Oops! The Bay dredging environmental checks are being revealed as inadequate:
Fails First test
It is wonderful to have the support of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
With only the first of the heads dredging underway - already we are witnessing the disappearance of our much loved beaches. I parked at the marina at the foot of Oliver’s Hill in Frankston yesterday and watched as my car was covered in salt and the waves crashed over the wall. The council has obviously made an effort - new sand can be seen along the remaining beach line towards the pier. It is disappearing rapidly.
This is one of those moments in life when I fervently wish we had been proven incorrect and that it will ‘be alright’. I truly hope this is perceived as a warning signal.
Blessings for the Eclipse in Leo (today 1st august 2008): traditionally such Eclipses bear witness to a time when much is revealed to the public.
There is a weekend of Rallies ahead for those able to be in the Melbourne City area.
[From Blue Wedges newsletter].
1. 
* [1.] Over 60 community and environmental groups including Your Water Your Say, Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Public Transport Users Association, Friends of the Earth, Tradewatch, Blue Wedges and may others have signed up to be part of this huge Red Alert event. We are all saying: Brumby and Rudd let’s get serious!
The Rally kicks off at 1 PM tomorrow, Saturday 5th July at the City Square (Not Fed Square) cnr. Swanson and Collins St. City.
Keynote Speaker Senator Bob Brown.
The rally will then march to Alexandra Gardens to form a human sign reading: CLIMATE EMERGENCY
* [2.] # PLANNING BACKLASH PUBLIC MEETING SUNDAY 6TH JULY
Mr. Brumby, and his mate Planning Minister Madden, the state “developers”, are making people as mad as hell! Join over 120 resident groups from city and country who have had enough of Mr. Brumby’s vision for Melbourne……which translates to more of everything. More high-rise, more shops, more high density housing, more trucks, more traffic congestion, more ships…… you name it he wants it!
But – the residents of town and country don’t want what Mr. Brumby wants. They say “We are as mad as hell and we are not going to take this any more. No more stripping away of our appeal rights. No to stripping away Councils’ planning powers.”
Speakers include: Geoffrey Rush, Rod Quantock (MC), David Davis (Liberal MP and Chair of Public Land Inquiry) and Greg Barber (Greens, MP)
Please join us at 2.30PM CLOCKTOWER TOWN HALL 750 MT ALEXANDER ROAD MOONEE VALLEY (Mel 28 J6). Show the Brumby government you care, but not for what they are doing!
For more details see: www.marvellousmelbourne.org
If you can make it and join in - please do!
Bay beaches (?) taken from Whitecliffs car park at 1.30 pm today. yes, it IS winter and the high tides are common after storms at this time of year. A local comments that if this becomes the norm - then we’ll know.
Here’s wishing you all warmth, food and shelter and a safe new fiscal year ahead …
Greetings! It is the Winter Solstice, exact at 10. 00am tomorrow morning, Saturday 21st June 2008. Our gorgeous little planet of teeming life turns on the elliptic point and starts heading back towards the Equinox (Spring) point and closer to the Sun. The bulbs are sprouting through the mulch.
Warm thoughts, sacred prayers and healthy blessings.
The dredging continues at the heads in stormy weather. I wonder what the whales will think of the Bay renovation on their journey towards warmer seas? I trust their community spirit to warn others along the way.
The adversarial system continues - our Parliamentary system is based on it and it continues through every level of society.
[Deep Sigh!].
Would that humanity could GET IT: co-operative, conscious, healthy pooling of resources and thoughts of Goodwill to benefit us all - including nature and this wondrous environment we love.
From my reckoning - it will take all of the 2, 500 years of the Aquarian Age. Am glad to be giving the incoming cycle of development and evolution a good hefty start.
I adore winter on the Peninsula: the air is fresh and clean and crisp and the sun still warm on the face and back. There is green in them there hills and gardens again AND rainbows sprouting amongst stormy clouds.
The Light is bright and clean and the atmosphere ranges from misty to sharp.
It’s a world we share and care about.
Blessings folks.
Ancient cultures have based artisan works on this jellyfish design. Found at Whitecliffs on friday 30 May. Fascinating.
Thursday 5th June is World Environment Day. May humanity grow in its awareness of how precious this planet truly is.
For those interested in POMc ’s report on their care of the Bay during the Dredging project, there are meetings at Rosebud and this Tuesday (3rd) at Bellarine.
*** ALSO:
On Thursday and Friday, the State finance Committee will be hearing the cases for and against the Dredging continuing. Presentations by various interests and concerned groups. See latest Blue Wedges newsletter.
Meanwhile, across the planet … New Guinea is clearing its forests at an alarming rate, Unilever is ignoring its own policies in devastating the Ivory Coast’s rainforest for palm oil and our own Victorian Farmers have been conned into the GM spin in a last ditch effort to rescue their livelihoods.
We have experienced decades of learning and teaching, lectures and books, films and documentaries, and people still want to ‘do their own thing’ even ‘though they KNOW it is grossly harmful in both short and long term.
That our Bay could soon become a toxic dump that is ILLEGAL in any other part of Australia - is beyond comprehension: It is malevolent and insane.
On World Environment Day - may humanity remember and honour our connection to the planetary world.
_______________________________
BAY WIDE ALLIANCE MEETING
An open invitation to all those concerned about the Bay.
Friday 30th of May
Port Phillip EcoCentre
Cnr of Blessington & Herbert Sts, St Kilda
From 6pm to gather, catch up & eat
Meeting starts 7pm, wind up 9pm
The consciousness of humanity IS expanding and we ARE maturing as a species. The impatience and frustration we are experiencing with those relectant to wake (grow) up is painful. It is part of the learning curve for which we are personally responsible. We know that we are ‘on cue’ with awareness of the pristine beauty of this planetary world and that our role as human guardians is vital.
Contemplate the Bigger Picture: suggest Carolyn Baker’s latest article about America’s need to mature.
”What I want to reinforce for all of us is how imperative it is in the days ahead for us to walk consciously, cautiously, and compassionately through the fires of this long, protracted initiation. Beyond our physical, financial, and logistic preparations, we must continuously work-and it will be work-to open our hearts and minds to the larger purpose behind the ordeals. We must ask ourselves what each particular experience wants to reveal to us, how it comes to us to open our eyes and cleanse the doors of our perception. We will be incessantly reminded that civilization has come to all this-depletion and exhaustion of the earth community and all of the suffering that attends that. In a sense, I believe, we are fortunate to be living in this time and on this planet because something greater than our finite human egos is delivering a message with unmistakable clarity: Living estranged from the earth community as if we are the only and the most important species on earth does not work, and collapse wishes to make certain that we understand unequivocally and irrevocably that our only survival and our only serenity will be found in living as if we and the earth are one. “
We do what we consciously can - while we can …
Blessings,
I shall be monitoring what happens to the Bay level during these stormy days.
Day 1 Friday 16th May and Rye pier is disappearing. You will notice the tides recede further out and at full tide, are heavier and reach further into the shores. We shall be able to watch the effects of the dredging at the heads over this weekend. There is a strong full Moon on Tuesday around midday. Kingtide warning and stormy winds and rain are forecast.
The landscapes of our Bay and its surrounding shores are changing.
I stopped for a quick snack at Cameron’s Bight today. Glorious still Autumn day, the sun shining on the water and rays streaming through clouds. The stillness and silence were restive.
I munched happily on my pie and sipped my oragnic latte. Until I realised something rather disturbing. There were no seagulls. Strange. No wind. Another couple enjoying a picnic nearby. No scavengers!?
Eventually, two adult Pacific gulls appeared. Then a pair of younger Pacific gulls hoping to share any remnants. Two seagulls ventured forth - young and quite skinny. The only times I witness an absence of seabirds is in violent storms and even then, there are usually some brave souls around.
The murky sands and the obvious lack of any fishy picnic for the the birds speaks volumes.
It was eerie.
Blue Wedges have updated with an interesting newsletter. We know now about the ship running aground at McCrae.
We await the first reports of the condition of the Bay with interest.
It has been a powerful weekend with a Full Moon and Australia’s 2020 Summit in Canberra. Lots of good ideas have emerged with issues of Sustainability, the need for a unified approach to Economy and Governance, and improved collaboration between community and Government/ regulatory bodies. These are issues that have arisen with our concern for this Dredging project. We are part of a huge wave of awakening consciousness. Fantastic idea of Australia leading the world in becoming a Green Nation. Victoria’s Premier, John Brumby, is inspired. Hope, folks - the Light dawneth.
The Dredging of the Yarra’s polluting contaminants begins today. Nature seems to be co-operating with mild weather sustaining a calm environment.
Precarious project …
The Age: Dredging project
The Australian Conservation Foundation begins its monitoring project tomorrow.
The Orca sails out into the Bay with students on board to do their own measuring and assessment of the Bay.
I have donated to this project - I like the objectivity. The Orca needs assistance financially. You can also opt to sail out with the team on their trips. Could be an interesting and inspiring experience!
Australian Conservation Foundation.
Cheers !
Hilary
Ocean walk …
Honouring the Feminine at Boonatallung
Sunday 13th April 2008
Boonatallung (Point Nepean) is a traditional women’s birthing place, a dolphin nursery and a place of spectacular beauty and wild feminine energy. Forming one side of the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, she stands as a proud guardian for the fertility of Melbourne. Boonatallung is now under attack from the aggressive ignorance of a large-scale dredging operation in her waters.
With deepest respect for the BoonWurrung women of this land, we are called to gather together at Boonatallung to honour the feminine and bear witness to the suffering of the land, her people and her waters. As women, as children, and as men protecting the feminine, we are all called to stand strong and offer our love and compassion, for the healing of the waters and the sacred feminine, inside and outside.
Plan of the Day:
11am Meet at Gunners Carpark
11.15- 12.40pm Sacred Walk along the beach to the Point
12.40-1pm Lunch at the Point
1.00-3.30pm Gathering at the Point: Honouring the Bay and the Feminine through Music, Song, Story, Dance and Poetry; Healing Meditation; Deep Ecology and Sustaining Our Spirit; Sharing Circle…
3.30-4.45pm Return journey by walk or train.
Logistics: Meet at Gunners carpark by 11am to join the Sacred Walk of 3.5km along the beach and up to the very tip of the Point. If you prefer not to walk, you can catch a tourist train from the Visitor Centre and meet us at the tip of the Point by 1pm (train departs 12.30pm Visitor Centre).
Please Bring: Walking shoes, sun, wind and rain protection, lunch and drinking water, musical instruments, prayers, poems, dances, stories and songs. Wear white or pink.
Entrance Fees: National Park entrance fees are $7.50 adult; $3.70 child and concession. Train fees extra. Please pay at Visitor Centre.
* This is a private gathering and an invitation to you, your family and friends. You have been invited by the Wild Women of the Waters: Sophie, Rose and Meenakshi.
Contact: 040 0 846 012 or 0405 379 223
Flier for printing: boonatallung-gathering.doc
For those who think it is only the feminine that is sensitive to nature:
the-whale.doc
This is a pic of Port Phillip Bay taken from the Helicopter pad at Sorrento Park.
It shows a beautiful Bay, the happy little boats, the curves of shoreline and softened aged mountain ranges in the distance.
Our forefathers knew it was Bay, with a small opening to the sea and enclosed all around by land. An ideal site for a settlement and a small city.
It was never thought of as a port. Portland is a port and was created for that purpose. Westernport is a port and was created for that purpose.
Somewhere along the line of time and generations, competitive thinking wore away at the visions for this part of Australia. Somehow, sometime, the patriarchs in charge dismissed what IS for what could BE.
In many places of the world, the pristine beauty of nature has been , and is being, devastated by the lure of possibility beyond the simplicity of the natural. In time, everything comes full circle for there is very little in nature that forms right angles or straight lines. The Universe prefers to run on curves and cycles.
The care of our Bay is now up to all of us: the people in charge of Crown land and Sea; the organisations committed to conservation and protection; the community awareness raising groups; the users of the Bay; those who have come to love its calm joy and marine beauty.
It (the Bay) embraces and encloses us all providing a sanctuary, a shelter from the wildness of the raw Antarctic just beyond the Southern horizon. The marine life that has made this Bay their home are sensible. The people who have purchased land and developed homes and shops, businesses and yes, a City of Melbourne, know this.
The dredging of the heads will widen the opening to this Bay. We do not know what effects this will have. Time will show us as nature adapts to the swelling tides and deeper channels.
The reasons for doing this at this stage of the planetary mood swings have not perhaps, taken much into account other than vested interests in human civilisation.
This kind of dismissive insensitivity and perhaps ignorance and naivety, invariable bring the need for adjustment in thinking and planning. We humans do this, we learn and grow through experience.
Patience is needed and understanding. Planners and developers are often secular and self interested. True visionaries are rare.
For those with more wholistic scopes of knowledge and perception - it is painful to watch the stupidity of half baked ideas bulldozing through nature which will take decades to resettle and grow again.
We have such short lives. Those who want to leave a legacy of building and creating are in a hurry to achieve their own dreams. Those who are agonising over the destruction mourn that they will not see the healing take place.
It is life.
Eric Idle explores the Meaning of Life and expresses what he discovers better than I. With the help of NASA and modern micro technologies - in visuals and sound …
Enjoy!
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