Andrew Bolt: Free our beautiful countryside from these metal monstrosities
Australia’s stunning landscapes are being desecrated by ugly wind farms. Blow them up. Tear them down. Never, never replace them.
I’ll start with the good bit. I’m just back from a weekend trip to underappreciated South Gippsland, and it was even more wonderful than I’d expected.
How good is country Australia? How blessed we are to have something so unique and so … us.
We drove past Caldermeade Farm, which on Sunday held the famous Basset Hound Race, eight heats of lolloping hounds.
So many delights: the beaches of Cape Paterson; the cheeses and superb olive oil of Meeniyan’s Trulli Pantry and Cellar; the two Indian guys serving their superb curries next to their service station at Welshpool, of all places.
But everywhere, as always in country Australia, the real hero was the landscape.
You’ve seen Tuscany? Save your money.
The Strzelecki Ranges are all that, but better. Greener, with all this rain. Less tamed, and so achingly beautiful, with the coast and Wilson’s Prom visible from the highest hills, and from our cabin at One Tree Hill.
But the views… How could we be so brainless? How could we vandalise what’s best about our land?
Cresting the hills of Kilcunda, past the Phillip Island turnoff, we saw Bass Strait – and six wind towers smack in front, listlessly turning like hoodlums scratching their names on the Taj Mahal.
In the Strzelecki Ranges, more madness, like the wind farm at Toora that looms right over that town, and sneers at the prom beyond.
Which politicians said yes to wind farms in our most beautiful spots, and often on the highest bits, so the damage could be seen even from the horizon?
It’s not just Victoria, of course, and these are not just crimes of the past.
Only last month, billionaire Andrew Forrest opened his new Clarke Creek wind farm – towers 207 metres tall – in central Queensland, between Rockhampton and Mackay.
Look it up on the internet. Have you seen such lovely countryside desecrated so casually, and by people thinking that by destroying nature they’re saving the planet?
But I have a faint hope: that Australians now fix this vandalism.
The two wind farms I mentioned are among Australia’s oldest and reaching the end of their operational lifespan, usually 20 to 30 years. The one at Kilcunda was built in 2005, and at Toora in 2002.
Blow them up. Tear them down. Never, never replace them.
Erase these monstrous monuments to our stupidity, and preserve our landscape as a refuge for the soul.
First there were hollow words, now we must ask the tough questions
