assumptions about incommensurability in values between majority Australia and Aboriginal groups. Such notions are at the forefront in some segments of Australian public life, notably on the left, among Aboriginal organisations and in academia, but not in Gladstone. In other words, it is the present structural condition that matters, not past sins and crimes, and full commensurability between values and aspirations is assumed. The presentism, the view that autonomy means economic self-sufficiency, and the rejection of alternative cosmologies, pin Gladstone down as a strong bearer of the ideology of modernity, capitalism and industrialism. Aboriginal issues are rarely mentioned in the daily Gladstone Observer. White Gladstonites tend to associate Aborigines with homelessness, begging, social welfare and ‘not being able to look properly after themselves’, although some might add that they hear that the situation is different in the Northern Territory. Class is a different, but related matter. It is so widely undercommunicated in Gladstone (and in Australia in general) that when I mentioned class to an informant who had a university degree in social sciences, he returned the question: ‘What is class? Who has class? It is not easy to define.’ I came to realise that he saw class as an individual attribute (as in a classy person), not as a structural feature of society. The widespread disdain of hierarchy, highlighted by Lyndal Hansen in her presentation to the Bechtel employees, has the unintended consequence of depriving Gladstonites of the possibility of developing a vocabulary about social class, since everybody is assumed to be equal.

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Although the trade unions are strong, their demands focus on labour conditions without incorporating a class analysis involving structural inequality. There is widespread disdain of greed and the insensitivity of ‘the super rich’ (a popular target of this banter is the mining magnate Gina Rinehart, one of the world’s richest women), but no calls for structural reforms, nor much by way of Bourdieusian distinctions (Bourdieu 1984). With social and cultural egalitarianism in mind, it might be argued that Australia is, in a way, though not in the way Marx foresaw, a dictatorship of the proletariat. This remark was prompted by several conversations with non-locals. One, a classical music enthusiast who had recently moved to the city from the Brisbane area, was hoping to set up a small orchestra, but had made no progress so far. Another, one of the marine superintendents overseeing the movement of vessels in the harbour, was an expatriate from England. We began to compare cultural styles, one of my interests being the apparent tension between Australian and American work regimes, Bechtel being an American corporation. One often hears Gladstonites employed by Bechtel complaining that ‘around here, we work to live, but those Americans live to work’. Shifting to casual conversation, I mentioned to the Englishman that there were many similarities between the standard Australian way of life and a certain version of English culture, climate notwithstanding. Immediately taking the cue, he responded that ‘yes, somehow they have succeeded in creating a classless society here,’ implying that working-class culture had become hegemonic. This cultural egalitarianism, which does not preclude substantial economic inequalities, is confirmed in many realms. An Argentine woman settled in Gladstone once told me that when she returned to Argentina on a visit, explaining to friends that she was married to an electrician, they immediately concluded that she had been downwardly mobile. With her class background, she ‘should at least have found a lawyer’. Yet these distinctions do not work in the same way in Gladstone as in Britain, or Argentina. A man in his late thirties, who has been working as a fitter and turner on various construction projects over the years, has a degree in environmental chemistry from the prestigious ANU (Australian National University) in Canberra. Another, with a degree in psychology from New Zealand, has been working as a coal miner for five years, enjoying the good money and intensive rosters enabling him to take a week off quite often. Neither of them sees themselves as being downwardly mobile. A third informant, a married woman around 40 with a teenage son, also has a university degree and is a highly intelligent, energetic, well-read person. She has meandered in and out of the labour market and has held a variety of jobs, yet she confesses that what she

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really likes to do is to work in a shop, ‘’cause I’m good at selling things and enjoy doing it’. The core value in the cultural world of Gladstone is self-reliance. The most efficient force of social exclusion is arguably unemployment. Immigrants from overseas are on the whole welcomed, provided they can fend for themselves. Housewives, however, are exempted from this principle; the typical gender relations in Gladstone have a strongly complementary element, in that it is considered perfectly legitimate for a woman not to earn, provided she has a husband capable of providing for her. Thus it is chiefly unemployed men who are marginalised. Without work, they are neither seen as self-reliant nor as being entitled to engage in leisure activities, since leisure presupposes work. Some are compelled to ‘work for the dole’; they typically carry out volunteering work such as rubbish removal from beaches. Some of those who do not work may receive a minimum living allowance depending on their circumstances. Compared to larger Australian cities, unemployment is low, homelessness hardly visible. This does not mean that it does not exist. People have been known to sleep in their cars, to couch-surf among friends and so on, in order not to be identified and stigmatised as homeless. A final aspect of local identity that needs to be addressed at this stage concerns the relationship to past and future, which is not least an important issue for Gladstone, a city dominated by a modern, future-oriented outlook. The cultural implications of Australia’s short history as a settler country for Europeans are often neglected in writings about the country. Even influential and sensitive travel writers like Bruce Chatwin (1987) and Bill Bryson (2000) fail to properly address the fragility resulting from newness. Australia has a very ancient Aboriginal history with which white Australia finds it difficult to engage; it is not theirs, and their own historical encounters with the Aborigines were, with some notable exceptions, shameful. As shown in the last chapter, the establishment of the first, fledgling European settlements in Central Queensland began only in the mid-nineteenth century, at a time when Nueva España had already been settled by Europeans for 350 years and splintered into many independent criollo republics. European settlement in Australia had not even begun when the USA declared its independence from Britain. In my fairly extensive network of acquaintances, friends and more fleeting conversational partners in Gladstone, some of the most outspoken critics of Australian newness were foreigners. A woman from a South American country, who had lived in Sydney for several years before coming to Gladstone, said that one of the first things she noticed in Sydney was that people ‘did not seem to have a sense of attachment to place’. I responded that everything was so new in

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Australia that it might be difficult to create a historically founded, deep identity. She laughed. ‘Nothing in Australia is deep,’ she said, adding that ‘everything is “no worries”, “fair dinkum” and “she’ll be right, mate”’. Yet, it may be added, the very newness of Australian settler society brings about specific forms of cultural creativity. Take unconventional sports, for example. In Brisbane, cockroach races are regularly organised; in other parts of Queensland, esky racing is a popular activity, and further north, there have even been attempts to organise cane toad races. (Apparently, the toads turned out to be less cooperative than anticipated.) In Gladstone civil society, there is nonetheless a clearly evident interest in settler history. Off the highway near Calliope, west of the city, there is an open-air museum, Calliope River Historical Village, featuring old buildings mainly from the first half of the twentieth century, and the city itself has numerous plaques commemorating its founders and a small, volunteer-run museum of marine history. A lively Facebook group, ‘Gladstone: Remember When …’, has several thousand members, many of them actively posting old photos (which could be from the 1960s), queries and information about the city’s history. At the same time, Gladstone also represents a clear-cut version of a characteristic discernible in all settler Australia; it represents an unrepentant modernity, future-oriented and committed to progress and change. The lack of strongly established, historically based identities, was expressed by Lyndal Hansen when, at the beginning of her cultural induction, she said that here, one should not consider anyone better than anyone else. A strong expression of egalitarianism, this perspective precludes a hierarchy based on genealogically grounded kinship identities and inherited cultural capital. There is an almost Sartrean insistence of judging people by what they do rather than who they are. The editor of the Gladstone Observer at the time of fieldwork, Allen Winter, is a New Zealander who has lived in the city for only a few years, but in his often piercing editorials, he acts like, and is respected as, a committed local. His successor (since mid-2014) is also an outsider; in his first editorial, he praises Winter for having been a great advocate for ‘the community’ and expresses excitement at now being part of it. In a boomtown, the grammar of inclusion has to be simple, the entrance ticket cheap and the waiting time short (see chapter 4). This kind of egalitarian individualism is tailored to fit societies with a high demographic turnover rate, and it is a prime exemplar of the individualistic ‘low group, low grid’ society described by Douglas (1970), with weak corporate groups and little internal differentiation. This is not to say that Gladstone is classless in the sense of being equitable, but rather in the sense that there are no immediately evident

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cultural classes. It is also not the case that social distinctions are non-existent, although they are under-communicated. A female informant in her thirties sighed, exasperated, at the end of a long evening, that ‘you have to excuse X [her husband]; he is a racist and an incredibly sexist person, especially after he’s had a few drinks’. To sum up, the social distinctions operative in Gladstone do not distinguish natives from outsiders, or posh people from common folk, but are based on gender, race (at least in the case of Aborigines) and participation in the economy.

mining and pastoralism in australian identity The short duration of European settlement in Australia, as well as the predominant patterns of migration (with no landed gentry or aristocracy), has laid the foundations for a society with a strong ethos of meritocracy, an orientation towards the future, cultural egalitarianism and a not insignificant degree of machismo. Those who arrived from Europe before the First World War were mainly people determined, or forced, to leave the past behind, looking to build new lives in this remote corner of the planet. Two of the main characters of the pioneering years are today celebrated as heroes of the embryonic Australian nation. They are featured on monuments, in museums, in popular films and books, and they both express central features of the Australian national identity: a rugged individualism, courage and perseverance, hard work, an unsentimental disdain for hierarchy, the conquest of nature by culture through transforming empty land, and consequent growth and prosperity. Immortalised by writers such as the ‘bush poet’ Banjo Paterson (1864–1941), the author of the unofficial national anthem ‘Waltzing Matilda’, the ‘bushman’ pioneer had become an iconic figure in Australian self-understanding at the time of independence from Britain in 1901. At this particular historical juncture, the two symbols of Australian­ ness repeatedly come into conflict with each other, creating a tricky dilemma for national imagery. Mining and livestock raising have been both economically important and symbolically significant activities in Australia since migration to the continent began. When convicts in the penal colonies had served their sentence, many took up either pastoral farming or mining. As many will recall, Abel Magwitch in Dickens’ Great Expectations, Pip’s anonymous benefactor, was a small-time criminal who made a fortune raising sheep in Australia after his release. The novel was published in 1861, and one may assume that Magwitch had been released a decade earlier, around the same time as the first major gold rush attracted thousands of free

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Europeans and Asians to the Australian goldfields, thus transforming penal colonies into cities. Gold was found in numerous locations, yet, throughout the nineteenth century, Australia was ‘riding on the sheep’s back’, its economic fortunes depending largely on the sale of wool. There was diversification into cattle further north, as in the case of Central Queensland, and grazing remains economically important as well as a symbol of Australian survivalism. Both mining and livestock rearing are associated with the outback. Having been brought up on a cattle station inspires a degree of awe in Australia almost comparable to the respect accorded people with multisyllabic, hyphenated, French-sounding surnames in some circles in Britain. In rural and outback history, mining and pastoral farming are often intertwined. The history of Banana Shire,1 immediately to the west of Gladstone, shows how closely the two activities are related. Settled by Europeans in the mid-nineteenth century, Biloela (‘Bilo’) and the surrounding areas were for decades sheep country, but a variety of crops were also grown, including cotton and cereals; farmers soon added herds of cattle to supplement their sheep. As elsewhere in the interior of Queensland, farmers in the shire soon found ways of pumping out groundwater for irrigating crops and watering animals (Perry 2005). The economy in which Biloela and Banana Shire participated in the nineteenth century was local, regional and transnational, the wool being exported overseas. However, communications were slow and cumbersome until the first railway line was built in 1953, and most of the trade took place on a small scale. The main consignment for trains to Rockhampton in the 1950s was, in fact, cream for the Wowan butter factory. Small-scale artisanal mining was an established activity already in the 1870s. Coal was the more abundant mineral, copper and gold the more attractive. Miners dug out the coal with buckets and spades, and, as shown earlier, coal mining on a commercial scale began only at the end of the Second World War, following the improvement of the Biloela– Gladstone road and escalating rapidly with the opening of the railway line to Gladstone in 1968 and the subsequent global growth in energy demand. 1.  Bananas were never grown in the shire, which, according to its official website, was named for ‘a dun-coloured bullock called Banana’. Bananas are grown further north, in the Wet Tropics of Queensland.

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Pastoral farming is still practised in the area, but in economic terms, its significance has long been sidelined by the growth of coal mining and the production of electricity at the Callide Power Station. The story of sheep, cattle, mining and infrastructural development in Banana Shire is typical of Australian rural history, but it does not include what has become a major narrative in contemporary rural Australia, namely conflicts between extractive interests and farming. The longestablished Callide coal mine does not interfere with farming interests, which is not the case in many other parts of rural Australia. Two major, recent developments have created tensions, sometimes open conflicts, between farmers and mining interests. First, there has been an expansion of coal mining; many new mines have been opened, some old ones expanded. It is hardly a coincidence that the concept of solastalgia was developed during a study of local responses to open-pit coal mining in the Upper Hunter Valley in New South Wales. Glenn Albrecht explains that: [a]s opposed to nostalgia – the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home – solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. (Albrecht et al. 2007: S95, see also Eriksen 2016a: 55–6) The Hunter Valley is renowned for its scenic beauty, with its green, rolling hills, its vineyards, grazing cattle, horse breeding and orchards. Although mining had been present in the valley for some decades, with the early twentieth-century expansion of coal mining in the region, residents have begun to protest the transformation of their pastoral landscapes into Martian dustscapes. Second, the twenty-first-century growth of technologies enabling the extraction of ‘unconventional hydrocarbons’ – shale oil, coal seam gas, tar sands and so on – has prompted resource companies to drill for gas in a vast area in eastern Australia. Unlike coal mining, which is strictly localised and bounded, gas wells are scattered across the landscape. In the year 2012–13, 1371 new wells were drilled in Queensland, and by 2016, the total number of gas wells in the state was 4000, with a tenfold growth projected by 2030. (Neighbouring New South Wales has stricter legislation, and there are far fewer there.) Most of the coal seam gas in Queensland is not sucked up via hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’), but by extracting water from the hole in order to release the gas in the coalseams. ‘This water,’ a gas company executive told me, ‘was generally too far down and too salty to be useful to farmers. It now passes through

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the Kenya water treatment plant which rinses the water, making it available for farmers.’ However, many farmers are concerned and take a negative position towards coal seam gas. The reason could be aesthetic (the wells are ugly); it could be environmental on a large scale (gas ruins the climate); or it could be a matter of health and security on a smaller scale. Cases have been recorded of gas seeping into the farmers’ regular water supply – to the extent that ‘you could put a torch to the water pumped out of your bore and it would catch fire’, as a concerned grazier explained. When fracking is necessary to release the gas, a mixture of sand and chemicals are pumped into the well. In the semi-arid Queensland outback, the main source of water for farming is the Great Artesian Basin, a gigantic underground lake covering 1.7 million square kilometres. If it becomes contaminated with coal seam gas owing to drilling and fracking, the consequences are unforeseeable, but likely to be extremely severe. The industry denies that this can happen, but trust in large resource companies is wearing thin in some mining, drilling or fracking areas. Anthropologist Kim de Rijke has studied local farmers’ responses to gas extraction in the Darling Downs, a rich agricultural area in south-eastern Queensland. He shows that reactions are very mixed. In some areas, farmers welcome gas drilling, since produce prices are variable, droughts recurrent and gas could save them economically. In a location in neighbouring New South Wales, however, de Rijke (2015) finds that protests against fossil fuel extraction have been strong, concerted and efficient. A much-discussed book among environmentally concerned Australians has been Sharyn Munro’s Rich Land, Wasteland (Munro 2012). The author has travelled to and spoken with people in coastal development areas, mining towns and agricultural areas increasingly feeling pressure from the mining interests. Munro’s political agenda is evident, and she draws on the standard narrative, described earlier, of the little Aussie battler: the small, but determined farmers who are up against giant, anonymous, transnational, corporate mining interests. She even makes a point of describing the diminutive size of her car, depicting her struggle as a David versus Goliath affair. In other words, hers is a book about clashing scales. However, at this point, the most relevant aspect of Munro’s book is the way it describes local conflicts of interest between farming and mining, the two pillars of Australian identity. Although the book covers themes such as wetlands, runoffs into the Coral Sea, nature reserves and miners’ health, the bulk of it concerns farmers who have been dispossessed (or are threatened with dispossession), whose soil has been poisoned, whose clean and healthy environment has been polluted, or who suffer depression or physical disease owing to a mining presence.

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Two photos are juxtaposed on the book’s cover: a farming family of four, relaxing against a fence in front of a vast, green pasture with rolling hills in the background; and a blackish, smoking inferno – a coal mine – with no vegetation nor any sign of life. A central concern contrasts renewable and non-renewable resources, which is related to a conflict between long-term survival and short-term profits often invoked by environmentalists. By adding indignation at discovering the close ties between government and corporations, Munro’s book closely mirrors programmatic views found in the Australian environmental movement, as well as misgivings voiced by Gladstonites and ex-Gladstonites worried about the lasting side-effects of industrial activity.

water and the double bind The climate in the Capricornia region, of which Gladstone forms part, is intermediate between subtropical and tropical. Sometimes, the city receives tropical rains from the north, sometimes subtropical rains from the south; but sometimes it gets neither. In January 2015, locals said that ‘we got a year’s worth of rain in a week’. It is thus an area with very variable rainfall, but, like many regions surrounding the tropic circles worldwide, it is on the whole fairly dry. Indeed, most of the world’s major deserts – the Sahara, the Kalahari, the Atacama, the great deserts of Australia – are located around the Tropic of Cancer or the Tropic of Capricorn. Driving north from Gladstone, the monotonous gumtree forest and occasional pastures gradually give way to greener, lusher and more varied vegetation shortly after crossing into the tropics. Similarly, the landscape changes into fat pastures and green canefields as you drive south as well, approaching Bundaberg from the north. You have left the ambiguous zone and entered the subtropics, an area with a defined winter – temperatures may drop as low as 10 degrees in July – and relatively predictable seasonal rainfall. The interest in rain is keen and enduring in Gladstone. To the graziers and growers around the city, this has an instrumental dimension. Among those worried about the side-effects of industry, a persistent rumour has it that industrial emissions have created a ‘dome’ around Gladstone pushing clouds away from the city; homeowners are concerned with their gardens and the council with the water supply. In the years before my fieldwork, the coastal areas had successive floodings in the hot summer period, but the summer of 2013–14 was fairly dry. The graziers of Mount Larcom were seriously worried, seeing their water table drop and reservoirs emptying. Rain eventually came (in April), and in early

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2015, a tropical storm arrived with such a vengeance that it damaged roads and infrastructure. * * * The obsession with water is not unique to Central Queensland. Australia is a mainly dry continent, with recurrent water shortages in most areas except for the far north and Tasmania. And just as Britons may complain about their generally rainy climate, Australians worry about the lack of rain. Although there is usually too little rain, there is also occasionally too much, and it may then come too fast, with flooding as a result. Climate activists have recently claimed that extreme weather events have become more violent and more common worldwide, and, at least in the case of Australia, they have the support of the climatologists. Long droughts and devastating bushfires, record temperatures, hurricanes and flooding have almost become routine news items in the twenty-first century. Although the Australian media is less unequivocal on the issue of humanly induced climate change than most Western European media (Bacon 2013; Chubb 2012), polls indicate that in 2015, 57 per cent of the Australian public agreed that there was a link between human activity and climate change, which is a significant increase from 2012, when the figure was only 46 per cent (Climate Institute 2016), far lower than in most Western European countries. In this, they have also come to accept that they live in a double bind, originally defined by Gregory Bateson (1972) as a self-refuting kind of communication, as when you say two incompatible things at once. A person trying to act on the basis of a double bind will never be able to do it right, since no matter what they do, it can be objected to. You can be favourable to fossil fuels (Australia gets more than 80 per cent of its electricity from coal), and you can be determined to halt climate change, but it is difficult to defend both positions simultaneously. Mining is one of the key elements in Australian narratives about who they are, where they are coming from and what made their country great. The mineral resources of the dry continent are legendary in their quantity and diversity, and represent an important source of the economic prosperity enjoyed by most Australians. At the same time, the Australian environmental movement is one of the world’s oldest and most influential, and has in recent years increasingly devoted its efforts to fighting climate change globally and the resource industry domestically. In other words, the double bind of growth and sustainability hits Australia with an extraordinary intensity: it is both a major contributor to and a major victim of global climate change; and it has a powerful

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fossil fuel industry countered by a strong and resilient environmental movement. In the introduction to their History of the Australian Environmental Movement, Drew Hutton and Libby Connors (1999) mention a few Australians who have won prestigious international environmental awards, adding that by ‘international comparison, Australia’s environmental movement has been enormously successful’ (Hutton and Connors 1999: 1). Some years after the publication of their book, in 2007, the palaeontologist, author and climate activist Tim Flannery was named ‘Australian of the Year’, indicating that his relentless criticism of the fossil fuel industry and compassion for Australian nature resonated with the award committee. In 2011, Flannery became chief commissioner of the Climate Commission set up by the federal government. Two years later, however, a newly elected government terminated the commission, which now relies on crowdfunding for its survival. The new prime minister, Tony Abbott, had earlier spoken about climate research in very dismissive terms, wishing to encourage investments and business initiatives rather than spreading anxiety about the weather. Australian official policy towards the environment has wavered from strongly environmentalist to indifferent, oscillating between extremes just as the weather oscillates between drought and flooding. When, in 1975, the Great Barrier Reef was declared a Marine Park, the Australian government revealed a prescient awareness of potential damage inflicted on the environment through human activities, detailing limits on fishing, ship traffic and other potentially unsustainable human activities along the reef, which stretches from Cape York in the far north to beyond Gladstone. At the same time, the vastness of the country and the smallness of its population may have contributed to a certain recklessness in Australian governments’ dealings with the environment. During the mining boom, spurred by the increased demand for minerals worldwide and not least from China, many mining leases have been granted in areas of agricultural importance or ecological vulnerability, and the decision by the federal government, in October 2015, to open the enormous Galilee Basin in north-central Queensland for coal mining, outraged environmentalists worldwide. Occasionally, ecological conservation and human interests are being confronted in ways unmediated by economic interests. In January 2014, the government of Western Australia decided to cull the shark population in some areas after several attacks on humans, in the face of protests from environmental groups who argued that many species of sharks were endangered. While this debate raged, a young boy was eaten by a crocodile in Kakadu, Northern Territory. Reporting on the story,

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the anchorman on Sky News said that environmentalists were critical of the killing of large crocodiles in the lake in question, adding that it might perhaps be a good idea after all to get rid of the voracious reptiles so that people could have a swim. There is no coherent Australian policy towards the environment and no single popular attitude towards the dilemmas of growth versus sustainability, or development versus conservation. They are, after all, real dilemmas or double binds. As early as the 1830s, the famous artist John Gould (Birds of Australia) was worried for Australia’s large mammals, and ‘made a plea for protection of native animals and for a ban on [importing] exotic flora and fauna’ (Hutton and Connors 1999: 28). Gould would have noticed the rapid spread of rabbits in Tasmania – an introduced species that became common (and detested) across the continent during the nineteenth century. Especially since the 1980s, Australian authorities and volunteering organisations have made concerted efforts to restore environments to their pre-colonial conditions (Lien and Davidson 2011), but with limited success. In Queensland, the most infamous foreign species is the dreaded cane toad, which was introduced as late as the 1930s. It disrupts local ecosystems and continues to spread westwards at a speed of 40 to 60 km a year. The Australian environmental movement comprises many organisations on different scales, from local conservation councils to domestic branches of transnational organisations such as Greenpeace, as well as ventures such as the Fight For Our Reef campaign, run jointly by WWF-Australia (World Wide Fund for Nature, formerly World Wildlife Fund) and the Australian Marine Conservation Society. While it has often been successful in protecting pristine environments, and has won numerous local conflicts over resource management, it has generally been unable to halt the expansion of extractive industries. Towards the end of their History (1999), Hutton and Connors, who are both academics and environmental activists, point out that the increasing globalisation of the economy has become a challenge for the environmental movement; whereas environmentalists were asking the government to strengthen environmental regulation, the global trend of which Australia was part was one of deregulation and increased trade. In identifying this contradiction, they point to a clash of scales which also reverberates through the life-worlds of Gladstonites, where large-scale projects often lead to small-scale consequences detrimental not to the corporations, but to the locals affected. However, Hutton and Connors also mention another challenge for the Australian environmental movement which concerns scale, and which is relevant for the analysis of Gladstone, namely ‘the increasingly bureaucratic nature of major conservation groups’, which

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may bring them closer to central decision-making arenas, but remove them from the small-scale worlds in which people spend most of their lives. These contradictions are at the core of the argument in this book. Some of them will be evident in the next two chapters, which provide a portrait of Gladstone the boomtown, the city that came of age courtesy of the fount of modernity and its promises of an ever-brighter future. The main analysis of clashing scales will have to wait until Part II.

3 Change in Their Bones Overall, as much as I do not like to see the destruction of native bushlands, the changes to Gladstone have been, on the whole, positive. Slowly, and many years after the boom, we are finally seeing new developments including a shopping centre expansion, Entertainment Centre remodelling, new restaurants and hotels coming to town, and new facilities for younger people including the new water playground. —Alison (university student, 19)

In general, people in Gladstone express optimism about the future, and they are not worried about change. Although the current construction boom would end soon after my fieldwork, there was at the time a widespread conviction that ‘something new will come up’ and little overt anxiety about a possible recession.1 Moreover, the city relies on cheap and abundant fossil fuel from the Queensland interior, and I met hardly anyone in Gladstone who proclaimed that they were ‘anti-mining’ as such. They might be concerned with possible negative consequences for farming, tourism, fisheries, indigenous peoples, local communities, local retailers, local enterprises, health, the loss of diversity in the Australian economy and, in a few cases, global climate change (see chapter 5), but they saw no realistic alternative to coal and gas. Optimism was unanimously expressed and encouraged among the participants at a workshop held at the Gladstone campus of Central Queensland University in February 2014, featuring a discussion of a report on the likely and assumed short-term prospects for local businesses. Commissioned by the Gladstone Chamber of Commerce, which represents the small and medium-sized businesses in the city (the major industries are organised in the Gladstone Engineering Alliance), the survey had been carried out by the local consultancy firm Amarna (Amarna 2014). And although the picture was mixed, the general outlook for the city, the report concluded, was positive. In spite of a projected loss of 5000 local jobs (plus another 5000 FIFO jobs) by the end of 2015, few of the local businesses surveyed expected a 1.  As pointed out earlier, the boom did indeed end, and the optimism has been dampened since the end of my fieldwork.

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dramatic downturn, although many expected to lay off a few employees. This may seem surprising, given that many of the companies in question did brisk business supplying goods, maintenance and miscellaneous services to the Curtis Island site where construction activities would soon cease. When asked, many of the business owners had answered that they expected the city to go into temporary decline, or a lull, in the coming years, but that they believed this would not affect their own activities adversely. At the workshop, attended by representatives of the business community, the consultancy segment, the media and local government, about 40 persons altogether, the near future of Gladstone was discussed, and the strengths and weaknesses of the city, seen in a wider competitive space, were pointed out. For example, a local business leader stated that it was not easy to FIFO to Gladstone, since virtually all flights to the small airport were from Brisbane, and they were expensive. Another predicted that with the end of construction on Curtis Island, a substantial vacancy rate in the housing sector was more likely than mass unemployment, since most of the people who stood to lose their jobs were likely to search for work elsewhere in Queensland. An executive from QGC (Queensland Gas Company), one of the major investors in the region, mentioned community spirit as a form of capital that might alleviate problems arising from the imminent cooling down of the local economy. Of those business owners who saw a downturn coming, the main issues mentioned were a decrease in work, staff issues (a blanket term), high costs and people not buying locally. The term ‘Gladstone tax’ was invoked by one, referring to the high cost of living in the city. Three-quarters of the respondents2 said that they had seen an increase in their customer base owing to the construction boom, but about half (52 per cent) said that they had felt negative effects. To them, the economic boom had not led to an increase in their turnover, only increased traffic, a strain on local services and inadequacies in the existing infrastructure. According to the researchers who presented the report, there had been ‘a couple of comments about the environment being sacrificed’, but on the whole, the respondents were upbeat about growth, change and the possibilities of making a good living in Gladstone after the present construction boom. One civil servant nevertheless pointed out that environmental problems resulting from dredging and emissions, which had been widely publicised in the Australian media, might have ‘damaged 2.  In total, 212 owners of small or medium-sized enterprises responded to the survey, a response rate of 67 per cent.

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the Gladstone brand’ (see chapter 6). When a spokeswoman for GAPDL spoke about future prospects in tourism, a young woman who had just moved to the city from the picturesque Sunshine Coast said that the first thing she had noticed were ‘the coal trains moving along the seafront. So perhaps tourism is not the first thing I’d think about.’ Her comment did not incite enthusiasm. Mayor Gail Sellars brought attention to the fact that the company Northern Oil had recently decided to build a small refinery for recycling used oil in the industrial estate at Fisherman’s Landing, Targinnie. ‘This [sustainable initiative] has not led to much attention in the media, but it is an example of the positive things happening here.’ During tea, the mayor confessed to me that ‘people say to me Gail, take off your rosy glasses and face the problems! But that is not what we need around here right now.’ A board member of the Gladstone Engineering Alliance suggested ‘chang[ing] the term “boom” to “growth”, and get[ting] rid of “bust”’. The mayor agreed. Another emphasised the importance of taking pride in being an industrial town and not to pretend otherwise. In order to attract new investments, he said, it was important to change the negative perception of Gladstone. (I made a note on my laptop: ‘Change negative perceptions, fine; but changing reality – more difficult.’) The previous year’s success with the musical Boomtown, which had mobilised hundreds of volunteers and was performed for large audiences on three consecutive nights, was invoked as a kind of event that might ‘raise the pride and give positive attention’ (see chapter 4). The participants at the seminar also spoke about building clusters, the significance of charities and black-tie events, the synergy effects of having many industries and a large, skilled workforce in a small region, and the problem of high costs. Many shop-owners had complained that lots of people seemed to go to Rockhampton or elsewhere, or even online, to buy things. But, as an industry leader said, ‘Obviously, if you can get it more cheaply elsewhere, you’d do it. Even business owners do. So why are they whingeing about people going elsewhere?’ The word whingeing has a strongly negative connotation in Australia and Gladstone. It is used about people who complain for no good reason and wait for others to solve their problems. As a sentiment, it is the opposite of resilience, a term used by many of the speakers at this event. After the conference, I had a chat with one of the external consultants about the term ‘resilience’. She said that Gladstone had ‘always been a boom and bust town’, and that new investments had ensured continued growth and precluded mass unemployment in the past. Indeed, she pointed out, the Gladstone region had a lower unemployment level than

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Queensland as a whole. She was confident that the city would continue to grow and prosper in the foreseeable future. There are two main reasons why this view, shared by business leaders and local politicians, could prove over-optimistic. First, as mentioned, the city stood to lose 5000 local jobs in the near future. Second, its lifeblood, the source of its confidence, growth and prosperity, consists in fossil fuels from the rich coal fields and burgeoning gas fields in the interior of Queensland, and, in a world with a growing pressure to shift towards renewable energy, total dependence on coal may be a difficult adaptation to maintain in the long run. It is often assumed, not least in the social science literature, that belonging is mainly based on memories and reminiscences, and that personal identity is connected to a sense of continuity with the past and predictability. Two influential contributions to this perspective are Maurice Halbwachs’ La Mémoire collective (‘Collective memory’, 1950) and Paul Connerton’s How Societies Remember (1989), a book inspired by Halbwachs and signalling its indebtedness to Émile Durkheim’s classic sociology in the title, assuming, as it does, the existence of a collective consciousness and its strong ties with the past. Gladstone represents, in some important ways, an intriguing contrast. Gladstone has grown in spurts, but mostly quickly, since industrialisation of the town began in the 1960s. This chapter discusses implications of fast change for the sense of self, belonging and identity, the way it is perceived among Gladstonites. Chapter 4 analyses the same tendencies, but mainly from a sociological perspective.

living amid accelerated change In the space of just a few decades, Gladstone has gone through a succession of industrial developments that have led to a continuous growth in size, population and prosperity, thus fully justifying the use of the past tense in Lorna McDonald’s book title: it no longer is a city that waits; it is rather at the epicentre of contemporary global industrialism, with its electricity production, alumina refineries, aluminium smelter, expanding coal port and now, a major export port for LNG. Living in Gladstone does not merely entail living amid the din, smells and possible health hazards of industrial activities. It also requires an acceptance of change in the surroundings, available livelihoods and the composition of the population. Only a minority of adult Gladstonites are born and bred in the city. Many long-standing residents admit that they had never planned to stay in this industrial city, but rather envisioned living there for a few years to work hard and save money; they eventually

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Map 3.1  Existing and projected major industrial operations in Gladstone in 2015 Source: Queensland Government Statistician’s Office.

stayed. Many adolescents and young adults express a wish to leave. Their reasons may be that ‘there is nothing to do here’ (referring to leisure activities, compared to larger cities), few institutions of higher education, a limited job market outside industry and a somewhat drab social environment focused on work and money rather than fun and beauty. Among the elderly, there has been a marked tendency to leave Gladstone since the upswing in the real estate market starting in 2010; the trend is sometimes described as a ‘grey exodus’. One retiree, a volunteer at the Maritime Museum, stated that he would ideally stay in Gladstone, where he had family and friends; but that there were no options there for anyone but ex-employees of certain corporations.

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There is no retirement village here. I’m going to be 72 soon, and it’s time that I move to a [serviced] retirement village. But it turns out that I’d have to go somewhere else. But you know, I don’t want to live in Bundaberg, look, I’ve been here for 46 years. Other pensioners have left for economic reasons. If they owned their house, they would have made a considerable profit selling it during the recent boom; and if they rented, they might no longer be able to live in Gladstone. A couple of my acquaintance – she was not working, and he had just retired – sold their house in early 2014 (when prices were already declining) and moved to the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane, about 400 km south. Just a week after they left, I received an email from her waxing lyrical about the natural beauty and healthy air of their new environment, as opposed – not too implicitly – to the grittiness of Gladstone. Most of the newcomers to Gladstone have resettled from other parts of Australia, but a fair number are foreigners employed by one of the corporations, typically on a temporary ‘457’ visa. Whereas WIN and the regional council hold meetings and organise events introducing foreigners to the Australian way of life, giving language classes when needed and teaching necessary skills, no formal introductions are made for Australians who move to the city from elsewhere in the country, and an obvious question is how the newcomers integrate, and how the population of Gladstone, seen as a whole, copes with the abrupt changes in their social surroundings. The dominant ethos of the city, expressed by the regional council, the local newspaper, the Chamber of Commerce and the major employers, represents an interesting antithesis to Albrecht’s concept of solastalgia, which is so convincingly applied to open-pit mining expansion in the Hunter Valley: in Gladstone, change brings not loss but progress; it is stability that brings anxiety, not new industrial projects. This is not to say that locals have no sense of loss or sadness when bushland is cleared, mangrove is removed and new infrastructure is built in their place. Yet negative reactions tend to be muted, given the awareness that the same forces that change the environment also offer growth and prosperity for the city and its residents. For the purpose of the present discussion, the voices of temporary workers and FIFOs are not included, and the focus is on settled Gladstonites. As noted, the latter are usually not born in the city but, in a great number of cases, they have spent most or all of their adult life there. They tend to be married and to own a house. The men have steady jobs or are self-employed, and they have one or more children. Discourse about accelerated change and its effects on local identity among Gladstonites

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who identify with the city tends to waver between a positive view and ambivalence, sometimes tinged with a muffled note of pessimism. Of course, different people do not hold the same views, but they base their views on shared, mostly implicit assumptions, which is what a Foucauldian would call a discourse, and an Annales historian would describe as a mentality. Some of the most striking changes are population growth and changes in the composition of the population. Although foreign immigration is so far modest, mobility into the city from other parts of Australia is significant and leads to a skewed gender and age balance compared to the national average. Settled residents perceive change continuously. They observe the increased traffic in the harbour, they see the cranes building new industrial enterprises, infrastructure or dwellings; they notice the incessant traffic along the Port Access Road transporting FIFOs back and forth to the building sites; they notice changes in the rush hour traffic at the Kin Kora roundabout, increases in the cost of living, changes in the structure of civil society and challenges for volunteering. When I asked what the most important changes had been in her life, a young woman said that the most noticeable change had been the expansion of the airport. ‘Living directly under the flight path of aircraft means that I and all those living in the path are very aware of the increase of flights and size of aeroplanes coming in and out of Gladstone every day.’

the fifo issue About 5000 of the 10,000 workers employed temporarily in construction on Curtis Island are defined as FIFOs. In the Gladstone Observer, on Facebook groups dedicated to local matters (notably the lively ‘Gladstone Open Discussion’) and in everyday conversations, there has for years been vivid debate about the way in which FIFOs relate to the city. In fact, most FIFOs rarely enter the city. They have to pass through it in order to get onto the boats to Curtis Island, but when they do, they travel on the Port Access Road, which, although it intersects the city, is physically segregated from the CBD. Every day, buses transfer workers from Port Central to the airport, or from the airport to the jetty at Fisherman’s Landing, or to and from Bechtel’s main offices and induction centre just west of the city. On Sunday evenings, buses take workers who have spent half of Saturday and/or Sunday in Gladstone down to the port to get back to work. One frequently mentioned topic concerns littering in public places. A middle-aged woman active in several civil society associations claims that the Red Rover Road, which is mostly used by Bechtel buses taking

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workers from A to B, was strewn with rubbish, mainly food wrappers, beer cans and soft drink bottles. ‘You don’t see this anywhere else in the area,’ she said, adding that ‘it’s obvious in a way, isn’t it, that FIFOs should care less about the local environment than people who live here permanently. They have no attachment.’ A study (Campbell et al. 2014) does suggest that FIFOs express less concern about littering than locals, but that there is no documented difference in their respective practices. Another largely negative discourse about FIFOs concerns their role as consumers in local establishments. Several shopkeepers complain that FIFOs scarcely enter town and rarely shop (they stick, allegedly, to the pubs, whenever in town). One owner of an independent, specialised shop claimed that he had experienced no positive effect whatsoever from the influx of a large and well-heeled group of workers in the immediate vicinity. He went on to explain that representatives of Bechtel had entered his shop some time ago to get quotes for a large number of products. He then spent some time calculating prices and giving them an offer, only to discover that they would then use his prices as a benchmark for negotiating discounts with a larger, Australia-wide chain. They ended up buying nothing from him. He said that he had felt no positive effects from the presence of FIFOs. Similar views were expressed by other independent shopkeepers. The hospitality businesses, from hotels and the caravan park to inns, pubs and restaurants, express a very different view. They have had a steady growth in business since construction on Curtis Island began, and have been in a position to increase prices. A new, upmarket apartment hotel was opened in central Gladstone in February 2014, and others report few vacancies since the beginning of construction on the island. The exception, oddly for hotels on the Queensland coast, is holiday periods, which are quiet. Local politicians tend to express more equivocal views about FIFOs. The latter work for companies that pay local council rates and also create local jobs (positive), while at the same time, they allegedly lack local engagement and do next to nothing for the community (negative). A more unanimously negative view is often expressed by Gladstonites engaged in voluntary work. To them, the FIFOs are mainly a burden on the community; they use the infrastructure, but spend little and contribute nothing. There are also widespread murmurings about other negative effects of the FIFO phenomenon. The growth in prostitution is an issue typically mentioned by many (although prostitution is legal in Australia); some also point out that drunk and disorderly behaviour, occasionally involving drink-driving and violence, have become more widespread

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recently, since, as an elderly woman points out, ‘You have to remember that a large proportion of the workers are young men far from their families, far from their mothers, with nobody to look after them, and they may end up doing silly things.’ There is much about Gladstone that recalls something the late Zygmunt Bauman said about a certain kind of postmodern identity project in the twenty-first century, ‘avoiding fixation and keeping the options open’ (Bauman 1996: 18). The city relies on continuous change to such an extent that continuity would be perceived as an aberration. Growth implies change, and prosperity depends on growth. Therefore, change is widely accepted as a necessary fact of life. As an environmental activist in Brisbane explains, Queensland ‘can’t do without [mining]’, and in order to keep unemployment down and the resources boom up, ‘there is a need to build big things’. Partly for this reason, she adds, new, large projects will be started in the state as soon as construction is finished in Gladstone (in 2015), so that the workers can move on to the expanding coal port of Abbot Point further north, to the new coal fields in the Galilee Basin or to mines further west or north. Compared to regular employees, temporary contracted workers live in a different rhythm. They work hard for several weeks before leaving for their week off. They need temporary lodging, are unstable and impermanent, and the constant mobility of large numbers of people in the city creates a sense of flux and restlessness. Not only the workers, but many of the managers fly in and out. Even the CEO of QAL lives in south-eastern Queensland. A local journalist partly confirms, partly contradicts what other informants say: Obviously, FIFOs have no sense of belonging to a community here, they’ve got their families and commitments elsewhere. If they have a garden, they tend it in Bundy or the Gold Coast, not here. I guess there isn’t a heck of a lot of respect either. On the other hand, many businesses have expanded; contracting services do good business with FIFOs after all. His colleague adds that: [T]he advice you get about work in Curtis Island is that you should leave your brain on the ferry. I heard about one bloke who was disenchanted already after three months. It is an artificial community, you know; well paid, but empty and somehow meaningless. You have 28 days on and nine days off. But they stop work at 2 p.m. on Saturdays,

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and some come into town then. You’d have noticed them, I guess, the drinking, the noise, a bit of fighting. Many FIFOs engage minimally with Gladstone as such, and locals observe this with a mixture of relief and resentment. The FIFOs do not contribute much to the local community, and they are widely seen as alien, perhaps a necessary evil. Some of those who complain about LNG and the FIFO rush are concerned with Gladstone’s identity, claiming that it has been lost owing to its fast growth. It must nevertheless be pointed out that similar concerns were voiced following the closure of the meatworks and the massive influx of construction workers, later factory workers, at QAL. The transience of FIFOs is nevertheless seen as a problem, for reasons suggested above. Vicki points out that, even before LNG, there were quite a few workers in Gladstone whose families lived elsewhere and who were thus technically FIFOs, although the term did not exist then. ‘Suddenly, the idea of working in the town, but not living there, was seen as being a huge problem, a drain on the town and an absolute insult,’ she says, insinuating that this was not the case earlier. The transience, fast money, increased pressure on local infrastructure and destabilisation of the local identity associated with the FIFO phenomenon are not new in Gladstone; they are key characteristics of the boomtown. Industrial Development Local perceptions of industrial development – and here I mainly have the construction projects on Curtis Island in mind – are more complex than those about FIFOs. While FIFOs are by definition not locals, many permanent residents of Gladstone, of both genders (but mostly male), have found well-paid temporary employment on the island. Unconfirmed stories are being told about cleaners who earn $120,000 a year, yet such figures are typically challenged by people who have worked as cleaners on the island. Notwithstanding such exaggerations, work on the island is well paid, and many Gladstonites have abandoned their steady jobs in town for a better-paid temporary job on the island. Some have doubled or even tripled their income. This nevertheless has its costs. The work regime on the island is strenuous, and family life suffers when the head of household has to leave home at four in the morning, to return only after dusk. Women with husbands who work on the island thus tend to be ambivalent. Their husbands earn good money, but their participation in family and married life has become limited.

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Many local employers react negatively to the accelerated change affecting Gladstone. It is difficult, they point out, to find reliable, good staff when one cannot compete with the wages on Curtis Island. Many kinds of employment have been available on the island, ranging from regular construction work to driving, engineering, canteen work, dredging and piloting the many boats shuttling people back and forth to the mainland. This greatly increased activity has driven up wages, making it difficult even for the largest local employers, such as QAL, to compete with Bechtel; but residents also complain about deteriorating public services. A typical complaint concerns the municipal hospital, which has a reputation for being below the standards of neighbouring hospitals (it is mainly compared to the one in Rockhampton); this situation is often explained through a shortage of qualified medical staff. City councillors confirm this, and they also admit that there have been difficulties in recruiting staff for the police and educational sectors. Elsewhere in Australia, there is a widespread negative discourse about industrial development in Gladstone and its side-effects, but it is rarely heard locally. Say ‘Gladstone’ to an environmental activist anywhere in Australia, and you will hear a sad monologue about the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef due to local activities, notably dredging, runoffs and ship traffic, but also its linking up with larger-scale processes, epitomised by the contribution of the fossil fuel industry to climate change. However, this particular discourse is, by and large, absent in the city itself, where environmental concerns tend to be specific and locally anchored (see chapter 5). The most vocal local critique of the dredging of the harbour (which eventually led to a major scandal publicised in the national media, see chapter 6) concerns not the reef, but the negative effects on local fisheries. In a word, critical engagement with accelerated growth in the industrial sector does not take on global issues such as climate change, or even the intermediate, though still large-scale and abstract level of the Great Barrier Reef, but it begins at the local level of personal observation or experience. Gains and Losses There are complaints to be heard – about the difficulties in recruiting people for volunteering, absent fathers who work long shifts, an unsustainably fast turnover in the schools and the many retirees who have left. Other complaints about the effects of accelerated change on the infrastructure are also heard. Some mention increased traffic in the rush hours and difficulties in finding parking space in the shopping

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areas. Others talk about the alleged deterioration of manners in a city where many do not feel a moral responsibility and where social control is uneven. A woman in her mid-fifties, who habitually took long walks as her main form of exercise, told me that ‘in some of the new housing estates, you don’t get the feeling that people belong at all’. On the other side, few complain about the de facto growth of Gladstone, where the new ring road a few kilometres south of the city, Kirkwood Road, has already become a busy artery connecting brand new suburbs to the city and the port. The typical view would be that, in so far as people who move in pay their rates and support themselves economically, they are welcome and can be fitted into the existing social structure. At the aforementioned ceremony in the Gladstone Entertainment and Convention Centre on the eve of Australia Day (25 January 2014), new Australian citizens living in Gladstone were invited to take the citizenship oath. Fifty-seven did, perhaps roughly half of them of European origin (mainly British and New Zealander). In her speech, the mayor joked that Gladstone welcomed all new residents since they kept the council afloat through paying rates, and gave them, as a symbolic gift, a small potted plant ‘that you can plant outside in your garden, and if you don’t have one yet, put it in a large pot and plant it when you get your garden’. The assumption was that people (a) were settling and not temporary residents, and (b) would have gardens. This is what the council wants. Many small and medium-sized local businesses have profited from the boom (Amarna 2014). Some deliver goods and services to Bechtel, from scaffolding to transport, while others have increased their turnover as a result of a larger customer base. A good example is a man in his fifties who sells and installs top-end car stereos mainly for young men who are living through the windfall of their lives; but the largest shopping mall at Kin Kora, which typically caters to families and housewives, is also expanding. Many locals also appreciate the increase in consumer choice; for example, three new restaurants opened in the city centre in the first half of 2014. The mobility, flux and growth characterising both the infrastructure and the population of Gladstone places demands on the sociability of the residents. ‘You have to be fairly outgoing to thrive here,’ said a recently arrived resident from another English-speaking country, and mentioned his wife, ‘who is a bit shy, who doesn’t like meeting new people too much, who dislikes large functions … she’s had real difficulties adjusting to life here, and for a while she didn’t even go to the supermarket on her own’. A well-educated woman in her late thirties, who had lived in Gladstone for a few years but was about to move abroad with her young family, had

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misgivings about the uneven rhythms of change in the city. While certain things change fast, she implied, others do not, and as a result, the system as a whole gets out of sync. As she says: The hospital isn’t great, the shopping is terrible. We have a 5-year-old, and it has been very hard to find a place for him in a kindergarten. When they start school, of course, that problem is gone. We were hoping that the industry would fund an early childcare centre, open 24 hours in order to accommodate children of shift workers, but that did not happen. In spite of the fast changes affecting everyday life in often unanticipated ways, there are also ways in which key social institutions are being reproduced regularly and routinely. Some institutions of civil society, such as the Gladstone Chamber of Commerce, the three local chapters of the Rotary Club, charities such as the Salvation Army and Caritas, sports clubs, as well as annual public events such as the Welsh cultural festival Eisteddfod, the Harbour Festival and Australia Day, many of them involving overlapping personnel both among organisers and volunteers, ensure both regularity and continuity. In addition, public institutions, notably schools and the health sector, and regular public services such as rubbish-collecting and postal delivery provide a structural framework enabling the reproduction of everyday life amid change. * * * From the foregoing description of change as the norm, coal as the fuel, and mobility as the precondition, a garden of forking analytical paths appears. There are many ways in which the Gladstonian optimism concerning change and progress can be analysed. In this account, the main focus is on the uncompromising modernity of Gladstone. Lacking the preconfigured social and cultural patterns of tradition, but also unperturbed by the ambivalence and uncertainties of postmodernity, Gladstone is fundamentally committed to the central values of modernity. It is a modernity bearing substantial traits of early twenty-first-century global capitalism, though with a distinctly Australian flavour. The underlying ideology celebrating classic industrial-technological notions of progress and development, largely unhampered by ambivalence, must nevertheless be described as a distinctly twentieth-century outlook. Change is accelerating as the past vanishes rapidly in the rear mirror, competition intensifies, and the city is glued together in a modular way that facilitates the absorption of new arrivals and offers cues for discourses about future directions.

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accelerated structural amnesia In an industrial, transient town such as this, there are scarcely any old and venerable families, and the sense of continuity with the pre-industrial past is weak. Although third-generation Gladstonites exist, they are few in number. Jake, a welder in his late thirties who recently moved to Bundaberg with his family, says: ‘The sense of community is different. Here, I go into a pub, and there’ll be ten, fifteen, twenty blokes I know.’ Thomas: Some of them would have moved here from Gladstone? Jake: Yeah, but it’s mostly people simply living here. There is more community, more stability here I guess. Gladstone is all work and moving. Recall the statement at the beginning of this chapter about Gladstone always having been a boom and bust town. Other informants occasionally remark that the city ‘has been industrialised for generations’. As a matter of fact, the industrial history of Gladstone goes back only to the mid-1960s, about fifty years. Statements of this kind seem to suggest that ‘the past’ was in fact quite recent, and that social memory is generally shallow. Recall that there are two museums, the Calliope River Historical Village and the Gladstone Maritime Museum, both depending on volunteers, which display objects, pictures and buildings enabling a genealogical narrative stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century. Visitor numbers are nevertheless modest. Moreover, local amateur historians – foremost among them Paulette Flint and Betty Laver (the sister-inlaw of the tennis player Rod Laver from Rockhampton) – publish books and pamphlets about different aspects of the city’s history. Finally, the Facebook group ‘Gladstone: Remember When …’, where old photos, historical details and anecdotes are continuously being presented and discussed, has more than 6,000 members. In other words, there are many in Gladstone who feel attached to the city’s history, who may volunteer in the museums and actively explore the link between the past and the present. Gladstone has eleven heritage-listed buildings, which thus cannot legally be demolished, dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It should be recalled again here that ‘the past’ in settler Australia is relatively recent. The longue durée of the continent, which is Aboriginal, is little known by most white Australians and rarely identified with by them. The continent’s total population was less than 4 million as late as 1901, the year of the Federation. Gladstone’s population was less than a thousand when

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the rail link from Brisbane was completed in 1897, and it doubled from 7000 to 14,000 during the first decade of industrialisation, from 1960 and 1970. With a 2015 population of over 30,000 in the city itself (and the figure more than doubles if all suburbs are included), it stands to reason that most of the inhabitants do not have a deep genealogy connecting them to the Gladstone area. The close relatives of my informants (parents, siblings, adult children) frequently live elsewhere, but often in Queensland. And, in spite of the efforts of enthusiasts, the council and civil society associations devoted to social memory, knowledge of and interest in local history tends to be limited. Year One, to many Gladstonites, was 1967, the year in which QAL fired up its furnaces. Among immigrants in Gladstone, there are some recurrent standard narratives about Australia in general and Gladstone in particular. During conversations with Eduardo, a Latin American married and settled in the city for five years, it often transpires that he is frustrated with the ‘lack of substance’ in the city. And upon asking Rosa, a single mother in her fifties from another South American country, about her views of Australian cultural life, she shrugged and said, paraphrasing Gandhi on Western civilisation, that ‘it would be a good idea’. Confirming this view, but drawing an opposite conclusion, a young Italian man who had studied for several years in Australia, confessed that he felt bogged down in history at home in Milan. ‘Here, everything is new. Back there, everything is old,’ he said. In a word, newness is celebrated in Gladstone. Apart from the heritage listed buildings and a few ‘Queenslanders’ (wooden houses built on stumps, mostly from before 1960), many of them dilapidated and awaiting demolition, the city comes across as new, and this is the case with both the CBD and the residential areas. A house is considered old if the owner grew up there as a child when it was new in the 1970s. As Connerton says, in a discussion of speed, architecture and obsolescence, a ‘powerful source of contemporary cultural amnesia … has to do with the nature and the life history of the material objects with which people are customarily surrounded’ (Connerton 2009: 122), adding that today ‘it is we who observe the birth and death of objects, whereas in all previous civilisations it was the object and the monument that survived the generations’ (2009: 122). The frozen moments described by Neumann (2016) in the context of monuments thus become marginal relics useful for occasional commemorative ceremonies, but uninteresting in the ongoing swirl of everyday life, which is oriented towards the present and the future, not the past. As Jane, an ex-resident of Gladstone, said when we were discussing the FIFO phenomenon, ‘probably, the most widespread disease is not related to dust or respiratory problems,

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or even environmental poisons, but mental health. I’m thinking about stress and the side-effects of the emptiness of lives devoted to making as much money as possible as fast as possible.’ Accelerated structural amnesia was the topic of an art installation displayed at the annual Rio Tinto Alcan Martin Hanson Memorial exhibition in 2013.3 Created by the local amateur artist Vicki Johnson and titled Crime Scene, the installation consisted of shards of glass, pieces of wood, rusty nails and odd bits and pieces left behind at demolition sites where houses with generations of history had been unceremoniously torn down in order to make way for something new and shiny (see Figs 3.1–3.3). Displayed in sealed transparent bags, labelled and captioned, the objects told a story of accelerated change where any sense of continuity was lost, where fast profits took pride of place and where the past was deemed worthless because it was inefficient and paid nobody’s salary. Discussing her motivation for creating this installation, Vicki told me that she had been struck by the brutality with which fragile, old wooden structures were crushed and sent to oblivion, and replaced with anodyne units buildings (blocks of flats) or office buildings, all in the name of progress. She was angered and saddened by this ruthless development, sensing a fundamental contradiction between the profit-seeking of the developers and local needs, but she says that ‘people are mostly too afraid, or perhaps just too apathetic, to speak up against this kind of thing’. Mary, a woman in her forties who lives in a caravan park near Calliope4 west of Gladstone, reacted in a similar way to changes in her immediate surroundings, although her concern was not with attachment to a built environment, but to nature. Since 2012, several housing estates have been built in the area, leading to the removal of large swathes of bushland, leading to a situation where wild animals can be seen more often than before near and inside the caravan park. Possums, wallabies and kangaroos have become a common sight, as have snakes. Mary is critical of the development because no consideration is given by the developers, and the political authorities, to the needs of the ecosystem and the animals that inhabit it, but she adds that the quality of life in the caravan park has also deteriorated. One of its main assets was its proximity to relatively unspoilt nature, which is now gone; and the animals, squeezed into a shrinking space, are stressed and can be a nuisance to people. 3.  Martin Hanson (1923–76) was a Labor politician and member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 1963 to his death. 4.  Why Calliope is named after the Greek muse for eloquence was a question that went unanswered throughout my fieldwork. To my collaborators, it was just the name of a country town.

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Figure 3.1 From Vicki Johnson’s installation Crime Scene (2013)

Figure 3.2  From Vicki Johnson’s installation Crime Scene (2013)

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Figure 3.3  From Vicki Johnson’s installation Crime Scene (2013)

Vicki and Mary are not alone in resenting the ways the rapid loss of memory can create a sense of detachment and alienation, but the only recent development project that has led to visible protests was the construction of the Port Access Road, which intersects central Gladstone in a very noticeable way. Demolition of the old and the construction of the new are widely accepted, almost as a law of nature.

a module-based identity In what sense is Gladstone a place? Have its residents entered into a Faustian pact whereby they sacrifice substance for profits? Its continuity with the past is tenuous, its roots thin and fragile, and this arguably shapes the relationship of Gladstone to its natural surroundings. Its population generally takes a pragmatic view on their physical location. Young people tend to want to leave. Their parents may be planning their retirement in the healthy climate and beautiful surroundings of the Sunshine Coast. You can belong, but you’d be hard pressed to grow deep roots. As a middle-aged couple told me, they had lived in Gladstone nearly all their adult lives. Now that their livelihood was gone owing to some unintended side-effects of industrial development, they were planning to relocate to Tasmania.

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Why Tasmania, I asked; does either of you have a connection there – family, close friends? No, they responded, they didn’t know a soul in Tassie, but they had been there once on holiday and liked the climate and lifestyle there. So they were prepared to sell out, buy a convenient house in Tasmania and move there permanently. Another pensioner I met had just bought a camper van, sold his house in Gladstone and was looking forward to criss-crossing Australia in the van for a year or two before settling in a suitably pleasant place. Having served in the civil service in Gladstone for most of his working life, he felt no connection to the city, as his children lived elsewhere. The facility with which Gladstonites relocate is worthy of consideration, given that human identity is so often associated with place and ‘rootedness’. The changes to which they so easily adjust encompass changes in their own physical location as well as in their surroundings. Perhaps this explains the facility with which the city has accepted fundamental transformations of its natural surroundings. The short migration history of Australia provides part of the answer. In a country where mass immigration is seen as a necessity, which has been the case in Australia for two hundred years, it is necessary to develop mechanisms of fast inclusion. The entrance ticket couldn’t be too expensive; people had to be turned into Australians quickly.5 This situation contrasts with that of a farming society or a city with a long continuous history and a long-established population, where the inclusion of new arrivals may be more cumbersome, and where mobility is much less common. The cheap entrance ticket requires informality in casual interaction (for which Australia is famous, recall chapter 2) and a common cultural grammar that can easily be acquired by those who move into a community. In Gladstone, the required cultural competence can be likened to a set of traffic rules. Apart from familiarity with English and following the law, economic independence (most likely through waged work) is most frequently invoked as a requirement for being accepted. Since the vast majority of the residents of Gladstone are Australians, they can draw on a pan-Australian comparative language for talking and thinking about communities and localities. Dialect variation in Australia is limited both in a metaphorical and literal sense. In any Australian community beyond a certain size, there must be schools, sport teams, 5.  ‘People’ here refers largely to English, Scottish and Welsh immigrants, with a few Irish, before the First World War, a sprinkling of other Protestant North Europeans between the wars, immigrants from other parts of Europe (Greece, Italy …) after the war, and today, increasingly, East Asians, especially in the big cities.

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voluntary associations, churches, a shopping centre, cafes, pubs and a hospital. The services offered by the council are comparable – and are actively being compared – with equivalent services elsewhere. Typical Australian leisure pastimes – fishing, barbecuing, going to the beach, sport (as performers or spectators), restaurants, shopping, various forms of entertainment – are comparable from city to city, and are actively being compared. The Eisteddfod is especially well organised and popular in Gladstone compared to other cities in Central Queensland. However, the high street is less enticing than the one in Bundaberg, the shopping less pleasing than in Rockhampton, the harbour less charming than the one in Hervey Bay. Yet, on the other hand, the new Spinnaker Park at the marina, courtesy of the GPC, is really quite nice for walks and picnics, and Awoonga Lake a few miles up the road is excellent for barramundi fishing, compared to what’s on offer in comparable places elsewhere in Queensland. In the dominant discourse, there is no incommensurability between different locations in Australia. Every module relevant for lifestyle or work can be compared directly with the equivalent module elsewhere. The elements that create a local identity in Gladstone are spoken of in a comparative, generic language. They could be seen as interchangeable modules, like mobile homes transported on trailers. When, in 2014, a Gladstone Observer journalist ran a private survey asking his Facebook friends what kind of services or establishments they missed in Gladstone, a surprisingly high number of the respondents mentioned a brand. They did not say ‘a good steak and seafood restaurant’, but ‘a Sizzler’s’. Some wanted ‘a better Target’ (a chain of budget clothes and homewares stores). Some said that it was ‘about time that Gladdy got its Myers’ (an upmarket chain of department stores). In private conversation, Gladstonites have said to me that it is significant for the city that it now has a ‘Ribs’n’Rumps’, a second ‘Coffee Club’ and a ‘Hog’s Breath’ (three popular restaurant chains) on Goondoon Street, because it helps build the city’s identity as a place where you can belong and live, not just a place to sleep and work. The modularity and standardisation of the high street is a function of high rents and economies of scale, ousting family-owned and one-of-a-kind establishments to the benefit of the large-scale operations (see Ritzer 1993 on the generic phenomenon of ‘McDonaldization’). In this particular city, an embodiment of modernity in one of its purest forms, even its identity as a unique place in the world, is made up of interchangeable modules. And as the world changes, so must Gladstone change, and it can do so relatively easily by adding new modules when needed.

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ambivalence It is often claimed that many live in Gladstone malgré eux, in spite of themselves. Employment opportunities are excellent in the industrial and service sectors, and salaries are above the national average. Yet there are widespread concerns, not just with the side-effects of rapid population growth described earlier, but also with regard to health and aesthetic aspects of the environment. It is commonly said that respiratory ailments such as asthma are more widespread in Gladstone than they ought to be, and this is usually associated with increased traffic and intensified industrial activity. On 6 February 2014, the Gladstone Observer reported that a rare form of cancer (neuroblastoma) was affecting several children in Gladstone. Only 40 cases were recorded in Australia every year, and three had been diagnosed in Gladstone recently. Jenny, a teacher in her fifties, says this about the situation of a friend of hers: Imagine two of your four children getting cancer. And you had originally planned to stay in Gladstone only a few years, but greed got the better of you and you stayed on. You will never stop thinking about how your children could have avoided this if you had only settled for a lower income in a healthier environment. Some feel that they get less than they bargained for when they take highly paid temporary work in the booming sectors. Tina, who had worked for a year as a cleaner on Curtis Island, told of a dirty, dangerous and exhausting work regime. ‘I worked for the industry as a cleaner for many years, and believe me, it was always poorly paid. At QAL, I don’t think you can imagine how bad it was to clean those rooms. All that red dust … I took a shower when I finished, I showered and showered, and still, I felt that poisonous dust lingering in my pores, always.’ At this point her friend Jake intercepts: ‘Hey, not poisonous … ’ Tina: ‘OK, but not very pleasant all the same.’ Yet, at the end of the day, she preferred QAL to the ‘wild west conditions’ on the island; work at the alumina refinery was regular, predictable and secure. Health concerns are among the most common anxieties expressed by Gladstonites, especially those related to respiratory ailments and cancers. But Gladstonites have become increasingly concerned with their food in recent years, following the destruction of the local fishing industry (chapter 6). Even Jimmy, a stalwart of the community and a staunch defender of the establishment, warned me against eating barramundi from Awoonga Lake, not because it had been poisoned, but

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because ‘it’s full of mud’. It is nevertheless a fact that there has been considerable wariness regarding the previously popular barramundi since the harbour dredging scandal, of which it was the focus, and it does not feature on most restaurant menus in Gladstone, unlike elsewhere in coastal Queensland. Other expressions of ambivalence can be more complex. Since everyone in Gladstone is aware that they depend on the industry for their livelihood, they cannot credibly criticise industry for being there or new developments for attracting new residents; the only solution for profound critics of industry seems to be to move elsewhere. One of those who most eloquently expressed the ambivalence of life in Gladstone was Betty, a researcher in her early thirties and a mother of two young children. This is an extract from our conversation about accelerated change and the environment. Betty: Well, you know, here in Gladstone, development and industry always form a two-edged sword since you’re usually wrapped up in it yourself. So it is hard. But it is also easy to see that wrong decisions are often made. For example, for the LNG plants, they could have put them in the Yarwun Industrial Zone inland, where they would have caused less aesthetic damage. But the industry wanted Curtis Island, so that’s how it went. Thomas: Industry is never far away in Gladstone anyway. Betty: No, I mean, there is a waterhole outside the city, which is a nice place to go fishing and swimming, and we went there not so long ago, only to discover, on our way, a lot of workers clearing bits of the forest with heavy machinery. We had to be escorted to the pond. When we asked what they were doing, they answered ‘just fixing the road’ – while what they were actually doing was to extend the gas pipelines. They somehow wouldn’t or couldn’t own up to what they were actually doing. Thomas: Yet there is little by way of environmental protest here? Betty: Yes. But in fact, as the developments on Curtis Island began, there were demonstrations, not with locals, but with people coming up from further south. Some of them were actually staying in a holiday house across from my mum’s house. She has never had a soft spot for the greenies, yet she spoke of them afterwards – not knowing who they were and why they were here – as a ‘lovely group of young people’. But yes, you’re right, the industry is really very important to people here.

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Thomas: At the same time, it appears to be a bit overheated at the moment? In the sense that the city is changing really fast right now? Betty: What is new, is that different kinds of new activity are taking place at the same time. Since the opening of the alumina refinery in 1967, we had that, and the power station, and the smelter on Boyne Island … Thomas: And the port? Betty: Well, yes, and other industries appeared as well, even a cyanide plant. Says something about the place, doesn’t it, that people thought it was OK to have a cyanide plant nearby? But you’re right, there has been massive change in the last few years, with the port expansion and LNG [taking place simultaneously]. The scale on which most of us initially perceive the impact of accelerated change is small, often domestic and personal. One homeowner was angry about a large land-clearing operation near her house; not because of environmental and ecological concerns, but because of the noise and the dust soiling her garden furniture. Small-scale responses to largescale operations are often objected to as being myopic and selfish. When the inhabitants of Targinnie were severely affected by a malfunctioning factory (chapter 8), they were told by unaffected Gladstonites to ‘stop whingeing’; when a concerned local complained about the destruction of her seafront, she was accused of short-sighted NIMBYism (chapter 5). Their reactions to environmental deterioration may be ineffective, but as I shall later show, small-scale engagement can sometimes expand. Opinion is divided as to the likely consequences of large-scale development. Speaking with a group of residents in the village of South End, the only permanent settlement on Curtis Island, about the ongoing development of LNG plants and the large cargo ships entering and leaving the Narrows, I soon learnt that the locals did not have a uniform view on the development. Although they appreciated the natural beauty and unspoilt character of South End, many of the residents worked in a Gladstone industry, or had done so until their retirement, making it easy for them to see the industry’s point of view. Cheryl Watson, who is an environmental activist in her sixties, says that she accepted industry, but could not tolerate that it crossed the Narrows and entered into Curtis Island, which formed part of the Great Barrier Reef Protected Area. She adds that the increased volume of ship traffic is likely to continue to whip up metals and toxins from the seafloor, and considers it unlikely that she will ever eat fish from Gladstone harbour again.

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Ray, a recent retiree from QAL, says that residents at South End would not notice much from the plant, which was located about 5 km from the village. ‘Maybe some noise when the wind blows in a westerly direction, that’s all.’ Steve, another retiree from a Gladstone enterprise, says that it wouldn’t be bad at all. ‘There is no road connection between South End and the gas plants. There will be no noise, no emissions, no lights except perhaps an occasional flare – we’ll scarcely notice it.’ Later the same evening, I am watching the TV news with Cheryl and her husband Trevor. A slow-burning fire in a coal mine at Morwell in Latrobe Valley, Victoria, spews out dark smoke over a large area. While the government in Victoria assures people that it remains safe to stay at home, many have moved out of the area waiting for the fire to be quelled. An 8-year-old boy, whose family had moved away, says to the reporters that his asthma has got ‘about a thousand times better’ since they left the smoky valley. ‘So who should we believe, the government or this little boy?’ I ask. The others shrug. Which knowledge to trust, or perhaps rather, whose knowledge to trust, is a question often raised in the philosophy of science, and it is now quickly becoming the foundational question in a range of political controversies, from Donald Trump’s tweets to health or mining in Morwell, Victoria. The question of who is trustworthy and whose knowledge is relevant and useful, has long since left the academic seminar room and, as I will eventually show, it is absolutely fundamental to the battles over truth and the environment taking place in Gladstone.

temporality and the future EQIP Gladstone is a great example of something at which Gladstone is very good. Finding local solutions to local challenges. —EQIP website (http://eqipgladstone.com.au)

The commitment to change and speed prevailing in Gladstone discourse and practice, and to which its residents are accustomed, can lead to an impatient demand for immediate returns. Teenagers are offered alternative training before they’ve left school, preparing them for industrial work. The institution offering these courses, called EQIP (Education Queensland Industry Partnership), explains on its website that it: provides opportunities for students to gain a school-based apprenticeship or traineeship and obtain (or work towards), their Queensland Certificate of Education (QCE). Currently the College has student-apprentices/trainees in Automotive, Building and Construction, Hospitality, Engineering, Horticulture and Business Administration.

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As a result, many young students, mostly male, do not leave town after finishing school, but go straight into industrial jobs. EQIP makes the transition from school to employment smooth and accessible, while the state government gains impressive school-leaver employment figures. QAL and other major employers gain by receiving a readymade and even partially trained workforce, transitioning seamlessly from school to work. These jobs are well paid and attractive, enabling the industry to retain a fully trained and experienced workforce, which is less costly than having continually to train new employees. As Vicki comments, ‘industry may also gain kudos from Gladstone residents for employing Gladstone residents rather than “outsiders”. Such brownie points may also help to offset bad publicity such as complaints over the poor air quality.’ The construction boom on Curtis Island has destabilised this smooth transition to the established Gladstone industry somewhat; the point here is, however, that because of the attractiveness of quick, vocational training leading to well-remunerated work, many young Gladstonites are unlikely to opt for a long, uncertain and expensive university education. Vicki points out that ‘EQIP claims to open up a great range of employment opportunities for students, when in reality it significantly narrows students’ interest in and knowledge of the other opportunities that may be available to them.’ It is common knowledge in Gladstone that higher education does not pay off economically. It is lengthy and uncertain. One typical story concerns the son of an informant, who was uninterested in school and even failed to finish his exams. However, he soon obtained a job in industry with a starting wage above his mother’s teacher salary. Another story confirming that workers in Gladstone constitute a labour aristocracy, is about the son of another acquaintance, who resigned from a local industrial job to look for alternative employment in Brisbane. However, his skills were in industry, and he could only find low-paid, uninteresting work. He soon returned to an industrial job in Gladstone. The broad awareness of a seemingly easy, lucrative and abundant job market in the boomtown has led to a disequilibrium between different parts of the local economy, but also to a crisis of expectations among young Gladstonites. Non-industrial jobs are not unusually well remunerated. Maria, who runs a cleaning company, also hires temporary staff for the annual Gladstone Harbour Festival. ‘They come, in their early twenties perhaps, and ask for work, and they think they’re worth more than $100,000. I have to tell them that sorry, darling, you’re worth $40,000. They immediately go “what?”.’ Reflecting on the probable, imminent downturn in the local economy, Maria adds: ‘They have few skills, and at the end of the party many of

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them have little to show for them. One of those I know, he’s 22, he’s got two dirt bikes, a new car and lives with mum and dad where he pays $50 a week for his room and board.’ The booming economy, the short training period and the high salaries encourage presentism, so I muse: ‘Yeah, makes you wonder what some of them are going to do next year, when they realise that they’ll have to find a job which pays half as much or less.’ Maria responds: ‘Some at least save money for a deposit on a house. Had they been clever about it, they could have paid for most of a house during those years on the island.’ The owner of a successful cleaning agency, an event organiser and a mother of three, Maria also reflects on the lack of broad cultural competence she sees in some of the young benefactors of accelerated change. About young men who share houses rented through their company, she complains: They park their car on the lawn, but they also let the grass grow until it reaches their waist, and they then expect my husband to mow it for 50 bucks! And house cleaning … if the house is big, and dirty, it can easily come to a thousand dollars. They may give it a try themselves, but it won’t be good enough, and so they, or the rental agency, will have to call on us. There is an incompetence among certain young people which is unreal. Not everybody fits in, but those who do not tend to leave upon completing school. One young man of my acquaintance had chosen to train and work as a chef further south because he loved the work, even if the hours were inconvenient and the salary modest. Other young Gladstonites are simply set on leaving the city. A university student in her late teens, visiting her parents during the long summer holidays, says that she would have been around 13 when she realised that Gladstone ‘might not be such a great place to live for someone like me’. Interested in music and the arts, she left for Brisbane soon after finishing school, and does not envisage returning to live in Gladstone. Other Gladstone residents in their late teens and early twenties also express strong ambivalence around the implications of rapid change on their lives.6 Several use terms like ‘constricted’, ‘hemmed in’ or ‘limited’ and refer to the poor cultural life, lack of a vibrant CBD, bad shopping and bad to non-existent public transport system. 6.  The following is based on eleven interviews, as well as personal observations, carried out for me by Alison Liefting.

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Just one of the young people we interviewed saw herself staying in Gladstone, but the two brothers of one of our interviewees had found jobs in local industry. (Their reason for staying was that their parents had moved to Port Hedland in Western Australia, a smaller, more remote town than Gladstone, but just as industrial.) Many of them were born in the city, some had moved there while young, and a few had lived there less than a year. The one person who saw herself as staying had an interest in nautical science, and was doing an apprenticeship with the GPC while taking a degree via distance education at a university in Tasmania. Not all of these young men and women shared a lack of interest in the trades offered by industry, although most saw themselves studying at universities elsewhere (Brisbane being mentioned most frequently) if they were not already. One bluntly responded, upon being asked, that he ‘couldn’t care less about the Bechtel boom but I still think I’d achieve more in a larger city regardless of industry booms here, as it’s not really my concern.’ Two other interviewees, having stayed on in the city for three years after high school, had done so only for economic reasons, and were looking to find similar work in a larger city. While this interview material has no claims to being representative, it reveals some interesting patterns in that the responses overlap considerably. Mainly, the respondents find the city boring for young people. Significantly, they all take change, infrastructural developments and environmental transformations for granted. This is not to say that they do not notice the changes. As one 19-year-old university student says, ‘The town feels like it has doubled in size even in the time I have been living here. Where there are now huge suburbs, there used to be dense bushlands, drive-in movie theatres and backroads, less than ten years ago.’ Yet the main concerns for most of the interviewees are lack of entertainment and shopping facilities, ‘interesting’ jobs and relevant educational institutions. They are somewhat concerned with the quality of the water, preferring to drink bottled water, but seem on the whole reconciled with the fact that industry leads to environmental side-effects. Neither are the young overtly concerned with health risks, which contrasts starkly with views common among older informants. As Alison Liefting, a 19-year-old university student, points out at the end of a long reflection on life in Gladstone for young people: Although a large number of the youth in Gladstone would agree that the town is not a very ‘fun’ place, there are a number of older residents who would disagree. I suppose it depends largely on your age as to whether you find the facilities that Gladstone provides as sufficient to ensure a pleasant residence in the town.

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Somewhat counterintuitively, the upshot seems to be that Gladstone offers better lifestyle options (to use the established Australian term) for families and children than for young adults. Yet, the success of EQIP (as well as the part-time technical and further education [TAFE] college) indicates a demand for a fast track into the moneymaking business of well-paid industrial work. Typically, when asked, young industrial workers – whether from Gladstone or not – say that they are doing this work for a few years, ‘And then I don’t know, I’ll probably go elsewhere.’ The lengthy temporal horizon is rarely seen as relevant in the fastgrowing town. The new suburbs, built in a semicircle around the city from 2011 to 2014 were assembled from modules and built fast. Just as it may be argued that an EQIP course is an easy fix but not a proper education, new houses are widely considered to be substandard. One says that ‘the walls are paper thin’; another remarks that ‘the concrete slab in the garage collapsed’. Yet people who buy these houses are open to the possibility that they may be exchanged for something equivalent or better, and they’re only planning to stay in Gladstone for a few years anyway. The modular local identity, which Gladstone shares with other Australian towns and smaller cities, may preclude strong attachment to place unless one has invested time, effort or money in the city. There is no sense of shock or even surprise when someone declares that they are relocating to another part of Queensland. Local identity thus becomes – not to all, but to many of its residents – a moveable feast, a Lego structure whose blocks can be relocated and reassembled elsewhere, quite contrary to the thick, integrated local identities traditionally studied by anthropologists. Gladstone identity is thin, flexible and accepting of change as long as it does not upset the cultural grammar of egalitarian individualism, self-reliance and loyalty to the spoken and unspoken norms of community life.

4 The Boomtown Syndrome and the Treadmill Paradox Jack: Some things stay the same. George: Like what? Jack: Like the water. The water’s always been there.

—David Burton, Boomtown

July 2013 saw a major cultural event, the talk of the town for months before and after it took place, unfold in Gladstone. It was the musical show Boomtown, presented by the Queensland Music Festival and the GRC, supported economically by more than twenty sponsors, ranging from large resource companies to the local Toyota dealer and one of the hotels. Performed outdoors in Gladstone Marina Park, the show was watched by an estimated 20,000 people. Although the music and libretto had been written by outsiders, the 400-strong cast and crew, including dancers, singers, musicians, actors and a large technical staff, were made up entirely of locals. It was the first event of its kind in Gladstone, and it was perceived, by local media, politicians and many residents, as a major achievement, not least since Gladstone’s identity is fully industrial. For once, Gladstone would be granted its place in the sun by virtue of a colourful and entertaining musical show; this was important to many of the residents, who were accustomed to condescending glances from the outside whenever some negative side-effects of the region’s industry made it to the national news. At a meeting in Brisbane ahead of the premiere, Mayor Gail Sellers said that she believed that ‘Boomtown, a musical celebration of Gladstone’s recent history, will be unmatched as a positive, living legacy for the Region and will be talked about for many years to come’ (GRC 2013). The musical aimed to show off the musical and artistic talent of a region that is more usually associated with work and pollution. The concept consisted of a narration of the story of Gladstone’s recent history as a boomtown, with a young boy, who had just arrived in town with his family, as the main character. Apart from a brief scene depicting the arrival of the first European settlers in the region in the mid-nineteenth century, and a couple of

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Aborigines playing the didgeridoo, the musical focuses exclusively on Gladstone’s post-1967 history as an industrial town, with an emphasis on social and cultural life in a rapidly changing environment. The boy George (played by child prodigy George Cartwright) expresses his dismay about having been brought to this drab and nondescript place where he has no friends, living initially in cramped conditions in the caravan park, but slowly learning to appreciate what the city can offer by way of challenging leisure activities and social dynamism. The creative team – composer, producer, writer – had been visiting Gladstone for months doing research, and the composer, Scott Saunders, explained that ‘[i]n a place like Gladstone, people really have to make their own culture. It is a place that is so focused on industry [that] they need to make their own culture and we’re helping them, encouraging them. Showing them what’s possible I think’ (ABC 2013a). Mayor Sellers added, in the same interview, that ‘coming out on the other side, we’ll have a community that will be very proud of what they are’. In saying this, she obliquely intimated that the residents of Gladstone were somewhat wanting in local pride before the production of the musical. Both Saunders and Sellers identify what could be seen as generic characteristics of boomtowns, which are localities that grow and change very quickly, with cramped facilities while new infrastructural developments are under way, a large influx of outsiders and a collective focus on work rather than leisure and the arts. Saunders, the outsider, claims that Gladstonites ‘have to make their own culture’ (presumably from scratch), while Sellers, the local, suggests that a sense of local pride is a scarce resource in a rapidly changing environment. While the previous chapter saw accelerated change through the eyes of the locals, this chapter aims to describe structural features of Gladstone seen as a boomtown, followed by an analytical perspective on contemporary capitalism identifying one of its central contradictions, or paradoxes. Perhaps it may be said that while chapter 3 showcases some of the virtues of ethnography – the social scientist crawling on all fours with a magnifying glass – this chapter mainly takes the bird’s-eye perspective, or the view through binoculars from a helicopter. However, being an anthropologist by training and vocation, I cannot help bringing individuals and their concerns into the structural analysis as well, and there is bound to be some thematic overlap between these two chapters. The intention is nevertheless to identify the nuts and bolts of the boomtown here, thereby providing a complementary perspective to the phenomenological approach of chapter 3, followed by an analysis of the

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‘treadmill paradox’ of capitalist society relying on growth and change in order merely to stay in the same place.

the boomtown A term used casually not only in everyday language, but also in academic writings, the concept of the boomtown needs an initial delineation. What does it take for a place to be considered a boomtown? Is it a sufficient characteristic that its population grows fast – and if so, how fast is fast enough? Besides, many cities grow fast without booming, for example, following rural droughts, or war, or slum expansion. A minimal definition of the boomtown must therefore include an economic dimension; the boomtown offers the promise of jobs and prosperity, and is seen as a ‘happening’ place with perceptibly increased economic activity – typically new opportunities in production, extraction or trade – which attracts prospective workers. The boomtown is a magnet. By definition, then, a boomtown is a delineated area (such as the Alberta tar-sand fields, or the Ok Tedi mountain in New Guinea), a newly designed town (such as Cancún in Mexico) or a pre-existing town (such as Odessa, Texas, or Gladstone, Queensland), which experiences one or several sudden spurts of fast economic growth and the concomitant influx of workers, often hired on a temporary basis. Given the fast growth of cities in the Global South (Davis 2006), and the ‘resources boom’ which has led to an almost equally spectacular growth in the international trade in minerals and fossil fuels (global coal exports doubled between 2003 and 2013), it may be assumed that boomtown phenomena are especially widespread, and lend themselves to comparative research, in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Typical short-term effects of this kind of growth, reflected in the research discussed below, are increases in the cost of living, an intensified pressure on infrastructure such as roads, housing and sewerage, and an increased proportion of single men in the local population. Some less immediate implications are difficulties in recruiting employees outside the booming part of the economy, the departure of certain demographic groups such as the elderly, increased ethnic diversity, changing social cohesion patterns (or fragmentation), and physical changes to the surroundings owing to both industrial and infrastructural developments, which may in turn affect the local identity and sense of belonging. Although the term ‘boomtown’ does not figure prominently in the social science literature, some significant studies in urban sociology and anthropology have dealt with effects of and responses to rapid economic and demographic change. The ‘Chicago school’, which produced many

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seminal studies of ethnic relations and ‘urban ecology’ under Robert Park’s leadership in the first half of the twentieth century (Park et al. 1967 [1925]; Hannerz 1980), took rapid change and large-scale immigration as their empirical starting point. Somewhat later, the anthropologists of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), later collectively known as the Manchester school, studied the social life of the mining town, where the workforce was drawn from surrounding rural areas, leading to innovative studies of ethnicity, social change and the implications of the assumed shift from a tribal identity based on subsistence agriculture to a unionised identity based on wage work (Wilson 1941–2). Eventually, members of the group found that the process was not so much one of detribalisation as of retribalisation, as tribal identities based on kinship and usufruct rights were transformed into ethnic identities based on shared origins, language and ethnically based interest groups (Mitchell 1956; Evens and Handelman 2006). Rapid demographic and social change has been studied extensively since then, whether with a focus on resource booms (e.g. Willow and Wylie 2014), intensified border trade (e.g. McMurray 2001), accelerated mobility leading to new forms of diversity (e.g. Vertovec 2007) or other forms of rapid change. So-called boom-and-bust cycles, that is cyclical expansions and contractions of regional economies, moreover, have their own specialised literature, much of it focusing on resource economies in the USA (e.g. Smith et al. 2001). Much of this research has a policy perspective (e.g. Jacquet 2009; Taylor and Winter 2013). In a study carried out at the beginning of the shale oil boom in the Marcellus Shale region in the Appalachians, Jeffrey Jacquet (2009) mentions some of the typical problems experienced by earlier boomtowns. Referring in particular to studies carried out in the 1970s and early 1980s of energy resource booms in the western US, Jacquet mentions some typical disadvantages experienced by boomtowns: Some of these disadvantages include a lack of information, growth volatility, lack of jurisdiction, conflict between long-term residents and new residents, resistance to new government policy or planning strategies, shortage of staff or expertise, and a lack of or lag in sufficient revenue. (Jacquet 2009: 2) Ironically, Jacquet remarks, many rural communities have been waiting for growth and prosperity for decades, and when development finally comes, there is too much of it, and it comes too fast – almost like the Australian farmer waiting for rain, only to see his fields flooded and his crops destroyed when it eventually arrives.

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The most famous article about the boomtown syndrome in the USA is probably Eldean Kohrs’ study of Gillette, Wyoming (Kohrs 1974). The article, written by a psychologist, vividly describes a society where the pace of change is uneven, making it impossible for services, infrastructure, housing and routine family life to keep up with the huge growth in population. While criticised for its fanciful conjectures and poor methodology, Kohrs’ article introduced the term ‘the Gillette Syndrome’ to boomtown studies, referring to social problems ranging from divorce and alcoholism to poor schooling and crime. A more systematic approach was represented by John Gilmore (1976), who argues that the inadequacy of services and recreational opportunities, along with the high cost of living in the boomtown, makes it difficult to attract a permanent population, especially in sectors such as education, health and shop-keeping, which are not themselves part of the boom. The American literature on energy boomtowns, both the studies from the 1970s and the more recent ones associated with the growth in fracking and shale oil extraction (Jacquet 2009; Putz et al. 2011) is relevant for Gladstone. However, this literature, with its focus on essentially new settlements in old rural areas, is arguably more appropriate for pure mining towns such as Karratha in Western Australia or Moura in Queensland. A policy paper about Darwin, Northern Territory (Taylor and Winter 2013) is in important ways more directly relevant for Gladstone. Darwin, a city of about 140,000, was at the time predicted to become the site of a large LNG plant. The potential negative impacts listed by the authors include crime and anti-social behaviour, economic inequality, strain on services, marginalisation of local residents, loss of control for local authorities as well as pollution and waste issues (Taylor and Winter 2013: 7–8; incidentally, environmental impacts are strangely absent from most of the American literature). As the Gladstone experience reveals, and as I shall presently show, these issues are far from absent there, although its councillors and residents do not confirm the crude dystopianism represented in Kohrs’ ‘Gillette Syndrome’. Gladstone has grown in spurts since the 1960s, unlike the American towns, which were small and mainly rural before the resource boom. The pressures, shortages, anxieties and concerns identified in the American boomtown studies are recognisable in Gladstone, but they are mitigated by the size of the city and its decades-long experience in dealing with fast, sudden changes. The boomtown model discussed by Jacquet and his predecessors may have been accurate for Gladstone in the early years of QAL – people living in tents on the showgrounds, Saturday night brawls on Goondoon Street, broken marriages and rampant alcoholism, cramped schools and poor health services – but contemporary Gladstone

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has learnt to embrace accelerated change. This does not mean that the city is immune to the ailments and problems identified by the American researchers. Nevertheless, its councillors, industry leaders and residents may be better prepared to deal with them. They have been there before, and many Gladstonites now on the cusp of retirement arrived in the city during the first period of accelerated growth. The complexity of the local economy, which includes several large employers, also entails that it is realistic to find new jobs when the current one is lost (provided the fossil fuel economy continues to thrive). The economic monocultures of the American boomtowns do not offer these options.

gladstone as a boomtown The expression ‘boom and bust’ often crops up when local people talk about Gladstone, but I once heard a woman being corrected by her husband, a local politician and businessman, when she told me about boom and bust: ‘We haven’t really had any busts yet,’ he said. ‘It’s more appropriate to talk of boom and plateau.’ The most intensive ‘boom’ periods in Gladstone’s recent history have coincided with intensive periods of construction, when large numbers of workers have been brought in and the demand for labour, qualified as well as unqualified, has brought salaries up and placed pressure on the existing infrastructure. Older Gladstonites may reminisce about the ‘wild west’ period in the mid-1960s during construction of QAL, when people had to make do with very modest facilities by Australian standards. Indeed, young George of Boomtown and his family lived in the caravan park during the first period. (‘That’s about the only thing it got right,’ a local man remarked.) During the construction boom in Gladstone, rumours went around about the conditions on the island and the exorbitant salaries. Locals were tempted by the high wages on the construction sites, destabilising the local labour market. Temporary accommodation was put into place, barrack-style but well equipped. The face of the city itself was also changing. The new ring road south of the city, Kirkwood Road, was opened only in 2012, yet new suburbs immediately began to sprout along it, while previous developments have seen the urbanisation of other, formerly unutilised areas. Old houses have been torn down and replaced with unit blocks, hotels and office buildings. Vessel movements in the harbour increased more than 1,000 per cent from one year to the next. Let me now give a systematic overview of general boomtown characteristics, drawing on the Gladstone material, but with a few sideways glances.

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High Cost of Living A universal characteristic of the boomtown is an increased cost of living. It is related to overheated labour and housing markets, but Gladstonites claim that goods and services are also overpriced there.1 The main cause of the high cost of living in the city is the real estate market. This factor has important social implications, affecting the composition of the population, cultural life, volunteering, job recruitment and retail. An expensive city without many obvious natural or cultural attractions is unlikely to develop a vibrant artistic community, as young people with such inclinations leave for more stimulating environments with cheaper rents. (Interestingly, a number of artists have recently moved into a former boomtown gone into decline decades ago, namely Detroit. They were attracted by the low cost of living, the city’s rich industrial history and the rustic charm of abandoned buildings (Fennell 2015).) Local retailers in Gladstone have seen rents increase, and some have gone out of business, leaving their premises to resource companies or large chains. The increased cost of living in a boomtown is both a cause and an effect, and it leads to the kinds of destabilisation I will presently examine. Volatile Labour Market All bubbles eventually burst, and boomtowns never last. This also means that they do not offer a high job supply indefinitely, but are bound to enter into decline sooner or later. Ferguson (1999) has described this situation as regards the Zambian Copperbelt; however, as I have shown, at the time of fieldwork, there was no indication of bust in Gladstone. Rather, the continuously high demand for certain kinds of labour led to what looked like a permanent disequilibrium in the labour market. Notably, in a boomtown, it becomes difficult to find staff for jobs outside of the booming sectors. As a spokesperson for the Gladstone Chamber of Commerce says: ‘There has been abundant work available on Curtis Island, and at other new industrial sites such as Wiggins Island, in construction; it is highly paid, and it is impossible to compete in terms of wages.’ Electricians, fitters and builders have a field day when construction is booming, but virtually anyone, though far more men than women are hired, could find work on the site, so many Gladstonites left their jobs for greener pastures when Bechtel were hiring. Sectors in direct competition with Bechtel were affected, such as garages, electricians and 1.  This is, from my observations, an exaggeration, although it is true that petrol sometimes costs 7¢ more a litre in Gladstone than in Rockhampton.

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builders. (This made it easier for skilled immigrants to find work.) Even QAL encountered difficulties in recruiting staff, since they could not compete economically with Bechtel. As a labour recruiter pointed out, QAL, which offered training either on site or in collaboration with EQIP, found that many young men left for Curtis Island the moment they got their trade. I asked, ‘But that is temporary work – what do they do when the construction is finished?’ ‘Well, they’ll have to look for something else, I guess.’ Other sectors are also affected by temporary booms which drive the cost of living up, and which force most sectors to raise their salaries. Recruiting competent medical personnel for the two hospitals in the city became difficult (and, as noticed, complaints about the quality of the hospital are very widespread), but the public sector also registered problems in filling vacancies for policemen, teachers and office workers. A stubborn rumour went around that the local McDonald’s restaurants (there are two) even flew people in and out – they had access to temporary staff accommodation – for a while. This rumour was never confirmed for Gladstone (but for the isolated mining town of Mt Isa in northern Queensland, it was); in any case, staff at local fast-food chains were very young. At McDonald’s, both in Biloela and Gladstone, several were barely out of puberty. At a fried chicken outlet in Gladstone, the girl behind the till, who was also responsible for sweeping and cleaning the dining section of the shop, was 14. Her two colleagues in the kitchen, handling the deep frying pans, were 16 and 17. All went to school and worked in the chicken joint on weekends. At the same time, the outlet advertised for part-time staff. ‘No experience needed’, the sign said, encouragingly.2 The official unemployment rate in Gladstone being low, it is alleged that the unemployed mainly consist of ‘people who don’t want to work’. It should be pointed out, though, that many women work part-time or not at all. While this is economically feasible, since they would have well-paid husbands, many women who move to Gladstone with their families have clerical or administrative skills which are less sought after than trade skills. Several recruitment companies, such as Adecco and Phoenix, have offices in Gladstone. I spoke to a couple of their managers, including Robert, who runs a recruitment office on Goondoon Street. Recruiting 2.  ‘This’, Anna Hitchcock points out (personal communication), ‘is standard practice in fast food outlets in Australia, young people are cheaper and these are considered entry level jobs which provide valuable training – those who don’t have any job experience by the time they are 18 are less employable – however, in areas with higher unemployment you will see a scattering of older workers among the teenagers!’

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both for the private and public sectors, he confirmed that it was difficult to find people for low-paid jobs such as traffic control. (These are the people who hold up a sign with ‘Stop’ on one side and ‘Go slowly’ on the other where there are roadworks.) Curtis Island, he confirmed, had been a drain on the local labour supply, but added that the situation was more serious in smaller, more isolated mining towns such as Miles and Moranbah (in the interior of Queensland), where the cost of living was so high and the isolation such that they had to FIFO policemen and nurses. The high salaries in the booming sectors are partly a function of scale and time. The conglomerate commissioned by the GPC to dredge the harbour were paid about $1 million a day for the job, and they had a deadline tied to penalties if it was not met. They thus had a strong incentive to pay their employees well, and put a bonus system in place, since they needed to use incentives to keep productivity high. ‘In this context,’ Robert says, ‘an extra $10,000 in salaries is nothing when you consider the price of not getting the work done in time.’ Scale is also a factor in housing construction. Whereas, in the case of Bechtel or the dredging company, labour costs were a relatively small proportion of the total expenditures (or contract terms) owing to the scale of their engineering project, small-scale companies are frequently outcompeted by larger companies in a boomtown like Gladstone due to a different functioning of scale. In the last chapter, I told the story of a shop-owner who had provided detailed prices for a large number of items to Bechtel, only to have the company negotiate discounts with a nationwide chain using this information. Owing to economies of scale, local builders have not benefited as much as might be expected from the housing boom. The new suburbs tend to be constructed by larger firms, some based in Brisbane, resulting in few local jobs. A consultant working for the Chamber of Commerce comments: ‘Well, yeah, large companies from Brisbane would come up and build at a lower price than the local builders were able to – the workers might even sleep in the half-finished houses.’ Speed is important in boomtown labour regimes, and the prospects for quick profits may lead to reduced worker security. Hugh, a fitter and turner, tells a story about the way in which he was bought off by a major company following an incident at work that permanently damaged his back, in order to ensure that he would not report them. On another occasion, when he got dripping caustic soda down his cheeks (his goggles saved his eyesight), not being allowed to return to work until the wounds had healed, he was sent on sick leave with the flu. ‘Caustic flu, we call it in the trade,’ he adds.

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To sum up, the boomtown economy in Gladstone has led to a disequilibrium in the labour market, an uneven wage structure, a shortage of qualified staff for jobs in the non-booming sector, a scaling-up of key sectors such as building, leading large companies to outbid local ones, and reduced worker security as well as job security. It is also a prerequisite that the houses, or services, are easily scalable, can be assembled from modules and mass produced. Housing Shortages When Margaret Mead (2002 [1956]) argued that different parts of a culture change at different speeds, she was talking about social change in Manus Island (Melanesia), not the local effects of the Australian mining boom. However, the unevenness of change is characteristic of a boomtown such as Gladstone, too. Overheated cities (Eriksen 2016a: chapter 5), that is cities that grow extremely fast, suffer from a mismatch between the population size and the available infrastructure. In Gladstone, both its first and second significant booms – in the late 1960s/early 1970s and from 2010 to 2015 – created acute housing shortages and rocketing real estate prices. Seen from the perspective of the settled individual who owns his or her own house, this situation could be an incentive to move elsewhere. As a real estate agent told me: At the peak, you might have to pay $1000 a week to rent a good family home. Sounds like a good deal if you’ve got one of those houses to rent out – $52,000 a year for doing nothing! It would be difficult to find a three-bedroom house for less than $500,000. Prices have gone down a bit now [early 2014], and will presumably decline further when the building boom is over. Many qualified professionals (teachers, nurses and so on) and pensioners have left Gladstone during the boom, either because they could no longer afford the rent, or because of the temptation to sell at a profit. ‘If you can sell your house, buy an identical one an hour or two further south, in Hervey Bay or Bundaberg, with a profit of say $200,000, it is tempting to go ahead,’ as one pensioner puts it. Both in terms of gender, age and profession, this development has shaped the demographic composition of the city. Although prices were on their way down during fieldwork, TV commercials tempting speculators to invest in Gladstone real estate and rent out to rich corporations were still on air then. One of them, produced by ‘Positive Real Estate TV’, had the heading ‘Gladstone Goldmine!’

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At the height of the housing shortage, in 2011–12, when Bechtel and the port had hired all their staff but accommodation was still scarce, families and individuals were living in caravans and filling up the few inexpensive motels and hostels. In 2014, some workers were still living in the caravan park, but most had been resettled elsewhere. Many young men shared suburban houses leased by their companies. Vicki recalls, in a text prepared for me: During the housing boom, suddenly ten blokes were living in a house on our street. They were just pushed in like guinea-pigs. This was before they had the camps ready on the island and at Calliope. And now, prices have fallen. There was someone near us who tried to sell their house before Christmas and had a contract to sell it for $405,000. It fell through, and in the end, they sold it last week [January 2014] for $350,000. And look at all these new … buildings going up; many of those units are going to remain empty. Vicki’s experience-based view, shared by many Gladstonites, is confirmed by statistics provided by the property valuation firm Herron Todd White in Brisbane. They confirm that contrary to expectations of stable prices, real estate prices had declined by 20 per cent in 2013, and vacancy rates had doubled from 3.7 to 7.9 per cent (Herron Todd White 2014), adding that ‘the increase in vacancy rates is attributed to the oversupply of new housing and unit stock’. House prices are among the most commonly invoked examples of boom-and bust cycles; they are subject to complex factors including both demography and psychology. Although the current boom was approaching its end in 2014, with a predicted decline in the regional labour market as a result, new suburbs were still being built along the southern perimeter of the city. In the city, the new Oaks Hotel opened in January 2014, and several new blocks (apartment buildings) were also under construction at that time. This indicates that real estate investors agreed with the Chamber of Commerce (cf. chapter 3) that the decline was temporary. Other boomtowns past their prime have fared differently (and Gladstone still may). Cities in the American ‘rust belt’ from Detroit to western Pennsylvania are frequently mentioned, but several Australian mining towns are also partly abandoned, decrepit and cheap. The town of Mount Morgan is virtually a ghost town thirty years after the closing of the gold mine; Cleary (2011: 155) describes the larger Queenstown in Tasmania, next to the once hugely profitable copper mine Mt Lyell,

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as a ‘shadow of the glory days’, with a population of just 2000 and very inexpensive homes. A reason why the council has approved nearly all new applications for house-building is that their main source of income consists in the council rates paid by homeowners. Unlike municipal government in some countries, where residents pay local income tax, Australian councils are comparatively poor – the expression rates, roads and rubbish is sometimes used to describe the limits of their power. The rates amount to roughly 4 per cent of the taxes paid by homeowners, but councils also get some funding from the state government. However, since the owner of a residential building has to pay rates even if the units are empty and unsold, there is a strong incentive to approve any unit buildings (and, if need be, demolish whatever was there before) because it is directly profitable for the council. Pressure on Services and Infrastructure In a situation of fast urban growth in a wealthy country like Australia, typical resources in short supply include water, electricity, transport, school facilities and daycare, health services, housing, rubbish collecting and other municipal services. Indeed, the only resource that has not been in short supply, one might say, is work. In a report produced by the regional council, with a focus on increasing ethnic diversity, the author asks, in a subheading: ‘Can the Gladstone region’s current social infrastructure cope with an estimated increase of 30% in population?’ He immediately answers his own question: ‘Not surprisingly, the short answer is no’ (GRC 2013: 12). The subsequent focus in the report is on institutions and activities that may facilitate integration of newcomers, especially those from overseas, to which I shall return. City councillors involved in planning identify a clash of temporal scales between the short and the long term. One of them puts it as follows: ‘When the population expands and contracts the way it inevitably does in towns that go through this kind of cyclical change, maintaining a certain level of service provision becomes almost impossible.’ Another city councillor speaks about the inevitability for large numbers of people to be prepared to move, since the demand for some kinds of labour will vary. ‘But you know, at the moment, we are expanding, and finding trained staff for the hospitals and schools is a challenge.’ In other boomtowns, water and electricity supply becomes a problem; this is not the case in Gladstone, where the Awoonga dam ensures an abundant

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supply of water (although complaints about its quality are common), and where the state’s largest power station is located within the city limits. Apart from the limited shopping opportunities, the most commonly heard complaint about services in Gladstone concerns the hospitals (there is one public and one private, separated by a corridor). One young woman whose brother has a chronic disease says she that has to go to the hospital frequently for her brother, and finds the situation ‘ridiculous’: ‘Anything besides a blood test or an x-ray requires at least a two-hour drive, usually longer. Often you have to go as far as Bundaberg or Brisbane to see specialists who are very much needed here in Gladstone.’ The intensive care unit at the local hospital was closed down years ago. During fieldwork, I had a minor medical issue myself, and got to know a doctor in one of the hospitals. He had an excellent reputation in the city, was American, and I asked him why he had ended up here. The answer was that he had been sailing across the Pacific and had met his wife-to-be on the Queensland coast. Some, especially mothers, are worried about the quality of the schools, claiming that far too many inexperienced and perhaps unqualified teachers are let loose on their children. One mother, in her thirties, added that they needed more childcare in the region; she thought the industry should build a few 24/7 kindergartens, to cater for shift workers. In fact, QAL has kindergartens with flexible opening hours, but only for its own employees. The speed of growth in the housing sector also raises eyebrows. Vicki claims that the town had become uglier and more untidy since the LNG boom, with less careful planning, less time to look after the surroundings and less consideration, because of the rush to make money, and she repeats an often-heard story about money, vulgarity and the lack of community feeling: Three or four blokes move into a rental house, and the first thing they do is to rip out the front fence and any plants growing in the front yard, and then they park all their big, brand new cars all over what used to be the front garden and footpath. She adds that the noise of chainsaws has become common, in her view not a pleasant sound. Moreover, it must be kept in mind that the new suburbs built to accommodate a fast-growing population, are standardised, module-based and built very quickly, in response to the pressures in the real estate market. After the boom, or the ‘crazy period’, many units and houses are almost impossible to sell. Their owners, often corporate, are waiting for the next boom.

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Increased but Limited Diversity A boomtown relies on developing practices for the fast integration of new arrivals. In male-dominated mining towns, the pubs frequented after work may be the main sites of local integration, and there may be little interaction with settled residents. Owing to its size and complexity, Gladstone is different. At a breakfast meeting in Gladstone library, organised by the council and aimed at welcoming new residents, information folders (which could also be obtained on a USB stick) were distributed. Three councillors as well as the mayor were present. There was tea and coffee, juice, fruit, muffins, some sweets and sandwiches. Maybe a little over a dozen actual newcomers attended; there were nearly as many working for the council or library or as a language teacher. The idea was to help people to settle, provide information about social services, offer English conversation classes if needed, while the brochure walked the newcomers through the steps to becoming a full resident of Gladstone, beginning with ‘finding a place to live’ and ending with volunteering, civil society associations and leisure activities. Many of the people present were women whose husbands worked for one of the industries. One of the councillors present at the breakfast meeting claimed that: seven months ago, you hardly saw a brown face here. You know, unlike in Bundaberg and Mackay and so on, there isn’t a very big Aboriginal community here. You’d see a few at Barney Point, which is where some of them live, but there aren’t many. But now, there’s people here from India, from Sri Lanka, and from I don’t know where, that is a major change which has happened just like this! [snaps fingers] The multicultural officers of the council confirm that there has been a fast diversification of Gladstone’s population, referring to statistics indicating that the proportion of foreign-born in 2011 was 20 per cent, while it had only been 5 per cent in 2001. Admitting that most of the foreign-born are white, they nevertheless refer to the introduction of the 457 visa system, introduced in 1996, which made it easier for non-citizens to live and work in Australia for up to four years. Luis Arroyo and Veronica Laverick of the council emphasise the search for common denominators as a way of handling diversity. ‘Here, we say inclusion, not multiculturalism‚’ Veronica says. Luis adds: ‘We emphasise similarity, what we have in common, instead of difference, which can be divisive – while at the same time celebrating diversity.’

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Low-hanging fruit, or easy common denominators, are conversations about children and sport. Participation in civil society is also encouraged. Thomas: What are the main sources of tension and conflict? Veronica: Well, often it is a lack of understanding of Australian law. For example, when there is domestic violence, many, not least from the Middle East, think that the partner, or victim, has to lodge a complaint. That is not the case here; the police can do it. There was a case here quite recently where an entire family was expelled because of domestic violence.   We should have induction briefings explaining why and how people need to respect the law of the country they’re in. Luis: Interfaith work is very important. We go to each other’s ceremonies and rituals. There was recently an interfaith prayer for peace event, and several hundred people took part in the different places of worship. Veronica: But often what we facilitate are simple things, such as: your child has an ear infection, where can you go. Or we organise special swimming classes for [non-Western] immigrant women, making sure that the pool is a no-go zone for men during the classes. They admit that a city like Gladstone ‘takes the cream of the crop’, since the immigrants who arrive do so under a skilled visa (the 457). ‘But skills may vary,’ Veronica says. The immigrants may work in the hospitality industry, with fruit picking, but also in local industries who lost people to the LNG construction sites – the car dealers didn’t get apprentices, everybody left for mining or LNG when the boom started – they couldn’t get mechanics. Well, they were offered 26 trained Filipinos, and to my knowledge, most of them are still there. Both Veronica and Luis are adamant that the council does not build dependencies. ‘We are the spider,’ Veronica concludes. ‘Our job is to create connections and build capacity in community groups.’ Diversity work, whether undertaken by the council, by WIN or others, emphasises common denominators and shared practices, thereby fitting into the modules that make up the dominant Gladstonian way of life. Asking them what it takes to be a full member of Gladstone society, they answer by referring to ‘a quirky sense of humour, as in getting the joke’;

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they also mention ‘fair dinkum’ and sport. Cheering for the Maroons (Queensland) in the State of Origin series in rugby between New South Wales and Queensland, is essential. Thomas: Speaking Australian English? Luis: Yeah. That’s it. Absolutely. An educator who had been working with minority children and adults for many years confirmed this view, but she added that the complexities of local language were often underestimated. Patricia: [Some] get devastated and humiliated when they realise that the kind of English they know won’t work here. In Australia, there isn’t much dialect variation, but there are a lot of idiomatic expressions. For example, there was a guy, from an Asian country, who worked as a mechanic, and found it virtually impossible to understand the instructions from the boss. I went there, and his boss used, on purpose it seemed, a lot of local expressions. He would say, to this immigrant, to look out for Joe Blake when he went out with the rubbish. But there wasn’t anybody called Joe Blake in the garage. What he meant was snakes, Joe Blake is a slang term for snakes.3 Thomas: I didn’t know that … Patricia: No, it’s not even very common, it is an old expression, and young people today probably wouldn’t get it either. He also asked me the exact meaning of ‘wanker’. It was not a word he had learnt in his English classes. Thomas: This sounds like a form of verbal bullying to me. Patricia: That’s exactly what it was. But there you are. There are some specific Queensland words as well, such as ‘port’ [-manteau] for luggage. Thomas: Well, in every language you have written and spoken registers … Patricia: Yes, for example how people say ‘fucking’ all the time, especially boys and men. Thomas: Often twice in the same sentence. Patricia: I’d say three times. But I won’t have that in my class. Not with my students. But you know, when I go out to the cattle station, I use that word a lot myself. 3.  This kind of rhyming slang (snake – Blake) has its origins in Cockney slang.

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All other things being equal, the entrance ticket into the boomtown is cheaper than into an historically rooted, established community, but what Patricia refers to is mainly a pan-Australian grammar of inclusion/ exclusion and code of interaction. In the boomtown of Gladstone, people on 457 visas are less readily included than others; they are there on a temporary permit, and struggle with cultural differences and informal everyday communication. If Muslim, they may also not participate in the quintessential activities of the sausage sizzle and pub crawl. However, as long as they are self-reliant and contribute to the economy, they are accepted. The only overt anti-Muslim discourse encountered during my fieldwork (which was finished just ahead of the Syrian refugee crisis) concerned future scenarios, as when Richie, a fitter at QAL, says, ‘We’ll soon have a big problem with the Muslims here, just look at what’s happening elsewhere. Those people just like to fight, it seems.’ The emphasis on similarities rather than differences, signalled by the integration officers in the council, is important, and confirms that the dominant grammar of inclusion rests on sameness rather than complementarity. Flexibility Budgets In a boomtown, people become accustomed to thinking flexibly about their future. You may be a plumber with a mortgage and family in Gladstone – so going to Western Australia when the boom is over, is not an option, you’re committed to staying here. Yet you leave your job, tempted by the high wages on Curtis Island, and go to work on a construction site for three years. Construction is then done, and you’re out of a job. Perhaps you’ll end up doing something other than plumbing, since your job is no longer vacant. But you feel confident that you will find a new job. The boomtowns studied in the social sciences – from the copper towns in Southern Africa in the 1940s to the shale oil towns in the US in the 2000s – differ from Gladstone in their lack of options beyond the one industrial or extractive operation that drew people to the place initially. Gladstone is a port city, but it is also an alumina city, a cement city, a railway city, an energy city, a cyanide city and, now, an LNG city. While construction on Curtis Island was still at its height, lobbying and campaigning went on, through the press, through the Engineering Alliance and the Chamber of Commerce, via the council and the regional politicians in state and federal parliaments, to attract new large-scale investments and employment for the substantial locally based class of mainly male, trained, experienced industrial workers.

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Thousands of Gladstonites have steady jobs, and many have held on to them for decades. Yet few of those I spoke to were totally alien to the thought that they might do something different in a year or five. A few do invoke ‘sour grapes’ analogies when asked about the buzz, turbulence and chances to make a quick buck during the boom. Ron, who has worked at QAL for more than twenty years, speaks dismissively of Curtis Island as a place of disappointment. ‘The moment they arrive, they discover that it isn’t a tropical paradise at all, but a place full of fucking sandflies, with no crystal-clear waters or coconut trees. Not to mention the [exhausting] rosters and the lack of family life.’ Gladstonites are expected to be flexible in the face of infrastructural changes, changes in employment opportunities and the size and demographic composition of the city. Yet, increased flexibility in one area tends to lead to reduced flexibility elsewhere (Eriksen 2007). New information technology, for example, increases the user’s flexibility with respect to place (you can do your work anywhere – for example, I’m writing these lines on a tropical island which does have coconut trees and crystal waters), but reduces flexibility with regard to time (the temporal gaps are being filled up). Since the Gladstone business elite, council workers, educational institutions and trained labour force are all geared towards industrial activities, the city has few options for diversifying into non-industrial projects. Indeed, some of the alternative forms of livelihood, such as fishing and mango farming, have been phased out as a direct consequence of industrial side-effects, and pastoral farmers outside Gladstone are also struggling, partly because of the adverse effects of mining. Asking a Gladstone stalwart – a member of several civil society organisations and an active organiser – about the detrimental side-effects of progress in Australia, she answered: ‘Well, Australia is progressing, it is a great country with huge natural resources, and everybody is reasonably upbeat. But there is one thing: education. At all levels. It is deteriorating.’ She referred to Australia as a whole, not just Gladstone or Queensland. A less well-educated man, currently working as a bus driver for Bechtel, confirmed this assertion by stating that Australia had become like ‘just one big mega mine’; he would want his own children to study in a big city, or preferably overseas, ‘to get a larger perspective on things’ and learn a broader set of skills. It stands to reason that boomtowns would not place a premium on education. The explosive overheating embodied in boomtowns encourages, rather, the full utilisation of human resources which are already there or can easily be obtained, and which can readily be utilised. This ability creates great flexibility within the narrow field of resourcebased industries, but reduces flexibility in other areas of economic

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activity. This dependency on a restricted set of skills shared by many and economic activities on a large scale not only sheds light on the ‘Dutch disease’, but may also explain why boom is so often followed by bust instead of adjustment or shift. Transience and Presentism I have briefly mentioned the existence of a kind of residential house called a Queenslander. By European standards, they are not very old, sometimes dating from the 1930s or even 1950s. They are built on wooden stumps with storage space and sometimes a car parking space underneath, designed to be well ventilated, flood resistant and cool at the height of summer. They are constructed so as to make the most of cool breezes and shade, with windows that may be opened in perpendicular ways to maximise the breeze regardless of its direction. During the flooding in early 2013, when new concrete houses in suburbs and estates were flooded along the Queensland coast, most Queenslanders were left undamaged. The new, modular houses are placed directly on concrete slabs; they are airtight, dependent on air-conditioning for most of the year and helpless in the case of a flood. Yet the skills that went into making the old-fashioned Queenslander resilient in the local climate are not being reproduced, and many of these houses are being demolished to make way for new buildings. One reason may be that the skills and materials required to produce a Queenslander are not scalable – they are neither generic nor susceptible to standardised mass production. Each of these houses has to be built separately from scratch, and they are built to suit a particular climate, while the modular, mass-produced estate houses are identical from Cairns to Sydney. A loss of collective memory results when older buildings are unceremoniously demolished. In Rockhampton, there are many older buildings testifying to the wealth of the region, most of them connected to the Mount Morgan mine. Along the Fitzroy River, there is an imposing row of stately late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century residential buildings, which are unrivalled by anything in Gladstone. Historically conscious Gladstonites therefore protested strongly when the first town hall, from 1869, was due for demolition. Others believed that the past should be left behind for the future to shine as brightly as possible. This material transience, recalling one of Connerton’s arguments in How Modernity Forgets (Connerton 2009), is mirrored in the transience of people in the boomtown. Jake describes his and his wife’s early years. They met in Canberra as students, and then took off to Western Australia. At first, they lived for a few years in Fremantle while he worked

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in different parts of the huge iron-ore mining district of Pilbara further north. After working in Gladstone for some years, they later took a year off, criss-crossing the country. ‘You can meet people from Gladstone almost everywhere, since it is such an unstable, mobile community,’ Jake says. ‘For example, at the pub in outback New South Wales, near the borders with Victoria and South Australia, I went to have a piss, and who do I meet in the toilet? A bloke I knew from Gladstone, and it was hey Jake, how are you doing and so on.’ They eventually left Gladstone to live in a city further south. In Queensland, FIFO work is mainly associated with mining and construction. According to the Queensland Resources Council, about 1000 miners live in the Sunshine Coast, 800 in the Gold Coast, 3700 in Mackay, 2000 in Rockhampton and 2850 in Townsville (Gladstone Observer, 4 December 2014). The 5000 FIFOs (or DIDOs) developed a tenuous and ephemeral relationship to the city, as noted earlier. FIFO work is temporary and transient, but so is construction work on Curtis Island for the locals. As a marine superintendent pointed out, there is a ‘big difference between living on the island as a FIFO, since you sleep five minutes from your workplace, and living at home in Gladstone and spending at least a couple of hours every day just commuting to work.’ Thus the construction period becomes a state of exception for the local workers as well. The large number of transient men populating the boomtown attracts sex workers, which is probably a generic trait of boomtowns everywhere. Again, Vicki has some acute observations: I am assuming this from the number of ads in the Gladstone Observer. Although this isn’t surprising, I find it significant because it seems that most of these women seem to be from overseas, and most likely the Philippines. So, has the LNG development here in Australia resulted in exploitation of people from poorer countries? Following LNG, a number of Chinese massage parlours have also opened in Gladstone. A regular customer with one of them reports that the staff turnover is fast, and that they seem to work long hours with low wages. An implication of the mobility of the Gladstone population is difficulty in getting reliable statistics on the health effects of living there. Jane says that people ‘simply don’t live there long enough, and aren’t traced later. But I know many who had anything from skin blotches to asthma, and who recovered almost immediately when they moved elsewhere.’ Intriguingly, Gladstone is number two of all Australian cities regarding the use of solar power, with 28 per cent of households partly (or, in rare

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cases, fully) covering their energy needs with solar power. Nearly all go on the grid after dark, since batteries are expensive and require considerable space. Many use solar units with batteries for camping, but most combine solar with grid electricity, using the former for hot water and appliances such as fridges and freezers. One woman in her thirties who works for a recently established solar energy company in Gladstone says that: this [January 2014] has been our best month since we started up in April. People got their electricity bill in December, due on the 27th, and they had no clue as to where they’d get the money. With us, it was just $550, but many people, who leave the aircon on in all rooms, and have a pump and filters for the swimming pool, it could run to $1200 or $1400 dollars [for three months], and well, they realised that they couldn’t really afford it. So they came here, and I’d say that about 60 per cent of those who enquire about it, end up installing solar. In her reasoning, the motivation for installing solar panels was mainly economic. Since, as she says, ‘Gladstone is a funny place – many just stay for a few years and then move on,’ people must be prepared to stay in the city for at least another two or three years for the solar to pay off in economic terms. She adds: But if you’re not home during the day, it makes less sense as you’d go on the grid after dark. But the hot water, obviously, stays hot during the night. But yeah, the people who install solar would be prepared to live here, and not just for a short time. People working at QAL, [the smelter at] Boyne Island, the power station … The commitment to solar power (as part of the electricity supply) for a substantial part of Gladstone’s population thus indicates that the transience does not include everyone. There is a large category of Gladstonites who may not have been born there, but who have spent much of their lives in the city, and who do not intend to move in a foreseeable future. Stress The industrial boom in Gladstone relies on a flexible, mobile and transient workforce. FIFOs live away from their home communities most of the time; locals have to comply with long hours and long commutes.

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As Rachel, a nurse in her forties, says, echoing what is a common view in Gladstone: Working on Curtis Island is OK for young blokes who want to save for a down payment on a home, but it is not OK for people your age or mine, who have families. You work twelve-hour shifts with only Sunday off. We have a friend, he lives out on Boyne Island with his family, and when Sunday comes, he just wants to sleep. He doesn’t even want to go out for a meal or something, since he has to get up at 4:30 to catch the boat. They love it the first two months since it is so well paid, but after six months, or seven, they hate it. I wouldn’t do it myself. I like my lifestyle. Drug use is commonly associated with boomtowns. In Australia, marijuana is the most common illegal drug, but many workers in the Gladstone industry have reputedly turned to pills and powders, since marijuana stays in the blood for days after smoking, while other drugs (barbiturates, cocaine, etc.) leave the body within 24 hours. This means that workers can take these drugs on Saturdays and still be clean if they have to submit to a urine test on Monday morning. It is not likely that most Curtis Island workers take illegal drugs, but the fact that drug-testing is common (which it is at QAL and the port as well) shows that industry leaders see it as a problem. Rumour has it that drug use is almost ubiquitous. There is a small fleet of barges moving machinery and trucks back and forth to the island, and, allegedly, all the skippers were once drug tested. According to the story, the majority failed the test. So they just stopped testing them, otherwise there wouldn’t be enough sailors to get the job done. Although numbers aren’t available, it is not unreasonable to assume that drug usage is widespread among shift workers on demanding rosters. When asked, workers are divided in their moral judgements on the issue, some insisting on respectability, others taking a more liberal view. In the boomtown, routines are easily disrupted; to some, it just means having to cope with increased traffic or new pupils in the children’s school, but for those who are at its epicentre, the unpredictability is pronounced and can lead to stress. Most stories are either about drugs or disruptions of family life. It was Jane who introduced me to the concept of the Pilbara widow. Speaking of her own experience as a spouse living more than 1000 km from her husband’s workplace, she reminisces: He’d be gone for three weeks, and you didn’t really have a lot to do. You couldn’t even date. You couldn’t call your boyfriend or husband in the

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Pilbara, he had to call you. So you’d wait for him to call over satellite to your landline – at that time, mobile phones were not very widespread. One evening, I went out with some other girls for a movie and some drinks, and didn’t return until eleven thirty – by which time he’d tried to call many times and was slightly exasperated and a little worried. Many marriages are broken, or strained, owing to FIFO work. As one ex-wife of a shift-worker says: One thing is the blokes who go out with their mates instead of being around the house when they finally come home for a few days. Another kind is those who don’t really care about children’s issues and problems, who don’t contribute to giving them a proper upbringing, and continue along these lines after they’ve done with FIFO work. Charlie, a miner in the interior of Queensland, tells about workmates with young families at home who seem to be constantly heartbroken about not being at home. ‘One bloke, he kept telling his wife and daughter down in Victoria on the phone that he was doing it for them. But I dunno. Perhaps he was doing it for himself, but was too screwed up mentally to realise it.’ Research on stress among Australian miners (Vojnovic and Bahn 2015) confirms that FIFO work can be psychologically debilitating. However, the stress experienced by non-FIFOs in a boomtown is equally interesting, the sense of job uncertainty, fragile intimate relations, an unsatisfactory and limited social life and a chronic sense of temporariness. Demographic Imbalances In December 2014, the Gladstone Observer published statistics showing that Gladstone was the fifth ‘worst Aussie town for single blokes’, with a male to female ratio of 141 to 100. Owing to the transience of much of the population, population statistics are uncertain, but if the FIFO workers are included, the ratio would be even more skewed towards men. And not just men, but men of a certain class and age – industrial workers, many between 20 and 45. Many locals profited economically from the shortage of housing resulting from the boom. Those with units or houses to let made good money during construction on the island; those in a position to sell similarly profited. However, the housing situation has led to a change in the demographic composition of Gladstone, destabilising important institutions in civil society. Many of those who have left are pensioners, who either could no longer afford the rent, or who were tempted by the

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prospect of selling in Gladstone and buying a similar house at a lower price just a couple of hours further south, in a healthier and prettier environment. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to recruit people for voluntary and charity work, which largely depends on retirees. Another group that has been reduced in numbers following the boom consists of unskilled workers unable to pay the higher rents. Young people who do not work in the industry, or who have other interests, left, and as a result, as Vicki puts it, ‘it seemed as if almost every business suddenly had a sign out advertising job vacancies’. Moreover, as a professional woman in her forties told me, she had never done football refereeing in her life until construction on Curtis Island began, but she was now getting the hang of it, since mothers had to take on the tasks typically assigned to fathers. The boom also affects the everyday demography of localities, with suburbs being more heavily dominated by women and children than before. ‘Why do you think I live at Tannum Sands?’ an industrial consultant asked, rhetorically, implicitly referring to the fact that this southern suburb close to a clean and inviting beach is located upwind from the alumina refinery and aluminium smelter, precluding toxic fumes from entering the local air. However, she added, the drive to Gladstone harbour takes half an hour or more, and many of the men in the quiet suburb of Tannum now work on the island. Since many pensioners have also left the city, organising children’s sports events in the weekends has become a challenge, as these activities also depend on the voluntary work of parents and grandparents. This means that their work regime is such that they are no longer available to referee children’s sport competitions at weekends. So, she concludes, without commenting on the quality of marital relations, the mums have to take over the refereeing. While some boomtowns, especially mining towns, have an extremely skewed gender ratio, Gladstone is intermediate owing to its size and complexity. Yet women are under-represented, as are pensioners and students. In addition, gender relations are being destabilised as a result of strenuous shift work.4 Indeterminate Local Identity ‘The first foreigners were Kiwis,’ an elderly member of Rotary Sunrise reminisces, ‘in the early 1980s, perhaps, that might have been, and that was when Gladstone became a community.’ 4.  Curtis Island is more reminiscent of a mining town in this regard than Gladstone, but I did not do fieldwork on the LNG sites.

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‘???’ ‘Why? Well, because everybody bonded together against the foreign intruders!’ The problem with this familiar model of local cohesion, whereby contrasting with ‘the other’ becomes the effective glue of a community, is that a boomtown needs to be open to strangers. As pointed out earlier, there are rules and principles to be obeyed, and there remain issues to do with race and religion, but strangers are, in principle, welcomed to the boomtown since everybody was once a stranger, in Gladstone in a double sense – bar the Aborigines. The main reason for the ecstatic reception of Boomtown, the musical, was probably its ability to produce a credible narrative about Gladstone that gave its residents a sense of self-esteem associated with the dynamism of demographic turbulence, transience and industrialism. In comparative perspective, this may be a rare achievement. When English museums celebrate industrialism, they do so in the past tense. The smoke and noise, uprootedness and uncertainties, filth and hard work of industry are rarely celebrated until they have faded into the past. With Gladstone, it is essential for those who have a stake in its industrial future that the city is promoted as a pleasant place to live, with attractions that go beyond good jobs and generous salaries. Its short history and rapid pace of change preclude a strongly historically rooted identity, and its lack of stability makes it necessary to anchor identity to turbulence. The officially sanctioned story about Gladstone is that progress and development will continue. The main stigma for Gladstone is that it is polluted, soulless and without ‘its own culture’, as the Boomtown composer put it. In other boomtowns studied by members of the Overheating team, concerns are similar in some ways, different in others. In the desert town of Pedregal in Peru, studied by Stensrud (2016), residents openly worry that they have no local culture, no proper identity. Thirty years ago, there were no settlements there; by 2016, thanks to an ambitious irrigation project enabling food production in the desert, the population may have reached 100,000. In Peru, distinct foods, clothes and musical traditions are associated with particular regions, while Pedregal has no such achievements, having no history. As regards Olangopo City in the Philippines, studied by Schober (2016), hardly anybody has lived there all their lives. However, the main concern for the majority is to eke out a living in a region formerly dominated by an American military base, now the site of a Korean-owned shipyard. Gladstone is different from these places mainly in that its population is materially secure. Unlike Pedregal, it is not positioned in a country with strong, historically rooted, regional cultural traditions. Its comparisons with Rockhampton and Bundaberg

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are symmetrical, not complementary; and what it has that they lack, is a relentless commitment to change, progress and development. The building of the Port Access Road, which was completed in 2010, met with some local resistance from residents protesting against the demolition of residential houses and the increased noise resulting from the heavy traffic. However, Gladstone depends on its port, and the road was constructed in an existing railway corridor below the main streets, which reduces the noise and pollution somewhat. It was recently extended westwards, increasing accessibility to the port further, without much protest. Similarly, the university student Alison probably reflects a common perception when she says that, on the whole, developments have been for the better, although she may miss bushlands from her childhood that have been turned into suburbs. There was more pride than outrage to be heard when Kirkwood Road, which connects the Gladstone-Benaraby Road and Dawson Highway, both leading to the Bruce Highway, was opened in April 2012. The Good Zombie One of the most discussed, and perhaps most puzzling, scenes in the Boomtown musical was a dance number featuring a group of zombies dressed in fluorescent yellow and blue work clothes. When the zombies came on stage, many saw it as an insult to the Bechtel workers, whose work might be monotonous, but was useful and necessary for their families and the city to prosper. The zombies began to dance, mechanically but coordinated, to loud, rhythmic music, leading many to revel in the sophisticated choreography and good dancing, concluding that the characterisation of workers as zombies was a tongue-in-cheek way of showing appreciation for their contribution. ‘It turned out that they were good zombies,’ a member of the audience later commented. The zombie scene is, nevertheless, a reminder that people come to Gladstone to work, and that the work can be repetitive, physically exhausting and spiritually and intellectually unrewarding. Jake says that ‘Gladstone is all about work and moving’, and by describing the city through the concept of the boomtown, I have shown some of the social implications of accelerated change mainly from a systemic and structural perspective. I have described the volatile labour market; housing shortages; increased cost of living; pressure on services and infrastructure; forms of flexibility; increased diversity; presentism and transience; stress; skewed gender balance and the city’s indeterminate local identity. For the boomtown to avoid decline and ‘bust’, it continuously needs to change, innovate and introduce new activities. An integral aspect of

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capitalism, the pressure to change and grow, is a local effect of competition as a systemic feature. Fully integrated into world markets, Gladstone is forced to keep abreast of developments elsewhere; it is subject to the whims of the world market, dependent on continued growth in China, in competition with existing and emerging ports elsewhere in Queensland and Australia, and relying on a continued high demand for fossil fuels in spite of growing global concerns about the need to shift to renewable energy. In the final part of this chapter, I examine the commitment to change and innovation as an expression of treadmill capitalism, a globally integrated economic system forcing its participants to stand still at great speed.

gladstone and treadmill capitalism ‘Well, in OUR country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’ ‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’ ‘I’d rather not try, please!’ said Alice. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass In evolutionary biology, the Red Queen effect refers to a particular aspect of competition (van Valen, 1973) or a long-term result of sexual selection. As in the situation involving Alice and the Red Queen, an organism, or species, is forced to evolve continuously merely to survive, since its competitors, prey or predators evolve. As rabbits become faster, foxes have to follow suit in the longue durée of evolution. In Matt Ridley’s (1994) account, the emphasis is on intraspecies competition. If you are a young spruce in a dense forest, you will have to grow to a height of about 30 metres in order to absorb enough sunlight to reproduce, since you are surrounded by trees of the same height. There is no immediate evolutionary or individual advantage in this competitive race, which is why I propose to call it a treadmill syndrome. The trees, one might say, would have been just as healthy and happy if they had settled for a height of 5 or 6 metres; what forces them to grow taller is the height of their neighbours, and the taller tree produces the most pine cones, thereby spreading DNA and programming its offspring to grow tall as well. Although it may look like an accelerated standstill, treadmill competition drives evolution, forcing species and individuals to improve their achievements relative to others over the generations. The ‘compet-

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itive edge’ often invoked in technology and business refers to a quality enabling a company, product or activity to ‘edge’ ahead of the others, who will in turn have to follow suit. There is a resemblance, in other words, between the cheetah evolving greater speed to catch gazelles who are nimbler and faster than their ancestors, and mobile phone developers looking to eclipse their competitors with a sleeker design, better camera or larger screen. You may still ask why this model from evolutionary biology should be applied to processes taking place in society. There is widespread wariness towards applying evolutionary models to the social sciences, often with good reason. Yet, treadmill phenomena are so easily identifiable in social life – in sport, fashion, technology, academic publishing, just to mention a few examples – that the pattern resemblance with events on the savannah, or in the forest, is nothing less than striking (Hessen and Eriksen 2012 is a book-length exploration, in Norwegian, by an anthropologist and a biologist, of this phenomenon). A main difference between cultural and evolutionary treadmills is the fact that humans can decide to do things differently if the spirals of the treadmill threaten to become destructive. One characteristic of the globalised resource economy is nevertheless the lack of a governor or thermostat (Eriksen 2016a) regulating growth and slowing change down when necessary. The local decision-makers in Gladstone have no choice but to play according to the global rules, trying to gain those extra inches enabling them to catch more sunlight than their close competitors. While this form of competition is integral to capitalist growth and prosperity, it is also a recipe for ecological disaster. It encapsulates, in a nutshell, the double bind of contemporary industrial capitalism, suspended in mid-air between growth imperatives and a desire for sustainability. * * * On the basis of the foregoing presentations of Gladstone as a futureoriented boomtown, it may be interesting to examine its relentless growth and openness to change in light of the treadmill model of competition. Underlying questions concern the quality of life and, as mentioned, the costs to the environment, to which I shall soon turn. I previously quoted an environmental activist in Brisbane as saying that ‘there is a need [in Queensland] to build big things to keep people employed’. The mobile workforce of FIFOs and DIDOs engaged in large-scale construction in the Gladstone area – Curtis Island, the new coal terminal, the gas pipelines – would soon need other employment. With imminent port expansion further north at Abbot Point, Port Alma and Hay Point, as well as the likely opening of several huge coal mines in the Galilee Basin, a large quantity of FIFO work would be available

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in Queensland in the coming years as well. The two-fold mobility of thousands of workers – from site to home and back, but also from one site to the next – illustrates the restless, shifting nature of a resource-based growth economy. In resource-rich, vast, thinly-populated Australia, the shifting centres of extraction and construction also require massive worker mobility. Instead of focusing on FIFO work here, it might be instructive to look at the economic situation in Gladstone itself, and for workers living in the region, in a labour market that is expanding and contracting. Although the construction boom on Curtis Island is temporary, city planners and investors assume that the city will continue to grow. Therefore, it is less counterintuitive than it might seem that much of the recent construction of suburbs, and unit buildings downtown, has taken place in 2013–14, towards the end of the current population boom. Population statistics nevertheless show that Gladstone has grown steadily since the mid-1960s, and if the trend continues, the population of the Gladstone region will increase from 70,000 to 100,000 by 2040. Yet, the residents of the city live with uncertainty and risk due to the unpredictability of the labour market, and have become accustomed to thinking flexibly about their future. A worker on Curtis Island in his forties, a fitter and turner with a mortgage and a family in Gladstone, does not see it as an option to move to Western Australia, or even to the Galilee Basin or Abbot Point, when the current boom is over. He had a steady job before the beginning of construction in 2011, but left it, tempted by the high wages on Curtis Island, and went to work on the construction site for four years, well aware that the job was temporary. I asked him if he was worried for the future. He shrugged and said no. There would be a job. However, he was open to the possibility of taking a different kind of job to the one he was trained to do. ‘Any job, actually, as long as it pays.’ There is continuity in Gladstone’s commitment to change. The openness to change and the acknowledgement that change will be necessary simply to stay put recalls the Red Queen phenomenon, or treadmill syndrome. Necessary changes, in Gladstone, are mainly understood as new industrial developments, followed by adjustments in other parts of the social system and infrastructure. As I will show in the next chapter, misgivings about the side-effects of industry are easily interpreted as expressions of disloyalty. Accordingly, residents who worry about the effects of industry on health and the environment often begin their litanies by emphasising that ‘I’m not against industry as such, but …’ . Although there is institutionalised as well as informal discourse about the negative side-effects of change and of continued industrialisation,

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most Gladstonites, and certainly their political and economic leadership, accept or enthuse about change. Leo Zussino, the general manager of the powerful GPC for many years, until retiring against his will in 2013, described his ambition for Gladstone as turning it into ‘the Qatar of the Pacific’ (Fraser 2013) – a glittering metropolis centred on the port and key industries.5 When asked about the rationale of change, Gladstonites may say that ‘it is necessary to keep up’ (with competition, both in and outside of Australia). In other words, again, what they say is tantamount to admitting that change may be necessary in order to stay in the same place. In this, as in other domains, Gladstone represents modernity almost in its ideal-typical form. Acceptance of change is endemic in modernity, but the general lack of nostalgia and the modest interest in history witnessed in Gladstone gives it an identity as a thoroughly futureoriented, progressive city. The treadmill syndrome is internalised almost as a second nature. When, for example, I asked two journalists with the Gladstone Observer about the prospects for the city following the end of construction on Curtis Island, they answered by outlining a number of possible new industrial developments in the near future. The editor at the time, Allen Winter, pointed out that industrialisation in Gladstone had always been characterised by waves of growth, and industrial development would continue. Currently, there was a possibility of a steel mill that might provide 1200 jobs. He also mentioned a possible expansion of the beef industry, and that oil shale extraction was beginning again in Targinnie, just north of the city. (For the ill-fated earlier oil shale venture in Targinnie, see chapter 8.) Winter adds: Concentration creates synergies and makes the region attractive for investors. Also, environmental impacts may be better monitored in a small area than if industries are scattered across a larger region. There are workshops and conferences being held around the region these days, discussing and exploring what will be the next big thing for the city. Something new is necessary. The Gladstone Observer campaigned in favour of the establishment of a steel mill in the early months of 2014, arguing that it would create up to 2000 jobs. Moreover, subcontractors, shopkeepers and service providers would also benefit. It has been estimated that for each person employed by industry in Gladstone, four additional jobs are created elsewhere. 5.  After the end of fieldwork, in 2015, Zussino returned, as chair of the Gladstone Ports Corporation.

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Following the end of construction on Curtis Island (after the end of my fieldwork), five major industrial projects were projected as a means of avoiding decline: the steel plant, a water pipeline connecting Gladstone with Rockhampton, a new gas pipeline to the interior, expansion of the new Wiggins Island coal terminal, and a nickel-processing plant. The rationale behind these major projects, seen from the regional perspective, is to prevent a downward spiral of increased unemployment, reduced returns on investments in real estate, and subsequent repercussions in other sectors. The new suburbs need to be filled, their residents employed. The situation again recalls Jake’s statement about Gladstone being ‘all about work and moving’, but the city is also locked in to a commitment to growth, and since the construction of QAL and the railway line from Moura in the 1960s, growth in Gladstone is tied to the ready availability of affordable fossil fuels in large quantities, which gives it its comparative advantage. There are nevertheless also government-approved plans to develop a major tourist resort in the Gladstone region, specifically on Hummock Island within commuting distance of the city. Called Pacificus, the resort would provide 700 permanent jobs and contribute in interesting ways to the diversification of the regional economy when completed. A $1 billion project, it would also create 3200 temporary jobs of the kind Gladstonites are familiar with, and will need, during the construction phase. Notwithstanding Zussino’s vision for Gladstone as ‘a Qatar of the Pacific’, the commitment to growth and change is chiefly an expression of a wish for things to stay as they are. Stability, in Gladstone, is seen as decline, lack of innovation, allowing others to get ahead. It is therefore a clear expression of treadmill mobility, where you have to run as fast as you can just to stay put. In the previous chapter, I commented on the modularity of Gladstone. For an entity to grow fast, it needs to utilise its energy quickly and efficiently. Simplification, modularisation and standardisation are typical ways in which modern societies grow in scale, as shown by many scholars of modernity. In one of the most widely read books about standardisation and rationalisation from the last few decades, Ritzer (1993) describes the way in which similar entities are being replicated almost infinitely through such means. He coins the evocative word ‘McDonaldization’ to this end. One way of keeping up with treadmill competition from outsiders consists in growing bigger and simplifying each operation, making modules and people interchangeable on a large scale. That which cannot easily be scaled up (‘the nonscalable’, as Anna Tsing, 2012, calls it), may find a niche in the periphery or be driven to extinction. In the

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Australian resource economy, as Cleary (2012) remarks, one of the most striking contemporary features is the huge scale of the new mines; in Gladstone, chain stores outcompete mum-and-dad shops, module-based bungalows are sending the wooden, old-fashioned Queenslanders to oblivion (outside of the outdoor museum segment), and consumer goods are increasingly produced cheaply in massive quantities in China, the cost of transportation having been dramatically reduced by the size of ships and the standardisation of shipping containers. However, even scalable activities reach a threshold, in which case the activity stays below the boundary – for example, the scale of the narrow Malacca Straits is taken into account when new cargo ships are built. Or, if the activity exceeds the threshold limit, collapse ensues. In anthropology, the most famous story about thresholds and collapses is probably Roy Rappaport’s study of pig cycles among the Tsembaga Maring in New Guinea (Rappaport 1968). Pig populations grow steadily, but at a given point, they become unmanageable, destroying crops and forcing the villagers to go ever further into the forest to tend their gardens. The elders then decide to slaughter all the pigs, organise a large feast called a kaiko, and move the village. There is a clear parallel in the contemporary, overheated world. Ancient stored sunlight fuelled growth and prosperity for 200 years, and now threatens to undermine the conditions for the civilisation it helped to build. Treadmill competition in a capitalist world places growth ahead of other considerations, and a possible outcome may be similar to the one in the Tsembaga Maring village, with the exception that we have nowhere to set up our new village. Another analogy may be even more appropriate. In a global situation where there is an expressed wish by world leaders to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and where there is almost unanimous agreement among scientists that greenhouse gases from fossil fuel extraction and consumption destabilise the climate, it is necessary to ask whether the growth of Gladstone, beneficial to the standard of living and facilities available to its population, is seriously harmful at a higher scale. My initial motivation for studying Gladstone was to no small degree its location, as a major coal port and industrial hub, close to the Great Barrier Reef, a powerful symbol of world conservationism currently threatened by global climate change as well as Australian industries. It therefore needs to be asked – and as will be clear in subsequent chapters, the question is being asked by locals – whether the Australian resource boom, as witnessed in the growth and prosperity of Gladstone, is analogous to the case of the Irish elk or that of the peacock’s tail (see also Eriksen 2016a: chapter 2).

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The Irish elk, strictly speaking a very large deer, lived in large parts of Europe and North Africa until it became extinct after the last ice age. It was a large animal. Adult stags were more than 2 metres tall, and their antlers could weigh as much as 40 kilos. The antlers had gradually evolved, partly as a result of sexual selection (those with the largest antlers attracted more females and were able to intimidate rivals) but also as a consequence of the body size. When the Irish elk became extinct, it may have been as a result of its antler size. It may have died out as a result of malnutrition, or because of climate change, or both. When the climate in Europe grew warmer and the vegetation changed, nutrients essential for the large animal to maintain its antlers and skeleton (notably calcium and phosphate compounds) became scarce. In other words, the reproductive advantage of large antlers clashed with the disadvantages, or unintended side-effects, of nutritional requirements. The elk was the victim of its own success or, rather, of having been caught up in a runaway evolutionary process with no thermostat. Now, these hypotheses about the demise of the Irish elk are fanciful, but, as analogies, they enable thinking about dysfunctional treadmill phenomena in contemporary society; where change is necessary in order to stay in the same place within the system, and where uncontrolled runaway processes preclude political or popular governance of the system. The spectacular male peacock’s tail is also a product of sexual selection, as a large and colourful tail attracts females. However, in spite of the obvious disadvantages of dragging a long and heavy tail around, not least in confrontations with predators, the peacock has survived in the wild until the present. Its unwieldy tail, which increases its reproductive chances, is ultimately harmless – unlike the antlers of the Irish elk, which ended up (according to the interpretations pursued) being deadly. Antlers and tails are similar in that they lock their bearers into competitive spirals. Is industrial growth in Gladstone a self-destructive Irish elk, or is it just a harmless peacock’s tail? What makes the simile meaningful is not mainly the potential role of climate change (analogously to the elk: we are digging our own grave), but the contradiction between two goals: short-term success and long-term survival. * * * In the first part of the book, which has now come to an end, I have provided a portrait of the boomtown Gladstone, its economy, its institutions and some of its residents, describing its history and dominant local perspectives on change, growth and development, as well as some of the perceived negative side-effects, paradoxes and contradictions. The more

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ethnographic Part II specifically focuses on the environmental impacts of industrialisation, some of the ways Gladstonites deal with them, and the ways in which clashing scales make it difficult to address problematic issues convincingly and efficiently. As the reader will see, current concerns with knowledge claims, trust in science, fake news and alternative facts are also addressed throughout Part II, but invoking a different range of examples than those to which we have become accustomed. As mentioned several times already, this analysis is not just about Gladstone, but about a particular form of globalised modernity.

Part II Clashing Scales

5 Green Voices

In Queensland, an oil-shale mining lease is more potent than a World Heritage listing.

—Jan Arens, engineer and environmentalist

In December 2013, the Greenpeace ship Esperanza (Hope) made a tour of the Queensland coastline in order to examine damage to the Great Barrier Reef and to raise consciousness about the environmental consequences of the projected and ongoing expansion of coal ports along the vulnerable coastline, which already had major coal ports at Gladstone, Port Alma, Hay Point and Abbot Point within the Great Barrier Reef Conservation Area. The port of Gladstone was already being expanded with the ongoing construction of a new terminal at Wiggins Island just north of the city, completed in 2015, and there were plans to turn Abbot Point near Bowen, one of the smaller ports, into one of Australia’s largest coal ports, following the projected opening of the enormous Galilee Basin in the interior of Queensland for coal mining. The cheerful Australian expansion of its coal mining operations was met with harsh criticism from environmentalists worldwide, which nonetheless had little visible impact on policies. Notwithstanding the scale of these coal mines, the conflict between mining interests and environmental concerns, endemic to contemporary modernity, is especially acute in this region, where the world’s largest coral reef system, designated a National Park as early as 1975, is threatened by increased ship traffic, emissions and runoffs, and – on a more lofty, global scale – climate change resulting from increased use of fossil fuels of exactly the kind shipped mainly to Japan and China from the Queensland ports. Just ahead of the fact-finding mission, I sent an email to Greenpeace asking when they would come to Gladstone. The answer was that they would not, alas, come ashore in Gladstone (although it should, in all fairness, be added that Esperanza did stop at five other ports in Queensland). Residents of Gladstone with environmental concerns nevertheless felt neglected. When I asked some of them how they felt about this, one answered that Greenpeace appeared not to work on their scale. ‘They’re into saving the planet,’ she said, ‘but they don’t seem to care that

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much about people living in a city like this. Perhaps they just want to close the place down.’ Gladstonites often complain about the indifference and arrogance they experience from large corporations or from the state government in Brisbane, and some now, similarly, felt that Greenpeace were operating on an abstract scale which ignored their localised experiences and life-worlds. Gladstonites concerned with environmental destruction in their immediate surroundings could easily be accused of NIMBYism (‘Not in my back yard’): caring about environmental issues only when they directly affected their own life-worlds. With Greenpeace, the situation seemed to be the opposite, as it might look as if they did not even bother to visit their back yard. While this verdict may be biased, it reflects quite accurately a clash of scales experienced by Gladstonites, who are accustomed to being overrun by large-scale interests in politics and industrialism. Around the same time, I accompanied a local environmental activist to a public hearing in Rockhampton, about 100 km north of Gladstone. It was organised by the Queensland government, and the topic was the Great Barrier Reef and its environmental challenges. Two large documents were presented in draft form, and distributed on DVD afterwards; the Great Barrier Reef Strategic Assessment (from the federal government) and the GBR [Great Barrier Reef] Coastal Zone Strategic Assessment (from the Queensland government). Participants at the hearing were regional stakeholders: recreational and professional fishermen’s associations, environmental organisations, farmers’ associations and several others. Similar public meetings had been held in several other cities, and the government representatives actively urged the participants to submit their comments and suggestions before the 31 January deadline. Chris from the federal government admitted that ‘these are huge documents, and I hope you don’t feel overwhelmed by them’. Karen from the local council said that she would have to use her outside voice to be heard above the din of casual small talk, explaining how to behave if a fire evacuation was necessary (gather in the large car park outside), where the toilets were located, that tea would be served around 2:15, and that the meeting should be finished by 3:30 so that people could get home ahead of the rush hour. The main purpose of the meeting was to explain to the organisations of civil society how to prepare a submission. As Karen explained, ‘If we say something you feel is wrong, say it – but you may also say it if we’ve done something right.’ Chris from the federal government and Carmel from the Queensland government presented their respective reports, followed by discussion,

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including some very critical questions. The discussion revealed a recurrent clash between local, experience-based knowledge and the general, large-scale assessments made in the reports. But several of the participants were also openly critical of the methodology and terminology used in both reports, challenging its expert knowledge with alternative forms of expert knowledge. For example, the reports listed a number of environmental conditions to be met before new industrial developments were approved, but the state representatives had to admit that there were no real sanctions involved if they were transgressed. To take another example, the situation of the corals had been explored in detail at ten locations along the reef. The table showing the findings indicated that the corals were coping quite well; in nine out of ten locations, the colour of the table cell was light or dark green (indicating good health); there was just a bit of yellow and even less orange. Someone in the audience then asked the obvious question: ‘But when it is a fact that half of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef have been lost [in the last 27 years], how can you conclude that the situation is good?’ This question elicited a long answer from the government representative, who pointed out that ‘the demonstration cases do not cover the whole reef; it would have taken years to do that …’ Both government representatives frequently used terms like ‘strategic plan’, ‘implementation’ and ‘broad systemic perspective’; but they also admitted that different policies might contradict each other, which made my sideman whisper that this meant that the industry would get its way no matter what the environmental office said. Towards the end of the hearing, Jan Arens, a Gladstone environmentalist with a natural science background, raised his voice slightly and said, in an exasperated tone: ‘Why mess around with us at all, why not just go ahead without pretending that we have a say?’ In spite of the provocative content of Jan’s rhetorical question, which was based on years of participation in similar processes, the people from the government seemed to sympathise with his sentiment. They muttered some words of understanding, before Karen from the organising committee concluded the meeting by saying: ‘The process to take your comments is something we are going to take very seriously.’

environmental ambivalence at the epicentre These ethnographic vignettes illustrate the marginal position of environmental activists in a country (Australia) where the recent resource boom has virtually insulated the national economy from global crises, a state in that country (Queensland) which benefits very considerably

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from the mining boom in terms of jobs and royalties, and a city in that state (Gladstone) which is a key location with respect to industrial and resources development in Queensland. The question I am raising in this chapter concerns the potentials and limitations of environmental engagement in Gladstone, a city which, according to some of its city councillors, ‘is too often in the news for the wrong reasons’. By this, they refer to negative news stories in the national media about the quality of the air, pollution in the harbour allegedly leading to fish and crab disease, unlawful removal of mangroves and similar environmental scandals. Although, until recently, Gladstone did not have a locally based environmental organisation, it would not be entirely true to claim that concerns for the environment have been absent or even weak in the city. From 2005 to 2009, the council-led Clean and Healthy Air for Gladstone Project was operating; since 2011, the Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership has held meetings and monitored developments following the controversial dredging of the harbour, and a group bringing together business interests, local politicians and NGOs – the Gladstone Regional Environmental Advisory Network (GREAN) – meet regularly to discuss and propose policy on how to mitigate the negative impact of industry on the environment. Yet the commitment to industrialism far overshadows any misgivings about unintended side-effects. Keep in mind that the dominant narrative about the last century begins with a long, stagnant period of frustrations and thwarted hopes, finally broken by a massive modernisation project on a large scale – the building of the world’s largest alumina refinery in the 1960s – following which Gladstone never looked back, but always ahead, for new industrial projects and developments. On the basis of the global concerns about climate change and fossil fuels, I had expected to devote much of my attention to exploring ambivalence in Gladstone, a city in which it is difficult not to be reminded continuously of the fact that you are located in the middle of the Australian resource industry. No matter where you look, there are signs of industrial activity and growth – with QAL to the south, to the west the three symmetrical chimneys of the coal power plant, which provides Central Queensland with much of its electricity, the two coal terminals to the east and a brand new one further north, along with the three major LNG plants being built on Curtis Island. Wherever you turn, there are visual, audible and sometimes olfactory reminders of industry. Fine coal dust settles on your window sills and garden chairs, city beaches are deserted due to the visible pollution of the water, the dredging of the harbour has been fraught with controversy and environmental concerns; there is a constant hum of distant machinery and din of heavy

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trucks passing through the Port Access Road intersecting the city centre. Against this background, and with the recent controversies around LNG developments and dredging (see chapter 6) as a backdrop, the comparative lack of environmental anxiety and wariness towards the fossil fuel industries initially came as something of a surprise. Yet it stands to reason that people who depend on fossil fuel-intensive industries for their livelihood should take a sanguine position towards questions to do with climate change and environmental destruction. Although the green movement, in its various permutations (Green Party, Greenpeace’s Save the Reef campaign and so on), is vocal, well-organised and at times influential in Australia, it is all but invisible in Gladstone. Serena Thompson of the Green Party, who contested the seat of Flynn (including Gladstone and surrounds) for the 2010 federal election, received 2.21 per cent of the votes in that constituency, but less than 1 per cent in Gladstone itself. In the 2012 Queensland elections, the Green Party won 2.1 per cent of the votes in the greater Gladstone region (602 votes), compared to 7.54 per cent in the state. The green candidate in 2012 never visited Gladstone during the campaign. Her postal address is in Brisbane; the Greens have been unable to find candidates who live in Central Queensland. Until 2012, the city lacked a locally based organisation devoted to broader ecological and environmental issues, and the Gladstone Conservation Council (GCC), which was founded in that year, has just four active members (but many sympathisers, as witnessed on their Facebook page), only one of whom currently lives in Gladstone, or, more precisely, on the southern tip of Curtis Island. Most Gladstonites would confirm, certainly if asked directly by a foreign researcher, that they would like to do something for the environment; but they would also emphasise that they are ‘not against industry’. This also goes for the most committed environmentalists in the region, virtually without exception. That there may be a tension between growth and sustainability is acknowledged, and many are keenly aware of some of the negative side-effects of the industry, but very few in Gladstone believe that moving away from fossil fuels will be necessary, desirable or feasible in a foreseeable future. As a matter of fact, many moved to Gladstone precisely because of the secure jobs and good salaries offered by the industry or its auxiliary activities. Although research on side-effects of industrial activities continuously takes place, and numerous reports exist on dredging and the quality of the air, the everyday discourse about environmental hazards, spills and side-effects typically takes the shape of contested knowledge, often based on experience and occasionally on hearsay. For example, people

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in Gladstone are keen to discuss the consequences of the harbour dredging for the local ecology. Before the scandal became public (details in chapter 6), there were already some who believed that the dredging of the western harbour was utterly destructive of marine life since it released toxic waste which had been dumped in the harbour for many years, but had sunk to the bottom and was only mixed into the water with the dredging. Others nevertheless trusted the council and the GPC, whose commissioned reports, based on what appeared to be sound research, concluded that the water in the harbour did become somewhat cloudy as a result of dredging, but not dangerously polluted. Another area of concern is the air and its purity. Some activists, under the informal leadership of the educator Ian Woodhouse (who later moved away from Gladstone), argued, in the early years of the 2000s, that the city had a suspiciously high incidence of various respiratory ailments, and that the allegedly high incidence of child leukaemia could be causally linked to air pollution stemming from industry. Other Gladstonites trusted statements from industry and measurements which indicated that the air quality in the city was excellent. Besides, health authorities had pointed out that the number of leukaemia cases was too small to be statistically significant, so no correlation could be established. However, with the cooperation of independent researchers, Woodhouse initiated his own measurements of the air quality in several locations in the city, which indicated that particle concentration was often well above that which is advisable. In both these cases, the conflict between the knowledge regimes is not a simple contrast between expert knowledge and experience-based knowledge, but rather a series of conflicts between different kinds of experience, different kinds of expert knowledge and differing interpretations of the same facts. For example, publishing median (average) values conceals emission peaks or spikes, which is when the health risks are at their most acute. Eventually, the Clean and Healthy Air for Gladstone Project, organised by the GRC and with the participation of Woodhouse, published a report (Queensland Government 2011) on the quality of the air in the city. Although it was occasionally referred to by my informants, many tended to base their conclusions on personal experience and recent news stories. A final example, which further illustrates the uncertainty surrounding the role of industry in altering the environment in the city, concerns the weather. According to a view often heard in casual conversation, clouds often evade Gladstone because an invisible ‘dome’ pushes them away. Satellite photos on the web indeed seem to confirm this view; quite often,

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when the rain finally arrives in central Queensland, there appears to be a mysterious hole in the cloud cover just above Gladstone. Rumour has it that emissions from the industry, probably QAL or the power station, form this ‘dome’ hovering above Gladstone.1 In none of these, or other, examples of possible negative local consequences of industrial activities, is there general agreement even about the description of the situation. Figures, observations and research reports are contested. Councillors and industry leaders are sometimes trusted, sometimes not. Some of my informants said that they had not lost faith in science, but trusted scientists less and less, since they could be bought by the powers that be. To sum up, in Gladstone, a city built around energy-intensive industries, environmental issues do not have a high priority in everyday discourse, in local politics or in the local media. This is not to say that they are absent, or that there is no ambivalence around industrial activity, but that the doubts and anxieties of the local population are often hidden below the surface. An exception is health. There is a broad concern with, and much discussion about, the quality of the air, water and the safety of locally produced food, always with reference to implications for health. This is the area in which the ambivalence around side-effects of industry is the strongest and most explicit. It is common to hear stories about asthma, or coughing, or skin blotches, returning as soon as people come back to Gladstone after having been away. There is a wariness surrounding engagement with nature, owing to the awareness that it has been ‘tampered with’. Early in my fieldwork, I was asked whether I had been to the Awoonga dam yet. I responded in the negative, asking what it was like. You could swim in the lake, my interlocutor said, but it was full of blue-green algae and not very attractive. Yet, I retorted, this was the source of Gladstone’s tap water. ‘Which means that it is being filtered and cleansed and chlorinated…’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I’ve noticed that.’ He then asked me about the water quality in Oslo, whereupon I responded that it was pretty good. ‘But even up there, people have started, like everywhere else, to buy branded water at $5 a bottle.’ Although health concerns are seen as legitimate, being an environmental activist in a city committed to industrialism is not uncontroversial, and it has its costs. To give a flavour of what it is like to be green in a city saturated by fossil fuels, here is an edited report from my first conversation with the core members of the GCC. 1.  In fact, Gladstone does have a somewhat drier microclimate than surrounding areas, but it is likely to be caused by the range of hills surrounding the Boyne Valley to the south-west.

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the gladstone conservation council Only a couple of days after my arrival in Gladstone in November 2013, I met for lunch with the GCC. Funded, modestly, by the Queensland government, the GCC has pledged not to receive economic support of any kind from the resource industries. In the course of our conversation, they painted a vivid picture of Gladstone as a ‘boom and bust’ town dependent on continuous investment and growth to avoid intermittent collapses, mass unemployment and downturns, consistent with the description in chapter 4. About the background of the GCC, Jan Arens, a chemical engineer, said: Nobody in Gladstone seemed to show a willingness to protect the local environment. We started a local group which began to tidy up beaches and, you might say, fixing damage on a small scale – but we soon realised that this didn’t really solve the problem, since the cause was bad decision-making. Green values have been weakened since the 1970s, and have very little influence now. I try to tell my children that ‘this is your problem, not ours’. They should be engaged! Of course people have to make a living, but it can be done differently. Karen, Jan’s wife, who works as an administrator, adds: ‘I wonder if democracy is capable of getting us out of this mess.’ Anna Hitchcock, the secretary of the GCC, says: I spoke to an industry executive about the environmental problems they are creating, but she wouldn’t hear. Now, if she had accepted that there was even the tiniest possibility that what they were doing would destroy the climate on the planet, it would have been difficult for her to continue. Jan: Planning in this region is based totally on what is already there, forcing young people into that industry. They have to have jobs, right? Thomas: It seems as if local politicians have very little influence, and that places like Gladstone are being sacrificed for the benefit of the Queensland economy? Anna: Yeah, and the powers that be always seem to be wearing sunglasses. Cheryl Watson, a retired small-business owner turned environmental activist, says: ‘There is data available which shows what is happening to

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the environment. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of these environmental impact statements that the industry is obliged to make?’ Thomas (nodding): They’re uh, rather bulky? Cheryl: Yes, and the truth is that 99.99 per cent of people would never go to these sources, which show, for example, that dredging could lead to an elevated metal concentration in the water, or that the industry is actually threatening the World Heritage area [the Great Barrier Reef]. These reports are typically published in November, while the due start-up date for the project would be in January. Thomas: Would you say that there is a democratic deficit? They laugh. Nobody had asked them for their opinion before the recent changes began, and they barely feel that they live in a democracy in this respect. One mentions box-ticking. Thomas: How are decisions actually made on issues like these, where it seems as if local concerns never get a fair hearing? Anna: There are many informal connections between people, often between politicians, bureaucrats and the industries. Even the research board of the Queensland government has been infiltrated by the industry. Jan: In the case of one particular project, the steel pipes were unloaded long before the actual political approval had been given. This says a lot, I think. Anna: They say, in the case of coal seam gas, that the politicians say that they have ‘put 2000 conditions on them’. Well, does that sound reassuring? Cheryl: Rather scary, if you ask me. Jan: What I tell young people is, care for the environment, or you’re not going to have a job in the future! The environmental movement managed to make a difference in the 1970s; this is not the case now, but the truth is that it is more important than ever. There was something [the Canadian ecological philosopher] Dave Suzuki said recently, something about Pachamama, the South American notion that places have a soul and rights. Thomas: Yeah, this is becoming an influential way of thinking in parts of South America. In fact, one of our researchers, who is in Peru … 2 2.  I am referring to the Overheating postdoctoral fellow, Dr Astrid Stensrud, whose work on water and climate change in Peru includes research into the local perceptions of nature as being imbued with spiritual qualities.

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Jan: Suppose we could say that Curtis Island has rights, and that those rights are being violated? How would that sound to an anthropologist? Thomas: ‘Perhaps Aboriginal groups would be in a better position than yourself to make that claim on behalf of the island? Jan: This is problematic. For historical reasons, Aborigines are quite disconnected from the land around here. Cheryl: In many parts of Australia, they’ve been paid big money by the corporations, which makes it difficult for them to be against what is going on. Thomas: It’s hard to be indigenous in the modern world, difficult to balance and reconcile those universes which so often seem to be each other’s opposites. Anna: Yes, it’s almost like being an environmentalist in Gladstone. Anna’s final comment indicates that there may be incommensurability between environmentalist views and those of the industry. She suggests that an ecologically sound vision, emphasising long-term sustainability rather than ultimately self-destructive unilinear growth, requires more than a reformation of the existing techno-economic system. A systemic change towards sustainability would entail a circular rather than a linear view of economic development, and it would take in the realisation that the fossil fuel version of modernity is undermining the very conditions of its own existence; that a precondition for its being productive is being destructive (Hornborg 2012). The circular sustainability perspective would be founded in an alternative view of human nature, the good life and the contested culture/nature divide. Yet, in spite of opposing values, there is no ontological incommensurability in the sense of mutual incomprehension. Besides, the GCC as an organisation is bound to work on a smaller canvas, confronting concrete, tangible cases of pollution and debatable plans for large industrial projects. Among the supporters of GCC, some are content to reform the industry and make it recognise the value of biodiversity and clean, healthy surroundings, while others are ultimately aiming to contribute towards a world which is post-capitalist, based on solidarity rather than competition as a core value, and free of fossil fuels in the long term. In spite of their small numbers and modest resources, the GCC are active on Facebook and the web, they produce and sign petitions, and respond to the mandatory Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) produced by the industry, often in very detailed ways. When the gas operations at Curtis Island began, they focused much of their attention on ‘flaring’: the practice of burning excess gas. While the industry is

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concerned with the loss of money (‘it’s like burning $100 notes’), the GCC speaks of the carbon footprint and local contamination of the air. Indeed, the practice of flaring can also be seen as an exemplification of a system that has grown too fast, or too unevenly, or too destructively. The philosopher Georges Bataille famously argued that any system receives more energy than is necessary for its maintenance. When the excessive energy cannot be used for systemic growth, it will be spent, ‘gloriously or catastrophically’ (Bataille 1988 [1949]: 21). In this particular case, it may be argued that the excess is used catastrophically; it serves no human purpose and destroys the climate, as a visual reminder of the inherent destructiveness of the fossil fuel economy, which, in this case, uselessly spends energy stored for millions of years in a matter of seconds. In March 2014, the Queensland government invited the residents of Gladstone to a public consultation on the proposed expansion of the Gladstone State Development Area (SDA). The consultation had been advertised in a small notice in the Gladstone Observer. The deadline for comments was just a week after the consultation, where government representatives explained and justified their plans for an expansion of the area designated for industrial development. Only a handful of people showed up, some of them property owners near the new boundaries of the SDA. Cheryl Watson went to the consultation and asked a few questions, not least concerning the inclusion of parts of Curtis Island, which is included in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, in the SDA. As pointed out by Jan Arens in an earlier presentation (Arens 2008), the Gladstone SDA, established in 1993, had grown from 6000 hectares to 28,000 hectares in that period, expanding to include vulnerable coastal land with mangrove forest as well as a protected dugong breeding area. Arens concluded that ‘in Queensland, an oil-shale mining lease is more potent than a World Heritage listing’. Subsequently, both Cheryl Watson and Anna Hitchcock wrote submissions to the state authorities (see Appendices 1 and 2), but with no visible result. The GCC do not shy away from using strong language in criticising the state and federal authorities. In his critique of the 2008 expansion of the SDA to include parts of Curtis Island, Arens (2008) points out that ‘an open forum attended by 500 members of the local community endorsed unanimously a motion to have NO INDUSTRY on Curtis Island, this is hereby ignored and all concerned are being treated with contempt’. In her submission regarding the 2014 proposed expansion of the SDA, Anna Hitchcock writes, referring to the complicity between government and the fossil fuel industry (see Appendix 1 for full text):

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[y]ou are lying, thieving bastards. You are greedy. You think that you can simply excise part of Australia and exempt it from due process, which is exactly what a State Development Area is. You think you can ride roughshod over a community, ruin an environment with impunity and take the money and run.

silencing and ambivalence The critical perspectives on the relationship between society, the environment, industry and politics represented by the GCC are not typical in Gladstone. The GRC is concerned with the quality of life in Gladstone, welcomes investments and negotiates partnerships with industry in an effort to make the corporations contribute economically and in kind to the well-being of the community. The council is also responsible for some environmental monitoring and coordinates some activities, but not in ways that might alienate potential investors. Speaking about the environmental situation in December 2013, Councillor Col Chapman explained to me that they were ‘looking at the cumulative effects of the changes in the harbour – social, environmental, economical, cultural. We are also monitoring the water quality in order to be able to identify a canary in the coal mine, if there is any.’ Public engagement for ecological sustainability tends to be cautious and circumspect. The Gladstone Observer often publishes letters to the editor questioning the local environmental impact of industrial activities, but has barely any coverage of global environmental issues such as climate change. One of their journalists told me, as a comment on complaints about industrial development, that ‘most people are totally complacent until that bulldozer touches their doorstep. They then claim that they were never consulted, whereas in fact, they ignored the public consultation until it was too late.’ Others might counter that public consultations rarely have any effect; the public may say what they like, but in the end, the industry does what it would have done anyway, with the complicity of politicians. This would be the conclusion drawn by some of the participants in the public hearing about the Great Barrier Reef outlined at the beginning of this chapter. Several of the most outspoken critics of industry have left Gladstone. I discussed this phenomenon with one of them, who now lives in another town about 200 km to the south. Thomas: I guess criticising the industry, or talking about specific things such as air quality, the state of the mudcrabs in the harbour and that sort of thing might lead to you being ostracised …

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Ex-Gladstonite: Worse than that, you’d lose your job. You know, most of the people who post on the GCC’s Facebook page don’t even live in Gladstone. Thomas: But they used to. Ex-Gladstonite: Exactly. And now, they can finally let out some steam. A Brisbane-based professional who has looked into some of the possible health effects of the dredging, confirms that green engagement can be costly at a personal and professional level. He says: It is true that at the latest election, the Greens got less than 1 per cent of the vote in Gladstone itself. But what is more worrying is that many are afraid to act and talk on behalf of the environment. Obviously, if your mortgage, your children’s school and your material security depend on the gas and coal industry, the last thing you’d want are people who create problems for the industry. There have been outspoken people who have received threats in their letterbox. They were depicted as ‘evil persons’ for showing that something was wrong. His views were later confirmed by several residents or ex-residents, who had either personally been threatened or who knew people who had been. Although anonymous threats and verbal abuse can be difficult to prove, especially retrospectively, these stories are too numerous and too similar to be ignored. Besides, it is well documented that the GPC has occasionally sued individuals and actors like the Gladstone Observer, who have criticised their practices. The silencing of environmental issues is visible in many other contexts as well. The anthology Kookaburra Shells (Sheahan-Bright 2006), a comprehensive collection of creative writing in the region, spanning a century and a half from the 1850s to the early 2000s, contains texts which mention the pollution, coal dust and aesthetic damage wrought by industrialisation, but scarcely any texts that take on its destructive sideeffects as a main subject. Similarly, at the 2013 Rio Tinto Alcan Martin Hanson Memorial exhibition at the Gladstone Museum and Art Gallery, which displayed over one hundred local works of art, just one – Vicki Johnson’s Crime Scene (chapter 3) – took on the negative side-effects of industrialisation. As Vicki commented, ‘there are always a lot of pelicans at these exhibitions. Why, I don’t even know if there are any pelicans in Gladstone!’ (Actually, there are.) Although it is fair to say that in the GRC, in the press, on Facebook and in everyday conversations, virtually nobody talks about climate change,

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few talk about ‘the environment’ and many talk about their mortgage, this is not to say that environmental concerns are absent. It would be more accurate to say that such concerns can be difficult to reconcile with the life-worlds inhabited by Gladstonites. As I shall presently show, environmental concerns come in different shapes of varying scope and implications.

a typology of environmental engagement Inspired by the political scientist Albert Hirschman’s (1970) famous trichotomy of kinds of political strategies for members of organisations (exit, voice and loyalty), I now propose a fourfold classification of environmental orientations among the residents of Gladstone who actively work for improvements or changes in this domain. I distinguish between the loyal, the specific, the systemic and the expanding orientations, and will argue that not only do the implications of each differ, but they are also based on different world-views and interpretations of their immediate surroundings. Loyal Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) was founded in 1982, inspired by similar organisations in other countries, some with the same name, but independent of each other. CVA specialise in projects oriented towards biodiversity, heritage preservation and beautification, and they work in corporate partnerships whenever possible. CVA have an office in an old wooden house near Gladstone harbour, where they regularly organise events such as rubbish collecting on beaches and along streams, as well as toad-busting (a peculiar Queensland activity more fully presented below). To give an experience-near impression of the CVA, I share a few paragraphs from my field diary below. The outing described here was my first with Conservation Volunteers, and my knowledge of the organisation was limited at the time. Today’s task consisted in cleaning a beach on Facing Island near Gladstone of marine debris. I had expected to meet a handful of retirees and perhaps some students, given that unemployment numbers are low here and this was a Tuesday. Instead, it turned out that three of the four other volunteers were on unemployment benefits, ‘working for the dole’. The fourth was a retired worker from Cement Australia; a fifth participant was a marine biologist from Central Queensland University, Scott, who took samples of the debris; there was the

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coordinator, an energetic woman in her forties, and yours truly. Off we went. The vast majority of what we collected was plastic. Tiny bits in many colours, bottles which had just been chucked out, a home-made bong [cannabis pipe], lengths of rope; but also beer cans and a Japanese Pepsi can which turned out to be unopened and probably drinkable, shards of glass and pieces of wood. Although one might be tempted to think that this selection of rubbish turns the collector into a kind of archaeologist of the present, this is not entirely accurate. Some of the things thrown or lost into the sea sink to the bottom. Metals, notably. Other things dissolve. Paper, cigarette butts and so on. Yet other things decompose – organic materials such as dinner leftovers and hamburger buns. Notwithstanding this caveat, it cannot be denied that some of the debris we picked up and left for Scott and his colleagues to analyse sheds light on globalisation in interesting ways – the aforementioned Japanese Pepsi can, a Korean water bottle, a Chinese can of beer, a carton of orange juice from Cyprus (not for sale in Australia) … None of this had made it to the Queensland coast from their countries of origin, that much was clear. And behold, on the horizon could be glimpsed a long line of very large vessels waiting for their turn to moor and get their fill of pitch-black, high-octane coal. There were sailors out there. Bored sailors, who probably sat around drinking, playing cards and tossing their rubbish out of the porthole. To see globalisation in a grain of sand … the beach, the ships, the coal, the Japanese and Korean factories and homes, the residents of Gladstone and the coal miners of Moura, the railway tracks, the cranes and the piers, us, the sailors, the ocean – we were all connected through those unassuming plastic wrappers, and the connection spelled rubbish on the beach, economic growth in Queensland and China, and ecological destruction on a large scale. Conservation Volunteers collaborate closely with, and are partly funded by industry: an advertisement announcing a forthcoming activity at Briffney Creek on the western outskirts of Gladstone reads: Our Commitment to improve the health of our catchments and harbour continues with our teams removing weeds, managing erosion problems and removing rubbish from along Briffney Creek. The project is part of the Gladstone Harbour Catchment Care program funded by QGC Pty Limited. Join the team to help clean up rubbish and remove introduced weeds from this urban creek. Help the

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catchment care program and help our creeks and harbour stay clean and healthy for us and our local wildlife. To book a safety induction before commencement of activity please phone [this number]. QGC, a subsidiary of the British BG Group, owns one of the three LNG plants on Curtis Island. It has formerly been subjected to severe criticism and demonstrations owing to leakage from its gas wells in Tara, Queensland. QGC has nevertheless ‘contributed $180,000 to preserve the health of Gladstone harbour in the third year of a partnership with Conservation Volunteers Australia’ (Gladstone Observer, 30 May 2013). The activities of the Conservation Volunteers do not aim to challenge industrial growth or CO2 emissions, but to mitigate the ugly and unpleasant impacts of the industry on the immediate environment. They are commensurable with the aims of industry. Networks and activities led by the GRC, which include the aforementioned GREAN, the Clean and Healthy Air for Gladstone Project and, more recently, the Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership, belong in the same category. All these forums, which are sponsored by the council, aim to raise consciousness about environmental issues, to monitor the local environment and to propose policies of mitigation. In addition, there are several environmentally oriented projects which are directly sponsored by industry, notably the development and improvement of parklands. These are all uncontroversial, seen from the corporate point of view. Although it is rarely spoken about as an environmental measure, many households in the region have installed solar panels, which may be unpopular with Origin, the major electricity provider, but not with the large industrial corporations. Quite a few Gladstonites also compost, recycle and buy second-hand goods in charity shops, often stating – when asked – that they have ecological motivations for doing so. This is nevertheless not the general norm. Most houses do not compost, and most Gladstonites shop at the mall. An unrepresentative, but telling example of the ‘loyal’ strategy is represented through a man in his forties who has planted 14 species of bamboo in his suburban garden. I once joked that it wasn’t necessary to remember his house number, since the moment you entered the street, you could see the bamboo towering above the smallish trees in neat, almost identical gardens in the rest of the neighbourhood. Working for a local firm, Richard says that ‘I’m doing my bit to slow down climate change’, pointing out that bamboo is ecologically first-rate, as it contributes to local biodiversity (birds and insects thrive) and consumes huge amounts of CO2. He also keeps chickens, feeds a kookaburra and a few lorikeets that arrive regularly at his kitchen

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window, and has devised a system for preserving and distributing rainwater in his lush and rather wild garden. Disdainful of the shifting Australian governments, which he sees as tools in the hands of multinational corporations, Richard nevertheless sees no reason to feel guilty about what he is doing to the environment. He plants bamboo and eats eggs from his own chooks, but to him, working for the industry belongs to another compartment, namely that of securing the future of his two adolescent daughters. He once said to me that he’d be really happy if I could give him a sustainable job, but it would have to enable him to pay his bills and fund his daughters’ education. These jobs are hard to come by for a skilled mechanical worker in Gladstone. None of the activities mentioned here addresses the contradiction between growth and sustainability, nor do they challenge the values and practices of the industry. Ecology and growth are made to appear as though they belong to separate, unconnected realms. Specific There is no widely held assumption in Gladstone to the effect that ‘the people’ are fighting against environmental destruction for which large corporations and politicians are ultimately responsible. On the contrary, the vast majority of the local residents benefit from capitalism and industry, which gives them their livelihood. Direct criticism of the industry tends to come from people who are, for one reason or another, adversely affected by its side-effects. Individuals and groups, often with vested or personal interests, focus on environmental issues of a localised kind, with no systemic implications beyond that of their particular concern. Here are a few thumbnail examples. At Mount Larcom, a small township about 20 km west of Gladstone, a group of farmers have been campaigning against the unintended side-effects of mining for decades (see chapter 7 for the full story). The East End limestone mine is surrounded by pastures and farmland on three sides, and for its operations it depends on pumping water out from the pit. The farmers’ group argues that the groundwater is being depleted – the water table is lowered – through this activity, while the mining management has consistently denied that there is a causal relationship. In Gladstone itself, a coalition of fishermen began to demand compensation and redress for the alleged deterioration of the water quality in Gladstone harbour following the dredging of the western harbour in 2010–13. During this period, far more cases than usual were reported of shell disease on mudcrabs, lesions and wounds on fish (especially

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barramundi) and turtle diseases. The dredging coincided with severe flooding, making it difficult for the fishermen and their allies to prove that the ailments were a result of dredging. The GPC, which had been in charge of the dredging, insisted that the problems were caused by flooding, not dredging. The affair, which was widely publicised, effectively led to the demise of the local fishing industry. (A full account follows in chapter 6.) A third concern that can be classified as specific concerns the air quality in Gladstone. A European in his fifties, settled in Gladstone for twenty years and managing a small business, says that he coughs and wheezes far more than he ought to. Pointing out that the city is downwind from QAL, he concludes that his respiratory complaints are caused by particles and dust emitted from the factory. Similar views are expressed by countless others, who claim that their coughing and symptoms of asthma subside the moment they leave Gladstone, returning the moment they come back. Although they are not collectively organised (apart from the short-lived Clean and Healthy Air for Gladstone committee), many in Gladstone assume that the air is not healthy. One, a man in his mid-twenties, employed on Curtis Island, even claims, as a matter of fact, that ‘we don’t even have proper weather in Gladstone’, intimating that emissions from industry and coal dust create an artificial, and quite unhealthy, micro-climate in the city. A fourth example of the same kind, with much greater local consequences than the others, is the story about Targinnie, a rural community just north of Gladstone which was virtually abandoned in the early 2000s (Blake 2005). The story is too complicated to be told here in full (see chapter 8), but it concerns an industrial experiment gone awry and a local population that left as a result. A shale oil factory built in 1997–9 produced emissions which led to immediate, widespread health complaints in the local population, which soon set up a citizens’ group in a bid to negotiate with the factory management. The residents of Targinnie, numbering a few hundred at the time, never criticised the industry as such, only the fact that this particular factory made them ill. A prominent member of its Representative Group, Craig Butler, later ran for mayor in Gladstone, losing narrowly, on a platform emphasising the need for strong partnerships between industry, council and civil society. Concerns such as these have potentially wider implications than the first category, but they remain focused on highly specific symptoms rather than underlying, broader causes. They do not criticise the fossil fuel industry as such, but argue that industry should be forced to take environmental considerations seriously, and to be made accountable if something goes wrong. However, there is an incipient systemic critique

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in some of these movements in that their most active participants tend to lose trust in public figures. As one of the former Targinnie residents told me, ‘What really pissed me off was not what they did, but the way they lied about it.’ Others who have been involved in local struggles against industrial corporations, were quick to ask me, during my fieldwork, how my research was funded. They had formerly come up against scientists whose work was funded by the resource companies and had reasons to believe that the funding source might influence the conclusions. Systemic Unlike the local and specific forms of environmental engagement, systemic critiques view symptoms of environmental degradation in a broader perspective, seeing them in relation to Australian economic policies and the job market, other forms of economic activities, the global economy and similar events taking place elsewhere and, perhaps, responded to in different ways in different countries. Until the formation of Gladstone Conservation Council in 2012, there was no dedicated environmentalist organisation in Gladstone. Two years later, the GCC was a recognised voice in the community, and its activities were by then well known, through the press, social media and public meetings. However, there are people in Gladstone who have for many years campaigned on environmental issues, made submissions to EIS processes and engaged with local politicians over a broad range of environmental issues. As noted, some of these engaged citizens base their interventions on a fundamental critique of the fossil fuel economy and the view that the close collaboration between politicians and corporations precludes genuinely democratic procedures and ignores the serious side-effects of industrial development. Several of these activists have left Gladstone after years of local engagement. The chemical engineer Jan Arens, introduced earlier, is himself employed in industrial enterprises and does not foresee an imminent de-industrialisation, but a transition to ecologically sustainable practices. These concerned citizens are conversant with the global discourse about climate change, fossil fuels and economic processes. They know the story of Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring (Carson 1962), the book that to many marked the beginning of the contemporary environmental movement; they are aware of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock 1979), speak about bleaching of coral on the Great Barrier Reef, and keenly follow the fast growth of the Chinese economy, which is fuelled partly by coal from Gladstone. The political scale of their engagement may be local, but it is integrated cognitively with a global analysis. For example, it was Anna

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from the GCC who alerted me to Jeremy Rifkin’s book about the political and environmental implications of a potential convergence between new information technology and decentralised energy regimes (Rifkin 2011). Outside the GCC, it is not easy to find people in Gladstone who take a unanimously negative view of the fossil fuel industry. One, who is critical and outspoken but not involved in activism, is Josh, a solar energy engineer. He says, in plain language: I don’t mind saying that I’m critical about the industry. It is good in a way, but it needs to be kept in check especially with a view to its environmental effects. Take the oil spills and emissions at the [Targinnie] shale plant – it turned into a toxic mess! Elaborating, he adds: In many ways, it is ludicrous how industry is allowed to operate – they can pollute everything, it seems, without any consequences. They expose the city to toxic gases and smells … it is common knowledge that there is a high per cent of asthma suffering in the city, which is ignored. It is even known that in the vicinity of a smelter, which emits lead, IQ plummets, sometimes ten points or more. There is a lid on all these things. As pointed out earlier, the proportion of households with solar power in Gladstone is one of the highest in Australia. Josh agrees that a main reason is economic (‘at the end of the day, what matters to people is their back pocket’), but he sees further potential in solar energy. ‘Solar power is one example of how you can have an industry which is sustainable. You can become independent of the grid. Ergon [the main electricity provider] wouldn’t like it of course.’ He then speaks about different kinds of batteries, which remain the Achilles’ heel of solar energy: A highly efficient battery would change the world. This incredibly cumbersome system of distribution, with coal travelling across half the planet before it is put to use, would become obsolete overnight. Let us compare it with Linux, a common effort to achieve something. Josh believes in technological solutions that go along with a change in the dominant mindset, and probably without being aware of it, he presents the same argument as Rifkin (2011), whose book I had begun to read only days before we met.

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And it also makes economic sense. We get calls from people who have looked at their bills, which could run to $800, and are keen to do something about it. Well, in addition to installing solar, you could look at your electricity use. You could have less gadgets that you don’t really need, you could go from aircon to a ceiling fan, which uses far less power. And you could go fully or partly solar. That would keep the bills down as well. The new fridges are less energy-intensive than the last generation, because of a new kind of compressor. Unlike the solar power employee described in chapter 4, Josh estimates the break-even point to occur after five years rather than three. ‘Of course, with larger systems, it takes longer for your investment to give a return. Here in Gladstone, you wouldn’t see people with green hats [hardhats] saying that they’re doing it for the environment. Even if they were.’ Thomas: But the authorities here, with the support of experts, tend to say that things are generally all right, both with regards to the air and the water quality? Josh: Look, I’m coughing more here than I should have been. In the long term, I want to be somewhere else. When you have a factory like QAL, downwind from where the city is, of course you get dust and particles in the air. You can often even smell it. Although, in Josh’s view, ‘solar power is one example of how you can have an industry which is sustainable’, he does not expect ‘people with green hats to state that they’re doing it for the environment. Even if they were.’ Being a ‘greenie’ is not easily compatible with a socially desirable male, or female, identity in Gladstone. Given his professional identity, it is unsurprising that Josh’s strongest belief is in the future of solar power, but he sees it not only as a technical and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, but also as a means to democratise society through a shift from hierarchical, large-scale energy provision to a horizontal network of prosumers (producer–consumers). Repeating his commitment to a fundamental transformation of the current techno-economic system, he concludes this train of thought by saying that ‘to my mind, we need to activate new parts of the brain to make the future renewable’. Yet, even among outspoken critics of pollution and environmental destruction in Gladstone, there is by and large a faith in science and technology as offering solutions. There are ecological communities in Australia that reject the logic of extractive high-tech capitalism wholesale, for example in the famous ecological village of Nimbin in

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New South Wales, and also in some Aboriginal communities, but as I have shown, among environmentally engaged people in Gladstone, there is no deep ‘ontological difference’ with those favouring continued growth, although they represent an alternative understanding of the relationship of humanity to ecology. They nevertheless draw on different sets of facts and interpret their surroundings differently, while remaining within the epistemological paradigm of modernity. To them, a mountain is just a mountain and not a sacred being (but it should be protected from mining, for ecological, social and aesthetic reasons); a dead dolphin is a disgrace (but not because the dolphin is a spiritual being, the ocean a super-organism), and the quality of the air is a problem in so far as it causes disease. Unlike in some mining areas in Indonesia and South America (where the idea of Pachamama – the divine mother of the Earth and of time – currently has some political traction), there is no intimation of an ontological incommensurability and no need for sophisticated cultural translation between environmentalists, politicians and industry. They understand each other well, but represent different perspectives on the future and different subject-positions, not least when it comes to power. Expanding Sociologically, the most interesting form of environmental engagement, which I call expanding, takes its cue from Cheryl Watson, one of the active members of the Gladstone Conservation Council. Cheryl, a married woman, mother and grandmother in her sixties, readily admits that she had little interest in the environment until a few years ago. Talking about friends who remained indifferent to the environment, she pointed out that ‘five or six years ago, I was them’. Living in the community of South End on Curtis Island, a short ferry ride from Gladstone, Cheryl had witnessed, since around 2009, the creation and subsequent implementation of large-scale development plans leading to irreversible changes in her immediate surroundings. More than 30 million cubic metres of sediment were dredged from the seafloor in three years, in order to expand and extend the shipping channel into the Narrows. Simultaneously, three large processing and storage plants for LNG were being constructed on the island itself, in spite of it being included in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. She noticed that the colour of the sea changed, that fish, turtles and mudcrabs caught diseases, and that breeding areas of the endangered dugong were lost. Speaking with conservationists, she became convinced that the dredging was to blame, and that four decades of toxic emissions

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from industry were being dredged up and mixed with seawater. What is interesting in the analysis is the way in which her environmental engagement has developed over the last few years. Beginning with a very localised, experience-based anxiety over the future of her own lifeworld, she soon began to widen her scope, both in the broader context of Australia and internationally. Shifting her focus to issues beyond Gladstone harbour and Curtis Island, she began to read, listen and talk about coal mining and climate change, Canadian tar sands and solar energy. A nearby case is that of the Great Barrier Reef, where one of the major threats to its survival is bleaching of the corals as a result of global warming. Although Gladstone’s tourist association advertises the city as ‘the gateway to the Southern Great Barrier Reef ’, concern about the reef is limited, and the southern reaches of the reef are believed to be too far offshore (up to 40 km) to be affected directly by agricultural runoff or industrial waste. Yet there are corals closer to the mainland, and soft corals at the mouth of the harbour died off following the recent dredging. In the larger scheme of things, coral bleaching is connected to the Australian resource economy, but no more than it is to the Norwegian, or the Canadian, resource economy. The shift of focus from Gladstone harbour to the Great Barrier Reef, thus, entails a transition from a local scale to the global scale, and from experience-near to experience-distant knowledge. Reflecting on her epiphany some years earlier, Cheryl says: The harbour was a big part of our life, my husband was a sailor. We knew that things were being pumped out that shouldn’t be, but we said nothing. I always accepted the fact that there was industry here, after all Gladstone has been an industrial town for generations. But what has happened in the last five years is unacceptable. Until then, fishing provided good jobs; you put your boat in the water, and you got a catch. Fishing in Gladstone at one point represented a substantial part of the Queensland economy. There used to be just one major industry at a time, such as QAL. Recently, there have been many big projects simultaneously – the setting up of the LNG facilities, of course, but also the dredging of Gladstone harbour and the expansion of the coal terminal at Wiggins Island – very dramatic. It has been emotionally draining to witness this and try to fight it. I have felt anger. But I suppose you could say that my reaction is still a result of the NIMBY syndrome, you know what that is? Thomas: Tell me …

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Cheryl: ‘Not In My Back Yard’. Terrible things were happening to the environment elsewhere, and I did nothing. We heard about the illnesses caused by coal seam gas in Papua New Guinea and so on. So when I try to explain to people why they should be engaged, and they don’t really react, I know that five years ago, I was them. It was the dredging across the harbour, which destroyed the fisheries, that was one straw too many. Confronted by the Queensland Minister for the Environment, Andrew Powell, who accused her of being a ‘NIMBY person’, thereby intimating indifference to environmental destruction until it occurs in your own back yard, Cheryl responded: Australia revolves around volunteers, take the Cancer Fund, the Heart Foundation, local schools, sporting clubs and so on. Why do the vast majority of people volunteer for a particular organisation? It’s because they have a ‘not in my backyard’ moment. I am not going to volunteer for school X if my child or grandchild attends school Y. So please do not put a negative connotation on the word NIMBY. The NIMBY phenomenon may also be described as local community engagement. As concluded by Vandehey (2013) in a study of community resistance against a plan to route high-voltage transmission lines through their neighbourhood near San Diego, ‘The phenomenon of NIMBYism might well be the suburbanites’ best weapon’ (Vandehey 2013: 253). It has an existential and experience-near dimension which fuels engagement and enhances credibility, in contrast to world-saving NGOs whose relationship to local communities is at best tenuous.

scale and green activism In conversations with the other, more seasoned environmentalists who form the core of GCC, and through following news, debates and links on the web, Cheryl gradually came to see the ecological destruction and the strong alliance between politicians and industry leaders not as a unique configuration characteristic of Central Queensland, but as a systemic feature of the contemporary world. She does not align herself with an ideological persuasion, was for a long time unimpressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their warnings about climate change, and describes herself as a proud Australian. The key event that made her decide to devote much of her time to environmental issues was, as has been made clear above, the realisation that the dredging

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of the harbour had begun without any prior democratic process, that it had led to devastating, unintended consequences, and impinged directly on her own quality of life and that of her neighbours. The contrast with the Greenpeace activists introduced at the beginning of this chapter is interesting. They operate on a global scale, where localities come across as instances of global processes; Cheryl is anchored in her locality and perceives the global system as the sum of events in and interlinkages between an indefinite number of localities. To her, large scale is produced by small scale; according to the other logic, where global climate change is the entry-point, the causal connection is the opposite. Scale, in social anthropology, refers to a combination of size and complexity (Grønhaug 1978). It can be defined as the total number of statuses necessary to reproduce a system, subsystem, field or activity; in other words, if two societies both have 10,000 inhabitants, they are nevertheless of differing scale if their respective divisions of labour vary significantly. Large-scale polities depend on the contributions of many persons and require an infrastructure capable of coordinating their actions, monitoring them and offering a minimum of benefits enabling persons around the system to reproduce it. In this sense, scale is a feature of social organisation. Scale can also usefully describe cultural and individual representations of society, the world or the cosmos, and there is no necessary congruence between social scale and cultural scale. A society may be embedded in global networks of production and consumption without its residents being aware of their place in a global system. Conversely, residents of societies which are relatively isolated in terms of economic and political processes may be well connected through symbolic communication and possess a high awareness of their place in wider, global systems. The late Fredrik Barth once compared two societies, in which he had done fieldwork, along such lines. The Baktaman of Papua New Guinea lived in very small social and cognitive worlds in the 1960s, surrounded by dense forest, steep inclines and other ethnic groups of whom they were suspicious. They were less than 200 in total, lived by hunting, raising pigs and gardening, and knew nothing about the world outside the forest; they had never seen a banknote, a news programme or an Arsenal T-shirt. By contrast, the Basseri nomads of Iran, pastoralists with herds of sheep and goats, participated in relatively small-scale systems economically and had a small-scale social organisation with a limited division of labour, but at the same time, they had a deep awareness of Persian history, recited classic poets and asked Barth questions about space travel and the armaments race (Eriksen 2015).

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Different forms of environmental engagement in Gladstone correspond to different levels of scale, both socially and cognitively. To the large transnational green NGOs, the global scale takes precedence. Their national, regional and local projects relate explicitly to global processes (notably climate change and the extractive logic of contemporary neoliberalism). To summarise the four types of engagement described above, the loyal engagement is locally rooted and concerns itself exclusively with the alleviation or mitigation of local symptoms of environmental damage. This is also largely the case with specific forms of engagement, although those involved frequently invoke an awareness of broader processes. For example, the farmers who negotiate with the East End Mine were aware of the implications of the expansion of Queensland Lime and Cement when it turned into Cement Australia and became a larger-scale operation more difficult to relate to (see chapter 7). The systemic, critical form of engagement, as it is represented in the GCC, has the local and regional scale as its main locus, and has decided to keep it this way owing to a lack of resources. At the same time, those involved contextualise events and developments in Gladstone within a broader, transnational and global framework, making comparisons with other communities affected adversely by emissions, runoffs and accelerated industrial development and comparing Australian politics with that of other countries. An expanding environmental engagement, I have argued, typically moves from its initial local scale to a larger, even planetary scale, but remains anchored in local life-worlds. An important contrast can be drawn between the two main varieties of large-scale environmental engagement – the top–down and the bottom–up kinds. Top–down engagement begins at the large, ultimately global scale, and may typically emphasise the importance of climate summits, international law and regulatory measures that would slow down extractive capitalism and reduce pollution and emissions. Bottom– up engagement, as exemplified in this chapter, takes a highly specific starting-point (the disappearing dolphins in Gladstone harbour, the high incidence of respiratory ailments in Gladstone and so on), developing a systemic, comparative and ultimately global analysis with the local life-world as fundamental. It should be noted here that although there are health concerns linking certain ailments to industry, and a growing reluctance in the community to eat local seafood, Gladstonites do not usually think of themselves as having entered into a destructive pact with industry, whereby they sacrifice their health (and that of their children) for money. Unlike the mining community described in June Nash’s seminal work from Bolivia

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(Nash 1993 [1979]), aptly titled We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us, most Gladstonites do not expect a dramatic shortening of their lifespan due to pollution. And unlike the gritty industrial squalor in Copsa Mica in Romania described by Trond Berge (2012), Gladstone, if not exactly a pretty town by Australian standards, has large sport fields, pleasant parks and a beautiful marina full of recreational boats cheerfully bobbing atop the waves. There are no thick clouds of black smoke obstructing the sunlight or toxic fumes seeping through the aircon. Yet, the tacit uneasiness about the double bind between growth and sustainability, cut down to a human scale in the dilemma of prosperity and health, forms a part of common knowledge. It goes without saying, perhaps because it comes without saying, and misgivings are muffled through self-censorship and fear of being ostracised or sacked. * * * In this chapter, we have identified some problems associated with environmental activism in a place like Gladstone. First, there is a clash of scales between the concerns of the transnational green NGOs and the local realities in Gladstone. As many Gladstonites state, they would really like to live sustainably, but who would then pay their mortgage or their children’s university fees? Second, criticism of industry does not go down well in Gladstone, where not only powerful actors such as the regional council, the GPC, the local newspaper and the resource companies discourage negative criticism, but also where local residents, many of whom in their day moved to Gladstone for economic reasons, tend to be distinctly unhappy with publicity that might threaten their future job and career prospects. People known for their heretical attitude towards industry speak about unpleasant incidents sometimes qualifying as threats, and for this reason, many prefer instead to express their concerns sotto voce. Unlike in cities which do not rely directly (only indirectly) on the fossil fuel industry, where flagging environmental responsibility increases your cultural capital, high-profile environmental engagement is not generally seen as good form in Gladstone and, as a consequence, people’s practices, and what they tell you sotto voce, may well be more sustainable and ecologically concerned than their overt presentation of self.

corporate social responsibility: offsets and lightning conductors As the awareness of health hazards and environmental risks has become more pronounced, industry has taken various measures to convince

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Gladstonites that they care about the health and well-being of the city residents and their surroundings. Their policies, which can be covered by the blanket term corporate social responsibility (CSR), take many different forms. Their implications can also be interpreted in different ways. CSR can be understood, benignly, simply as active support of community activities, which may or may not be related to the interests of the industry itself; it can be seen as offsets, which can be seen as compensation for damages done; and less benignly, as lightning conductors, which I define as ways of diverting attention from negative consequences towards something positive. Lightning Conductors Let us begin with the lightning conductor aspect. During a discussion with a local politician about the way in which the big corporations somehow always had it their way, she pointed out that whenever the state politicians began to discuss extra daylight time in the press, you could be certain that something big and unpopular was brewing, probably a tax reform or a controversial industrial development project likely to be in conflict with tourism, fishing and environmentalist ideas. The art of diverting attention is a skill in great demand in a location dependent on large-scale material changes with unknown unintended consequences. Toad-busting is a good example. Since the cane toad is a potent and multivocal, or many-stranded, symbol for Queenslanders, it seems appropriate to offer a brief description of its importance before moving to its role as a lightning conductor. The most despised and famous invasive species to arrive and thrive in Australia since the introduction of the rabbit by the First Fleet, the cane toad came from Hawaii, where it had also been introduced by Europeans. Native to the Caribbean and Central America, the cane toad was introduced to eat the insects that ravaged the Queensland sugar plantations, notably the annoying cane beetle. Following an experimental introduction of just a few dozen in 1935, several thousand were imported in 1937. It soon dawned on the authorities that they had made a terrible mistake. The toads disliked the environment offered by the cane fields, which provided little shelter against snakes and birds of prey. Besides, the cane beetle lived on top of the cane, and the toads were not keen climbers. Accordingly, they soon left the plantations in search of greener pastures. Today, the poisonous and omnivorous cane toad, which breeds prolifically and eats voraciously, has spread across Queensland and the Northern Territory, threatening endemic species, among them

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rare predators such as the northern quoll, a carnivorous marsupial whose instincts do not tell it that eating cane toads can be deadly. To some Australians, the story of the cane toad can be read as an allegorical reminder that border control is essential. The country’s brisk and, in the opinion of many, insensitive treatment of boat refugees, who have for years been interned in camps outside Australia – in Manus (Papua New Guinea) and Nauru – can be connected to a long-standing concern in Australia with keeping the borders under control. For many years, this meant turning it, as far as possible, into a version of Britain (keep in mind that the three most populous states, tellingly, are called New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria); and, according to influential social scientists like Hage (2000), the White Australia policy has never really been abandoned as a cultural template. The cane toad represents a disruptive alien force and can be co-opted by Australians who reject large-scale non-European immigration. But it also has a place in popular culture. In rugby, the Queensland team is called ‘The Cane Toads’ by fans from New South Wales, whose team is called ‘The Cockroaches’. When the heat is on, during the annual State of Origin series in Rugby League, patriotic Queenslanders may well be inclined to point out that cane toads eat cockroaches. However, even an avid reader of Mary Douglas (1966) must concede that a toad may sometimes just be a toad. You don’t have to be a racist, or to dislike Muslims and Indians, in order to be concerned about the disruptive impact of the cane toad on the environment. It leads, de facto, to a loss of diversity and is a threat to the unique fauna of the southern continent. Thus, the cane toad can just as well be used as a symbolic warning against flattening neoliberalism and global standardisation – it does the same to the goanna as the British did to Aboriginal cultures – as against contemporary immigration. Numerous attempts to control and halt the spread of the cane toad have all failed. Some naturalists have even tried to train other animals to avoid the poisonous toad, but to little avail. Chemical warfare might have been effective, but it would also have wiped out native species. The toad is more resilient and more adaptive than most of its competitors. In toad-infested parts of Australia, groups of volunteers regularly go out at dusk, armed with flashlights, rubber gloves and large bags, to collect toads. In Gladstone, there is a substantial local engagement relating to the toad and its impact on the environment – far more visible, in fact, than the local opposition to coal and gas. This stands to reason, since most of the inhabitants of Gladstone make their living directly or indirectly from industry, shipping and mining, while the cane toad has no defenders.

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Toad-busting is organised by Conservation Volunteers Australia in different areas around Gladstone in the early evening on most Tuesdays. In early January 2014, it took place in the Tondoon Botanic Gardens, 3 km south of the city. We were about 15 toad-busters altogether. Numbers would increase over the next few weeks, since many Australians were still on summer vacation, and the school term would not start until late February. Some were families, their children full of enthusiasm; some were dedicated conservationists, and yet others joined the group for other reasons. Leaving the car park, we ventured into the darkness. I had expected the toad hunt to be focused on streams and wetland, but – and this shows the adaptiveness of this species – from the moment we left the car park, the toads began to appear on dry ground. Some were jumping across the footpath. Some were rustling among the leaves less than a metre away. Some were standing guard in front of trees. There were toads literally wherever you pointed your flashlight, from flocks of tiny hoppers to solitary, pompous alpha males. The cane toad is a sluggish animal, and with a little practice, you can easily pick them up and chuck them into the sack. After an hour, we had about 700. The most inexperienced of the lot, I got about 50 – and slimy gloves. Although perhaps not the most intuitively obvious empirical case for a study of local responses to accelerated change, toad-busting is a condensed symbol revealing some aspects of Australia and some aspects of Gladstone. First, the cane toad stands as a symbol of humanly instigated change which has got out of control. Within this narrative, it may signify hubris and arrogance, and can be connected to what we do to the environment through mining and fracking – activities which may appear to be rational in the short term, but which have unforeseeable and potentially devastating future consequences. The cane toad, in other words, tell us what will happen if we continue to dig up coal as fast as we can. Second, the cane toad can be used as a proxy for undesired aliens of the human kind. You invite them in order to be nice (or to make them work, for example by eating cane beetles), but the moment you turn your back, they have taken over the country. Third, there is a hierarchy of species in the conservationist movement. Typical animal rights groups work hard to protect whales against bloodthirsty Japanese and Norwegians, or to save polar foxes and minks from the fur industry, or even to stop industrial meat production or experiments on animals. By comparison, rats and cockroaches do not seem to have rights. The toad-busting movement tries to protect Australian wildlife through massive violence against one unlucky species. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

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Fourth, the cane toad can be seen just as a pest and a nuisance. Nobody really believes that Queensland will get rid of it, but at least toad-busters can contribute to keeping the numbers down. In this, all volunteers agreed before we duly handed in our fluorescent vests and counting devices, got into our vehicles and called it a day. Finally, the cane toad may be connected to a Romantic narrative about purity and the loss of a natural equilibrium, a pristine state as it were (see Lien and Davidson 2011). There are environmentalists in Australia who argue that anything that was brought there by humans shouldn’t have been there. This puritan view nevertheless easily lends itself to objections: for example, what about the dingo? A relative of Melanesian and Southeast Asian dogs and wolves, the dingo may have been brought to Australia about 4000 years ago, yet it is considered an endemic species, indeed as an emblematic Australian animal. And isn’t it, one might add, a good thing that Australians can grow apples and grapes? Most Australians would agree. Ultimately, puritan nativism is rare, yet many resent the thought that the unique (and, as is often pointed out, fragile) Australian ecosystems should be destroyed by invasive species running amok, and there is a significant pan-Australian awareness of the disruptive potential of invasive species such as South African grass and bushes, as well as feral animals such as brumbies (wild horses), camels and wild pigs. In December 2013, South American fire-ants were discovered near the alumina refinery at Yarwun north of Gladstone. The discovery immediately raised the alarm and became the talk of the town. The tension between fossil fuel industries and the natural environment represents a big dilemma, not least in Queensland, to which there is no easy solution. If the problem is scaled down to fire-ants or cane toads, it may be more easily manageable than an analysis which requires a full understanding of the importance of Australian fossil fuels for the warming of the oceans, the crisis of the Great Barrier Reef and global climate change – or the pragmatically impossible position that anything post-invasion is out of place. In this way, toad-busting in Gladstone can be understood in direct relation to the resource industry. It is uncontroversial and gives concerned citizens a feeling of doing something useful for the environment. Anna Hitchcock of the Gladstone Conservation Council was in charge of the toad-busting programme for a period, and I asked her about its ecological rationale: ‘Do you reckon it helps? Is it worthwhile or just another form of environmental whitewashing?’ She said: The places where toads are allowed to reproduce in large numbers are weak ecosystems anyway, where there is little resistance to them. And

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of course, picking up a few hundred or a few thousand toads is not going to make any difference, but when I ran the programme, I always thought that toad-busting could be a beginning to a deeper kind of engagement. Besides, the way toad-busters do it is an alternative to using the toads as footballs, which people do, and which doesn’t even always kill them. The toads are not merely a lightning conductor for the industry – they are a real nuisance as well – but it is worth noticing that far more Gladstonites engage in toad-busting than in protests against environmental destruction on a large scale, arguably of a more serious nature, and where industrial activities are directly implicated. The federal Australian government has a socially responsible investment policy which excludes investments in tobacco, landmines and cluster bombs. It also aims to reduce fossil fuel dependency significantly by 2050. Yet the Queensland government has invested massively in the fossil fuel industry, and also has holdings in uranium (which violates federal law). As pointed out in a report by the Australian Conservation Federation, ‘As investments currently stand, the Queensland funds invest around $1.4 billion in fossil fuels, $147 million in the nuclear industry and $33 million in renewables’ (ACF 2008: 17). Although the figures are dated, the practices have not changed. Pointing to innovation in renewable energy may thus credibly be seen as a way of diverting attention from the main preoccupation, which remains fossil fuels, mainly coal. There are many possible ways of diverting attention, by focusing either on a smaller problem (‘this is regrettable but under control, don’t you worry’) or on all the good things the corporation does for the community. Making your good achievements (support of schools for disabled children, a sculpture in the park, a prize for the best cricket player and so on) overshadow what you are doing while people are looking the other way. This is how CSR may take on the characteristics of the lightning conductor. Since environmental activism is neither very popular nor widespread, diversions may be easily accepted. Ian Woodhouse, the local whistle­ blower concerned with air quality and disease – himself a survivor of leukaemia – says: I remember when the [Brisbane newspaper] Courier-Mail first came up to Gladstone to talk about this, they asked me why nobody seemed to want to say anything. Well, I said, they make $150,000 or more working for the industry, or their spouse or brother does, or their

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cousin, it is so entangled – and talking about negative effects of the industry might affect their job prospects. Unfortunately, it’s as simple as this. Offsets The term ‘lightning conductor’ is mine, but offsets are frequently spoken about locally, here as elsewhere in the world. Offsets are CSR activities which may be understood as direct compensations for damages done. As pointed out by Fabiana Li (2011) in a study of CSR in Chile, the notion of the offset presupposes that entities are comparable: we ruin your harbour, which is worth a certain sum, but to make good, we make a wonderful park for you, which has an equivalent value. Of course, this is debatable if the ecological destruction is either irreversible or influences global climate change. Here, there may be incommensurability between ecological perspectives and the views from the fossil fuel economy. In Gladstone, one of the most powerful industrial developers for decades has been the GPC. Unlike other investors in the industrial future of the city, the GPC is owned by the Queensland government and thus has a political obligation towards the city that the private sector does not. The most visible and popular gift to the public in recent years from the GPC is the Spinnaker Park, a beautifully developed peninsula just outside the coal wharf, with many species of indigenous trees and shrubs, footpaths, a cafe and several ponds. There is also a beach with a stinger net to repel lethal box jellyfish, but it is not being used owing to the quality of the water in the harbour. In fact, the stinger net is covered in oil slick. The GPC is also responsible for the Marina Parklands, a popular location for picnics and events. Together with WICET (Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal), the GPC has also built a water amusement park on the East Shores at Auckland Point near the multi-commodity wharf, opened towards the end of 2014. It will cost the council a substantial sum to maintain the park (which requires large amounts of clean water), but it has become a popular attraction, particularly for families. Like the GPC, Rio Tinto Alcan is also often spoken of, by community leaders, as ‘a good corporate citizen’, which has made major contributions towards ‘the green belt’ in south Gladstone – parks and recreational areas – and has founded sewage treatment plants. Another form of CSR, which is not a direct response or compensation for polluting the environment, but rather has a lightning conductor quality, consists in funding various community activities. Some are unrelated to the industry altogether. For example, QGC has sponsored

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the dialysis facility at the hospital. Among other things, Rio Tinto co-funds the annual arts exhibition at the city museum, and it supports WIN; and many companies, both local and translocal, make contributions towards sport. Some of the community initiatives from industry have a directly utilitarian motivation, a fact that is openly admitted by its representatives when asked. For example, QAL makes contributions towards educational training and supports kindergartens simply to enable people to work there. ‘You have to think long-term commitment,’ a community relations officer from Rio Tinto Alcan explains. While the GPC has a history that began with the establishment of the Gladstone Harbour Board in 1914, Rio have been in Gladstone since 1963 and remain the largest single corporation in the city, although they are not involved in LNG. A contrast is often drawn between Rio Tinto Alcan and Bechtel, which was the largest employer in the city during the four years of construction on Curtis Island. Bechtel have been far less involved in CSR activities than Rio and other long-standing corporate entities, and there is a widespread perception that the temporariness of their presence in the city led them to neglect building relationships with the community. They are not perceived as ‘a good corporate citizen’. By contrast, GLNG, the owner of one of the LNG plants on the island, won an award in Sydney in 2014 for its community work. In Gladstone, they have attracted particular attention for contributing to upgrading the airport and for community health initiatives. To sum up, CSR in Gladstone comes from many sources, with the oldest and largest actors being the most prominent, and it takes many forms. From an environmentalist perspective, some of the CSR activities can easily be understood simply as offsets or even as lightning conductors. As one green activist said, ‘Of course they [GPC] built the Spinnaker Park, so that they could get away with the dredging later.’ Disillusion It would be an exaggeration to claim that the environmentalists in Gladstone see their endeavours as successful. They notice that many of their activities are either fruitless or go unnoticed. As Anna Hitchcock says: ‘Last year [2013], there were nationwide demonstrations against fossil fuels; there was a huge turnout in the major cities, even in Bundaberg there were about forty. We got a five-second mention on the news and no coverage in the larger newspapers.’ (However, she adds, it may be worth mentioning that there were no demonstrations in Gladstone.) Submissions to EIS processes, painstakingly researched and written, often in

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holiday periods, seem to leave no trace when the projects are eventually passed by the ministries. Cheryl adds that it is very difficult to build an environmental engagement in Gladstone when it is contrary to industry interests: ‘When the harbour was closed [during the dredging scandal], and I protested and wanted to organise a demonstration, my friends cheered me on. But how many turned up? None.’ They are also concerned that the pro-industry discourse dominating public life in Gladstone takes its toll. One says: ‘Being subjected to this propaganda, you start to doubt your own judgement. You become a bit paranoid. You may be seen as mad. And if they are good [the spindoctors or PR officers from the industry], you end up liking them and seeing their point of view.’ It is difficult not to notice the exasperation and anger, sometimes verging on sarcasm, in letters and statements sent from the GCC to government agencies or corporations. They tend to agree, admitting that they are occasionally ‘running out of puff ’, seeing that although their freedom of expression is undisputed, and critical comments are actively invited ahead of major developments, the industry seems to have its way notwithstanding. Many have identified the close ties between the Australian political elite and the resources industry (e.g. Cleary 2012; Burgmann and Baer 2012). The well-known coal magnate Clive Palmer is an elected politician with his own party; but the resources industry also wields considerable power over the two traditional parties. As mentioned earlier, the resource industry even managed to depose Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, after he had proposed a carbon tax as an offset measure. Cheryl adds: ‘Also, the environmental movements in Australia are sometimes part of the problem. How are they funded, for example? And how efficient are they? Take Queensland Conservation Council; I asked them at a meeting if they could mention a success, and they couldn’t.’ Yet, there is support for environmentalist work in the city so long as it does not interfere with the fundamental interests of the fossil fuel industry. As Raymond, a long-time worker at QAL, remarks: ‘Spouts from QAL leak alumina dust; the extent of the damage depends on the prevailing direction of the wind. It can be fixed, but they won’t do it until someone forces them to.’ On 8 February 2014, the Gladstone Observer published an interview with the new professor of biology at Central Queensland University, Owen Nevin. He described Gladstone as a model example of the coexistence of industry and the environment, with coal on the one side and the natural beauty of the Great Barrier Reef on the other. In his view, ‘it is

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an environment that is very carefully managed and while it’s undergoing a lot of change, a good balance between conservation and industry is being struck,’ adding that we ‘need to be able to say to people globally, come and learn from this absolutely incredible juxtaposition, you’ve got a World Heritage site and industry absolutely side by side.’ Professor Nevin’s conclusion was that ‘[s]ometimes we have to admit we are going to keep using fossil fuels because we like the lifestyle that we have. So how best should we do that? That’s the question.’ Green ideology and practice represent the opposite of what Gladstone stands for, and many of my environmentalist informants no longer live in the city. It embodies the high point of industrialism.

6 Dredging the Harbour

If they monitor the water quality every three months, of course it is going to improve. But they don’t have statistical data going back to before the beginning of the dredging. —Josh, solar energy engineer

The harbour has been dredged before. Things will return to fucking normal. —Ron, fitter and turner

The water in the harbour used to be golden, almost the colour of your shirt; it is now a dirty brown. —Mary, retired businesswoman

Seawater is one of the most complicated things to test.

—Col Chapman, city councillor

Many harbours need to be dredged now and then. Owing to tidal movement and waves caused by wind or precipitation, the bottom sediment shifts and may create dangerous shallow spots or cumbersome unpredictability for maritime traffic. Gladstone is no exception, and its harbour has been dredged several times in the past. Indeed, an area a couple of kilometres off the coast had long been designated a dumping area for dredge spoil. However, the recent (2010–13) dredging was a large-scale operation whereby it was intended that as much as 46 million cubic metres would be removed from the seafloor (in the end, only slightly more than 30 million cubic metres was dredged), some of which was dumped off the coast, but most was lodged within a built enclosure called a bund wall, at Fisherman’s Landing north of Gladstone. The reason for the dredging was the need to expand the harbour westwards in connection with the building of the new coal terminal at Wiggins Island about 5 km north-west of the city, and the simultaneous construction of the three LNG terminals on Curtis Island. As should be abundantly clear by now, Gladstone has earned a reputation in Queensland and Australia for being a major contributor not only to the state’s economy, but also to local, regional and global

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environmental problems, ranging from air pollution and the destruction of wetlands (local scale) and damage to the Great Barrier Reef (regional scale), to climate change (global scale). The dredging of Gladstone harbour can be seen as a condensed index of both wealth and destruction: while it brings the promise of growth and continued prosperity, it also suggests a lack of sensitivity to long-term ecological sustainability, and a neglect of the damage to local ecosystems and the problems this creates for local people who have to pay the price for its unintentional consequences. It shows the clashes of scale characteristic of globalised modernity, and reveals the Janus face of the fossil fuel world; first the salvation of humanity and then its damnation. The dredging of the western harbour, planned and monitored by the GPC, was approved by Queensland authorities in July 2010, and commenced later in the same year, stepping up to a 24-hour large-scale operation in June 2011. By mid-2013, 25 million cubic metres of seafloor had been removed. The bund wall, connected to the mainland at Fisherman’s Landing just across the Narrows from the LNG terminals, was constructed between January and August 2011, with the intention of turning the enclosure, when filled with dredge spoil, into reclaimed land. Owing to the large construction operations in the western harbour basin, ship traffic in Gladstone harbour increased dramatically in the same period as dredging took place. The number of movements across the harbour increased from 1500 to 25,000 a month, the all-time peak month being reached in December 2011 with 33,000 registered vessel movements (leisure boats not included). Many locals were concerned about the potentially damaging effects of dredging. Although few raised their voices in public, there was a great deal of anxiety among Gladstonites about the constantly visible and audible dredging operation. Gladstone had about a hundred professional fishermen, many of whom were regularly fishing and crabbing in the harbour basin. In addition, there were thousands of recreational fishermen, many of whose boats were moored in the marina and who spent much of their leisure time in the harbour, from the Narrows in the west to Facing Island in the east. They had formerly seen mudflats and mangroves being destroyed in the name of progress, and many were wary about the future of their leisure activities. In addition to fishing, crabbing is a popular pastime among Gladstonites, the popular mudcrab being a common catch in precisely the areas most affected by the dredging. The fact that there was no massive local outrage against the dredging can be put down to the fact that the majority of Gladstonites earn their

Map 6.1  Location of Gladstone in relation to the LNG terminals and Fisherman’s Landing, indicating the shipping channel about to be doubled and extended following dredging

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living from industry and are reluctant to criticise it and thereby risk their future career prospects or those of their close relatives. In March 2011, when 2 million cubic metres of dredge spoil had been disposed of in the designated area in the ocean, sightings of sick and dying turtles were reported by fishermen (Landos 2012: 20). Soon afterwards, reports about sick and dead fish of several species, proliferating shell disease among mudcrabs, the disappearance of dolphins and dugongs from the harbour area and increased turbidity of the water led environmentalists, fishermen, journalists, bloggers and others to conclude that the dredging had ecological side-effects that had not been acknowledged by the GPC. There were also broader ecological concerns about the removal of the dredged silt and mud to areas within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The bund wall in the western harbour was clearly leaking (see Figure 6.1), yet the GPC denied that there were any problems. Scientists commissioned by the GPC continuously monitored the water quality, declaring it to be well within the acceptable limits. Locals murmured. The Australian environmental movement was outraged. The press, local as well as national, was more equivocal, reporting from both sides. The GRC and Queensland government, supportive of the GPC, argued that the dredging was necessary and essentially harmless. Yet the drama now began to unfold in earnest, reaching a climax in January 2014 with the revelations that led to what was subsequently known as the bund wall scandal. I now proceed to tell

Figure 6.1  Dredge spoil leaking out of the bund wall in 2011. The LNG plants under construction can be seen on Curtis Island on the other side of the Narrows.

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the story about the dredging of Gladstone harbour and the bund wall in full, but first give some theoretical background and introduce the dramatis personae.

positioned knowledge and unequal power The main analytical interest in this chapter and the two that follow concerns the relationship between different knowledge regimes, how they are linked with actors’ positioning, and the ways in which particular knowledge regimes come to form the basis of political decisions and practices. An old interest in anthropology, the relationship between competing or contrasting knowledge systems has been explored since Evans-Pritchard published his seminal book about witchcraft beliefs among the Azande of southern Sudan (Evans-Pritchard 1937). Later contributions, often taking on the asymmetrical encounter between modernity and a traditional knowledge system, include Norman Long’s (1992) important writings on the ‘interface’ in the context of development aid, Peter Worsley’s (1997) Knowledges, and a large number of more recent studies in the social studies of technology and society (STS) vein, often drawing on Bruno Latour’s influential perspectives on knowledge (e.g. Latour 1993, 2005). Important theoretical contributions, which inform the present endeavour to no small extent, are Michel Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge (Foucault 2002 [1969]), which shows the embeddedness of knowledge, including experience-based everyday knowledge, in a particular historical context; and James Scott’s work on the gap between large-scale abstract knowledge and practical knowledge, or the world of planning and the world of experience (Scott 1998). As Bateson (1972) says, ‘the map is not the territory’, indicating that the same territory can give birth to quite different maps. Power discrepancies are essential to understand this drama, and it is here taken to encompass (1) the power of definition – the ability to make a certain version of reality appear credible and authoritative, and (2) the power to effect changes in the physical world by making people do things they otherwise would not have done. A knowledge regime can be likened to a cognitive map. It is ideologically and culturally shaped, informed by the interests, experiences and subject-positions of its adherents, but, as I will show, unlike ontologies, knowledge regimes are not incommensurable. They can be compared, discussed in relation to each other, and compete on the same turf. The persons and groups featured in this drama, some of whom have been encountered in earlier chapters, represent a variety of subject-

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positions and interpret their surroundings and relevant events differently. These are the dramatis personae: • The GPC: Owned by the Queensland government, their main spokesperson was their CEO, Leo Zussino, who valiantly and consistently defended the way in which the dredging was carried out. • The GRC: An otherwise diverse group of local politicians, they had a vested interest in the dredging, which was seen as instrumental to the future growth and prosperity of the city. • The scientists: Some were commissioned by the GPC; one was hired by the fishermen; some worked independently at universities outside Gladstone, and some did applied work for the GPC and industry. They held different views and drew, to some extent, on different data. • The fishermen: The only clearly defined oppositional interest group, they saw their livelihood evaporate as a result of the unintentional, and long unacknowledged, side-effects of the dredging. • The environmentalists: Whether locally or nationally based, they saw the dredging as a major expression of the contradiction between unchecked industrial growth and ecological responsibility. • The locals: A broad range of views on the dredging is represented in the Gladstone population, some of which will come to the fore. Some locals represent a kind of expert knowledge, such as the harbour master; he nevertheless speaks here as a Gladstonite with a particular set of experiences, and can therefore be included in this group. • The media people: The Gladstone Observer is deeply loyal to the city, its residents and its economic prospects, and keeps a keen eye on its advertising accounts, while regional or national newspapers, based in Brisbane or Sydney, are far more likely to publicise possible scandals and compromising news about the events in Gladstone (which are then picked up by the Observer). On the web, organisations and bloggers also commented on what was happening in Gladstone. We can now move on to the first major indication that the dredging had serious side-effects. Gladstone fishermen would lose their livelihood, but some of the heaviest rains in the history of Queensland led to flooding, which obfuscated what might otherwise have been a simple argument about causes and effects.

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the end of commercial fishing in gladstone In April and May 2011, sick fish of various species were observed near the spoil dump ground, dead turtles were reported at the mouth of the nearby Boyne River, and three dead dolphins were found around Gladstone harbour. By July 2011, reports of sick and dying fish were becoming more widespread, as were observations of shell disease in mudcrabs. In June and July, three dead dugongs were found in the harbour area. As mentioned, in this period, large numbers of barramundi (a popular fish in Queensland, which can survive in both freshwater and saltwater) with skin lesions, parasitical infections and other diseases were reported. In September, the authorities imposed a three-week fishing ban in the harbour due to the widespread outbreak of disease. By now, the prevalence of fish disease in Gladstone harbour was well known; the market for seafood from Gladstone ‘just disappeared overnight’, in the words of one fisherman, and the fishermen found themselves in a precarious situation. Some went out of business and found work elsewhere; some moved to another location; a few continued to use the Gladstone Marina as their base, but went further afield to fish. A group of fishermen, who were convinced that the dredging was responsible for forcing them out of business, formed the Gladstone Fishing Research Fund in order to prove their case and demand compensation. Funded out of their own pockets and from donations, the organisation then hired a marine biologist, Matt Landos, to carry out research and write a report about the prevalence and causes of fish and mudcrab disease. To this report and its detractors we shall return. For now, I shall concentrate on the observations and reflections of residents in Gladstone during and after the dredging. It should be noted that trust in the truthfulness of the GPC at this stage was wearing thin, and a widespread view was that the politicians were generally complicit with the GPC and the corporate world. At the public meeting about the Great Barrier Reef described in chapter 5, held in Rockhampton in December 2013, the Queensland government announced that it had ‘prohibited dredging outside Priority Port Development Areas’. As will be recalled, my sideman then whispered that this meant, in reality, ‘that they can go ahead where they want to’. Only a few months before the first reports about sick and dead fish, in December 2010 to January 2011, unusually heavy rainfall on the Central Queensland coast led to the flooding of rivers, streams, gardens and basements. Large numbers of barramundi had previously been introduced into the artificial Lake Awoonga up the Boyne River, and for the first time since the Awoonga dam was completed in 1970,

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it overflowed. Thousands of barramundi were released into the river, eventually ending up in the ocean along with a large volume of freshwater. For months, fishermen had a windfall of huge barramundi catches. One of them estimates the volume of barramundi caught between January and May 2011 as up to 200 tonnes. The fish were ‘visually normal’ (Landos 2012: 19). This would soon end, as the first barramundi with skin lesions were discovered in June. By September, the fishing ban was imposed, and although it was lifted in October, the damage to the Gladstone fishing industry turned out to be fatal. The council and the GPC explained the lesions and diseases in fish as a result of the flooding. Partly, barramundi were said to have been wounded and traumatised by the rough and violent journey from the rim of the dam down to the sea; partly, the turbidity and brackish water in the harbour basin resulting from the heavy rains and flooding were blamed for the fish ailments. The Gladstone community was aware of these opposing views, and many could also draw on their own experiences in assessing what had caused the problems. Veronica, a woman in her fifties who walks her dogs along the marina shore every morning, told me that one day – ‘it must have been in mid-2011’ – she discovered five large, dead fish lying on the shore. ‘I had never seen anything like it before. Surely that couldn’t be normal. We have had floods before, but this was new.’ Her view is expanded on by Jane, a seasoned environmentalist who drily remarks: ‘Forty years of dumping toxic waste into the harbour, and you think it wouldn’t make a difference to stir up all that stuff by dredging up millions of cubic metres of silt and mud?’ Mary, a retiree and voluntary social worker in her early eighties who has lived in Gladstone since she was young, elaborates on what is essentially the same narrative: And if you take the harbour, I saw the fish with red, bulging eyes and big sores on their bodies. Fishermen and their families also got rashes and sores. So it is clear that some things have been ignored here. In a way, what we see time and time again is big money walking over people, not taking responsibility for their well-being unless they’re forced to. They say that ‘it’s not us’, it’s the flooding and so on – but look, we’ve had rain before. The fishermen did their own research, paid a bloke to do research for them, and what he came up with was quite shocking. She is here referring to Landos’ report, but seems to be unaware of the research commissioned by the GPC, which reached a different

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conclusion. Many Gladstone residents shared her basic view, some of them unable to resist the pun that ‘there is clearly something fishy about this whole thing’. Yet many were also more bothered by the annoyance of not being able to buy local seafood than the health of the harbour ecology, confirming that small-scale concerns tend to get the upper hand. Others were less impressed by the fishermen’s narrative. Frances, an active member of several civil society associations in Gladstone, has this to say: For example, some of those fishermen are doing a great disservice to the community. Thomas: You are thinking about the negative publicity around Gladstone harbour? Frances: Yes, they’ve effectively destroyed the fishing industry by creating an image of a place where nobody should even think about eating the seafood. Thomas: Well, [one of their spokesmen] has moved up to Yeppoon … Frances: ‘Yes, and actually I think he can stay there. He and a few others have been bad-mouthing the whole industry, the whole community. It is not good. In her view, the fishermen had been publicising news about diseased fish and crabs far and wide, thereby effectively destroying their own livelihood, instead of keeping their counsel courtesy of the benefit of the doubt. Frances believed that flooding was ‘probably the main cause’ of the fish disease, but ‘I’m not an expert, so you really have to ask someone else.’ Speaking about dredging generally, Ron, a machinist in his forties, who went to school in Gladstone and has lived there all his life, would be happy to eat seafood from Gladstone any time. Besides, the ‘greeny whinging about the dredging’ was misguided and hysterical, in his view. All right, so here, the reef is about 40 Ks out. At Mackay, it would be 20 K, at Townsville 5 K. Up at Port Douglas, you can stand on the fucking beach and throw a fucking rock at the reef. So I mean, dredging further north is a different story. Charlie, an elderly part-time farmer who raises stately Brahman cattle on a pasture outside of Gladstone, mentioned during casual conversation

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that he’d bought some crabs the other day. ‘The lady asked, do you want top quality or mediocre? I said well, top quality. Paid 20 bucks a crab.’ I asked: ‘Mediocre … would that mean from Gladstone harbour?’ We were having smoko (a break – in a not too distant past it would have been a cigarette break) in a shed near the pastures, and Charlie’s son Doug intervened: ‘All the crabs are from Gladstone harbour. Mediocre means empty, or half-empty. You know, you poke your finger into the belly of the crab and it’s all soft.’1 Accompanying me on the trip was Craig Butler, a local politician and previously a farmer in the area, and Charlie went on to ask him: ‘So Craig, what do you think about this dredging business?’ Craig responded cautiously: ‘Well, I think there were some connections between the dredging, the poorly built bund wall and the problems with fish and crabs and so on.’ Charlie disagreed. ‘Look, in the past when we had floods, there were red-eyed fish and mudcrabs with disease in the harbour. I saw that fifty years ago, so I don’t believe in that crap. Those fishermen just want to get a lot of money in so-called com-pen-sation.’ In other words, Charlie’s local knowledge contradicts Veronica’s. He had seen diseased crabs and fish before, and was unimpressed by the ‘whingeing’ of the fishermen. Yet others would say to me that shell disease was far from unknown, but that almost 40 per cent of the crabs were infected at the height of the dredging in 2011–12, which could scarcely be a coincidence. As one fisherman said, ‘If they blame flooding – well, the entire Queensland coast was flooded, but I hear nothing about mudcrab disease from Bundaberg, or from Hervey Bay.’ Rajiv is one of the chief marine officers of Bechtel, responsible for much of the boat traffic back and forth between the mainland and Curtis Island. One evening, we spoke about the measures taken by Bechtel to prevent excessive damage to the environment. He pointed out that they had to comply with the strictest measures – Bechtel, being a transnational company, had to go further even than the laws of Queensland, since they had their international reputation to look after. This is somewhat beside the point of the present narrative, since Bechtel had nothing directly to do with the dredging. However, three years of observing the harbour as a Bechtel employee had given Rajiv a great deal of experience-based 1.  I knew all about this from countless summers down the Norwegian coast; intriguingly, Queensland mudcrabs bear an uncanny similarity to the North Atlantic crabs that coastal Norwegians typically eat with lemon, slices of white bread and mayonnaise during the warm months.

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knowledge, and he said that there were never any dugongs in the harbour in the first place. He then told the story about the flooding. At the time when the dredging started, there had been very heavy rains for weeks, and Lake Awoonga overflowed. So the sick fish you saw around that time had been flooded out of the lake, down Boyne River and into the harbour basin. No wonder they were sick and wounded. The GPC was always ready to take action in order to allay fears and to minimise the implications of the dredging. The recently (2014) retired harbour master of Gladstone, Mike Lutze, was also unimpressed by the allegations about dredging having destroyed the fishing industry. Mike: The people who were critical of the dredging were generally people who don’t live here. Thomas: And local fishermen … Mike: Yes, because they were hoping to get compensation from the government. But as I’ve also said to the media, do you think I’m a bloody idiot? I live here, for god’s sake, do you think I would have gone along with a project that had destroyed the local environment, the Great Barrier Reef and so on? Look … this harbour is probably the most overstudied harbour in all of Australia, and the Ports Corporation [GPC] has spent $100 million on monitoring the water quality. It’s doing fine, and besides, the water has always been a bit cloudy here. I came here first in 1977, and the water in the harbour was muddy even then. It has to do with the conditions on the bottom, see, if it’s mud and not sand, it won’t be crystal clear. The gregarious harbour master, who had worked in Gladstone harbour for decades, thus invokes local, experience-based knowledge against the lofty and abstract perspectives of environmentalists from afar – just as local environmentalists do when they argue against the big corporations, but with the opposite purpose. As the foregoing has made clear, the experience-based knowledge about dredging, flooding and disease in fish, crabs and sea mammals is not consistent. Some speak with shock and disgust about the dead dolphins washed up on the shore in 2011, while others are adamant that dolphins were never supposed to be in the harbour anyway. However, on a boat trip in January 2014, I saw a dolphin in the marina myself. Incidentally, I have also seen dugongs in the harbour basin twice, contrary

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to allegations that the increased turbidity has killed off the seagrass, reduced visibility dramatically and made the harbour uninhabitable for dugongs – or the view that dugongs never ventured into the harbour in the first place. Those who suffered health problems following the dredging, allegedly because of toxic residue in fish or bacteria in the water, would take a less sanguine view. With his wife Betty, Fred was the owner of a thriving seafood business for many years. Based in the prosperous suburb of Boyne Island south of Gladstone proper, they sold crustaceans and many species of fish to locals. In addition, as a friend of his points out, ‘Fred was never exactly what you’d call a die-hard environmentalist. He used to chop off shark fins and sell them to Asia. Now, nobody wants to buy shark fins from Gladstone, of course.’ In late 2011, Fred’s right leg became swollen and painful. He was admitted to hospital, but the source of his ailment was not found. There was talk of amputating his leg when Dr Andrew Jeremijenko, a Brisbane-based doctor, managed to diagnose Fred correctly. He treated Fred with antibiotics and amputation was avoided, but more than two years later, Fred can walk only with difficulty and is unlikely to work again. He speaks with bitterness about the refusal of the GPC to admit their responsibility and to offer some kind of compensation for his lost business and ruined life. Jeremijenko would later explain to me how he became interested in Gladstone. He had worked as a doctor for the mining industry before, and had seen dead seabirds in Western Australia, where lead pellets had polluted the water supply and poisoned birdlife. ‘Now that dead fish were turning up in Gladstone harbour, I knew that there were reasons for this. Dead fish are biomarkers. Obviously, in Gladstone there has been heavy industry for more than forty years, and everybody knows that alumina production releases toxins, including heavy metals.’ Jeremijenko adds that what surprised him was not that this happened, since environmental side-effects are always outcomes of industrial activity, but the denial that toxic waste was a problem in Gladstone harbour. That was clearly bullshit, things were covered up. Well, small environmental problems or health issues can always be covered up; there are ways of avoiding them being reported by paying people off and reporting them in other ways, but these were big things – I thought that ‘you’ll get caught sooner or later’. Curtis Island is part of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, after all.

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Soon after this conversation, the GPC was indeed ‘caught’, but that story will have to wait. We first have to examine the expert knowledges at play. It is a common assumption that ‘scientists’ tend to close ranks and project a shared, objectivist view of the natural world. This misrepresentation is widespread, not least in some of the STS literature. In the ongoing controversy around dredging in Gladstone, it nevertheless soon became apparent that there was no single scientific view, but several.

conflicting expert knowledges Just as lay people disagreed fundamentally on the description of the situation as well as the causes and effects of the events taking place in Gladstone harbour during the flooding and dredging from 2010 to 2013, so did people drawing on scientific research disagree just as strongly, if not more. In 2012, while Matt Landos was busy collecting data for his report commissioned by the Gladstone fishermen – collecting specimens, measuring the water quality, taking algae samples – other scientists were also at work studying the water quality in the harbour area. The Gladstone-based research institute Vision Environment had been hired by the GPC to monitor water quality and to report on any aberrations. Their view was that the proportion of chemicals and dissolved metals was well within established limits. As the Vision director, Dr Leonie Anderson, concludes a presentation of their work on Australian TV in September 2012, ‘By maintaining water quality within Australian standards, we are maintaining ecological health.’2 Landos’ findings, by contrast, indicated that a massive toxic algal bloom, compounded by lead and other dissolved metals, was the main explanation for the high prevalence of disease in marine life. Nevertheless, an earlier report published by the GPC, in late 2011 (GPC 2011), drew the opposite conclusions. While the stories I have told about dead dolphins, turtles and dugongs may seem dramatic, the GPC published statistics indicating that stranded sea animals are quite common in Queensland, and that there is no glaring overrepresentation in Gladstone. For example, 44 dolphins were reported as stranded in Queensland from 1 January to 27 September 2011, 6 of them in the Gladstone area. The GPC concedes that seagrass cover in Gladstone harbour had decreased noticeably during ‘the wild summer season’ (GPC 2011: 4) of 2010–11, but that it had recovered. This report also indicates that dredging on a large scale had taken place regularly since the 1960s – 2.  The clip can be watched on www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWkISQDRxdE

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however, since 1998, the dredge spoil had mainly been deposited ashore. During the present, large-scale dredging operation, the dredge spoil was dumped either at sea or in the contested bund wall. And regarding the diseased barramundi, the report concludes: ‘These fish suffered physical stress, which combined with the stress of the relocation, would have also made them susceptible to disease’ (GPC 2011: 18). I asked Dr Marnie Campbell at Central Queensland University, a marine biologist who has also done research in Gladstone harbour, for her views. She took an equivocal stance. Dredging in the Gladstone harbour has had less of an impact than many people believe. Yes, the water gets muddy. But there wasn’t great visibility before either. When we arrived three years ago, the situation for the seagrass was disgusting, but this year [2013], the seagrass is fantastic, probably as a result of flooding which has washed out mud and brought circulation and nutrients into the harbour. What dredging does do is to affect water current movements, but the effects of this on fishing are uncertain. There is no fish caught in Gladstone harbour [any more], but who would have eaten that fish anyway? There has been a recent algae bloom, but the causes are again uncertain. I asked her about her views on Matt Landos’ report. She was sceptical of the quality of his science, but added that ‘dredging is debatable, and one could argue that you shouldn’t take the mud out to the reef but dump it elsewhere. Also, there has been a change in tactics, where the slogan now seems to be “talk more, do less”.’ Dr Campbell also pointed out that the GPC’s mandatory EIS published prior to the commencement of dredging, reported on shorebirds, dolphins and dugongs, but not on fish. Soon after, I asked Dr Jeremijenko, admittedly not a marine biologist, but someone conversant with scientific methods and data, why the water monitoring carried out by Vision Environment had not detected the presence of toxins. You have to monitor many times and use different criteria each time if you really want to find out what is wrong. To take an analogy, if I have a patient with a swollen, painful leg, and I can’t immediately diagnose him, I can’t just send him home and say that he is fine. I have to continue searching for the causes. In the end, in this particular case [Fred], it took a year to identify the bacteria, which is called Shewenella. It is a bacteria that eats metals, and people got sick with it. Clearly, the environment was suffering.

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Another surprise was that this was denied by scientists doing the reports for the Ports Corporation. They said that the cause was flooding, which I see as a perversion of science. Seagrass died, fish died, and government officials were manipulating science to their own purposes. This was an eye-opener to me. Curtis Island was a $60 billion investment, and dredging in the harbour was crucial for it to come about. They had already sold [part of] a World Heritage island to the oil and gas companies – it was initially owned by a grazier, who sold it cheaply to the Queensland government, which then sold it to the companies with a handsome profit. A lot of things were subverted for this to happen quickly. There is a collusion between the industry and government here; it was not regulated properly. And if you say absurd things for long enough, such as ‘the sky is pink’, eventually a lot of people are going to take you at your word, but that doesn’t make the sky any more pink. A handful of dismissive comments were posted below the YouTube video of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) programme where Dr Anderson presents Vision Environment’s conclusions about the health of Gladstone harbour. One says: The vid says the water was tested for dissolved metals every month from the time the dredging began. Dredging began on May 20, 2011. There was no testing of dissolved metals till well after the fish got sick and the harbour had to be closed. Total metals were tested for in April, Aug, Oct, Nov and only monthly from then, which only included for dissolved metals from then. There was no dissolved metal testing in May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct 2011. sick fish surprise? the evidence is missing. Another says: She says ‘some’ levels of turbidity doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s like saying, some acid rain in the rain every now and then doesn’t affect anyone. Mud particles which block out sunlight effects marine life drastically, killing off vegetation which need sunlight, and the marine life which feeds off the vegetation move out or eat infected plankton and all sorts. In this way, scientific knowledge is being challenged on its own terms, by people who question the methodology and interpretation of the data. For two years, the Gladstone Conservation Council had requested access to the raw data on which the GPC based its assessment of the

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water quality in the harbour, but to no avail. In the end (January 2014), Jan Arens of the GCC, a chemical engineer capable of interpreting the data and methods, finally got access to most of the data, but as a PDF file rather than a more useful spreadsheet format. Luckily for him, he found software enabling him to extract the numbers. People in powerful positions – politicians and spokesmen for the GPC – would typically adopt two kinds of positions, and develop their strategies accordingly, when confronted with anxiety and criticism. Leo Zussino, the director of GPC until 2013, was strongly dismissive of the criticism. Here is a short article from the Gladstone Observer. Call for leaders to stand up against harbour critics COMMUNITY leaders should stand up against critics of the science showing Gladstone Harbour is in good health. That is the view of Gladstone Ports Corporation chief executive Leo Zussino, who spoke at the Gladstone Region Futures Summit yesterday. Mr Zussino rejected the notion that scientists monitoring the harbour were compromised because their research was paid for by the port authority or the government. One of the arguments made by critics of the current dredging project is that the government has manipulated the outcome of scientific research on the harbour to show dredging has not had an impact. ‘It is just a base political argument,’ Mr Zussino said of the claims. ‘What it basically says is that every scientist we have ever used, and they are all reputable scientists, is either morally corrupt or they are willing to, for a buck, change the outcome of their research. ‘It is nonsense and I get sick and tired of community leaders who won’t stand up and say it.’ (Gladstone Observer, 12 April 2013) Councillor Col Chapman of the GRC takes a different approach. He concedes that there are many uncertainties involved here, and adds that ‘seawater is one of the most complicated things to test’. He speaks about desalination owing to rainfall, rivers and flooding, turbidity resulting from increased ship traffic, industrial waste and natural fluctuations in, for example, seagrass cover. ‘It is a matter of several things, not just this or that.’ Chapman has been involved in a broad range of council-led initiatives to monitor and improve the environmental situation in Gladstone, and has successfully built partnerships with various institutions in civil society as well as industry.

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The subject-positions of those who produced conflicting accounts, including their funding sources, are far from irrelevant. Matt Landos was paid by the fishermen to make his report. Vision Environment was paid by the GPC to do their water monitoring: there are rumours about million-dollar payments. Zussino and the GPC stood to lose money and symbolic capital were they to be found guilty of ecological indifference, while the council has as one of its main interests to build trust between residents and industry. The people from civil society who have been quoted in this chapter would in many cases be personally entangled with the interests either of the GPC and its allies, or with the forces opposing it, or would have personal stakes in preserving the harbour for leisure or aesthetic reasons. Some, however, such as the Gladstone Conservation Council and Dr Jeremijenko, do not appear to have any vested interests. The story about the dredging of Gladstone harbour might have ended here, somewhat inconclusively, with evidence pointing in several directions, possibly with the more convincing stories supporting the view that environmental toxins were released through the dredging, leading to death and disease in fish and crabs, and resulting in boils, infections and – in a few cases – serious illness among people who came in regular contact with fish from the harbour. However, there is a final act to this drama, which develops the theme of knowledge and power further, and it concerns the bund wall, intended to contain most of the dredge spoil and to prevent damage to the harbour as a result of the massive dredging operation.

the bund wall scandal When it comes to government officials … somebody has deliberately been playing some tricks on us. Others have been misinformed. Too much was at stake. So it was claimed that the bund wall complied with legislation. Some have been thinking, this is what we want you to know. Not the rest. There is likely to have been a core group who have known the truth [about the bund wall] all along. —Environmental activist based in Sydney Many suspected that the GPC was not telling the whole truth about the bund wall, which was designed as a filter preventing soil particulates from leaking into the harbour. However, aerial photos indicated that brown, muddy water was leaking out of the bund wall on all sides. Inexplicably, the GPC refused to accept this evidence, insisting that the bund wall was safe and sealed, save for a minor leakage in the early days of dredging.

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As the foregoing has made clear, there is so much complexity surrounding the dredging affair that the leakages might conceivably have been forgotten amid the general confusion and uncertainty. Regarding the dredging in general, not only is there disagreement about the causes of environmental issues associated with the dredging; there is also disagreement about the very description of the situation – the maps, which are always interpretations, differ. Here is a short excerpt from a long and animated discussion on Facebook, starting with the publication of the two photos reproduced in Figure 6.2. They depict Gladstone harbour before and after dredging, indicating – apparently – in no uncertain terms that the water quality has become visibly worse after dredging. However, there are several possible interpretations of the photos, as the anonymised Facebook exchange below suggests. Judith: Tide was also different … need same tide for a true reflection… Jim: Nothing anyone will ever do will be able to stop this. And also the top photo is better quality than the bottom one.

Figure 6.2  Before and after dredging Source: The Daily Telegraph Pole, Facebook.

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Polly: Wasn’t that during the big rains last year? I’m pretty sure I read it was. Emma: What are the dates of each of these photos? Judith: Pretty sure you are Right Polly Nina: Does dredging turn the trees black too? Beth: These photos are so wrong, if you want to prove a point properly get correct pic for after Christa: Top looks like sand bottom looks like mud. Pretty confident there has never been beaches … Jim: I see the water every day and it isn’t that muddy Christa: Nor is it that sandy. Christa: Or has it ever been. Amanda: I’m fairly sure I seen that bottom pics after we had the big rains Beth: That is exactly when it was Amanda Tony: Can’t let facts get in the way of a good story, you know. Emma: This is greeny propaganda, never has the water looked like we live in the whitsundays or that muddy, maybe after floods. Seriously stop scare campaign, we live in a beautiful industrial town. Jennifer: This photo [Figure 6.3] was taken on 2 July 2012 well after the floods and you can see the difference in the water. The clear water from Auckland Creek mixing with the dirty water coming from where they were dredging. For those that say the water in the Gladstone harbour has always been dirty then I say you have never been on it much at all as I have seen it clear on many occasions and yes, it does get dirty but not as dirty as it was when the dredging was happening.3 Beth: of course the water is going to get dirty when dredging they are moving dirt. but how is the water now, has it made it dirty forever. why drag all this up again the dredging is done lets move on and enjoy this town and what it has to offer. Jennifer: Beacause people deny that Gladstone had a clean harbour. Keith: I wish all the hippys would move to Nimbin or the Daintree and leave the industry alone, its here to stay. […] Emma: Do any of you live in Gladstone? This has been photoshopped this is nothing like our harbour. …. 3.  Minor edits have been made to this exchange for ease of reading.

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Figure 6.3  Private photo from Gladstone harbour

Sally: disgusting … no wonder the fish are deformed … Kate: Environmenticide on a grand scale perpetrated by the worst state and federal governments in Queensland and Australian history. Mary: Sorry Emma have photos and video prior to dredging to prove it not photo shopped. Steve: I used to say, you can’t stop progress, now i say we must stop progress in places like this. Then i think how will it be in a hundred years from now, and is anything we do going to make a difference?? The controversy around the bund wall, which was attacked as leaky and dodgy, but defended as sound and safe, took an unexpected turn in January 2014, when the previous environmental manager of the GPC came out as a whistleblower in The Australian, a nationwide newspaper not widely known for its environmentalist credentials. As early as August 2011, John Broomhead had reported to his employer that the bund wall was seriously faulty, and that potentially toxic dredge spoil leaked out of it at low tide. Two and a half years later, the environmental editor of the

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newspaper, Graham Lloyd (2014) would, in a scathing article, describe a culture of secrecy, an opaque process of decision-making which led the LNG project to be located to an island rather than, arguably more rationally, to the mainland, and an emerging ecological catastrophe in a World Heritage Area, taking place ‘under the astonished gaze of UNESCO’ (Lloyd 2014). In 2011, the GPC had conceded that the bund wall would leak a little until it was sealed by a massive amount of dredge spoil placed against the wall. However, they had not admitted that its construction was faulty. Broomhead was not the only whistleblower to call attention to the bund wall scandal. In August 2013, Bill Service, dredging adviser of the QGC and Warren Hornsey, National Technical Manager of Geofabrics Australasia, had given a detailed presentation to Engineers Australia about mistakes made during the construction of the bund wall. They explained in detail how the contractor working for the GPC, in a bid to save time and money, had settled for an inferior geotextile sealing the bund wall, and that it had been placed along the internal rim and not in the core of the bund wall. As a result, the geotextile was lifted by the tide and soon became torn and leaky (Service and Hornsey 2013). In an environmental briefing released by the GPC itself in October 2011, it is merely remarked that ‘[t]here have been short periods of heightened turbidity levels during extreme Spring tides near the Fisherman’s Landing bund wall’ (GPC 2011: 3), but no conclusion is drawn. However, in a report commissioned by the GPC, submitted in November 2011, the engineering firm BMT WBM stated that the leaking bund wall was a likely cause of the poor water quality at the time when fish and other animals were sick and dying in large numbers. This report was released (or leaked, if the pun be allowed) to the public only in November 2013 (Lloyd 2014). The Gladstone Observer, which called attention to the mounting scandal in several articles in December 2013 and January 2014, had previously concluded, on 2 August 2013, that ‘Flooding, not dredging, caused sick fish in Gladstone harbour’, basing the conclusion on a ‘final report’ on sick fish commissioned by GPC. Owing to the new information, the newspaper had now changed its mind. The new boldness of the Observer in critiquing the powerful GPC may also have been linked to the fact that the CEO of the Corporation had effectively been dismissed from his job in August. Zussino was known for his impatience with critics and had threatened to take the newspaper to court for libel on several occasions in the past. ‘These moves typically ended with out-of-court settlements which have cost the Observer quite a few dollars,’ a journalist with the newspaper says.

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Andrew Jeremijenko seconds this interpretation. I asked him why The Australian, a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper that would often support corporations against local communities, now ran a series of critical articles about the GPC. Yes, they ran the whistleblower’s story. What happened here was that Leo Zussino, who liked to sue people who criticised him, had taken Graham Lloyd to court some time back, so Lloyd was none too fond of the Gladstone Ports Corporation. This could be seen as a way of hitting back at them. The dismissal of Zussino, who had been CEO of the GPC for 21 years and openly stated that he had no wish to leave, may have been related to the bund wall affair. Chief executives of the GPC had, according to Broomhead, been aware of fatal flaws in the bund wall and the likelihood of its leaks being linked to the effective death of the local fishing industry since 2011. Now that dredging was completed, it was no longer necessary to conceal the facts from the public, which would be impossible in the long run in any case. So, many Gladstonites reason, Zussino was sacrificed in order for GPC to wash its hands of the mounting scandal. Zussino was closely aligned with the former Labor government of Queensland, which had taken the counterintuitive decision to locate the LNG plants to Curtis Island for reasons which are still somewhat obscure. He was replaced by a liberal, Mark Brody, with no prior connection to the region.4 On 20 January 2014, the ABC announced, in its evening news programme, that the federal Minister of the Environment, Greg Hunt, had called for an independent inquiry into the bund wall affair. Since Tony Abbott’s Liberal government came to power in September 2013, Hunt had approved several coal mines and coal port expansions on the ecologically vulnerable Queensland coast, thus this decision was clearly the result of growing pressure from the media and civil society. Wary of the term ‘independent inquiry’, Cheryl Watson of the Gladstone Conservation Council wrote a letter to Minister Hunt on the following day: Dear Minister Hunt, It is with both a heavy heart and a small ray of hope that I write this email to you. First of all to introduce myself. My name is Cheryl Watson and I live at South End, Curtis Island, Gladstone, Queensland. I am a retired small business owner who is a wife, mother and grand4.  Zussino was reappointed as Chairman of the Board of the Gladstone Ports Corporation in 2015.

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mother. Until 5 1/2 years ago I had complete trust in our Governments and would never have dreamt that I would be called an ‘environmental activist’. I do not wish to play politics or use the blame game because what has happened in Gladstone has happened and my little ray of hope is the sincere and deeply felt wish that you will do what is right by not only our community but for the rest of the Queensland Coast. This hope has come about because you have called for ‘an independent inquiry’ of what I can only call a travesty pertaining to the Gladstone harbour. The heavy heart comes about because unfortunately ‘independent inquiry’ does not fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling as we seem to have had numerous ones which sadly have not reached any genuine answers. I was a member of the Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership (set up by the Newman Government [in Queensland, THE]) for approximately 6 months but withdrew because of major concerns regarding the so-called independence of this committee and its objectives. I am Treasurer of the Gladstone Conservation Council which was officially formed approximately 2 years ago, our President Jan (pronounced Yan) Arens has been trying for 2 1/2 years to obtain the raw data regarding the dredging that has occurred in the Gladstone harbour over the last few years. Part of the EIS states that this is available to those who wish to view it. Unfortunately to date some data was given just before Christmas, 2013 but it did not include some crucial information. Jan works full time and is a Process Engineer, water quality being one of his work activities. Unfortunately it is much easier for me to verbalise my concerns than to try to condense the information into an email. We have information which I believe is relevant to this inquiry including video of the Gladstone harbour taken in August, 2008. Jan has a Power Point presentation dealing with the environmental timeline of the Gladstone harbour which seems to be the only one that has been done by anyone to the best of our knowledge. […] Thanking you, Cheryl Watson5 This meeting never came about, and Arens’ material was not used in the review, although the Gladstone Conservation Council submitted two 5. 

Minor edits have been made to this letter.

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lengthy documents as source material for the commission of inquiry. Be this as it may, the report, written by three scientists appointed by Hunt’s ministry, concluded with several points of severe criticism directed at the GPC, and recommended better transparency and more genuinely independent decision-making procedures. The report identified breaches of environmental conditions set prior to the dredging, stated that the water monitoring was inadequate and emphasised that the construction of the bund wall was ‘not consistent with industry best practices’ (Johnson et al. 2014: vii). The commission’s mandate was limited to the bund wall affair and thus they did not comment on the effects of the leakages on the surrounding ecosystem, as pointed out and lamented by the Queensland Seafood Industry Association in their submission to the commission (QSIA 2014). Yet, the findings and recommendations in the review made it clear that serious mistakes had been made by GPC in the construction of the bund wall, and that it had not adequately communicated the situation to the public.

trust, power and knowledge Gladstonites are used to industry having its way. Most of them depend directly or indirectly on the industry for their livelihood, and are reluctant to complain. As a former environmental whistleblower in Gladstone, now retired and living elsewhere, says, When your job is on the line, you might not ask the hard question. … We get a skewed view in the press, often with an emphasis on factors that obstruct the view. The politicians and corporations are part of this package. The system is broken and needs to be fixed. She sees complicity between federal and state politicians on the one hand and powerful industrial interests on the other, personified by Clive Palmer, the mining magnate who formed his own political party in 2013, the Palmer United Party, and holds a seat in the federal parliament. Trust in the media, politicians and spokespersons for corporations is generally limited. There is also a concern about the hegemonic knowledge regime working against a balanced view of the relationship between carbon-intensive industry and the environment. As Wendy Bacon’s research shows, scepticism about the impact of human activities on climate change is widespread in Australian newspapers, giving the impression that the scientific community is undecided or divided on the issue (Bacon 2013); while Philip Chubb (2012) has shown how the large newspapers tended towards a pro-industry partisan view

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of the carbon tax issue. With the exception of the West Australian in Perth, all major Australian newspapers are either owned by the Fairfax group (of which the mining billionaire Gina Rinehart is the largest shareholder) or by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. Like several smaller newspapers on the Queensland coast, the Gladstone Observer is owned by APN News and Media, in which NewsCorp is a major shareholder. It is not being censured or micromanaged by its owners, but depends on Gladstone-based industry for advertising revenue. The relationship between politicians, applied research institutes and corporations is close and founded on shared interests. Producing an EIS is so highly paid that its authors are quite likely to be more cautious and equivocal in their assessments than they might otherwise have been. Arrow Energy’s EIS about Gladstone concedes that the project is located within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, and that impacts of dredging and construction could disturb fragile ecosystems (Arrow Energy 2012). However, Shell Oil, which owns Arrow, stated in 2003 that the company would ‘not explore for, or develop, oil and gas resources in natural World Heritage Sites’, and accordingly, the EIS downplays the location as well as the ecological implications of the project. Government, in turn, gets large sums in revenue and royalties from the companies, and would therefore generally support development of new projects.6 Governments and local councils are also concerned with unemployment figures and the general state of the economy. Most Gladstonites take a decidedly local perspective when talking about environmental issues, speaking from their own experience. An elderly woman says: ‘Coming back to Gladstone, after having spent six weeks in that terrible, polluted city of Melbourne [with family], my asthma immediately returned. It hadn’t bothered me for six weeks. And they tell us that the air in Gladstone is excellent?’ A resident of South End, the sole village on Curtis Island, says: ‘Well, before the dredging started, we’d get perhaps 200 whitings in the Narrows. Afterwards, it was perhaps 20. We stopped fishing there anyway, went out on the other side of the island instead.’ He continues: ‘What really angered me …’ His wife interrupts: ‘… and he doesn’t really get angry …’ ‘… was being treated like an idiot.’ His wife adds: ‘Before, we would have fish perhaps three or four times a week. But now, would I eat the fish from the harbour? 6.  In early 2014, Arrow Energy decided to postpone the construction of its plant for economic reasons.

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‘You also stop trusting scientists. If CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation] tells me that eating the fish from Gladstone harbour is safe, would I do it? Not necessarily. The very concept of the independent inquiry has been hollowed out.’ * * * Before moving on, in the next chapter, to considering a case which has many structural similarities to the dredging scandal, I shall give the final word to Andrew Jeremijenko, summing up the relationship between power, trust and different regimes of knowledge in the prospering, booming, but fraught and paradoxical industrial city of Gladstone: The air quality is also poorly regulated. Areas of concern include aluminium dust levels, which are higher here than in comparable places in the US, but also other discharges. Personally, I have asthma, and I wouldn’t live in Gladstone, no. Coal dust also increases, and is projected to increase further in the coming years, and also has an impact. It is hard to blame all this on ‘natural causes’. But when they can sell a Great Barrier Reef island off to a gas company and get away with it, you get the feeling that they can do anything. It is an incredible example of poor environmental regulation, as is the harbour affair. Well, Gladstone is basically run by the ports, and some have made a lot of money out of this. Others will get very rich. Clearly, all the powerful people just wanted the problems to go away.

7 Slow-Burning Overheating at the East End Mine Water has ruled my life. Shortages and difficulty in obtaining a reliable farm supply dictated to me. Maybe in some perverse way it has also ruined my life, for like Don Quixote, I too have tilted at windmills.

—Alec Lucke (2013, loc. 493)

In Australian society, farmers and miners are both legitimate custodians of the land. Both turn wilderness into value and make a living in a difficult environment, but, as pointed out in chapter 2, they increasingly come into conflict with one another in the era of huge-scale coal mining and coal seam gas. Yet, as is sometimes noted, whereas miners bring money to the country, farmers put food on the table. The Australian public was reminded of the national significance of farming when, in February 2014, at the height of a severe drought in the Queensland outback, Prime Minister Abbott visited towns and farms stricken by the drought and

Figure 7.1  East End Mine Action Group protest poster against QCL mine expansion

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promised financial relief. This was a very significant decision, in so far as Abbott’s government (2013–15) usually favoured free competition of a strictly neoliberal kind, allowing unprofitable enterprises to go bankrupt rather than keeping them going through subsidies and tax breaks. But a grazier is not a mechanic, a cattle farm not a car factory. In the rural parts of Mount Larcom, a small township some 35 km west of Gladstone, farmers are accustomed to examining the skies, looking for promising signs of heavy, dark cloud. Rain is scarce and grazing inadequate, and they all rely on bores and surface storage facilities for water. Given this scarcity, it does not help their viability, or trust in the decency of politicians meant to look after their interests, that an expanding limestone mine in the vicinity uses gigalitres of groundwater in its operations. This conflict, which has been simmering since 1979, is the subject of this chapter. Like the dredging controversy, it involves competing knowledge regimes, complex scientific models as well as the everyday knowledge of experience, a powerful corporation and local resistance. Located by the Bruce Highway, half an hour’s drive from Gladstone, Mount Larcom has been a farming area since the beginning of the twentieth century, mostly raising livestock, but some crops are also grown. The soil, as outsiders sometimes point out, is less fertile than in the nearby Targinnie and Yarwun areas, and the rain less predictable than in other parts of coastal Queensland. Yet the green rolling fields of Bracewell and East End (the rural parts of the township) are well suited for pastoralism, and the tiny town, with a population of just 221, punches well above its weight in terms of services and facilities. There is a shop, a police station, a pub and restaurant, a petrol station, a primary school, a village hall, a church, a showground and a bowls club. Unlike Gladstonites, who are concerned about the fast growth of their city, the residents of Mount Larcom have for many years canvassed for political support to sustain its growth and survival as a rural town with a healthy agricultural sector. The area has never been prioritised for development. Some locals suspect that a reason may be that the fallout from industry tends to blow in the direction of Mount Larcom. Instead, a bushland area near Calliope, which lies due west of Gladstone, has been singled out for residential development, and is now the site of new suburbs. The limestone mine at the centre of the controversy, the East End Mine, employs a dozen people, but only two or three live in Mount Larcom. In order to extract the limestone, the mine pumps out large quantities of water from underground aquifers, on which the farmers also rely for their water supply. Queensland’s largest limestone mine, the East End Mine, is owned by Cement Australia, which is one of the

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largest cement companies in the world following an amalgamation in 2003. The mine provides the cement factory at Fisherman’s Landing with its raw material. The cement factory is Australia’s largest, and much of its production is exported. Unlike coal seam gas drilling elsewhere in Queensland, limestone mining is open pit, and therefore requires ownership of the surface as well as that which is underground. The mine has been expanded several times, the cement company successively buying out farmers on adjacent properties. Farmers and graziers in the area have been wary of the mine’s thirst for groundwater since the beginning. Successive expansions have prompted action on their part. Not only do they argue that the mining activity lowers the water table, they have also claimed that the depletion of aquifers makes the soil subside in places, thereby making the land difficult to maintain and use.

the mine and the farmers The story began in 1974, when Mount Larcom farmers were surprised to discover that, under Queensland law, mining companies were allowed to drill boreholes on private land. This was when drilling took place, carried out by Darra Explorations, the exploratory arm of Queensland Cement & Lime (QCL). Later in the year, QCL purchased 2200 hectares of agricultural land in order to expand the mine into a large, industrial operation. In December 1974, a group of local farmers, concerned about their water supply, joined forces and formed the Mount Larcom Mining Protest Group in order to oppose the project. However, they were disappointed to learn that people in Mount Larcom town were generally in favour of the mine expansion, since it would bring jobs and, perhaps, development to the region. The population of the town itself at the time was less than 300, while the number of rural landholders potentially affected was estimated at roughly 45. Unlike coal mines and the Gladstone industry, the mine did not pollute the air, nor were there any other nuisances associated with it such as noise and light. For the townsfolk, that is. To the farmers, the prodigious quantities of water used by the mine did produce some undesirable side-effects which they saw as being detrimental to their livelihoods. In her celebratory book about the history of Gladstone from rags to riches, or from backwater to modern industrial city, McDonald (1988: 351) writes that the lime from the mine was transported to the factory in the form of slurry, ‘through a twenty-four kilometre underground

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pipeline from East End to Fisherman’s Landing, thus producing no environmental hazards’. (The pipeline was later replaced by a railway loop.) This statement could be contested, since the waste water contaminated by slurry went straight into the creeks and then to the ocean, potentially contributing not only to a decline in the water table, but also interfering with the biodiversity of the creek system. This latter argument, however, was developed later, since ecological issues were not foremost on the agenda in the 1970s. Although landholders were opposed to the new mining leases, these were granted in 1976. Among politicians, even those sympathetic to the farmers found it difficult to balance their interests against their support for industrial development in Gladstone. The farmers were few and represented a small economic contribution, as opposed to the prospects for the mine and the burgeoning industry at Fisherman’s Landing. The cement kiln, which depended on the mine, represented more jobs, more money and more powerful economic interests than the livestock farmers in Mount Larcom could match. Aware of possible side-effects of the extensive use of water by the mine, the Queensland government decided to put a water monitoring programme into place in 1977. As would later become evident, however, water levels were measured quarterly for many years without the results ever having been analysed or used. The Irrigation and Water Supply Commission was responsible for water monitoring, together with QCL’s consultant hydrologist. Unexpected problems arose, as is so often the case when models meet reality. For example, it turned out that the local water contained too much sodium to be used in cement production and, as a result, a 40 km water pipeline had to be built from Lake Awoonga to enable the pumping of slurry to the factory on the coast. The original protest group ceased to function in the early 1980s, and for almost fifteen years, there was no stakeholder participation or systematic critical scrutiny in relation to the mine. Since QCL consistently denied that the mine had contributed to a declining water supply for the farmers, it is a matter of some interest that at a meeting with landowners in 1995, the company admitted that they had improved the water supply for five farmers, by upgrading their bores, drilling new wells or supplying water from the mine. This was interpreted by many as an inadvertent admission of guilt – an offset. Within ten days of this meeting, which was held at the mine, representatives of QCL began to visit landowners in order to inform them about a possible expansion of the mine.

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the east end mine action group When news of an imminent mine expansion became known, engaged farmers decided to meet and form a new protest group. EEMAG (the East End Mine Action Group) was formed in 1995, aiming to protect and promote the interests of the farmers, as well as producing independent knowledge about the state of the aquifers and the consequences of the mining operation. EEMAG does not demand a closure of the mine, but aims to have its understanding of the law recognised, and to convince QCL (now amalgamated into Cement Australia) of the validity of its members’ knowledge about the mine’s role in depleting the area’s water resources. A consequence of these achievements would be that the mine would have to change some of its practices and provide landowners with appropriate compensation. Alec Lucke, who lived and worked on the Lucke farm in the Bracewell area until his retirement in 2006, is one of the rural activists who has for decades been engaged in battle with Cement Australia and with political decisions which, in his view, have been grossly misguided. In his detailed and meticulous self-published autobiography, Road to Exploitation (Lucke 2013), he describes meetings with politicians and bureaucrats, lawsuits against the company, independent studies documenting water depletion, and the slow encroachment on the community by the expanding mine. Having moved to another state after selling the family farm at a low price (‘after all, it was now virtually surrounded by the mine,’ he says), he continues to invoke hydrogeological studies and law in order to call the company to account. As one of EEMAG’s founders, Lucke concedes (in 2014) that throughout its existence, the organisation has achieved little, although at least 24 landowners have received replacement water supplies from Cement Australia. Their greatest achievement, he reflects retrospectively, consists in continuing to exist and to maintain the struggle. Lucke adds, not without pride, that the lawyers and scientists commissioned by the farmers’ organisation to assist them, worked for free half the time. To EEMAG, this fact testifies to the existence of a community bent on representing the interests of ‘the little man’ facing powerful, transnational adversaries, and capable of mobilising and understanding the science needed to meet the mine owners on their own terms. EEMAG succeeded in becoming a negotiating partner for the mining corporation, eventually presenting demands, reports and submissions to EISs that were discussed in both small forums and larger meetings involving landowners as well as representatives of the mine. One proposal discussed in the committee where both mining and farming

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interests were represented, consisted in pumping water back into the aquifers instead of releasing it to the creek. Unlike subterranean lakes like the Great Artesian Basin, aquifers are layers of rock containing water. Water released on the surface will not return to the aquifer by itself. Lucke argues: The following requirements were considered necessary for a successful trial. • drill an injection bore at a known high permeability site • inject reticulated water from the mine under controlled pressure and volumes into the aquifer • maintain a constantly pumped discharge so that the water will pool and thus create an underground barrier that backs up water behind it Alternatively, of course, the water might just drain away freely to the mine without providing any real benefit. (Lucke 2013: loc. 3559–60) In the event, the trial never came about. Eventually, however, QCL admitted helping farmers with offset water. At a meeting in November 2000, they produced a long list of actions they had undertaken to improve the water supply for local landowners. Mainly, this consisted in drilling bores on several of the properties, but they also provided a pipeline for a pumped water supply to two properties and long-term water carting to one landowner. They stated that they monitored ‘a network of approximately 161 bores, thirty-two wells, two springs, seven weirs and seven rain gauges’ (Lucke 2013: loc. 4540). Realising that quantitative data on local water consumption was needed, the EEMAG chairman Peter Brady, a teacher and grazier, compiled historical material on natural irrigation and the state of the creeks. He showed that at the onset of mining, in 1980–81, springs were permanent, and creeks flowed except in times of extreme drought. However, 22 years after the onset of mining, most of the springs and creeks were dry. This could be blamed on natural variation, or even global climate change, but as Brady has later pointed out, no other part of Central Queensland has seen a similar drop in water availability. His data were largely ignored by QCL, and had no impact on policy. Eventually, environmental concerns became more central to EEMAG. At a meeting with the Productivity Commission in 2003, Peter Brady began his talk like this: My family has lived on the land where I am now for […] four generations. I wish to make comment very briefly today in the limited time

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available on water loss on that land, loss of land productivity, loss of land values, and the final point that I will make extremely briefly is the endangered vegetation and aquatic life, which I see is totally lost in our local creek systems. (Lucke 2013: loc. 5818) Brady thus expands the engagement to include a wider system (some anthropologists might be tempted to say assemblage), including people, domesticated animals and crops, soil, water and undomesticated plants and wildlife. It was now not merely a question of farming versus mining, but one of a sustainable environment versus one ravaged by short-sighted profit-seeking and large-scale corporate power with no consideration for the living systems with which they engaged. He introduced an alternative knowledge regime. In spite of Alec Lucke’s dejection, which is partly shared by Peter Brady, it is a fact that at least 24 landholders have received replacement water supplies at the company’s expense. Cement Australia and the political authorities may cite this as evidence that the system is working, Lucke argues that this is a misleading conclusion: ‘The alternative water supplies have been won, not because of entitlements, not because of the system, but because of EEMAG and their concerted endeavours to bring about justifiable outcomes’ (Lucke 2013: loc. 7225).

knowledge about mount larcom water The conflict outcome – some farmers have received compensation, but many have sold their properties to Cement Australia, and the mine continues to expand – is a direct result of power discrepancies and asymmetrical economic interests. Even politicians who are openly sympathetic to the farmers eventually have to bow to corporate interests. Not only do large corporations represent far greater economic profitability than a few dozen farmers and graziers, but they are also capable of offering employment on a large scale. The agents of industrial modernity are primarily committed to growth, sometimes conceding that offsets have to be made to mitigate unintended consequences. All other things being equal, when small money meets big money, the big money wins. Long-term environmental considerations do not play a major role in these calculations. Wanting to be perceived as a good corporate citizen, Cement Australia takes great pride in its environmentally sound practices and its responsible community involvement, which includes sponsorships and support for a variety of civic activities around Gladstone. Yet, the farmers at

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Mount Larcom continue to feel that they have been sacrificed on the altar of large-scale industrial growth. As I have shown, there is an ongoing dialogue, however wary and tentative, between the mining company and the farmers. Its outcome ostensibly hinges on the ability of the respective parties to produce reliable and relevant knowledge about the aquifers and, as a result, Mount Larcom farmers have been forced to build knowledge not only about the legal system of Queensland, the logic of capitalism and the tight relationship between politicians and extractive industries, but also about hydrology and geology as well. We will now take a closer look at two encounters between EEMAG and representatives of mining interests, before describing ways in which EEMAG have been able to challenge the scientific models commissioned by Cement Australia. The Mining Executives QCL was already a substantial firm in the late 1970s, but Cement Australia, into which it was amalgamated, is one of the world’s largest cement producers, with its head office in Darra, south-eastern Queensland. Jimmy, the new manager of the East End Mine at the time of fieldwork, is not a local, but a foreigner who had formerly worked in a third country. On his office wall, the slogan ‘If it can’t be counted, it doesn’t count’ is visible to all visitors. As part of the ongoing discussion about water, but also as a prelude to the proposed expansion of the mine, Peter Brady of EEMAG arranged a meeting with Jimmy in December 2013. Also at the meeting was Laurie, a local who works as a security manager at the mine. The meeting, which lasted slightly less than an hour, was convivial, the three of them spending much of the time poring over a detailed map of the area, indicating mine boundaries, waterways, properties and plans for the mine expansion. Jimmy: So we pump up about 6 gigalitres of water a day. It isn’t terribly much for an area of 100 square kilometres. Peter: But only half a per cent of the rainwater makes it into the groundwater. And that, on an average, has been calculated to amount to no more than 2 or 3 gigalitres a day. Jimmy: So where does that leave us? Peter: Well, it would suggest that you draw water from a much larger area than those 100 square kilometres. Jimmy: You know that I can’t go along with you here.

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They went on to examine the presence of artesian water and aquifers in the area, discussing how the water flowed. As Peter commented afterwards, they had been having these discussions with successive mine executives for many years, and could never agree. The mine is adamant that its water use does not affect the groundwater available to the farms, while EEMAG claims to have evidence to the contrary. Jimmy has other concerns as well. He claims that it has become more profitable to import cement from Indonesia or the Philippines now than to produce it locally, but rejects any suggestion that protective tariffs might be put into place: ‘No, I don’t personally believe in that. We have to find a way of being genuinely competitive.’ Seen from the perspective of the mine, the incessant badgering by EEMAG represents an unwelcome diversion from their main focus, namely finding ways of increasing profitability. On the other hand, they rely on the goodwill of the locals, not least since the mine depends on buying their properties to be able to expand. EIS Authors As pointed out on several occasions, the mandatory EIS produced ahead of new industrial enterprises is commissioned by the industry itself, and produced by a panel of scientists selected by them. EISs are publicly available and can be freely consulted. In Gladstone City Library, an entire wall in the room devoted to regional literature contains only EISs. Comparing those from the 1970s with those produced in the 2010s, there is no doubt that they have grown massively in a generation – from thin booklets to multi-volume tomes. Like everything else connected to the resource economy, EISs show symptoms of overheating. In January 2014, the East End Mine invited the general public to a consultation at the Mount Larcom community hall (which had for many years been the venue for the Saturday dance), at which the EIS produced ahead of their planned expansion was presented. The researchers responsible for the EIS were naturally present, as was Jimmy and one or two other employees at the mine. The Brisbane-based researchers had put up posters explaining the scope, content and conclusions of the EIS. A hardcopy of the EIS, in three thick volumes, could be consulted, but the report was also freely distributed on CD. Arriving before Peter Brady and his wife Lyn, I asked the consultants a few questions about the groundwater levels, the depth of the aquifers and how different sediments absorbed and channelled water in different ways. The experts were happy to answer my questions. They were geologists, they explained, not from here, and confirmed that they

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were not familiar with the often fraught relationship between environmentalist interests and industry in the Gladstone region. However, they were well aware of the part played by EEMAG in the community. When I asked if it was true, as EEMAG claimed, that it was possible that their water usage affected far more properties than the mine had been willing to admit, they answered that Peter Brady and EEMAG were entitled to their opinions, which they, the authors of the EIS, did not share. I then asked representatives of the mine about the future of the community: ‘The question in the future is, I suppose, whether Mount Larcom should be a vibrant farming and livestock-raising community or just a limestone mine.’ They answered: ‘That is up to the market to decide. We do not force anybody to sell. And truth to tell, the soil here is not first class. I suggest you take a drive around the area and have a look for yourself. It isn’t exactly the Darling Downs.’ Another added: ‘Some can get the best of both worlds. They can work in the mine, and farm on their days off.’ A local vegetable farmer was one of a handful of people present at the consultation, looking at the posters and talking to the mine officials. When Peter Brady arrived, he focused mainly on the methodology the scientists had used to ascertain the state of the aquifers and the impact of the mine. While naturally not reaching an agreement, both parties were quite specific as to where the disagreement was. In order to fully appreciate the extent and cause of this discrepancy, we have to look more closely at the kinds of knowledge drawn upon by EEMAG. As in the case of Gladstone harbour, the contrast is not simply one of experience-near everyday knowledge versus experience-distant expert knowledge, but it is just as much a conflict between competing versions of scientific knowledge, different maps claiming to describe the same territory. The Farmers Even a cursory look at EEMAG’s website (online since 2010) reveals a strong commitment to scientific knowledge and the rule of law; to them, experiential knowledge is complementary and not contrary to the findings of scientific research. In 2016, the opening page of the website contains the following statement: Cement Australia’s EIS envisages deepening the mine from 45 metres to 90 metres. In their hydrology assessment the EIS uses Darcian Flow methodology to conclude that doubling the depth of the mine whether alone or in conjunction with proposed mining lease 80156

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will cause only an additional two metre drawdown of the water table for a short distance from the mine. EEMAG disagrees entirely with this hypothesis and will ask the Land Court to rule that the use of Darcian Flow methodology in what is essentially a Karst Aquifer system is: • inappropriate and • the findings are fatally flawed through reliance upon the wrong methodology and • that the EIS study therefore contains no valid risk assessment what-so-ever. The Court will be asked to determine whether local limestone aquifers are Darcian Flow or karst. The implications if the Court should find the aquifers are karst are far-reaching as government and company findings rely exclusively upon Darcian Flow methodology to interpret almost forty years of data drawn from what is regarded as one of the most monitored mines in Australia. Much of the controversy concerns the appropriateness of using Darcian Flow methodology for monitoring the effects of the East End Mine on the groundwater in the adjacent farming area. Karst is a landform dominated by soluble rock, such as limestone, which quickly absorbs surface water, and which is also characterised by underground drainage networks. The Darcian Flow methodology builds on Henry Darcy’s (1803–58) calculations based on the flow of water through sand and similarly fine-grained sediments. EEMAG’s position, supported by hydrological treatises they have read, is that the aquifers in Mount Larcom are mainly of limestone, and that water flows in very different ways in sand and karst, respectively. By using the Darcian model, therefore, the scientists commissioned by the mine failed to represent accurately the water flows in the limestone-rich surroundings of the mine. Core members of EEMAG developed some fluency in hydrology. At a meeting in 1995, a geologist doing commissioned work for the mine explained his findings of possible mine impacts on the aquifers of the East End. At the end, he invited questions, and Liz Bergstrom of EEMAG asked the first question: ‘What storativity factor and permeability values have you included in the model?’ (Lucke 2013: loc. 2568). EEMAG commissioned another scientist, Dr Peter James, to review the report. However, he found it so wanting that he instead produced an assessment, based on the recognition that the land was karstic, which documented serious dewatering impacts over a 60-square-kilometre area.

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The farmers did not rely entirely on alternative, or as they would say, independent scientific knowledge for their judgement. Lucke, Brady and others were middle-aged people who had spent all or most of their lives in the area and, as Central Queensland farmers, they had a lifelong obsession with water. They knew all about sinkholes, the way surface water tended to disappear, and the vicissitudes of bore water. In other words, they were familiar with the karst on which they had built their lives, and they had also experienced the successive changes in their water supply concomitant with the expansion of the mine. Lucke has also contested the validity of a radiomagnetic aerial survey carried out by Cement Australia, which seemed to locate a ‘mafic dyke’ (a deeply embedded volcanic intrusion of mainly andersite rock) that was said to cut across the Lucke property. According to the study, the mafic dyke was an impenetrable barrier preventing water from the Lucke farm from flowing towards the mine. Lucke disagreed, and argued that he could prove why. Later, following the intensive rains of 2010–11, when water was for once abundant, EEMAG petitioned to have a grout curtain installed around the mine, to prevent surplus water from flowing into it. (Grout curtaining is a way of sealing an area to prevent leakage, similar to the geofabric discussed in the previous chapter.) It is unlikely that QCL/Cement Australia had anticipated the acumen and perseverance with which the EEMAG activists took on the legal and scientific dimensions of the issue. The level of detail in some of the letters and submissions sent by the farmers must have been stunning. For example, Lucke could point out that the hydrogeologist Frans Kalf ’s ‘three Bracewell calibration wells were all unrepresentative of the chronically depleted Bracewell limestone aquifer that Kalf was purportedly modelling and this factor alone rendered the Bracewell segment of the model, and therefore the entire model, invalid’ (Lucke 2013: loc. 3937). Presumably like other resource companies, Cement Australia does not, in all likelihood, expect stakeholders to read their EISs. Some years before my fieldwork, Arrow Energy had sent out their EIS reports in parcels labelled: ‘Caution: Heavy, 27 kg.’ Some EISs have been up to 10,000 pages long. When the EIS discussed at the subsequent consultation in the community hall arrived at Peter Brady’s farm in December 2013, he was soon poring cautiously over it, knowing what to look for and which questions to raise. He, and other rural activists, had learnt the language of scientific quantification, arguing against the mining interests within a shared knowledge regime, instead of relying mainly on the anecdotal and unquantifiable knowledge of experience so often associated with farming communities.

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scale, knowledge and power The patient efforts by EEMAG have ultimately been to little avail, seen from a farming perspective. Calliope Shire Council, of which Mount Larcom was part until the shire amalgamated with Gladstone in 2008, did not prioritise rural development in its policies, instead encouraging extractive and other industries. In his book, which recounts the relationship of farming to mining in meticulous detail, Lucke also makes some observations of a more general kind. Unlike the university-educated Brady, Lucke is a man of little formal education. Nevertheless, his long career as a rural activist has sharpened his analytical acumen and stimulated his thirst for knowledge. He argues that the specific, unique circumstances of Mount Larcom are relevant for people elsewhere who are affected by the expansion of mining, since the logic of corporations confronting locals is similar everywhere. He also says, based on his own experience, that there is a very important difference between the local investments typical of the previous generation and today’s huge open-cut mines, where both the scale of the operations and the complexity of ownership make it difficult for local communities to engage effectively with the corporations: Examples abound of past controversial projects – polarising individual communities with those adversely affected largely being left to their own devices. Now, there is evidence of whole communities losing control of their futures, of community services being overwhelmed by the size of investment, the speed of change and shifts in strategies like fly-in and fly-out workforces. (Lucke 2013: loc. 225) This view is confirmed by Peter Brady. In his view, it is the successive mine expansions, not the mine itself, that threaten, and have contributed to the slow decline of, the farming community in Mount Larcom. Farms are sold to Cement Australia at a slow, but regular rate, then left fallow awaiting approval of the next mine expansion, and the population is shrinking. Although the expanding mine is a main cause of the ‘cooling down’ of Mount Larcom as a vibrant rural community, it is not the only one. The centralisation of certain services, notably the abattoir, led to the increasing isolation of the area, he adds. Now in his sixties, Peter has seen the slow, but steady marginalisation of Mount Larcom take place during his lifetime. Just before the turn of the millennium, Chinese investors bought a substantial chunk of Mount Larcom’s commercial sector as well as some real estate and land. At the time, it was assumed that shale oil

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and possibly coal seam gas would reverse the downward spiral of the township. However, by 2004, the Chinese had sold out. Many others have sold and moved, including board members of EEMAG. The town itself had just 278 residents in 2011; it had peaked at 395 in 1921. Around 500 live in the rural areas of East End and Bracewell. Some politicians have said explicitly that Mount Larcom poses a threat to the expanding Gladstone SDA, designated for industrial growth. If something big – a steelworks, a shale oil plant – is proposed, a large residential area nearby would not be desirable. To sum up, Mount Larcom is a victim of the politics and economics of scale. Although the East End Mine is a small-scale mine, comparatively speaking, it forms part of a large corporation and is tied to the larger factory at Fisherman’s Landing. There is centralised planning and investment involved, as well as complex logistics ensuring transportation and distribution. By comparison, the farmers of Mount Larcom, none of them running large agrobusinesses, have successively been disconnected from their markets and formerly multiple ties to the region. * * * There are many parallels between the Mount Larcom action group and the Gladstone environmentalists questioning the GPC’s handling of the harbour dredging. Notably, they do not doubt the validity of scientific methods, but are aware that scientific findings are contested and can be manipulated. Thus, they live, by this token, in the same epistemic world as their adversaries. The corporate experts and their reports, notably the mandatory EISs, are adamant that they are compliant with the strictest standards, and that all values are within acceptable limits. At the same time, experience-based knowledge, as well as expert knowledge obtained from outside researchers or within the protest groups, tell very different stories; they produce other facts, or interpret the same facts differently. These groups are inevitably invited to submit comments and objections to the Queensland government, their letters to the editor are usually published (EEMAG have been very active letter writers in the Gladstone Observer), and the companies are willing to have meetings with them. Yet these alternative perspectives stemming from local community concerns rarely have any practical consequences. The political decisions are taken at the state level (Brisbane) or, in some circumstances, at the federal level (Canberra). With no prompting on my part, more than one informant has described the government as the administrative wing of the large corporations, period. So both among the green activists protesting the dredging and the farmers up in arms against the mine, there is a very strong feeling of democratic deficit, which sometimes ends in disillusion

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and cynicism. They also begin to doubt the validity of scientific findings commissioned by government or the private sector. Again, there is a parallel with Gladstone harbour. In 2012, the council announced that the pH of the harbour was 7.1, which according to them was fine, 7 being neutral. Jan Arens drily commented that as a matter of fact, coral reefs and many marine organisms die if the pH is below 7.6. The normal pH for seawater is 8.2. A question which may thus be asked of people who are still actively defending community interests against corporations is, accordingly, why they persevere. Lucke is a typical example. His very thorough personal research into the East End Mine situation, which eventually led him to write a lengthy memoir, left him with the feeling that although he had been doing everything right for years, his activity has had no practical consequences. His trust in the political system has been severely weakened, as has his trust in scientists. On the EEMAG website, a reflection on the dredging of Gladstone harbour, clearly written before the scandal erupted, states in no uncertain terms that the project was ‘too big to fail’, just like other large-scale industrial projects. Too many jobs are involved, the investments are too large, and for the politicians too much prestige is involved. EEMAG asks what the Queensland government would do if ‘the dredging’s environmental footprint gets all out of whack and destroys the harbour’s ecological balance?’ The online article concludes: ‘In EEMAG’s case they cooked the science.’ (As shown in the last chapter, this could be said about Gladstone harbour as well.) In spite of nearly forty hydrological studies of the aquifers in the region since the mid-1990s, it has been impossible to reach a consensus over the impact of East End Mine on the aquifers on which the farmers depend. When such cracks appear in an otherwise consensus-oriented industrial, forward-looking society, the relationship between knowledge and power is questioned, and trust suffers as a result. One ex-activist, in response to my questions, replies that ‘the answer is simple, just follow the money’. Many have seen their trust in the democratic character of the political system dwindle and, following the dredging scandal (which affected many) and the mine controversy (which affects fewer), faith in scientific results has also become weakened. Although, as some might say, ‘I still trust science’, they may add that they no longer trust scientists until they know who pays for their research. Distrust may quickly spread. For example, there is a widespread rumour that the routine blood testing of employees at some of the large factories, while it ostensibly concerns drugs and alcohol, is really about looking for evidence of toxins and symptoms of poisoning. Other things being equal, the trust-

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worthiness of people and institutions decreases with distance. The view shared by EEMAG and the fishermen in Gladstone, to mention just two, is that large-scale projects clash with small-scale realities; and that being right is far less important than being large. Distance also precludes close engagement with life-worlds. The scaling up of the Australian resource economy, commented upon by many, including Cleary (2011, 2012) and Munro (2012), thereby moves corporate accountability further away from stakeholders. In the final part of this chapter, I shall therefore take a closer look at the changes in scale, seen from the perspective of Mount Larcom farming, in recent history.

alec lucke’s story Alec Lucke’s life story and the story of the Lucke farm illustrate some of the changes in Australian community life and politics which have a direct bearing on the powerlessness farmers now experience in confronting the mine, and the continued marginalisation of Mount Larcom, a place which is being emptied as nearby Gladstone is filling up to the brim.1 Lucke’s mother came to the area in 1913 with her grandparents, after a fire that destroyed the Yarwun hotel her grandfather had built. His father came from Bundaberg with his five brothers, intent on growing sugarcane. Two brothers went back when it became apparent that cane would not thrive in the drier climate of Bracewell, while George Lucke and his remaining brothers set about growing cereals and cotton, and developing a dairy farm. They had first tried sheep, which did not adapt well to the climate. (Sheep-farming in Australia mainly takes place in the temperate zones further south.) Alec Lucke, the sixth of seven children, was born in 1940 and grew up on the dairy farm now purchased by his parents. The children were obliged to work on the farm, where mechanisation set in, in the shape of a ‘grey Fergy’ (Ferguson tractor) in the early 1950s, replacing the horses. The economy with which the farm engaged, and in which it thrived, was regional. In 1942, a small, cooperative cheese factory was opened, supplying cheese to Gladstone and other nearby towns until it was closed in 1954. At that time, farmers sold cream, starting to keep pigs partly to get rid of the skimmed milk that would otherwise have gone to waste. The Lucke farm became a loading agent for a bacon factory in Brisbane. 1.  The following is based on Lucke’s memoir (Lucke 2013) and conversations with the author.

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In the early 1950s, several local farmers grew peanuts in large quantities. They did well for a while, but the market was eventually saturated, which coincided with the very wet year of 1956, causing the Luckes to lose their entire crop of peanuts. In order to mitigate the loss, they bought hundreds of pigs to eat the peanuts. In this way, they became pig farmers, obtaining a licence to build a small abattoir. It was nevertheless a problem that the fat on peanut-fed pigs would not set, and the meat went rancid. The solution, one of the neighbours discovered, consisted in feeding the pigs something other than peanuts in the final six weeks before their slaughter. The farm was a family business, run by Lucke senior and his four sons. By the early 1960s, the Luckes had also begun to raise chickens. At this time, at the cusp of Gladstone’s industrialisation, the town had a population of 6000, and the Luckes went to Friends, the main department store, asking if they were interested in buying some processed chickens. They were unenthusiastic, but agreed to take six on a trial basis. They were sold, and the Luckes soon supplied chicken to several shops in the region, as well as selling directly from the farm. Centralisation and the shift to larger scale came in spurts and waves, one of the most significant events being the introduction of ‘bulk milk’ in 1976, whereby the distribution was scaled up, and the milk had to be refrigerated locally. Some farms amalgamated in order to be able to afford the new technology and upgrade their facilities to comply with the new rules. The local dairy industry was gone by 1990. By the 1980s, the Luckes concentrated on chickens and pigs. However, the regional market was slowly taken over by larger producers. This happened in two ways: the increasing dominance of nationwide supermarket chains such as Woolworth’s,2 with their own supply chains; and by the growth of larger, vertically integrated chicken producers. They controlled the whole chain, from feed mills and day-old chicken sales to the finished product, and were prepared to sell the product below the cost of production if need be, in order to get rid of competitors. Similarly, the pig industry was also under constant pressure from less expensive imported product, and owing to new laws regulating the slaughter and processing of meat, the abattoir fell into disuse. Processing factories were at Gympie and Brisbane in southern Queensland. Thus a formerly thriving, growing farm servicing the regional markets with cream, beef, pork and chicken went into a downward spiral owing to a clash of scales with the larger entities – stricter state legislation, centralised distribution, larger producers and foreign competition. 2.  The Australian supermarket chain Woolworth’s has independent origins from, and no connection with, the eponymous American-owned chain.

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The problem of scale is also reflected in the conflict with the mine, and not only in ways already mentioned. Influence in democratic politics depends on a critical number of people with a strong interest in the issue. The farmers in Mount Larcom are few in number and cannot even count on support from people in the small town. After the 2008 council amalgamation, their votes count for nothing; they would need to join forces with people elsewhere who are similarly influenced by large-scale actors, but in the industrial city of Gladstone they would be unlikely to carry enough weight to be a real political force. In this way, as political theorists have often pointed out, democracy often does not benefit minorities unless they are protected by law. Another problem of scale is illustrated in the way Queensland politicians have spoken of public versus private interests in the East End Mine affair. Although Queensland politics have always been favourably inclined to the private sector, by the mid-1970s, the Bjelke-Pedersen government prioritised mines over the farmers, justifying this by referring to public interest. In their view, a large resource company which manufactured an essential commodity represented the public interest of the state, while the few dozen struggling farmers in Mount Larcom represented only their own interests and those of their families. The story of the Lucke farm ended on an ironic note in 2006, as Alec and Heather Lucke, preparing for retirement, sold the farm to Cement Australia and moved to New South Wales. It is a story about the shift from small- to regional-scale production to large, standardised production which is familiar from elsewhere. However, it should be noted – a point which is familiar to anthropologists – that the smaller producers are often more flexible than the larger ones. The Luckes could shift from sheep to cattle, from peanuts to pigs, from cereals to chickens, without much difficulty. The larger operations, depending on returns from enormous investments, are ‘too big to fail’, they are entangled with other economic and infrastructural developments – gas wells are tied to pipelines, storage and conversion plants, ships, ship owners, maintenance crews, subcontractors and so on – and cannot easily cease operating, even if they turn out to be unprofitable or to be destructive to the environment in unforeseen ways. Turning the Lucke farm around would be like turning a rowing boat; changing the Gladstone gas industry would be more like turning around a large tanker the size of Shen Neng I. Building the three gas plants on Curtis Island cost about $60 billion. They cannot easily be closed down if the world gas market should continue to point downwards, or public opinion in Australia shifts dramatically towards renewable energy.

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I could not have written this chapter without the assistance of EEMAG, and it is therefore appropriate to end it with another quotation from Alec Lucke. As a matter of fact, here he ties my three main empirical cases together, ending with a sombre reflection on the controversy that is highlighted in the next chapter, namely the Targinnie oil shale affair. There is a reprehensible pattern that characterises disputes like the EEMAG dispute; the Targinnie Shale Oil dispute; the Gladstone harbour dispute; a common methodology on how the state, its agencies and companies operate. The Targinnie Shale Oil fiasco provides the classic example. Rather than enforcing environmental standards, the state’s agency-controlled science produced inconclusive findings that failed to link the emissions to health effects, while at the same time engaging in denials, deferment and delay tactics to keep the plant operating. (Lucke 2013: loc. 6535)

8 The Demise of Targinnie

Along its western boundary Mount Larcom nobly stands And casts its evening shadows On Targinnie’s fertile lands

—Walter James Prizeman (1935)

Our community was too small to have statistical meaning.

—Peter Harland, ex-resident of Targinnie

A notice in the Gladstone Observer caught my attention in February 2014. It reported the outcome of a minor court case, where a woman had been convicted of breaking into government property, cutting through a barbed wire fence and trespassing on the government-owned block of untended farmland. Although Ms Dasha Kozloff (67) claimed that she was the rightful owner of the property, she pleaded guilty and accepted a $600 bond. What had happened? In order to understand this apparently irrational behaviour, we need to go back to the late 1990s. At the time, Targinnie, some 15 km north of Gladstone, was a rural community with about 400 residents. Fifteen years later, it was virtually depopulated, and many of the former residents felt grief and resentment when reflecting on the circumstances of their departure, which was not only emotionally devastating, but in most cases also led to great economic loss. * * * It was never what you would call a bustling town, but Targinnie was for many years a healthy rural community, connected to the nearby urban centres of Gladstone, Calliope and Rockhampton, with the inhabitants doing a brisk trade in fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products. Nestled between a low range of mountains and the sea at Fisherman’s Landing, Targinnie offers a green and fertile landscape. On my first visit to Targinnie, shortly after arrival in Gladstone, I did not know the full story; I was only aware that the community had been abandoned. I ended up driving up and down the road, through

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dry forest, abandoned fruit plantations and a scattering of grazing cattle, consulting Google Maps several times until I came to understand that what remained of the community was largely limited to one short road containing a handful of wooden houses in varying stages of decomposition. Only a few humans seemed to be left: next to a ramshackle house, there was a caravan and a trailer full of scrap metal in one yard, guineafowl pecking for food, dust and weeds in the shade. There appeared to be some small-scale cattle farming in the area, and a few newer houses away from what used to be the village. Its residents, I later learnt, work in some of Gladstone’s many industries, but the previously bountiful mango and papaw (pawpaw) orchards are not being maintained. There is an outlaw feeling to the abandoned village, epitomised in the sign ‘Private Property – Fuck Off ’ marking the entrance to what used to be a public village road not so many years ago. Not far from Targinnie village, just a few kilometres east on the semicircular Forest Road – bitumen at first, dirt later – there was noise and human activity. Near the Narrows at Fisherman’s Landing, this is where a crucial stretch of the gas pipelines from the Queensland outback to Curtis Island was being laid out, meandering their way through the denuded landscape like so many monstrous snakes. Trees and rocks were being removed, earth dug up and combed with powerful machines, and there was constant traffic on the road, even on a Sunday. Earlier in 2013, a workers’ village with space for 400 in the area had been approved by the GRC, relieving the city itself of some urgent overheating effects in the housing market, but all this hectic activity only serves to highlight the cooling down and marginalisation of Targinnie itself. I would soon discover what had happened to the eerily quiet ghost town of Targinnie, a place abandoned and left behind, it turned out, owing to failed industrial development, its residents forced to move and their homes left to decay.

fruit and industry Like many other locations in Central Queensland, Targinnie was settled by Europeans in the 1850s. As elsewhere in coastal Queensland, the Aboriginal population, who may have lived in the area for as long as 8000 years, were killed, chased or subdued, opening one of the most fertile and scenic landscapes in the region for European settlement. Only the name, derived from Darginnie (meaning scrub), remains from the traditional owners. Targinnie Station, which traded in cattle, was established by Richard Palmer in 1855.

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In the late nineteenth century, gold was discovered in the area, which attracted a few more settlers, but no gold rush ensued. The Gladstone– Rockhampton railway, completed in 1903 and connected to Bundaberg, was more significant to the development of the settlement. In 1915, the first orchards were established. The main crops were papaw and mangoes, marketed locally and regionally. As the community slowly grew in the early twentieth century and communications improved, people would try their hand at a variety of activities. The Battery Hotel had six rooms for accommodation, and was operating from the beginning of the very minor gold rush in 1901 until 1917. Located 4 miles from the railway station, it was difficult to run. A single-classroom school was open from 1903 to 1918. By then, it was clear that nobody would make a fortune mining gold in Targinnie. However, a new school opened in a different location in 1923, as farming opportunities attracted new residents. The soil in Targinnie is volcanic and well-watered, with a slightly higher rainfall than Gladstone owing to the proximity to the low Mount Larcom range; permanent streams from the mountains made irrigation feasible. A wide range of crops were grown, including European vegetables as well as tropical fruits. Although papaw and mangoes soon became the mainstay of the local farming economy, dairy farming was also important. As in Mount Larcom township on the other side of the mountains, the cream was separated from the milk and transported to Gladstone. The community continued to grow. A pub was opened, then another one, and a community hall was built in 1936. One of the buildings still standing in Targinnie is a modest, rectangular structure where the Russian Old Believers continued to congregate on Sundays for years after the community had been scattered to the four winds. The Russians had arrived in the late 1940s and 1950s from the Harbin area in Manchuria, after having moved there following persecution after the Russian Revolution. After the Chinese Revolution, it was time for them to move on. But the first Russians to arrive, David and Lucy Guerassimoff, came to Gladstone via a different route as early as 1940. A few years later, by then a landowner and fruit grower in Targinnie, David Guerassimoff was in a position to sponsor other Russian immigrants to come to Australia. He did so, after learning about the hardships suffered by other Old Believers in Manchuria. The condition was that he could guarantee their employment, and while some of the newly arrived Russians later reminisced that they had to sleep in their sponsor’s house, they found work as sharecroppers either on Guerassimoff ’s farm or with other farmers.

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For a while, the market in tropical fruits expanded. By the 1950s, much of the fruit was canned at Northgate near Brisbane, where as much as 40 per cent of their ‘tropical fruit salad’ was papaw (Blake 2005). In the late 1960s, supply of papaw exceeded demand, and prices dropped. At this time, more than 100 families in the Targinnie area were full-time farmers. By the mid-1970s, only 18 were left. However, people stayed on as part-time farmers, but at almost exactly the same time as the decline in the papaw market occurred, new employment opportunities came with the industrialisation of Gladstone. Some years later, the power station and cement factory, the latter located on the seafront of Targinnie itself, would also offer job opportunities for locals. Gladstone was in practice quite remote at this time. With the building of the bridge over the Calliope River in 1981, the distance between Gladstone and Targinnie was effectively reduced from 50 to 15 km. The bridge and the now ubiquitous car made daily commuting to Gladstone fast and simple. Real estate prices went up, new residential houses were built, and the population grew. A village shop was opened on the corner of Wilson Road and Targinnie Road. With hindsight, it is easy to see the irony in the dynamics leading to the small housing boom and influx of new residents in Targinnie in the 1980s and early 1990s. The improved connectivity to Gladstone was a direct result of government plans to intensify the industrialisation of the area. The Queensland Department of Commercial and Industrial Development had purchased 890 hectares of land near Fisherman’s Landing in 1978, wishing to develop the area industrially. The power station had been completed in 1979, and Targinnie was located between the two. The cement factory processing slurry from the East End Mine had opened in 1981, soon after the mine; and Orica’s cyanide factory (often spoken of just as a ‘chemical factory’) opened in 1990. Several other industrial enterprises were planned in the area. Many Targinnie residents commuted daily into Gladstone, enjoying the tranquillity and fresh air of the rural life before and after working hours, usually farming on a small scale as well. They were comfortable with the contrasts between industrial Gladstone and peaceful Targinnie, seeing it as, in the words of one, ‘having the best of two worlds’. And then catastrophe struck, ‘basically wiping out Targinnie’, as a researcher at Central Queensland University phrases it – brutally, but accurately.

shale oil: the end of targinnie As in Gladstone, there were deliberate silences in Targinnie as well, its residents being perfectly aware that the air pollution was directly tied

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to their livelihoods. Upwind from Gladstone industry and close to the power station, residents could often smell and see discharges, but they kept their counsel. The problem was not severe or constant, yet nobody mentioned it, not least since speaking about it might bring real estate prices down and reduce the demand for their produce. However, the Yarwun–Targinnie Fruit & Vegetable Growers’ Association – many of them part-time by now, but serious growers none the less – were concerned about the effects of emissions from the cyanide factory on their crops. Addressing the issue publicly before the Orica factory was built, they received no response. Another environmental problem consisted in smoke and particles from the Gladstone Power Station between Targinnie and the city. One year in the late 1980s, the papaws at Yarwun became ‘as hard as coconuts and would not ripen’ (Lucke 2013: loc. 1181). It was also well known that the dark smoke from the power station contained acidic particles that settled on leaves and fruits. When the rains came, the effect was that of highly acid rain, burning and damaging watermelons, papaws and mangoes. This problem would effectively be addressed following the privatisation of the power station in 1994 (when it was bought by Rio Tinto). One of the conditions for its privatisation was that they should install efficient filters in the chimneys. ‘You can see the white smoke billowing out of the chimneys now,’ an ex-Targinnie resident says, ‘it is very clean.’ In other words, the environmental side-effects of industrialisation were not unknown to the people in Targinnie. Yet, they were on the whole positive about the prospect of a shale oil refinery at Fisherman’s Landing when they learnt about the plans. After all, they were accustomed to, and profited from, the coexistence of the rural and the urban, and in general, they did not see an impossible contradiction between agriculture and industry. Oil shale was discovered near Fisherman’s Landing as early as the late nineteenth century – ironically, the discovery was made by coincidence during an early dredging operation in the Narrows (Blake 2005: 36). There had been intermittent interest in extracting the shale oil since the 1940s, but it was only in the late 1990s that plans were realised to exploit the resource commercially and the Stuart Shale Oil Plant was built in 1998–9. Southern Pacific Petroleum (SPP) and Central Pacific Minerals had explored the oil shale since the 1970s, entering into a partnership with the Canadian company Suncor Energy, which allegedly had developed appropriate technology, in the mid-1990s. The plan was to proceed in three stages; first, to build a demonstration plant; second, a slightly larger

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production plant; and finally, a large factory capable of producing 85,000 barrels of oil a day. However, the investors created some problems for themselves, which helped to protect the community, when they started. If they had taken out their lease under the Petroleum and Gas Act, they could have drilled anywhere. Instead, they took it out under the Mining Act, which meant that they couldn’t come within 200 metres of the orchards. Coal seam gas leases are legally regulated within the Petroleum and Gas Act, which states that the wells can be placed anywhere. The construction of the demonstration plant was completed in April 1999, and tests began in July. At a well-attended open day in August 1999, the mood in the Targinnie community was still upbeat, with most of the visitors seeing the new factory as a welcome addition to the regional economy. This positive attitude would not last. The nearest neighbours to the demonstration plant were bothered by the noise and lights coming from the factory, and soon, a bad smell, described by an ex-resident as ‘a mixture of fresh bitumen and burning tyres’, began to drift across the community on occasion. On 2 October 1999, the factory malfunctioned, sending a thick cloud of smoke across Targinnie. One ex-resident, who lived on the far side of Targinnie, remembers returning home from work in Gladstone to see his family with red eyes, runny noses, headaches and nausea. Believing, like the farmers in Mount Larcom, in democratic procedures, some concerned residents formed a citizens’ group, the Yarwun–Targinnie Representative Group. Meetings were held with the local government, with state government and the factory owners. Meanwhile, the health complaints continued, and the air pollution became a growing concern throughout the year 2000. There were also other serious incidents resulting from malfunctioning, covering much of Targinnie in smoke. Local residents were nevertheless being told that emissions were within acceptable limits, since the quality of the air had been monitored. In other words, measurements of the air quality (however random and incomplete they might be) were deemed more trustworthy than knowledge based on experience. Eventually, most of the residents in Targinnie, fearing for their health, wished to leave. Some ran family farms that had been operating for 100 years. The Russians had a tightly knit community of Old Believers with their church off the Targinnie Road; this community would now be scattered across Queensland and beyond. Several cases of cancer had occurred. Some of the victims died, while others recovered; but the

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residents were told by health authorities that the numbers were too small to be statistically significant. It soon turned out that the properties, located in what is arguably the most scenic and beautiful rural area near Gladstone, with excellent soil and good water, could not be sold in the market. Prospective buyers were aware of the emissions from the oil shale factory and the plans to expand it. This was a serious blow to the locals. Many had regarded their house and property in Targinnie as their pension fund, planning to move south upon retirement. This investment had now shrunk, almost overnight, to nothing. The Yarwun–Targinnie Representative Group decided to fight for recognition, reparations, apologies and compensation. At each consecutive meeting with the PR people of the company, they were met with denial. ‘They just spoke to us, not with us,’ says an ex-resident who was present at these meetings. In early 2002, SPP released a mandatory supplementary EIS (Sinclair Knight Merz 2002). Along with the Yarwun–Targinnie Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association, the Yarwun–Targinnie Representative Group contacted a legal scholar, Dr Richard Whitwell at the Department of Environmental Management, Central Queensland University, for assistance in preparing a thorough response to SPP’s assurances that everything was going to be fine. Together with researchers Andrea van der Togt and Malcolm Scandrett, Whitwell produced a small book (Whitwell 2002) based on interpretations of the law, previous experiences in the community, questionnaire surveys and qualitative interviews with residents. The Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association also produced a 39-page submission of their own, which was drawn upon and analysed by Whitwell and his colleagues. The critique of the EIS is scathing and comprehensive. First, it questions the methodology used to determine the air quality and effects of emissions. Although the company states that it has monitored air emissions, the positioning and usage of the receptors is not specified. No Targinnie residents remembered having seen any of these contraptions on their property, but one reports that he has noticed a receptor which was sometimes turned on after trial runs, but never during factory activity. Second, the EIS refers to an ‘independent toxicologist’ consulted to determine the levels of dioxins in the air, but s/he is not named, and the group of residents asks for the views of another toxicologist. Since values are not specified, and measurements are seen to be inadequate, the results may well be doubted. Third, the terminology used in the report is seen as wanting and inaccurate. Whitwell points out that the term ‘elevated emissions’ used in

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the EIS is not defined. The ‘bad odours’ referred to in the EIS should, in his view, be replaced by ‘odour/irritant’. Some Targinnie residents would have preferred the term ‘toxic fumes’. Moreover, the EIS is replete with round formulations such as SPP promising to ensure that ‘these issues are given close attention’, without saying how. It also boasts that development of Australia’s oil shale resources could lead to self-sufficiency in oil for at least fifty years, and Whitwell proposes that this view ‘be reviewed and a more realistic situation outlined’. Fourth, the experience of the residents is dismissed in the EIS as being irrelevant, which the locals perceive as being especially disturbing. The EIS refers to the ‘unnecessary concerns in the community’ (Whitwell 2002: 8), suggesting that they are complaining for no good reasons. As opposed to the quantitative measurements indicating that the air quality in Targinnie was really very good, the report ‘suggests that the use of human subjects is the best method for detecting the impact of odour emissions’ (Whitwell 2002: 5). Fifth, the report shows that the actions proposed by SPP are not described in a specific way, which inevitably gives the reader the impression that they are empty promises. For example, regarding dioxins, the EIS states that ‘tenfold reductions are probably achievable’, but Whitwell suggests that this statement ‘be removed from the report or a detailed explanation with evidence on how this is to be achieved’ be added (Whitwell 2002: 5). Apart from presenting likely impacts on health, this extended commentary on the EIS also raises questions about contamination of water, effects of airborne toxins on the orchards and livestock, and the prospects of marketing produce from Targinnie following its stigmatisation as a severely polluted area. Serious doubt is cast on the validity of nearly all aspects of the EIS, and Whitwell’s report advises that the sentence claiming that ‘the proponent works closely with the community’ be deleted (Whitwell 2002: 6). An important source of anxiety for Targinnie residents was the rapidly declining value of real estate. Targinnie’s attraction in the property market lies in its scenic beauty, rural serenity and healthy climate, and since the emissions started in spring 1999, nobody had been able to sell their property. Whitwell’s report recommends that all affected landowners be given the option of ‘outright purchase’ by SPP, based on an independent valuation of the property, using the value before the beginning of emissions as a benchmark. In the three years since the opening of the demonstration plant, there had been no sales of property in the area, ‘with the proportion of residents listing their properties for sale being much higher than in the [comparable] reference areas’ (Scandrett

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2002: 5). In the end, the Queensland government would offer to buy all privately owned land in Targinnie and turn the area into a SDA for future use. The questionnaire survey carried out by Malcolm Scandrett (2002) is especially interesting in so far as it includes a reference group drawn from neighbouring areas – Calliope, Gladstone and Tannum Sands/ Boyne Island. These areas had an economic interest in the success of the plant, and their residents were unaffected by fallouts. Unsurprisingly, the reference group were on the whole less concerned than the locals, although some were sympathetic to the struggles of the Targinnie residents. A few blamed the entire controversy on ‘over-active greenies’ (from outside). Others pointed out that industries elsewhere also released ‘nasties’, and that you had to live with that in the Gladstone region. While the Targinnie respondents were pleading for the Queensland government to intervene on their behalf, either by closing down the plant or guaranteeing a good price for their property, the reference group felt that this was the company’s responsibility. At this time, three years after the opening of the oil shale plant, property values had become a chief preoccupation for the locals. Some wanted to move as they feared for their health and had come to distrust the government’s ability to keep the plant in check. The transformation and eventual demise of Targinnie now began to accelerate. The EIS justifying the planned expansion of the plant had been published in early 2002. The response from the researchers at Central Queensland University was printed only a few months later. In May 2002, the Queensland minister for state development met with the Yarwun–Targinnie Representative Group to hear them out on the long-term prospects for the region. In July, he made a statement to the state government, explaining the difficulties of the situation. Some wanted to leave, while others wanted an option to stay for a while and later be bought out by the government, whereas yet others refused to leave (Blake 2005: 94). The Queensland government were by now interested in extending the Gladstone SDA to include all of Targinnie from Fisherman’s Landing up to the main road separating it from Yarwun, but this would entail buying all properties. In December 2002, following an approval to expand the SDA, the Targinnie residents were given a five-year deadline to negotiate the value of their property and complete the sale to the government. They were free to use real estate valuers of their choice, but the actual price would have to be negotiated with the government. In spite of the efforts of a couple of engaged and sympathetic real estate valuers, nobody received a price approaching what would have been the market price before the

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Stuart Shale Oil Plant. A former mango farmer says that his 2000 trees had initially been valued at zero, while his sprinklers were accorded a value of $5 each. An elderly couple, unaccustomed to large-scale transactions, had sold their property for a mere $100,000. A handful of residents were reluctant to sell, clinging on to their property for as long as they could. Mal and Jane Watkins still, defiantly, live on their land. A few others, like Charlie, encountered in chapter 6, lease land from the government and use it to graze cattle, but live elsewhere. Some squatters periodically occupy houses that are still standing, but most of the houses in Targinnie have been demolished. Where the shop used to be, at the natural meeting-place on the corner of Wilson Road and Targinnie Road, only a concrete slab remains. It is within this context that the actions of Ms Kozloff must be understood. Seeing the sale of her land as illegitimate and fraudulent, she tried – in vain – to take the law into her own hands.

retrospections The ex-residents of Targinnie with whom I have met all tell unique, personal stories about the unfolding of events, but they tend to be variations on a common theme, namely that of a thriving rural community being destroyed by greed and indifference, distant politicians, personal prestige and big money. They tell of the humiliation of being lied to and being overrun, of eroding trust in the system. Of not being believed and being confronted with facts that fly in the face of experience and other facts. They speak about deteriorating health, loss and mourning, anger and fear, uncertainty and anxiety. And, not least, they speak about economic hardship and the loss of a much-appreciated lifestyle. A middle-aged man talks about how one full schoolbus and a minibus left Targinnie every morning to take the nearly 50 local children to Yarwun school following the closure of the Targinnie school before Christmas in 1968. An elderly man, who continues to graze his cattle in Targinnie, adds that today, there would have been none. Retrospectively, it is easy to see the opening of the shale oil factory as the beginning of the end for Targinnie as a living rural community. Although its owners had assured the locals that they were using state-of-the-art Canadian technology, it soon became apparent that the venture was experimental and prone to periodically high emission levels, noise and occasional explosions. The residents were shocked to realise that their rights were far more limited than expected, that – in the words of one – ‘the factory could just keep poisoning us without any consequences’. It should be kept in mind, again, that Targinnie was

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not an alternative community of ecologically minded smallholders who had sought refuge from the alienation, destructiveness and brutality of industrial modernity. They were committed to the industrial modernity of Gladstone, keen to strike a balance between the serenity of rural life and the spoils of industrialism. One of the two valuers working for Targinnie residents from 2002 to 2004 remembers his job as being to ‘make sure that people got properly paid for their properties’. He says that the Targinnie people ‘were devastated’, mentioning in particular the Russians. They were really good orchard farmers. They were happy to live down there. I remember them coming into Gladstone, wearing different clothes and speaking broken English. But they were also into the rugby union. It was hard for them when they had to move – there aren’t many Russians in Australia, so there wasn’t a community waiting to take them in elsewhere. In the event, many of the Russians subsequently settled in the Gympie area in south-eastern Queensland. Some stayed in the Gladstone area as well. The real estate valuer points out, moreover, that people wishing – or pressured – to sell, were left in limbo for years, not knowing the outcome and fearing for their economic security. Ultimately, he says, they got ‘a fairly good result, monetary-wise’. Yet he points to the stress and uncertainty they were placed under, and believes it to have been ‘a factor in the high cancer incidence we saw among Targinnie people’. Although, as a former fruit-grower from Targinnie said, ‘you need to speak to different people, since everybody has their own version of what happened, how and why it happened’, conversations with ex-residents tend to reveal variations on four themes: health concerns, economic losses, the political power of corporations and environmental issues. Emphases differ, and so do opinions to some extent, but there are also many points of convergence. Health Concerns Peter Harland runs a successful small business in Gladstone, and was active in the Targinnie-Yarwun Citizens’ Association. His wife is among the cancer survivors of Targinnie. He is convinced that the cancers were related to the emissions from the factory. ‘When you get half a dozen cancers in a small community in just a year, it’s extremely unlikely to be just a coincidence. And when we presented this, they [the health authorities] told us that the figures were too small to be statistically significant!’

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Again, the scales are clashing. No generalisation can be made by conventional statistical methods, since the sample was too small. It was nevertheless impossible to increase the size of the sample, given the actual size of the community. Others are more equivocal. Another activist from the emissions period says, retrospectively, that ‘It is difficult to say if those cancer cases had anything to do with the emissions.’ She adds that ‘Some of those cancers could actually be caused by other things, such as lifestyle issues, old age – but of course people got scared.’ Her mother, who was a fruit grower, had experienced incidents in the past, where ‘something happened to their trees’, but the government and company might just blame it on spraying, drought or a combination of factors. ‘It is impossible to prove that it is this and not that.’ The ‘last man standing’ who refused to sell his land to the state, and who still lives in Targinnie as of this writing, is Mal Watkins. In an interview with Australian broadcasting, he is clear about the causes and effects. ‘I know of at least half a dozen people who’ve up and died from cancer for no reason at all,’ he said. ‘We lost a very very good friend up here at the end of the street. It brings a lump to my throat to talk about her. ‘It was terrible. The odours were that bad you could get it in your throat, in the back of your throat, in your nose.’ (ABC 2013b) Everybody from Targinnie seems to remember 2 October 1999, the day of the first serious malfunctioning of the factory. Peter was the resident, mentioned earlier, who came home to find his wife and children throwing up, with red eyes and rashes. The company, he adds, consistently denied that anything was wrong, claiming in effect that the community concerns were lies. Sally, a housewife and mother of two, remembers when the factory stack was on fire and the fire brigade came out to avert a larger catastrophe: ‘The temperature was so high that the measurement equipment shut down, so they have no clue as to the nature and quantity of the emissions.’ The smell, she adds, was horrendous. Others recall similar experiences, one adding that the worst stress factor at the time was the uncertainty. She says, ‘You’d been to town, and on your way home you wonder what it’s going to be like there. At times it was all right; but sometimes, you felt the smell the moment you hit the Targinnie Road. It immediately made you uptight.’ One of the workers

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at the plant recalls that in the end, he couldn’t wash his clothes with his family’s clothes because the children developed rashes. During the last period of settlement at Targinnie, some members of the Representative Group joined a committee making a health risk assessment. Both the industry and the government were also represented. One of the participants recalls that ‘It took a long time with lots of heartache and frustrations. The government departments were pushing their own agenda, as did the company. What came through was a document agreed by all three.’ As the Targinnie representative explains, the outcome was a compromise, where up to 20 variations of many of the formulations were discussed. ‘It was watered down every time; so in the end, we said what’s the fucking point.’ He nevertheless adds that ‘if you read between the lines, the report is pretty damning’. The report shows that, before 2001, SPP had never actually measured the particles that came out of the stack. They had merely done a desktop assessment, calculating what should be emitted. During the health risk assessment, the government tested the plant at 20 per cent of its designed capacity though it had only been when it ran at 40 per cent of capacity that ‘it went to shit’. The test results were still a cause for concern, but did not reflect the amount of toxins released during the malfunctioning events. The company would not accept any other term than ‘odour’ to describe the smell and smoke released from the plant. ‘Slightly high irritant toxic shit, we suggested,’ the Targinnie representative says, laughing. In order to avoid a class action demanding compensation for deterioration of health, it was important for SPP that the term ‘odour’ was retained rather than ‘irritant/odour’ or even ‘toxic fumes’. At the same time, it was well known that the fumes contained dioxins, which are known carcinogens. As with the high incidence of leukaemia and respiratory ailments common in Gladstone, the causes of the depleted groundwater in Bracewell and the increase in shell disease in mudcrabs, conclusive evidence is impossible to produce either way, and the benefit of the doubt is always accorded to the economically most powerful player. Yet, Suncor and SPP indirectly conceded that not everything went according to plan. They eventually offered to pay motel bills in town for those who were most severely affected by the malfunctioning incidents. They also shut the plant down for weeks before Christmas. This was understood locally as being caused by it being the mango season, a time when mango pickers from outside were hired in Targinnie. They would not, in other words, let outsiders witness and experience the extent of the emissions.

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Economic Loss Sally says, ‘We would have loved to stay. There were other people who didn’t want to go too. In the end people saw that they could not continue living there, given the intention of the government’s plan.’ After the expansion of the SDA in 2002, banks would not loan Targinnie residents money to make improvements to their property, since it had no market value. ‘It became a sterile community, there was nothing to do there any more,’ Sally adds. So people had to relocate, often with a considerable economic loss. Danny, a mechanic in his fifties, says that ‘None of this was our fault, but we were made to pay for it.’ Several mention the government assessors who came to value their property. They used old figures as benchmarks, or compared the Targinnie properties to rural places in far less attractive parts of Queensland. Most sought independent valuation, and the real estate valuers became advocates for the Targinnie residents. ‘But people who were too old to maintain their property, took the first offer [from the government] because they had to go,’ Sally says. ‘They didn’t have the time to hang around and fight for more money.’ Peter mentions a retired couple who had been talking about buying a unit in Hervey Bay. Rumours were going around Gladstone that people in Targinnie were getting huge compensation packages, while in truth, the properties had to be sold at much lower prices than what would have been realistic before 1999. The retired couple, who had a house and 10 acres in Targinnie, ‘walked away with nothing’, certainly not enough to buy a flat in Hervey Bay. ‘But the guy was so nice, we had a cup of tea …’ the wife said to Peter, who responded that she shouldn’t sign until she had seen her lawyer. They nevertheless did, ending up in the permanent section of a caravan park in Bundaberg. Local politician and ex-Targinnie resident Craig Butler agrees that the emptying of Targinnie probably was hardest for the older residents, and not just in an economic sense. ‘Their lives were bloody devastated because of the government’s decision to shut down the area.’ Ex-Targinnians speak with bitterness not only about the economic loss, but also about the lack of recognition for the amount of work that had gone into developing the land. Orchards were valued to nought, and the hundreds or thousands of hours invested in improving the property were ignored. ‘They tended to pull everything down to one level. All houses were considered the same. So if you had a property with a small shed on it, you probably did quite well,’ Danny says.

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Stories about the government valuations vary somewhat, but everybody agrees that they had to sell with a loss. ‘They picked the shittiest, most fly-infested area between here and Emerald, and used that as a standard for valuing Targinnie,’ one said, another adding that the government would not compare Targinnie values to areas near Gladstone since the values were too high! One fruit grower who had sold his property to the government wished to lease it for one final mango season. At the government valuation, the orchard was considered to be of no value, but when he asked to lease it, he says, he was told to insure the trees for several thousand dollars. In the space of just a few months, Targinnie went from being a district in high demand to one where it was impossible to sell. Speaking to a representative of SPP about house prices, Peter Harland was told that the real estate values in the area ‘depends on your perspective’. He responded that ‘No house has been sold here for three years, because of your fucking factory.’ Sally and her husband Derek explain that, in the end, they finally got a figure from the government that they could work with. Derek says that in reality, the house they had at Targinnie was not as good as the one they have now, which is near Tannum Sands upwind of the Gladstone industry. ‘But in Targinnie, we could sit at the kitchen table and look at Mount Larcom, we lived across the road from the shop, and from my mother,’ says Sally. The Targinnie residents had to justify, meticulously, step by step, how they had arrived at their own valuation of their house, while the government never explained their criteria. Peter speaks of his five-bedroom house with three bathrooms, a home theatre and a bar. ‘The first offer from the government was $120,000. I said what, you talking about the carport? The big shed [which was 24 by 12 metres] cost me 30,000 bucks just in building materials.’ MIchelle points out that the demise of Targinnie as a community happened very fast and took people completely by surprise. ‘There was no thought on anyone’s mind that we would all be moved off our blocks when the Representative Group was formed.’ Following the decision to extend the SDA, Targinnie residents nevertheless realised that they had no choice but to sell and move elsewhere. Craig Butler’s family had lived in the area since 1906, as graziers, growers and workers in various trades. He explains that several people actually wanted to leave independently of, and before, the shale oil disaster, but there were also many who did not want to leave. ‘After the [expansion of the] State Development Area, we saw a clear sign that we had to find

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somewhere else to live – we could see that there was no future there beyond 2007.’ The Political Power of Corporations As in the other cases I have examined in this book, in Targinnie, too, the people who were adversely affected by large-scale industrial development were surprised to learn about the lack of protection offered to local communities and ‘the little man’ in such situations. Although The Castle is a film expressing a fundamental aspect of Australian identity, ‘the little Aussie battler’ rarely gets the upper hand in reality. Perhaps it is precisely because it represents a widely shared, but usually unattainable dream, that the film has made such an impact. The people of Targinnie were, moreover, surprised and angered to realise the strength of the ties between politicians and corporate interests, and to experience the virtual impossibility – for people lacking money and power – to influence outcomes. Having believed in the maxim ‘People first’, they – like those affected by emissions in Gladstone, mining in Mount Larcom and the harbour dredging – came to realise that big money would always defeat small money, regardless of the quality of the knowledge and arguments put forward during hearings, meetings, consultations and submissions. At the outset, they had believed that justice would prevail, and that Australia, unlike totalitarian countries, would not sacrifice the lifestyle, economic security and health of a small settlement on the altar of profits, royalties and industrial growth. Yet they would come to learn otherwise. Derek comments that he is surprised that nobody got shot during this period. ‘You know, lots of people had guns, this being a rural community.’ Sally explains that her family were strongly affected by the incident on 2 October. She phoned a friend and said that they did not have to put up with this. Soon after, there was a community meeting by the shop, where it was decided that a group of locals would meet with the company and discuss the issues with them. Peter Harland, who was the President of the Yarwun–Targinnie Representative Group, recalls that the group were: beautifully used by them [the company] as a management tool. We were assuming that they were telling the truth when they said that this was proven technology from Canada, and that these were just small teething problems. To be honest, I took them at their word.

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He would later discover that the company had more lawyers than engineers, ‘which is a bit worrying for an industrial development firm’. It soon became clear to them that the Stuart Shale Oil Plant in its first phase was not state of the art, but part of the R&D of the company. Craig Butler, who was also in the Representative Group, says that ‘the company – SPP – and the state government wouldn’t recognise that there was a problem’. ‘If there is a problem, put your hand up and say yes, there is a problem, and we’re going to fix it. They accepted no responsibility, neither the company nor the state government.’ During meetings with the company, which took place from late 1999 to 2002, patience slowly wore thin. Peter Harland says, ‘You know, I’ve no idea as to the number of times I’ve heard sentences that begin with “You have to understand …”.’ He felt that they were being treated as ignorant peasants. It did not help, he adds, that the media, too, represented the Targinnie community as a mob of quaint hillbillies. Sally is more equivocal in her judgement. Her experience of dealing with Suncor and SPP was that they ‘were like any other company, they have a PR group who are nice to you, take your concerns on board, and they wanted to work with the community.’ She concedes that they often came across as ‘smug and superior’, assuming that the representatives knew nothing, but – taking the company’s point of view – adds that it can be difficult to deal rationally with people’s emotions and fears. Personal relationships with the company representatives could be good, but no concessions were made. Suncor, which pulled out of the project in 2001, apologised orally to the Representative Group before leaving. ‘[The CEO of Suncor] looked me in the eye and said sorry,’ Peter recalls. The Representative Group was nevertheless more resourceful than the company had expected. Craig Butler was well connected in political circles in Central Queensland; Peter Harland sold high-end car stereos and had a professional interest in sound and frequencies; and, as Sally says, ‘Keith McGavin, yes, he’s a farmer, but he’s not an idiot. So yes, at the meetings, they thought that they were dealing with idiots. Then you turn up and are able to ask fairly well-informed questions.’ The situation is in many ways reminiscent of the hearings about the East End Mine and the part played by the civil society association EEMAG, described in chapter 7. Michelle Butler recalls that they were being treated like ignoramuses by the company, and that ‘people were later going into negotiations with government, where they were being treated like dirt. You go on and you are just playing out a pantomime, everyone’s going through the motions, but nobody seems to mean anything.’

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In Craig Butler’s view honesty with people counts for a lot. You can say, I stuffed up, I’m sorry, but I’ll do everything I can to try and fix it. People will say, We can’t ask you any more, and they will accept it. In this case, to put it mildly, honesty was not evident. The Representative Group was disappointed to learn that ‘the proven technology from Canada’ was ‘a thing that fitted into a 20-foot shipping container’. They also discovered that the plant worked well with small shale rocks and at low speed, but blew up the moment they fed larger rocks into it and increased the speed, exploding and blowing off the seals at the end. They also knew that the process could be improved, with far reduced side-effects, but that this would cost money that the company was not prepared to invest. ‘They made promises to the community and the government that they would put in a catalytic burner at the end, but never did.’ The most engaged of the locals had to learn not only the language of the PR people and politicians, but also the language of EISs. Some of them got to the point where they could easily find inconsistencies in EISs – which are, as pointed out earlier, commissioned by the companies themselves and not by the government. The companies and consultancy firms were not used to being questioned, since the reports were not intended to be read. ‘And they don’t want to know. There is a delusion factor,’ Peter Harland says. During the shale oil project, you could go down there and notice that whereas the rest of the harbour was brown from flood, yours was black and there was shimmy oil on top. I wrote a letter to the paper about this, but it wasn’t printed. They were saying that the cause was fresh water flow from the Awoonga dam. Which was rubbish. The Representative Group soon discovered that the plant had been built ‘on a shoestring’, using cheap Chinese steel and no flow control in the pipelines. This meant that it was impossible to shut off valves if part of the plant malfunctioned; in other words, that the company was incapable of controlling its own factory. The knowledge possessed by the local community in Targinnie, whether based on experience or on abstract concepts, was never brought to bear on the practices at the plant. Sally says that one day, people from the company would come out to their home and claim that they couldn’t

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smell anything. ‘We said serious, can’t you smell anything? They said no, no, no, no.’ The suspicion that there were covert complicities between politicians and investors was also widespread. The political support of the project, which was ‘good for Gladstone’, was open and acknowledged. The Queensland government had supported the project financially. The Gladstone City Council saw jobs, growth and dollars. Additionally, there were politicians who had invested in the plant, and who thus had personal interests in talking up the value of the shares and hushing up anything smelling of scandal or failure. Indeed, there were people in Targinnie who also bought shares in the plant, and this led to some frictions within the community. Nor was there much local support for the Targinnie residents. ‘We didn’t have a lot of money or powerful contacts, unlike in Airlie Beach, where they had millions of dollars at their doorstep.’ Sally is referring to a later, failed attempt by SPP to open a shale oil plant in Proserpine near the glamorous and picturesque tourist town of Airlie Beach further north on the Queensland coast. In Gladstone, a common view, according to some of the people from Targinnie, was that they were ‘whingeing’, since one has to put up with a bit of noise and smell if one chooses to live in an industrial area. The Gladstone Observer would report critically on the Targinnie emission scandal, but on the whole, the paper expressed a trusting and positive view of the company. An ex-Targinnie resident, who used to work in advertising at the Observer, says, ‘There is a strong incentive to defend industry too much; from an advertising point of view it is easy to see why.’ To many, the experience of first negotiating unsuccessfully with the company, and then being evicted and bought out at a sub-market price by the government, seriously weakened their trust in the impartiality and accountability of the political system. ‘It’s money first, not people first,’ Sally says. The EIS was so flawed. There was constant low noise even for us who were not their nearest neighbours, and had hills between us and the shale oil plants. The EIS claimed that the waves lapping on the shore would cover the noise, which was ridiculous, but the government accepted it. It was when they saw the EIS, described by Michelle as ‘a very lightweight EIS’, that they contacted Richard Whitwell for assistance to write a proper response.

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Michelle mentions a woman who worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, but who was transferred to a different district because she agreed with the arguments put forward by the Representative Group. ‘She started to admit things that the government did not accept – they insisted that things were OK.’ Mount Larcom township, which lies behind the mountain Mount Larcom, is in a comparable situation to Targinnie, although its recent history has been different. The SDA has expanded nearly to the borders of Mount Larcom township, and there are possibilities of new industries being established in the vicinity. Owing to the likelihood of pollutants and noxious emissions from the possible new industries, which range from a steel mill to a smelter and a nickel plant, the council has actively de-prioritised Mount Larcom for residential and agricultural development. Queensland Energy Resources, owners of the new shale oil plant at Targinnie, have reported that they have received no complaints from the nearby community following the announcement of their desire to expand the plant. ‘No wonder,’ comments an ex-Targinnian, ‘since there isn’t one; it’s all gone.’ Environmental Issues The Australian environmental movement was campaigning relentlessly against the shale oil plant at Targinnie, being mainly concerned with its large-scale effects on climate. Their relationship with the local community of farmers and industrial workers was tense; they had a common cause, but for different reasons. Greenpeace visited Targinnie several times, once with a TV crew. ‘I used to work at QAL,’ Jennifer recalls, ‘before deciding to have children and be at home. So it’s not as if we were anti-industry. Then, Greenpeace got involved [in Targinnie]; well, what it said to us was that they were highly educated, not just rabble-rousers.’ ‘But it didn’t help,’ her husband interjects. ‘I think they did help,’ Jennifer says, ‘but there is so much happening elsewhere in the world, and they only have so many people. There are some really smart people in the organisation.’ Peter Harland told Greenpeace, when they came to Targinnie, that they should not be so concerned with getting the media in, but talk to the locals instead. ‘We fed them information they would never have got otherwise, and they helped us. But really, they came in for a photo opportunity and left, and did nothing.’ He adds, as an afterthought, that sometimes they seemed as cynical as the people they were fighting.

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The Targinnie disaster naturally did alert many locals to the severe environmental hazards of large-scale industry, but mainly on a local scale. Danny says that QAL was probably the best thing that ever happened to the city, ‘but today, they’d never have built it in that site. It is far too near the city and suburbs, and downwind from the CBD’. Reflecting on shale oil as an energy resource, Peter questions both its economic viability and its environmental sustainability. ‘You’ve got to have some limits, you know.’ Together with his wife, Peter had been planning to evolve into eco-tourism before disaster struck. His property, at the foothills of Mount Larcom, had fresh air, green and diverse vegetation, with wallabies coming to drink from the streams in the early morning. The few tourists who come to Gladstone usually go straight to the marina in order to board a boat to Heron Island. His business idea consisted in giving them something different in addition. He had plans for three solar-powered cabins on the hillside behind his house, ideal for stargazing and bushwalking, with its own natural water supply, organic fruit and fresh air. I ask Peter if Gladstone hasn’t become a dumping ground for everything that’s harmful, ugly and polluting. He laughs. Well, yeah, you can do anything in Gladstone harbour, because it can’t get any worse. You know, if you’re already pregnant, you can’t get any more pregnant. [Former Mayor Peter] Corones even wanted to bring nuclear waste here. He thought that was a good thing. Derek, unfazed by the large-scale rhetoric about climate change and fossil fuels, is concerned with his own, tangible life-world. ‘I worked at QAL myself, so I didn’t care about the shale oil plant as long as it didn’t disturb me.’ Sally has become more doubtful of the industry. Some time ago, she was asked about her views of the new shale oil project. She answered that she did not care who it was or which technology they were using. ‘I said you’re never going to convince me that they’re going to be viable and good for the community. The money should be going into renewables.’ Elaborating on her view, she adds that it was clear that the government really wanted the Stuart Shale Oil Project to succeed, since it had supported the venture with $35 million, ‘but why not support some other form of energy that does not have the effects that shale oil has?’ In saying this, she is not merely concerned with the effects on the health and well-being of the local community – the technology currently being used is far less dirty and noisy than the previous one – but on the long-term, large-scale effects of shale oil versus solar or other renewable energy sources.

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Her husband, changing the subject slightly, adds that ‘Targinnie used to be lovely and well maintained, while now it’s rubbish, there’s long grass everywhere, it’s become a shoddy and ugly place. It has the best soil in Central Queensland for papaw farming. And now it’s all just going to waste.’ Returning to the question of pollution, Sally adds that cyanide had been found in crustaceans caught in the harbour. ‘But you know, fishing and agriculture just represents a few million dollars, far less than the industry can provide. So that’s where it’s at.’ The environmental hazards of living near major emitters of smoke and noxious gases were not new to the residents of Targinnie. They are also accustomed to looking for technological solutions to local environmental issues: filters, valves, regulations. In the case of the shale oil plant, the Representative Group suggested, at an early stage, that trees should be planted around the factory in order to muffle the noise. That was before they discovered that all the trees near the plant were blackened and dying. * * * The shale oil prospect near Airlie Beach has been mentioned briefly, and a few more details might be appropriate. In 2008, Queensland Energy Resources were applying for a mining lease in Proserpine, a sugarcane growing area near Airlie Beach, which is a tourist town with a ferry service to the picturesque Whitsunday Islands. The shale oil reserves in the area were estimated to be three times the size of the Stuart deposit. Aware of his engagement in Targinnie, the organisers invited Peter Harland to speak at a well-attended protest meeting. He told them that the company would promise that real estate prices would go up, and that this would be the greatest thing that ever happened in the area. They would tell the community that they would neither see them or smell them. He added, rhetorically, a question about where Targinnie was now.1 Following massive local protest, a 20-year moratorium on shale oil extraction was eventually decided in Queensland. It was lifted in 2013, with the exception of the Proserpine area, owing to its proximity to vulnerable wetlands. In Targinnie, shale oil production started again immediately after the lifting of the ban, and the plant is currently operated by Queensland Energy Resources. In the following year, 2014, another company called – somewhat ironically – Northern Oil opened a recycling plant for motor oil in the same area, near the cement factory and the cyanide factory. Unlike the shale oil plant, this factory is tolerated 1.  A video of part of Peter Harland’s speech is available at: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TvQqUR4qdNw.

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by the environmental movement, since it reduces – however modestly – the need to extract more fossil fuels by reusing some of that which has already been extracted and processed.

scaling up and cooling down Although more dramatic and devastating in its outcome, the controversy over the Stuart Shale Oil Plant replicates features of community conflicts with industrial operations which I have described in previous chapters, with the harbour dredging and the East End Mine as the major cases. The state and regional governments were favourable to the industry’s expressed needs, trusting their judgements. The locals pitted their experience-based knowledge against the quantitative expert knowledge of the industry, but also called for alternative sources of expert knowledge. The large-scale concerns of the Australian resource economy confronted the small-scale interests of the locals in their health, their economic prospects and the value of their property. The former Targinnie residents paint a picture of a tightly knit community of rugged individualists, who nevertheless stood up for each other in times of need. ‘We never locked our house for twenty years,’ Peter Harland says. ‘The keys were left in the car and the tractor. But once the State Development Area was approved, there was vandalism, people from outside coming in.’ Their assumption, presumably, was that the community was being unravelled, with abandoned houses and much reduced social control. Many ex-residents hint at the sadness of leaving a place where they belonged. Craig, whose family history in the area spans four generations, makes a comparison with Aborigines. ‘There is much talk these days about Aboriginal people having a special connection to the land. This is true, but remember that so do long-term farmers, who have developed the land, with years and generations of blood, sweat and tears invested in it.’ Following the dispersal of the community, many people from Targinnie remain in contact occasionally. There are ladies’ networks and old friendships which are kept warm, ‘but mainly, you have people on Facebook, you don’t see them much, we do miss that,’ Sally says. Overheating, or accelerated change, is not a uniform process. Boomtowns go bust, and frantic growth in one area may be matched by concomitant decline and ‘cooling down’ in other areas. Targinnie, virtually a suburb of Gladstone after the opening of the bridge across the Calliope River, felt the heat of industrial growth nearby for a brief time, before cooling down to zero degrees – as an ex-resident says, ‘it became a

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sterile place’. Targinnie was too small, too insignificant, too economically uninteresting, to be salvaged when an industrial experiment went awry. Its former residents continue to pay the price. In anthropology, the most famous study of a former boomtown which was cooled down after the party is probably James Ferguson’s Expectations of Modernity (1999), a study of Copperbelt towns in Zambia years after the copper boom. Elderly men in these towns may reminisce about a time when they could put on a suit on Saturday, take their girl to a restaurant and go dancing to a jazz band later in the evening. At the time of Ferguson’s fieldwork, the towns were decrepit and decaying; still inhabited, but much in the same way as Detroit, the elites and big money having been siphoned out, leaving a largely unemployed proletariat to its own devices. In Mauritius, a booming economy based on tourism, manufacturing and sugar has entailed some very noticeable infrastructural developments – highways, shopping centres, business districts, plush hotels, upmarket housing estates – in much of the island. Yet, a village and a town where I carried out fieldwork in the mid-1980s remain virtually untouched by the accelerated change affecting so much of the island. They are eddies, or billabongs, in an otherwise swiftly flowing river. In Norway, the district of Enebakk, half an hour east of my hometown Oslo, was a bustling high-tech area in the late nineteenth century. They had no coal, but there was a mill based on waterborne energy; they had an industrial working class and a local squire, Holm Jølsen, who subscribed to German and English technological magazines. In the event, however, the railway never made it through the spruce forest to Enebakk, favouring coastal routes and the rich agricultural lands between Oslo and Lake Mjøsa instead. The factory burnt down; uninsured, Jølsen went bankrupt, and Enebakk quickly cooled down. It was one of the places that got left behind by the uneven swirl of modernisation, saved from oblivion mainly through the novelist Jens Bjørneboe’s book about Jølsen’s novelist daughter Ragnhild, Drømmen og hjulet (‘The dream and the wheel’, Bjørneboe 1964). In spite of its short settler history, Australia also has many places which were left behind, mainly abandoned mining settlements. The nearest to Gladstone is Many Peaks, some 80 km south of the city at the southern end of Boyne Valley. A busy mining town in the early 20th century, it had a silent movie theatre and four hotels, a soda factory, two churches, a small hospital and a sawmill. When the copper mine was exhausted in the mid-1920s, population declined dramatically – from 1280 in 1911 to 82 in 1961 – and today, it is just a highway stop. These stories are familiar from around the world. Sometimes, as in the Ok Tedi toxic disaster in New Guinea (Kirsch 2006), or – on a less

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dramatic scale – in Mount Morgan, Queensland, mining leaves barren landscapes and poisonous residues behind. Sometimes, ramshackle buildings and rusty implements remain for a while, until the town is forgotten or turned into an outdoor museum. With Targinnie, another kind of cooling down has taken place, caused not by the exhaustion of a natural resource (quite the opposite), but by the eviction of the community owing to environmental and health hazards. Although their rights were effectively very limited, the Targinnie residents lived in a rich and spacious country, and were, unlike people in poor countries living near toxic industry, able to move elsewhere. Their community could be emptied, cooled down to a standstill to allow for the overheating going on elsewhere. Although the direct cause of the cooling down of Targinnie was the malfunctioning of the shale oil plant, its decline and demise can easily be understood as a result of the vulnerabilities created in local communities owing to the scaling up and speeding up typical of the way contemporary capitalism works. It is a story not only about fossil fuels versus sustainability, but also one about scale and speed. It should be kept in mind that, ever since the beginning of European settlement, Targinnie has been integrated in a global economy; it was never based on self-sufficiency or peasant agriculture. Already Arthur Palmer’s cattle station, established in the 1850s, relied on transnational trade for its survival, selling animals on the hoof to New Zealand and receiving consumer goods from other parts of the British Empire. The later mining period was also a highly transnational affair, the value of gold being dependent on the global market for precious metals. When, in the third wave of economic change, fruit growers began to market their pawpaws and mangoes, they relied on the railway and eventually on a cannery in a Brisbane suburb. Finally, in the fourth period, post-QAL, Targinnie residents typically juggled horticulture and factory work. Yet, as Craig points out, as an agricultural community, Targinnie was declining already, following the opening of the new bridge, which made access to Gladstone quick and easy. This was largely a result of increased connectedness and industrial development. Working in Gladstone became easier, but another factor was that the crops suffered from industrial fallout. In addition, the traffic across the Calliope was believed to have spread unwanted seeds and plant diseases, further reducing the viability of horticulture. The social arenas that existed on a local scale were nevertheless many. Until 1968, the school delineated the community effectively, since most households included children; following the closure of Targinnie school, pupils were bussed to nearby Yarwun school, also a local institution.

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Until 1980, the community house was a gathering place for dancing and community events. In the final years, the shop was a natural hub and meeting place. The voluntary fire brigade had a larger membership than, for example, the one in Mount Larcom. Everybody knew about everybody else; there was gossip, mateship and rumours, dinner parties, ladies’ clubs and fishing trips in the Narrows. The regional scale was relevant in politics. Until the council amalgamation in 2008, Targinnie was part of the Calliope Shire Council, subsequently of the enlarged GRC. The labour market was also regional, with residents working at Yarwun, in Calliope and, mainly, in Gladstone. Many also had active kinship networks throughout the region. Transnational scales entered into residents’ lives in numerous ways, as their worlds of work and consumption were multiscalar and connected to world markets, but the transnational level rarely influenced their social networks. Even the Russian group had few active connections with Old Believers elsewhere. During and after the shale oil controversy, the residents came to experience clashes of scale between the local community and larger entities – the GRC and the Queensland government, Suncor/SPP, to some extent Greenpeace. Whereas formerly they were able to take the central decisions in their own lives concerning work, place of residence, lifestyle, relationships and health, these, along with their economic destiny and prospects were now determined by outside forces. It came as a big and unpleasant surprise to them that their own influence on these forces was virtually zero, and that it was impossible for them to win. Significantly, few of the Targinnie residents invoked large-scale ecological arguments in their complaints. This is especially interesting in so far as the Australian environmental movement had been campaigning against the Stuart Shale Oil Project since the early planning stage. More than 20,000 Australians signed a petition against the plant and most major environmental organisations were warning against it, arguing that shale oil was among the dirtiest and most harmful fossil fuels in existence. They invoked three levels of scale – the global (climate change), the national (the Great Barrier Reef) and the local (health and quality of life in Targinnie). Only the small scale was seen as relevant by Targinnie residents, who worried that an alliance with the environmental movement, known for its anti-industry views, would backfire on them. When the Yarwun–Targinnie Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association made a submission regarding the supplementary EIS, they found it wanting in almost every respect (van der Togt 2002). Out of 47 items commented upon in their submission, ranging from noise reduction to tank water contamination, they were only satisfied with three of the

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responses from the Stuart Oil Shale Project. One of the rare cases where the ‘yes’ box was ticked, was the item concerning greenhouse gases. The proponent ‘believes that their emission of GHG [greenhouse gases] is within acceptable limits’. Rather than quibble about the precise meaning of the word ‘acceptable’, the association accepts that ‘greenhouse gas emissions are regulated in a manner consistent with the intentions of the Kyoto Protocol’ (van der Togt 2002: 8). Today, it is hard to see Targinnie as anything but a melancholy place. If you were to visit it today, unaware of its recent history, you would approach the abandoned village by taking off from the Gladstone– Mount Larcom Road, driving through a strip of dry eucalyptus forest, first reaching the old cemetery and the empty Russian church to the left, partly concealed by trees. You would then come to notice the extensive, beautiful orchards of tall, strong, thick mango trees, now neglected and about to turn into a wild deciduous forest. A few houses are standing, some are decaying, many demolished. When you reach the site of the shop, all that is left is the concrete slab. There would be a scattering of grazing cattle by the roadside, some heavy trucks passing on the road, on their way to the industrial estate near the port at Fisherman’s Landing (where no fisherman, incidentally, has landed for a long time). Approaching the sea, you would see and hear excavators and workers clearing the land for the gas pipelines on their way to Curtis Island. But there would be nothing indicating that anyone lived here, or that a community existed, however small. You would ask yourself what might have happened to the place, which bore an eerie resemblance to a stage set for a post-apocalyptic film. Eventually, you turn right towards Gladstone, leaving Targinnie behind, perhaps with Gertrude Stein’s famous phrase ringing in your ears: ‘There was no there there.’

9 Clashing Scales: Globalisation, as We Know It

If those people upon whom rests responsibility, voluntary or otherwise, for forging a future for Central Queensland inhabitants, were to weigh up the blessings with which this part of the State is endowed against its shortcomings, the result would be startlingly in favour of our countless blessings. —William R. Golding (1979: 338)

Tom, anywhere where a lot of money is involved, injustices are done.

—Craig Butler, local politician and ex-resident of Targinnie

In the early decades of the twenty-first century, the Australian extractive sector has been scaling up and speeding up.1 It is ‘too big to fail’ and easily gets politicians on board, with approvals, board memberships and financial support, for its ambitious mega projects. It places Australia at the centre of the global climate change discourse, as one of the main contributors of greenhouse gases, and as one of the main victims of climate change. When the dry continent warms up, it gets even drier; when the ocean heats up, its irreplaceable coral reefs die and marine life is threatened; and when climate systems are pushed out of kilter, extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts and flooding become more common. Australia has already had a foretaste of these changes since the turn of the millennium. The country epitomises the contradictions of contemporary capitalism by creating private wealth and public poverty, reducing economic flexibility by subscribing wholesale to the principle of comparative advantage, prioritising speed over slowness, and by increasing internal inequalities. Australia is also a prime example of the fundamental contradictions of contemporary world civilisation, between large scale and small scale, and between economic growth and ecological sustainability. The resource industry is the key actor in this global passion play. 1.  In spite of the decline in fossil fuel prices in 2013–14, a commitment to coal and gas remains unwavering among Australian politicians.

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* * * In Gladstone, industry is never far away: the endless rows of coal wagons; the huge alumina refineries with their red lakes of residue; the clanking cranes along the port, which stretches north and south of the city for a total of 30 km; the tall chimneys of the power plant, the storage facilities and – across the water – the new LNG plants. There is a common theme to Gladstone. It is not as if everybody in the city is dancing to the same tune; some are out of rhythm, some have left the community hall, and some never showed up. Yet, as I have shown throughout this book, there is a multi-layered discursive and material universe that everybody has to relate to. One layer consists in the egalitarian individualism of Australian identity, which emphasises self-reliance, a pragmatic, practical approach to challenges and problems, and personal autonomy. The next layer is the ethos of the boomtown, which requires acceptance of infrastructural developments, an openness to newcomers and a grammar of inclusion which enables the quick acquisition of community membership, provided one conforms to a set of implicit norms. The third layer is that of accelerated industrial change and the belief in development and progress fuelled by coal and gas. Coal was the force that lifted Gladstone out of the doldrums, and if this is impossible to accept, one is forced to live in a constant double bind or move elsewhere. The conflicts and misgivings presented in this book often involve conflicting values, but they can also be understood as results not of individual greed or malign intentions, but of structural speed and scale. When big changes take place fast, some are bound to lose. When the Port Access Road was built, for the benefit of the state and city economy, houses had to be demolished. When stately, if ramshackle Queenslanders are removed to make way for units buildings, far more people can get accommodation on the same block than before. When coal mines make life miserable for the farmers of the Upper Hunter Valley, the argument from politicians is numerical, not qualitative; it is about dollars and jobs, not about the beauty of the scenery or the serenity of rural life, or for that matter, the medium- to long-term future of Australian food production. People are continuously reminded of their multiscalar lives: their livelihoods depend on transnational markets, their consumption presupposes inexpensive imports, and the debris collected on beaches often consists of Korean and Japanese plastic wrappers from ships waiting to moor. Yet, the dynamics of clashing scales remain only partly understood, and Gladstonites are, on the whole, unaware that this is a common theme to their lives.

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The conjunction of high speed and large scale is a characteristic of many developments in the Gladstone area. In the case of Targinnie, the shale oil plant was built quickly, with barely tested technology. The bund wall scandal was partly a result of pressure to get the job done fast. But the side-effects of high speed and large scale are also noticeable with respect to some of the new Gladstone suburbs. In one such suburb, off Kirkwood Road, built in less than a year in 2013–14, visitors point out that the access streets are so narrow that you cannot park your car on the curb. The houses are prefabricated and not suited to the hot climate of Central Queensland, so they are wholly dependent on air-conditioning to be liveable. They are also susceptible to flooding, with poor drainage and there has been no consideration of the natural flow of surface water in the event of flash flooding. In general, the speed with which the Australian coal mining industry has grown since the 1990s has ramifications at many scales, from global climate to workloads at Gladstone harbour to the expansion of the Kin Kora Mall, where many Gladstonites do their shopping. In retail, clashes of scale typically occur when large and small actors compete in the same market. Earlier I described the specialist shop in Gladstone which provided prices and specifications for a large number of items following a request from Bechtel, only to discover that the company ended up buying the items from an Australia-wide chain able to offer them at a lower price. Gladstone builders had modest benefits from the housing boom, as the new suburbs were largely built by larger, Brisbane-based firms. One middle-aged woman from Yarwun reminisces that her family used to buy chickens from the Lucke brothers, ‘until they were priced out by Woolies [Woolworth’s]’. Finally, on Goondoon Street, a small, family-operated cafe of the ‘greasy spoon’ type had been in business for decades. Only weeks after the opening of a Coffee Club (an Australia-wide chain) across the street, a ‘For Sale’ sign appeared in its window. Upscaling may obliterate the small by making it uncompetitive. The Yarwun Cooperative Shop had been in business for many years when it finally closed down in 2013. ‘But,’ as a local politician says, ‘if the Yarwun alumina refinery had just bought one kind of item in the shop – soap, coffee, toilet paper – it would have been enough to save it. But they didn’t, and it went out of business.’ In this case, the large-scale entity fails entirely to connect with the small-scale nearby. This is also the case when FIFO workers on Curtis Island never come into town; their large-scale operation (5000 FIFOs) existed in a parallel society with few if any links to shopkeepers and pub owners in Gladstone.

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Scales can also be hierarchical in counterintuitive ways. Gladstone, now (after 2015) a major exporter of LNG, has seen domestic gas prices increase following the completion of the plants. The explanation is that the amount of LNG has failed to meet the targets and, by fulfilling obligations towards the buyers, the companies have created a scarcity in Australia itself. It must feel like being a coal miner who cannot afford coal. In politics, local councillors see themselves as advocates for the community, often seeing the state government and the corporations as adversaries. At a meeting with the LNG companies, a councillor asked them to let the maintenance crews be based on the mainland, not on Curtis Island. He added, ‘I just want to signal that we want to be part of the conversation – not that we’ll necessarily be able to influence you, but we’ll try.’ Scaling up, as many examples in this book indicate, can be a way of masking local problems: conjuring them into invisibility by seeing them exclusively as part of the larger picture. Statistics are often used to this end. More specifically, as many confirm, it is impossible to get precise information about the health effects of living in Gladstone. Partly this is because of the high mobility, but it is also partly because of the way health statistics are produced. For example, the cancer victims in Targinnie were mostly treated in Brisbane, and were registered as patients in Brisbane hospitals. Another councillor speaks of minute and time-consuming negotiations with the LNG companies about details, such as making them remove their cars from the main thoroughfare, Dawson Road, before a funeral. He also expresses frustration at the relative lack of benefits returned to Gladstone from the Queensland government. He confirms the view, voiced by non-politicians, to the effect that the wealth produced in Gladstone largely benefits the south-eastern part of Queensland. ‘To them, it sometimes seems as if Queensland ends in Noosa [at the northern end of the Sunshine Coast].’ There is, in other words, a conversion from regional to state-level scale taking place. A generic characteristic of global capitalism, the general formula is that what is good for the world does not necessarily benefit Australia; what is good for Australia could be bad for Queensland; what is good for Queensland may lead to a crisis in Gladstone, and what is good for Gladstone may be devastating to the residents of Targinnie. However, the councillor points to a massive wealth transfer from Gladstone to the Queensland government, which is not a necessary corollary of these clashes between scales. In a readers’ poll carried out by the Gladstone Observer in 2014, only 13 per cent of the respondents agreed that Gladstone got enough regional funding

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from the state government. A source of frustration for the council, its precarious economy means not only that they are virtually forced to approve all new construction proposals due to the need for royalties, but also that partnerships with the private sector are necessary. The NIMBY syndrome analysed in particular in chapter 5, but alluded to throughout this book, is worth examining in this context. NIMBY accusations are allegations of selfish navel-gazing typical of people whose worlds are too small for them to see the larger picture. Yet, Cheryl Watson eloquently said to the minister accusing her of NIMBYism that charity begins at home, and that engagement on behalf of your own life-world (what Giddens 1991 speaks of as ‘life-politics’) can be a prerequisite for a broader engagement to be credible. While this view is debatable as a general principle – it is conceivable that someone could devote their life to protecting the Amazon rainforest, but doesn’t care about the polluted stream in his own garden – it shows well the ways in which large-scale arguments are invoked against small-scale life-worlds in Gladstone. Sentences beginning with ‘You’ve got to understand …’, that made Peter Harland want to get up and punch someone, almost invariably purport to represent the larger canvas, the bigger picture, the system that is so big that your puny little worries become insignificant and negligible. However, even large-scale processes ultimately take place among people, and life-worlds always have small-scale elements. Thus, the NIMBY argument could credibly be invoked against the industry leaders in Gladstone, who prefer to live on the Sunshine Coast for reasons of health and well-being, or the mining companies that dramatically alter the livelihoods of people living near the mines, while their own workers are FIFOs and the executives based far away from the mines. A further aspect of clashing scales concerns large investments which eventually become ‘too big to fail’. Soon after the completion of construction on Curtis Island, it became clear that the LNG plants were running at a loss. Gas prices were low, and supplies were as yet not adequate. Yet, the money invested in the infrastructure, mainly by the LNG companies but also by the government, and the prestige loss implied if one were to admit a failure, made it unthinkable that they should be shut down and written off. The world of Alec Lucke’s adolescence in the 1950s was quite different. As he recalls, they tried their hand at many different crops and different kinds of animals at the farm, without incurring catastrophic losses, before settling for pigs and chickens. There is a flexibility involved in small-scale activity which is lost when the operation is scaled up. Recall the analysis of the Australian resource boom in the Prologue, where I pointed out that ‘Dutch disease’ created its particular vulnerabilities by

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shedding minor industries and less profitable activities like dead wood in order to allow the currently most profitable sector to flourish. Yet the inflexible resource economy, locked in its own path-dependency, may become Australia’s curse. The former editor of Climate Spectator Giles Parkinson makes this prediction on the basis of the fast and frantic coal and gas developments on the Queensland coast: We are investing tens of billions of dollars building new assets to promote fossil fuels, be it in LNG, coal, the Galilee in particular, Abbot Point port infrastructure. The investment is huge and I think it is going to end up leaving us with stranded assets because we are missing the point that China, India, America and Germany are moving full steam towards a low-carbon economy. […] They are not going to need our fossil fuels in 20 or 30 years’ time, and we are building assets with 50-year lives. To build a coal port in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef with a 50-year life means we are effectively becoming a price taker for fossil fuels. Those assets will be stranded and we will see very, very significant write-downs on the back of them. (Parkinson 2014) The gist of the above quotation was the empirical starting-point of the research that led to my writing this book. But in order to do the diversity of people and settings in Gladstone justice, I had to make many adjustments as I went along. Yes, there are climate change advocates in the Gladstone region, and their numbers grow significantly if ex-Gladstonites are included. Yet the uncertainties, deep ambivalences and anxieties over fossil fuels that I had anticipated, being aware of the strength and determination of the Australian environmental movement, were less pronounced than expected. There is a strong sense of loyalty and pride in the prosperity and progress brought by industrialisation in Gladstone and, in spite of concerns over health and pollution, the commitment to continued industrial development remains strong in the city. At the same time, there are tangible indications that views of the fossil fuel industry are changing, and indeed that many in the Gladstone region have a less sanguine view of the future of heavy industry than they would have had before the recent massive development of the area. Upon discovering five large, dead fish on the shore while walking her dogs, Veronica says that she became doubtful of the ultimate goodness of development. Sally from Targinnie has become an advocate for renewable energy after the toxic scandal that had such a devastating impact on her life. Richard in South Gladstone, growing his bamboo and looking after his chooks, is unequivocal in his desire for a sustainable job ‘as long as

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it pays the bills’. And Peter in Mount Larcom has increasingly begun to speak about creek ecology and biodiversity instead of focusing narrowly on farming needs. Tim Flannery (2015) tells a story which highlights the dilemma of Queensland and echoes the concerns of many Gladstonites. At a public meeting about climate change where he was one of the speakers, a coal miner took the floor. He had been a farmer, but successive droughts and floods, probably influenced by climate change, ‘had driven him from the land. He’d had no choice but to seek work in the mines’ (Flannery 2015: loc. 1367). He was now wondering if he had made the right choice. ‘None of us,’ Flannery admits, ‘knew what to say, beyond that his first responsibility was to put bread on his family’s table.’ As long as sustainable jobs are not readily available, many Gladstonites have little choice. The fragile and shifting alliance between farmers and environmentalists, epitomised through the Lock the Gate Alliance, is interesting. Historically and culturally different, they have shared interests in fighting the power of the corporations, not necessarily by scaling down the economy but by changing its values. Some Australian farmers now speak of their relationship to the land, like Craig Butler in Targinnie, in new ways. Jim, who raises thoroughbred horses on a property near Mount Alma west of Gladstone, elaborates on this shift: We now see ourselves more like the Aborigines, in a way, as custodians. In the past, there was a lot of chemical runoff from agriculture. This isn’t the case any more, not in the same way, and it certainly shouldn’t be. Here, we don’t want to use more chemicals than we have to. Therefore, invasive plants such as the South African grass become a large problem. Like others directly affected by overheating, Jim has begun to see his relationship to his environment in a different light. Being a custodian is very different from being a conqueror, domesticator or civiliser, as rural Australians are seen in the national mythology (see Trigger 2016). However, it is fair to say that environmental concerns in the Gladstone area are mainly local and possible to scale down to a manageable size, often lending themselves to proposals for technical solutions. Perhaps, as Vicki says, people tend to become apathetic when they are confronted with large-scale transformations impinging on their lives. I once asked her if she thought people felt powerless. ‘I’d say to a certain degree, but mainly in selfish terms, that is with what affects them directly, whether it is significant or trivial.’ Scaling problems down to a manageable size is probably universal, and it may be the most efficient way of mobilising

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genuine engagement, but it does not address the underlying causes unless it prompts an upscaling of the issues. Yet, people in Gladstone do not in general think it will be worthwhile to fight the corporations, even if they should want to. I heard about a man who had been working at the cyanide plant and had an accident where he was covered in cyanide from head to toe. Luckily, he was wearing his full safety gear. The company refused to see this as a health and safety incident, he said, since ‘this kind of thing happened regularly’. He quit his job and moved away from Gladstone, concluding that ‘you can’t win’. Those who most strongly resent the long-term side-effects of accelerated change fuelled by coal and gas tend to move elsewhere and find other work. Others leave activism behind. The engineer Paul Tooker, who was the leading environmental spokesman in Gladstone for many years, wrote detailed submissions, letters and well-informed comments on proposed industrial developments. His view, as a long-term employee in the industry himself, was not that industrial development should cease, but that ‘they ought to do it right’. Since his retirement, Tooker has moved from Gladstone and left activism, having passed the torch to others. The majority who stay in Gladstone, for a few years or most of their lives, are mostly loyal, even if they sometimes voice criticism of the industry or rather concrete aspects of it. Rather than widespread unease about living in the double bind of growth and sustainability, a recurrent aspect of the dilemmas experienced by residents of Gladstone is clashing scales, mainly expressed through large-scale political decisions (state and federal) and large-scale investments overruling local concerns, making it difficult, if not impossible, to exert democratic influence. This was the experience of the farmers in Mount Larcom as well as the residents of Targinnie, and the environmental activists of the region have long felt that they are bashing their heads against a brick wall. In this city, even the politicians see themselves as representing a counterculture, fighting for the little man and woman, like the anti-hero Darryl in the film The Castle, against the mammoth corporations. This is probably the most universal common theme to contemporary globalisation, or globalised neoliberal capitalism. When big money meets small money, the big money generally has its way. Or, when large-scale economic interests encounter communities, the latter have few ways of resisting in the long term. Decisions taken on a large scale affect small-scale life-worlds without in turn being affected by them. As a way of controlling humanly induced climate change, there exist proposals to develop a ‘lift’ transporting CO2 in large quantities into outer space, and to spray the stratosphere with

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particles in order to weaken the heat of the sun somewhat. These massive projects, if approved by the powers that be, would have consequences for everybody on Earth. If they fail, we would all have to pay the price, without having been consulted beforehand. Or rather: consultations will arguably be held, but – as any resident of Gladstone might point out – with no necessary consequence for the final outcome. There is a gap, and a resulting clash of scales, between negotiated outcomes taken at a high level (for example, involving corporations and state politicians, or even ‘world leaders’), which may in themselves be democratic, and the conditions and demands put forward by local communities, who are delinked from decision-making processes affecting their lives. Occasionally, people in Gladstone would invoke the film Avatar (incidentally directed by the Australian James Cameron), which depicts an indigenous group, with a culture which is aesthetically pleasing to the cinema-goer and a high quality of life, being overrun by resource companies. They might also have mentioned the opening chapter in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Adams 1979; see Eriksen 2016a: 137). In Adams’ book, our hero Arthur Dent is told that his home planet is about to be demolished by the Vogons, who intend to build an intergalactic highway cutting through the orbit of our dear little planet. When he protests, Dent is told that the Earthlings have had plenty of time – several thousand years, in fact – to make their submissions, but have not made use of this right, so they are themselves to blame for the destruction of their home. The Vogons might argue, if so inclined, that the highway would benefit billions of space travellers, while Earth was only of value to the parochial and unsophisticated Earthlings with a flawed view of progress and development limited by their distorting NIMBYism. * * * The large-scale threats of climate change are scarcely on the horizon in Gladstone. Tree-huggers and greenies don’t settle there in the first place, or they get up and leave, since fighting the corporations is futile. On the other hand, local pollution matters to Gladstonites, especially in so far as it can affect their health, and although moving away from fossil fuels currently is not on the agenda, the popularity of solar panels in the city is significant. Federal and state investments in renewable energy exist, but compared to the massive economic support of the carbon industries, they are negligible. Interestingly, a poll suggested that 71 per cent of Australians agreed that ‘it is inevitable that Australia’s coal fired [electricity] generation will need to be replaced’ (Climate Institute 2015), suggesting

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not only a gap between Gladstone and all Australia, but also between political priorities and public opinion. Without energy alternatives or political incentives, relinquishing fossil fuels would have entailed going back to square one, to 1963, before the closing of the meatworks, before QAL, the railways connecting Gladstone to the mines in Moura and Callide – before prosperity and growth finally reached the formerly unlucky city ‘that waited’. Yet, at the same time, any solution to the climate crisis must take into account the lives of people who live in overheated industrial hotspots like Gladstone. The narrative about growth and progress, so important to the collective self-understanding of the city, cannot be dismissed. Even the most environmentally worried people in the city might readily concede that ‘QAL is probably the best thing that happened to Gladstone’. Rather than proposing a radical rupture with the story of fossil fuel modernity, advocates for a carbon-neutral future – and their numbers are growing, in Australia as elsewhere – must build on the resources and values locals already possess, encouraging forms of change that will not result in destructive overheating effects. In this book, I have shown that a transition to sustainability is difficult, even if it should have the support of most locals, to the extent that investments, loans, political decisions and corporate priorities favour growth based on fossil fuels. As a rule, David is no match for Goliath, and the influence exerted by concerned citizens on the powerful agents operating at a large scale, tends to be negligible. The potential political implications of this conclusion are considerable. The rise of resentful political movements across the world – from right-wing populist to Islamist – which direct their frustrations at the state or global elites, is easily understandable against this background, as they grow out of frustrations based in experience, not mere propaganda or ideology. Although the research on which this book is based – and most of the writing – was done before Brexit and the election of the Twitter president, these signals of withdrawal can best be understood against the background of clashing scales, the ensuing alienation and angry reactions against the allegedly smug and satisfied elites who do not themselves have to pay the price for accelerated change on a large scale. Alternative responses might look for a viable balance between the scales, ensuring democratic influence and accountability from below while retaining governance at a large scale where needed. These questions, and responses to them, go beyond the ambitions of this book, but they deserve mentioning because the Gladstone experience sheds

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light on a more widespread, and still poorly understood, phenomenon in the contemporary world, that of structural and chronic conflicts between large-scale and small-scale concerns. The resentment, alienation, frustration and anger emerging from below – from those who are ‘too few to be statistically significant’, who feel overrun and talked down to – needs to be addressed, not just in Gladstone, but across the globalised world of clashing scales.

Epilogue: a Boomtown in Decline

There were hints of an imminent downturn in Gladstone already in the early months of 2014. People who had waited to sell their house in the hope that real estate prices would recover found not only that prices continued to decline, but that finding a buyer could be a challenge in itself. Only two years after the completion of the new ring road – Kirkwood Road – dotted with new suburbs, the real estate market seemed to be on the verge of collapse. In a similar asynchronous move, the upscale business hotel Oaks opened its doors in January 2014, just as the boom was beginning to peter out. There were ambitious plans afoot to make the boom continue, as it had done in the past. Neither the proposed steelworks, which would employ a sizeable number of locals, nor a similarly scaled nickel refinery, have materialised. The ambitious Pacificus tourist resort south of the city, which would generate 850 local jobs, is at the time of writing seven years behind schedule, and construction has not yet started. These failed attempts to expand do not fit into the Gladstone script as it has been written since the mid-1960s. As a previously quoted local businessman pointed out, ‘In the case of Gladstone, it is inaccurate to talk of boom and bust. It’s more a situation of boom and plateau.’ Gladstone was simply not prepared for the cooling down of the economy that began in 2014 and has continued to the time of this writing. As a result of the fast growth, good salaries and range of job opportunities in the early 2010s, many either assumed that the boom would continue, or else they failed to plan for the future. This presentism is characteristic of the boomtown, a place where fast money can be earned. As one of my collaborators says in correspondence from 2016, ‘on the whole, people did not collect nuts ahead of winter’. Yet the extent of the crisis should not be exaggerated. Unlike resourcebased boomtowns reliant on a single industry, Gladstone has a diversified, complex and globally integrated economy with many sources of employment. Unlike Mount Morgan or Many Peaks, which turned into virtual ghost towns when the mineral resources were depleted, the core industries continue to chug on, from the ports to the alumina refineries. However, even QAL, the very cornerstone of the contemporary Gladstone economy, made a number of employees redundant in 2016 owing to low aluminium prices on the world market. Many DIDOs

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(drive-in drive-out workers) living in Gladstone but employed in coal mines further west and north, have either lost their jobs or have been forced to renegotiate their contracts on less lucrative terms. Yet unemployment figures in the city remain relatively low, rising from 3.7 per cent in September 2014 to 6.5 per cent in March 2017. Youth unemployment is nevertheless estimated at 20 per cent and a cause of concern locally (Gladstone Observer, 27 August 2017). Finding jobs, which was not a problem in the recent past, can be a challenge for experienced workers as well. Richard, a skilled mechanic in his forties, was made redundant in early 2015, and it took him more than two years to find new employment – in a different trade and with a long commute. Similar stories are heard from others, but it is important to keep in mind that what struck Gladstone at the end of the construction boom in 2014 was not total economic collapse, but an end – temporary or not – to growth. Anticipating continued growth, units buildings and suburbs were built in the region, and they have not only proved difficult to sell in the stagnating market, but have also affected the regional real estate market as a whole. In correspondence from 2017, a friend explains that Gladstone remains ‘a bit warped’ owing to the recent overheating of its real estate market: For instance, quite amusingly, the house next door, across the road and the one next to it on the corner have been empty for 3, 2 and 1 year respectively, and the next house across the road is the residence of a real estate agent couple who come home every day past the signs of two different rival companies! The real estate market can be a good indicator of perceived prospects for Gladstone. A two-bedroom flat could be rented for as little as AUS$90 a week in 2017, compared to about AUS$200 in other Queensland cities. House sales declined 37 per cent between 2012 and 2017, while the median price for units (flats) was reduced by 50 per cent in the same period (Real Estate Institute of Queensland, 2017, quoted in Gladstone Observer, 14 October 2017). While this change has serious economic consequences for families paying high mortgages and retirees seeking to relocate, real estate agents recommend clients to invest in Gladstone property, anticipating a new boom, provided prices of fossil fuels recover. * * * What struck Gladstone from 2014 onwards was not the end of industry based on fossil fuels, or the end of the general faith in progress, but rather

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the end of the belief that growth was inevitable, like a force of nature. Coal and gas prices may yet recover, if temporarily, since global demand remains high, but prospects are uncertain. Since 1967, the city and its industries had expanded slowly but surely, accelerating dramatically with the concomitant construction of LNG terminals on Curtis Island and the expansion of the port at Wiggins Island. Both of these major projects relied on high prices in fossil fuels to be feasible, but when prices declined, it was too late to change course. The asynchronicity of change in overheated places like Gladstone is striking. New developments in infrastructure, such as roads and housing as well as hugely ambitious industrial developments, rely on stability in the transnational markets on which they depend, and when this fails, local investments fall like so many houses of cards, from large-scale infrastructural developments to mortgages paying for houses far above their current market value. There is a fragility and vulnerability to this kind of economy which has not been experienced in Gladstone since the beginning of large-scale industrialisation. Viewed in the light of the current downturn, Gladstone’s history from 1967 to 2014 comes across as a particular, clearly delineated period, one of industrial growth, expansion and widespread optimism. Whether or not the current situation leads more Gladstonites to question hegemonic knowledge regimes and look for other interpretations, options and narratives about past, present and future, is too early to tell. If it does happen, the city may well embark on a different trajectory in the near future.

Appendix 1 Anna Hitchcock’s submission regarding the further expansion of the State Development Area in Gladstone in 2014

RE the changes to the SDA in Gladstone: Dear Sirs, You may feel that since not many people turned up to the information sessions about the State Development Area changes, that no-one cares what you do. This is not true. Many people have objected strenuously to this process over the years, and it has done them not one bit of good. Is it any wonder that most people have simply opted out of the process? I am one of them, but I’ve decided to voice my thoughts on the whole process in a way which I hope you can understand. I’m going to put it very plainly. And when I say ‘You’ I am conflating government and fossil fuel corporations because I believe they are so intertwined that they cannot be separated. You are lying, thieving bastards. You are greedy. You think that you can simply excise part of Australia and exempt it from due process, which is exactly what a State Development Area is. You think you can ride roughshod over a community, ruin an environment with impunity and take the money and run. I am here to tell you that while the people of Central Queensland are slow to anger, when they are roused, they are a force to be reckoned with. Oh, we won’t be marching in the streets, have no fear of that, but you will find that your social licence has expired. People, good people, have been leaving the area in droves. You will struggle to find the people you need, you will have to pay them double to stay there, and those people who will go anywhere for money are exactly the people who will leave at the drop of a hat. And the good people who have left, who were forced to leave, are quietly agitating behind the scenes. You will find your finance is harder to get, your approvals much, much slower, and every act of environmental vandalism will be photographed and flashed around the world. So go ahead, draw more lines on a map. Give with one hand as you take away with the other. You will find that it will and has already backfired on you. Kind Regards, Anna Hitchcock

Appendix 2 Letter to Coordinator-General from Cheryl Watson

From: Cheryl Watson Subject: Proposed SDA changes Gladstone Date: 10 Mar 2014 14:57:29 GMT+10 To: State Development Areas The Coordinator-General Manager, Gladstone SDA State Development Areas Division Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning 10th March, 2014. As a person who has actively been interested in the SDA since it was extended to include over 6,000 hectares of Curtis Island, I, as an individual, a member of the South End Progress Association and Treasurer of the Gladstone Conservation Council would think the Government would include in their consultation process those individuals and groups who will be affected by or have an interest in any decisions you may make. It appears that instead of wanting to engage a wide variety of citizens the Government designs this process so that basically it fails in terms of community engagement. If you do not wish the publics opinions then please don’t waste our time and tax payer dollars pretending that you do. An advertisement is put in the local paper which is not purchased by everyone and the time frame makes it almost impossible for an individual or group to put in a well-researched submission. I would think that one way to approach this would be to at least contact all those who put in a submission on the previous changes. Another would be to have more than one meeting for the general public as a great number of people in Gladstone work long hours during the week and do not have the time or inclination to attend meetings at these times. Curtis Island I was told early in the timeframe of the SDA on Curtis Island that we would have access via road to Laird Point. By the map I do not see that being possible. Could you please clarify.

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Why is half of the EMP [Curtis Island Environmental Management Precinct] still in the SDA? The part that has been transferred out of the SDA is it managed by National Parks or is it National Park? I believe the whole of the EMP should be National Park and the area allotted for Arrow should be returned to that National Park. Curtis Island is part of the GBRWHA [Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area] and therefore allowing more industry on there is unthinkable. From all accounts Arrow Energy is not going to be built as a separate identity so a good faith act by the Government would be to return this back to nature. From my understanding, the area where this site is situated is unsuitable for shipping because of the currents and the amount of dredging that will be required. Dredging in this area will also bring with it the same problems that occurred when mudflats were dredged near the LNG Precinct. Industry Investigation Precinct This I find disturbing on several fronts, the first being the open-ended title, e.g. does this include heavy and noxious industries which will be on the foreshores. Will mudflats and mangroves once again either be smothered with spoil or will they be removed for dredging? Surely you must have an idea of what sort of industries you would allow to be put here or is it a matter of anything as long as it is industry. Cannot some of the northern shoreline of the Gladstone harbour be set aside simply for the environment? Unfortunately I am unable to comment on the rest of the SDA proposals as I simply do not have time to research them. I include the following [a PowerPoint presentation, THE] which was compiled in 2008 by Gladstone Conservation Council’s President Jan Arens, which follows the timeline of the SDA. I am sure this will clarify our concerns. Thanking you, Cheryl Watson

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Index

Abbot Point 52, 99, 109 Abbott, Tony 41, 171–2 Aborigines 23, 30–1, 34, 57, 118, 223 acid rain 194 activism see environmental movement; resistance Adams, Douglas 225 agriculture see farmers air pollution in Gladstone 112, 114, 126, 140–1; asthma and 64, 67, 91, 115, 126, 128, 169, 170 in Targinnie 193–4, 195 Airlie Beach 208, 211 Albrecht, Glenn xxi, 37 alumina refineries see Queensland Alumina Limited Amarna consultancy 25–7, 44–5 ambivalence x, xv–xvii, 16–17, 64–7, 69, 111–15, 120–2, 222 Anderson, Leonie 157, 159 Anzac Day 20–1 APLNG 13, 14 Arens, Jan 109, 111, 116–18, 119, 127, 160, 167, 185 Arrow Energy 169, 182 Arroyo, Luis 24 asthma 64, 67, 91, 115, 126, 128, 169, 170 Australia Day 21–4 Australian identity 20–43 exclusion/inclusion and 23–4, 27, 29–35, 62 modularity and standardisation of 62–3 national holidays and 20–4 the past and 33–4 self-perceptions 25–8 ‘un-Australian’ 28–9

The Australian newspaper 164–5, 167 Avatar (film) 225 Bacon, Wendy 168 Baktaman people (Papua New Guinea) 133 Banana Shire 36 barramundi fish 64–5, 126, 151, 152, 158 Barth, Fredrik 133 Basseri people (Iran) 133 Bataille Georges 119 Bateson, Gregory 149 beach cleaning 122–4 Bechtel construction of LNG terminals xiv, 30 environmental measures of 154 local interactions of 51, 142 local rumours about 15, 32 tours by 12–13 BHP Billiton xix Biloela 36 Blainey, Geoffrey 8 Boomtown (musical) 46, 72–3, 96, 97 boomtowns concept of 74–7 disadvantages of 74, 75, 76, 77–88 other examples 96–7 bottom-up engagement 134 Brady, Peter 176–7, 178–9, 180, 182, 183 Broomhead, John 164–5 bund wall 145, 148, 161–8 business see corporations; fossil fuel industry; local businesses; mining industry Butler, Craig 126, 154, 203, 204–5, 206, 207, 214, 217

index  

Butler, Michelle 204, 206, 208–9 Callide coalfield 8–9, 37 Calliope River Historical Village 34, 57 Campbell, Marnie 158 cancer and leukaemia 64, 114, 195–6, 200–1, 202 cane toads 26, 42, 136–40 capitalism, treadmill comparison 98–104 Carson, Rachel 127 The Castle (film) 27–8, 205 Cement Australia 171–89 Central Pacific Minerals see Stuart Shale Oil Plant change living amid 47–59, 65–6 material transience 90–2 openness to 100–2 readiness to relocate 62, 69, 71, 99–100 unevenness of 81–3 Chapman, Col 120, 160 Chicago school 74–5 Chubb, Philip 168–9 circular sustainability 118 clashing scales 27–9, 38–9, 217–31, 224–5 accountability and 186 democracy and 188, 224–5 environmental NGOs and 42–3, 109–10, 135, 209–10 in Mount Larcom 183–4, 187–8 in Targinnie 200–1, 215–16 class 31–3 Clean and Healthy Air for Gladstone Project 114 Cleary, Paul xix, 103 coal mining see mining industry coal seam gas xvi–xvii, 14, 37–8, 195 Connerton, Paul 58, 90–1 Connor, Linda xxi–xxii Connors, Libby 41, 42–3 Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) 122–4, 138

.  243

consultations and hearings 110–11, 119, 120 cooling down 212–13, 214, 229–31 Corones, Peter 17 corporations accountability of 186 closeness to government xix, 117, 127, 132, 143, 184–5, 188, 212; port dredging project and 151, 159, 168, 169; Targinnie pollution and 205, 208 corporate social responsibility 123–4, 125, 135–42, 177 media, links to 150, 165–6, 169, 208 power discrepancies and 177, 183, 205–9 public acceptance of power of 66, 100–1, 114, 168 public resentment against power of 27–9, 38–9, 66, 151, 152, 199 cost of living 78, 81 Crime Scene (art installation) 59, 60–1, 121 Curtis Island Aborigines of 30 ending of construction on 45, 101–2 LNG terminals on xiv, xviii, 12–15, 16, 66, 166 local perceptions of working at 32, 52–4, 93 population profile 12, 14, 50 Curtis, Roger 19 cyanide plant 11, 66, 193, 194, 211, 224 Darcian Flow 181 de Rijke, Kim 38 democratic deficit 117, 179–82 185, 188, 224–5 Dickens, Charles 35–6 double binds 16, 19, 40–3, 99, 135, 217, 224 dredging see port dredging droughts see water supply issues drug use 93

244  .  boomtown

Dutch disease (resource curse) xix– xx, 90, 221–2 Dutton, Peter 28, 29 East End Mine 171–89 East End Mine Action Group 175–86 economic slump xi, 229–31 education, schools, and training 67–71, 83, 84, 89–90, 142 egalitarianism 25–8 ideology vs. practice 29–35 elderly residents 48–9, 62, 81, 94–5 employment among young 67–71, 79, 230 class and 32–3 diversity of 229 flexibility and 88–90, 99–100 high wage levels of 53–4, 64, 68, 78–80 mechanization and xx optimism and 44–5, 88 as requirement for inclusion 33, 62, 88 stress and 92–4 volatility of labour market 78–81 see also FIFOs English language, and exclusion 28, 87 environment, local attitudes to lack of engagement 45, 65, 111–15, 128, 143 ostracism of concerned residents 120–2, 129, 135, 168 typology of orientations 122–32 see also environmental movement; resistance environmental impact statements (EIS) ignoring of responses to 142–3 impartiality and 169, 179–80 for port dredging 158, 169, 179–80, 182 for Targinnie 196–7, 198, 207, 208–9, 215–16 user-friendliness and 117, 182, 207

environmental movement xix, xxi–xxii clash of scales and 42–3, 109–10, 135, 209–10 Greenpeace 109–10, 133, 209 ‘lightning conductors’ for 136–41 national xix, xxi, 40–3, 148, 209, 215 port dredging and 148, 150 EQIP 67–8, 71 exclusion and inclusion 23–5, 27, 29–35, 62, 85–8 ‘expanding’ environmental engagement 130–2, 134, 177 expert knowledge see knowledge regimes family life 93–4, 95 farmers extractive industries vs. xxi, 35–40, 125, 134, 171–89, 194 resistance by xxi, 125, 173, 175–89, 223 Ferguson, James 213 FIFOs (fly-in-flight-out workers) 12, 50–6, 91, 93–4, 99–100 fishing industry, destruction of 64–5, 125–6, 150, 151–6, 211 Flannery, Tim 41, 223 flaring 14, 118–19 flexibility 88–90, 99–100, 221–2 Flinders, Matthew 19 food safety 64–5, 169–70 see also fishing fossil fuel industry coal seam gas xvi–xvii, 14, 37–8, 195 on Curtis Island xiv, xviii, 12–15, 16, 66, 166, 220, 221 government investment in 140, 210, 222, 225–6 growth of vs. ecological sustainability 16, 20, 40, 118, 139 insecure future for 16, 47, 103, 222 price decline and x, 16n, 231 in Targinnie 194–216 see also LNG terminals

index  

457 visas 49, 85, 86, 88 fracking xvi–xvii, 37–8 frozen moments 58 Galilee Basin 41, 52, 99–100, 109 GAPDL 17–19, 29 gas industry see fossil fuel industry GCC see Gladstone Conservation Council Gillette Syndrome 76 Gilmore, John 76 Gladstone boomtown characteristics of 77–98 development of 3–17 maps xv, 4, 21, 48, 147 overview xiv–xviii, 3–4 population growth xiv, 57–8, 85, 100 treadmill capitalism in 98–104 Gladstone Chamber Of Commerce 44–6 Gladstone Conservation Council (GCC) 113, 116–20, 127, 134, 143 port dredging and 159–60, 161, 166–8 Gladstone Engineering Alliance 46 Gladstone Fishing Research Fund 151 Gladstone Maritime Museum 34, 57 Gladstone Observer campaign for steel mill 101–2 on demographics in Gladstone 94 environmental coverage of 120 GPC threats to 121 on health issues in Gladstone 64 links to industry 150, 165, 169 port dredging project and 150, 160, 165 Targinnie pollution and 150, 160, 165 Gladstone Ports Corporation (GPC) dredging project 145–70; denial of issues 148, 152, 156–61, 165; mistakes revealed 168 public parks gifted by 141

.  245

Gladstone Power Station xiv, 11, 194 Gladstone Regional Council (GRC) as advocates for community 220–1, 224 Australia Day events 21 clean air project 114 environmental activity sponsorship 124 industry orientation of 120 port dredging and 148, 150 public relations efforts 17–19, 29 Gladstone State Development Area (SDA) 119, 198, 212, 232 Gladstone, William 6, 19 GLNG 13, 142 Golding, William R. 3, 4, 217 Gould, John 42 government closeness to industry xix, 117, 127, 132, 143, 184–5, 188, 212; port dredging project and 151, 159, 168, 169; Targinnie pollution and 205, 208 consultations, inquiries and hearings 110–11, 119, 120, 166–8, 170 environmental policies of 41 investment in fossil fuels 140, 210, 222, 225–6 local, as advocates for community 220–1, 224 mining, prioritisation of 41, 174, 183, 188, 218 see also Gladstone Regional Council; Queensland state GPC see Gladstone Ports Corporation GRC see Gladstone Regional Council Great Artesian Basin 38 Great Barrier Reef xviii, 41, 54, 109, 110–11, 131, 169, 170 Great Expectations (Dickens) 35–6 Green Party 113 Greenpeace 109–10, 133, 209 grey exodus 48–9, 61–2, 81, 94–5 harbour see port dredging

246  .  boomtown

Harland, Peter 190, 200–1, 204, 205–6, 207, 209, 211 health asthma 64, 67, 91, 115, 126, 128, 169, 170 cancer and leukaemia 64, 114, 195–6, 200–1, 202 locals’ observations of issues 64–5, 67, 91, 114, 115, 126, 156, 169 official dismissing of issues 114, 128, 195–7, 200–2, 207–8 Hitchcock, Anna 79n, 116, 119–20, 127–8 Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 225 Hornsey, Warren 165 hospitals 54, 79, 84 housing new and unsuitable 219 prices 81–3, 94–5, 229, 230 sale of, in Targinnie 196, 197–9, 200, 203–5 temporary 10–11, 14, 82, 84 Hummock Island (proposed resort) 102, 229 Hunt, Greg 166, 168 Hutton, Drew xxi, 41, 42–3 immigrants at Bechtel (proportion of) 24 boat refugees 137 on Curtis Island (proportion of) 14 exclusion and inclusion of 23–5, 33, 62, 85–8 in Gladstone (proportion of) 85 perceptions of Australia 58 inclusion and exclusion 23–5, 27, 29–35, 62, 85–8 independent inquiries 166–8, 170 individualism 25–8 industrial development, local attitudes to ambivalence x, xv–xvii, 16–17, 64–7, 115 feelings of loss 59–61 lack of negativity 44, 54, 55, 112–13, 128

ostracism of critics 66, 100–1, 120–2, 135, 168 positivity towards 45–6, 194, 222 small-scale concerns 45, 64–5, 66, 114–15, 153, 221, 223–4 see also environment, local attitudes to industry see corporations; fossil fuel industry; mining industry Irish elk vs. peacock’s tail 103–4 Jacquet, Jeffrey 75, 76 Jeremijenko, Andrew 156, 158, 161, 166, 170 Johnson, Vicki on The Castle 27 Crime Scene installation 59, 60–1, 121 on FIFOs/incoming workers 53, 82, 84, 91 on local employment 68, 95 on powerlessness 223 Kapferer, Bruce 20–1 karst 181 knowledge regimes 149–50 of experts: on Mount Larcom 179–82; on port dredging project 157–61, 169, 170; on Targinnie pollution 189, 196–7, 202; locals’ loss of trust in 67, 168–70, 184–6 hegemonic dismissal of issues: East End Mine 174; Gladstone air quality 114, 128; port dredging project 148, 152, 156–61, 165; Targinnie pollution 195–7, 200–2, 206, 207–8 of local residents: in Mount Larcom 176–82; on port dredging project 152–6, 162–4, 169–70; in Targinnie 195, 200–11; expert knowledge of 177–8, 180–2, 196–8 Kohrs, Eldean 76 Kookaburra Shells (anthology) 121

index  

Landos, Matt 151, 157, 161 language, and exclusion 28, 87 laws on resource extraction xxi, 195 leukaemia 114, 140, 202 limestone mine (East End) 171–89 livestock farming see farmers Lloyd, Graham 165 LNG terminals (Curtis Island) construction of xiv, xviii, 12–15, 16, 66, 166 local perceptions of working at 32, 52–4, 93 poor performance of 220, 221 local businesses (SMEs) 44–6, 51, 54, 55, 78–81, 219 Lock the Gate Alliance xxi, 223 ‘loyal’ environmental engagement 122–5, 134 Lucke, Alec 171, 175–7, 182–3, 185, 186–9, 221 Macintyre, Stuart 8 Manchester school 75 Many Peaks (abandoned town) 213, 229 Marina Parklands 141 Mauritius 213 McDonald, Lorna 5, 11, 173–4 McDonaldization 102 meatworks 7–8, 9, 10 media climate scepticism of 168–9 links to industry 150, 165–6, 169, 208 see also Gladstone Observer; The Australian Meston, Archibald 20 mining industry development of xviii–xxii, 36–9 farmers vs. xxi, 35–40, 125, 134, 171–89, 194 government prioritization of 41, 174, 183, 188, 218 Mitchell, Timothy xx mitigation 124 modernity, Gladstone as 31, 34, 56, 63, 101

.  247

modularity 61–3, 102 Mount Larcom 171–89 Mount Larcom Mining Protest Group 173 Mount Morgan mine xviii, 10, 82, 90, 229 Munro, Sharyn 16–17, 38–9 national days 20–4 Native Title (land rights) 30, 118 Nevin, Owen 143–4 Nhulundu health centre 30–1 NIMBYism 66, 110, 131–2, 221 Northern Oil 211–12 Norway 213 offsets 141–2, 174, 176, 177, 202 oil industry see fossil fuel industry oil shale plant see Targinnie older residents 48–9, 62, 81, 94–5 optimism 18, 44–7 Orica cyanide plant 11, 66, 193, 194, 211, 224 overheating, definition ix–x, xvii Pachamama 117–18, 130 Pacificus resort 102, 229 Palmer, Clive 143, 168 papaw farming 192, 193, 194 Parkinson, Giles 222 past, the 33–4, 57–8 peacock’s tail vs. Irish elk 103–4 pensioners see senior residents Peru, boomtown in 96 Petroleum and Gas Act 195 Philippines, boomtown in 96 Phillips, Tim 28–9 pig cycles 103 Pilbara widows 93–4, 95 pollution see air quality; health; port dredging; Targinnie population size and profile of FIFOs 50 growth of Gladstone xiv, 57–8, 85, 100 of immigrants 14, 24, 85 skewed profile 50, 94–5

248  .  boomtown

Port Access Road 50, 61, 97, 218 port dredging xviii, 145–70 bund wall scandal 114, 148, 161–8 environmental deterioration after 114, 130–1, 148, 151 flooding at time of 150, 151–2, 159, 165 locals’ acceptance/defense of 146–7, 153–5 as well-paid work 80 power discrepancies in 149, 177, 183, 199–200, 205–9 disempowerment 215, 223–4 trust and 185–6 Prizeman, Walter James 190 protest see environmental movement; resistance public consultations and hearings 110–11, 119, 120 public relations efforts by GAPDL 17–19, 29 by industry 12–15; corporate social responsibility 123–4, 125, 135–42, 177 public services 54, 79, 83–8 see also education; hospitals Qatar, as aspiration 101, 102 QCLNG 13–14 QGC Pty 123–4, 141–2 quantification 13–15 Queensland Alumina Limited (QAL) air quality and 112, 115, 126, 129, 143 day care at 84 early development of Gladstone 9–10, 76, 77 educational funding from 142 employees’ experiences of 64, 89 local attitudes to 53, 58, 64, 210, 229 recruitment difficulties of 54, 79 redundancies at 229 Queensland Energy Resources 209, 211–12

Queensland state government Cement Australia and 174 hearings and consultations 110–11, 119, 140, 141 investment in fossil fuels 140 port dredging and 148, 151 Targinnie property purchases 198–9, 203–5 wealth transfer to 220 see also Gladstone Port Corporation Queenslander houses 58, 90, 103, 218 racism 31 rainfall, rumors about 39–40, 114–15 Rappaport, Roy 103 real estate see housing Red Queen effect 98, 100 resilience 46–7 see also selfsufficiency resistance by farmers xxi, 125, 173, 175–89, 223 lack of locally 45, 65, 100–1 by Targinnie residents 195, 196–9, 202 see also environmental movement resource curse (Dutch disease) xix– xx, 90, 221–2 Ridley, Matt 98 Rifkin, Jeremy 128 Rio Tinto/Rio Tinto Alcan xvii, xix, 11, 15–16, 141, 194 see also Queensland Alumina Limited (QAL) Ritzer, George 102 Rockhampton xviii, 7, 10, 90, 91 rubbish clearance 122–4 Rudd, Kevin xix Russians, in Targinnie 192, 195, 200 Saunders, Scott 73 scale clash of 27–9, 38–9, 183–4, 186, 187–8, 200–1, 215–16, 217–31, 224–5

index  

definition 133 environmental NGOs and 42–3, 109–10, 135, 209–10 high speed and large scale 218–19 large/small, in combination 16, 215, 218 scaling up and cooling down 212–16, 229–31 small, dismissal of 114, 196, 200–1, 219 ‘too big to fail’ 185, 188, 217, 221–2 Scandrett, Malcolm 196, 198 Schober, Elisabeth 96 schools 83, 84 see also education science and scientists see knowledge regimes SDA (Gladstone State Development Area) 119, 198, 212, 232 self-sufficiency 31, 33, 62, 88 see also resilience Sellers, Gail 12, 21, 46, 72, 73 senior residents 48–9, 62, 81, 94–5 Service, Bill 165 sex workers 51–2, 91 Shell Oil 169 Shen Neng incident 17 small and medium-sized businesses 44–6, 51, 54, 55, 78–81, 219 Smith, Philip 28–9 social integration see Australian identity; exclusion and inclusion socio-economic class 31–3 solar power 91–2, 124–5, 128–9 solastalgia xxi–xxii, 37, 49 Southern Pacific Petroleum (SPP) 194–7, 202, 205–8 see also Stuart Shale Oil Plant ‘specific’ environmental engagement 125–7, 134 Spinnaker Park 141 steel mill (proposed) 101–2, 229 Stensrud, Astrid 96 stress 92–4

.  249

Stuart Shale Oil Plant (Targinnie) 194–216 Suncor Energy 194–5, 202, 206 see also Stuart Shale Oil Plant Swift’s meatworks 7–8, 9, 10 ‘systemic’ environmental engagement 127–30, 134 Targinnie 190–216 history of 190–5 impacts of oil shale plant in 195–211; official dismissal of issues 195, 196, 197, 200–2, 206, 207–8 resistance in 126, 195, 196–9, 202 temporary workers see FIFOs Thompson, Serena 113 Tooker, Paul 224 top-down engagement 134 tourism 18, 102 transience see change treadmill capitalism 98–104 Tsembaga Maring people 103 unemployment 30, 33, 79, 230 van der Togt, Andrea 196 visas (457) 85, 86, 88 Vision Environment 157, 158, 159, 161 volunteers and volunteering awards for 21 for conservation 42, 122–4 for promoting Gladstone 17, 34, 46, 57 shortage of 94–5 for social inclusion 14, 26, 29 for toad destruction 137–9 for unemployment benefits 33, 122 wage levels 53–4, 64, 68, 78–80 water supply issues 37–40, 114–15, 125–6, 171–89 Watson, Cheryl 66, 116–18, 119, 130, 166–7, 221, 233 Whitwell, Richard 196–7

250  .  boomtown

Wiggins Island xv, 16, 78, 102, 109, 131, 231 WIN (NGO) 24 Winter, Allen 34, 101 women with absent husbands 53, 93–4, 95 demographic imbalances 94–5 as housewives 33, 79 as workers on Curtis Island (proportion of) 14 Woodhouse, Ian 114, 140–1

Xstrata xix Yarwun Targinnie Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association 196, 215–16 Yarwun-Targinnie Representative Group 195, 196–9, 202, 205–9 young residents 48, 67–71, 79, 230 Zambia copperbelt towns 213 Zussino, Leo 101, 160, 161, 165–6