James Price Point – Protestors or Protectors?

The Dreaming Chair only a few kilometres from the proposed Gas HubSunday 26th June – Off to the blockade on this beautiful sunny morning to stand strong in country. It seems some people are under the misapprehension that the blockade is just a bunch of tree hugging hippies and a few disgruntled aboriginals but nothing could be further from the truth.

The blockade is being run to a well thought out and strategic plan. There are many dedicated professionals who have given up their time and put their lives on hold to plough through the 1000’s of pages of the Strategic Assessment Report and the myriad of paper trails through submissions and papers to find out legalities of operations being conducted by Woodside. Many of the blockaders have businesses to run, jobs to go to, families to care for and yet will get up at 4am in the cold and drive some 20 kilometres to stand strong against the relentless push by Woodside to clear land that they have not gained the proper authority to clear.

Yet a blockader who lay for 27 hours with his arm shoved up a pipe and chained to the bulldozer, with mozzies buzzing around him and freezing cold night surrounding him, unable to eat, drink, sleep or turn around .. was carted off to jail.

The blockaders feel very deep association with this country. It has offered healing and great joy to many and they feel it is their obligation to protect it. The Lurujarri Trail runs some 80 kms along this country, it is an ancient Song Cycle which has a birth place and an end place, it has a physical (landmass) length and width but it is not a track. It is made up with “sites” – ceremonial grounds, seasonal food places, vegetation for ceremonial usage, trees, scrubs, plants, ochre, etc. The land and water within the Song Cycle provides all that is needed to sustain life both for humans and animals. There are many special sites along the trail, that westerners who have had the privilege of walking the trail have expressed experiencing, happiness in some sites and sadness in others but overall they experience the sharing of the “Dreaming”.

Woodside’s activities in country have finally being brought to the attention of governing authorities and the media as they ride roughshod over sacred sites, removing artifacts from middens, thousands of years old and buggy over sand dunes exposing bones from burial sites.

IT IS NOT A DONE DEAL!