Hippies of Nimbin admit bush got too wild

The greenies have a lot to answer for over the state of the bush, says a leading environmentalist.

Nimbin environmentalist Michael Balderstone on Monday. Picture: Vanessa Hunter

The greenies have a lot to answer for over the incendiary state of the Australian bush.

This is the view of Michael Balderstone, hemp candidate, deep environmentalist and leading figure in the Nimbin community, which is now beset by fire.

“They (greenies) own it,” Mr Balderstone said. “The Greens have to cop it on the head, they have been obsessed with no fires and no burning.”

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Mr Balderstone says the lessons from indigenous land managers have been forgotten.

“The Aboriginals say it is country gone wild,” he said. “We were just blind to their knowledge.”

The hills of northern NSW are ablaze with an out-of-control bushfire that, with an expected change in wind, could on Tuesday race for the coast near Byron Bay.

Des Layer has for 30 years ridden his horses through hills now being ravaged by fire. For decades he has watched the structure of the bush change from what he says is poor logging and lax management.

Nimbin resident Des Layer says he has not seen such a large fuel load in the national parks in his 30 years of riding horses in northeast NSW. Picture: Vanessa Hunter

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Before the area became ­national park, Mr Layer said, he would get permits to collect firewood from the state forests. Since the national park was declared there had been no permits issued.

“It has just been building up,” he said.

A generation of locals, raised on forest protest, are being forced to confront some tough truths about forest fuel loads and management. Communities that have been on the frontline to stop logging and expand national parks are seeking refuge as fire threatens to consume their homes.

Protesters Falls near Terania Creek, the site of Australia’s first environmental blockade in ­August 1979, is surrounded by an out-of-control blaze in the Nightcap National Park. Tuntable Creek community, a free-spirited community that grew from Nimbin’s counter-culture movement of the 1970s, was one of the first settlements to be evacuated.

Conservationists protesting the logging of Terania Creek outside Lismore in 1979.

The Terania Creek protests.

Greens leader Richard Di ­Natale has blamed climate change for what has been billed as a raging armageddon. But even among hippies bigger questions are being asked about park management and the extraordinary fuel loads that have been allowed to build up for more than a decade.

Poor logging practices have changed the forest’s ability to cope with fire. First the fire-retardant edges were lost and then the high-value canopy trees. With the big trees gone, the ­humidity of the forest was reduced, the canopy was opened to allow palms to grow and then drop dead fronds into the undergrowth. Extended dry conditions have resulted in a tinderbox of lantana and weeds in an area that has not seen a significant fire for half a century.

Mr Layer believes the solution should have been selective logging but “you can’t trust these people to go in with chainsaws to do it ­sustainably”.

Opinions are mixed about climate change. Some say climate is always changing; others think conditions are worse because of it.

Police clash with Terania Creek protesters in 1979.

At an emergency information meeting called for Nimbin Hall on Sunday the emphasis was on the task at hand rather than whether the federal government had been doing enough for fire brigades.

For many, Senator Di Natale’s attempts to blame lack of climate change action for the fires is seen as opportunistic and irrational. Climate change is a global problem. Local action on carbon dioxide emissions will not afford regional protection against the weather or fire.

Mr Layer has been taking action for his own property. He has spent winter slashing and cleaning up the property, which has 20 dams. He hopes he’s done enough.