How you can help Bimblebox

Featured

To win this fight, The Bimblebox Alliance Inc. needs YOU. 

Yes, we need funds, but we also need your hearts and minds, your hands-on help, and your connections. Spread the word about this David and Goliath battle for Nature to be valued above and beyond Coal. 

Let’s make ‘Bimblebox’ a household word!

 

•  Join us in The Bimblebox Alliance Inc. (TBA) and share your particular skills. IT? Social Media? Clerical? Numerical? We are all volunteers, trying our best to meet this challenge, but we can’t all be multi-skilled, and we can certainly use more help!

• Write to your local papers (if you still have one) and to any major papers that take letters to the editor. See the Bimblebox Fact Sheet for backup, and express how you feel about this coal mine proposal, and about a dedicated Nature Refuge being offered up for a coal project – whether Bimblebox or any private ‘protected’ area.

• Call your local talkback radio shows and share your opinions about what is being proposed for Bimblebox. If this state significant ‘protected area” is mined, nowhere is safe!

• Write to your politicians so they know how you feel about this; ask them what their stance is on private ‘protected’ areas not being exempt from mining, on the impacts this project might have, on water, on habitat, on climate change…! Let them know this is a major issue of concern for you, and will influence your votes. Call or visit your local MP!

• Share our Facebook posts. Look out for our FrogsFriday features across social media, showcasing the diversity of Bimblebox.

• Share our tweets (Twitter handle @BimbleboxNR) and use our hashtags, #SaveBimblebox, #NatureNotCoal, #FrogsFriday and #Valuing Nature.

• Get Bimblebox update emails: sign up on this page.

• Donate to our fighting fund.

• Buy for Bimblebox: beautiful all-year-round Bimblebox calendars, our great logo bags and T-shirts, the book: Bimblebox – A Nature Refuge under Siege, the DVD…

• Markets: post-Covid, run a tell-and-sell market stall, with Bimblebox goods and info and stickers; clean out the garage and sell bric-a-brac, old tools, books or whatever to raise funds forthe fight.

• Tell your story: whenever you can, share with people why you care about Bimblebox and are helping to fight for its survival.

• Volunteer for hands-on help at Bimblebox; more help is always need to care for and nurture the living treasures there, to weed, to manage areas and the small cattle herd.

However you choose to help, thank you!

Bimblebox: a living treasure – worth far more than coal!

Bimblebox is under imminent threat and urgently needs your help.

In late 2019 Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal applied to the Queensland Government for a Mining Lease and Environmental Authority, two of the final steps required before approval of mining on Bimblebox Nature Refuge. The Bimblebox Alliance (TBA) had only until December 2nd, 2019 to object to the Land Court of Queensland.

But due to a technical issue, the process was restarted and the new deadline was April 3rd, 2020. We now await a Directions Hearing date. The EDO will represent TBA as well as our fellow objectors, Youth Verdict, a group of young people concerned by the potential breach of their human rights that this Galilee Coal Project could pose.

Wildlife have rights too, and we are gathering all our resources to fight to protect the flora and fauna of Bimblebox. It was always incredibly contradictory that a mining exploration licence was granted over a dedicated Refuge recognised by both Federal and State governments because it was such a significant large tract of intact vegetation of high biodiversity values.

Bimblebox Nature Refuge is beautiful – and invaluable: an 8,000 hectare property, 95% uncleared, in the largely cleared Desert Uplands Bioregion of Central West Queensland, in the south Galilee Basin. It is living proof that sustainable grazing and high conservation values can successfully co-exist.

The Bimblebox Alliance believe we have social licence and moral right on our side, and now we need to prove that we also have the legal right to exist. To do that in court is costly.

We need as much financial help as possible to fund this battle. Can you help?

Please donate now!

Bimblebox with Bob Brown

This 5-minute video depicts the history and the possible dire future of Bimblebox Nature Refuge. Our thanks to Tangible Media, Bob Brown, Sonya Duus, Mark Doyle and Karl Hoch. Please click on “HD” in the lower right-hand corner to ensure maximum colour and sound quality.

2020 Bimblebox Calendar

The 2020 Bimblebox Calendar is a beautiful photographic testimony to the rich diversity of flora and fauna that this Nature Refuge protects. We are most grateful to Bimblebox supporters Greg and Emma Harm, of Tangible Media, who have designed the calendar around their stunning photographs.

Buy our 2020 Calendar to help save all these natural treasures from being destroyed for a coal mine! Now at the reduced price of $10 each (including P &P).

2020 may be moving along, but for the next nine months these Calendars will keep delighting with their visual charm as well as sharing fresh information each month. 

Or buy a Bimblebox T-shirt or Singlet and get one of these great Calendars for FREE!

 

PRESS RELEASE by Lock the Gate: China First mine puts farmers last

https://www.lockthegate.org.au/china_first_mine_puts_farmers_last
Published: October 22, 2019

Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal company has been condemned after it submitted an Environment Authority and Mining Lease application for the destructive Galilee Coal Project – previously called “China First”.

The mine has been on ice since being approved by the Federal Government in 2013 leaving local landholders in limbo. 

If it goes ahead, the Galilee Coal Project would destroy grazing land and the Bimblebox Nature Refuge.

Local Landowner and Nature Refuge co-owner Paola Cassoni said she would be considering all her options now that the ML and EA had been notified. 

“The first of 26 boreholes was sunk on the Nature Reserve in 2008, but we locked our gates and stopped the extra 100 boreholes. We have submitted to the Environmental Impact Statement and voiced our concerns throughout the EIS process. 

“But by making an objection to the land court Waratah’s assertions about the impacts of the mine can finally be put to the test. 

“We have been in drought out here for more than three years. Our groundwater is all we have to depend on. We have no choice but to use all options open to us to protect this important pocket of country.”

“We have until December 2 to gather information for our objection. Any Nature Refuge owner out there, and there are more than 500 of us, that feels outraged like we do that this government would allow mining on a Nature Refuge, please join me in the fight. 

“And any graziers that are worried about their water, please join us too. 

A recent Supreme Court decision has thrown into doubt the consideration of groundwater during the grant of an Environmental Authority and in any subsequent Land Court processes. 

Graziers are now calling on the government to amend legislation to confirm that the impacts of mining on groundwater will be properly considered at all stages of the assessment and approvals process, including for the Galilee Coal Project.  

Lock the Gate Queensland spokesperson Ellie Smith said, “It seems ludicrous that impacts on groundwater can suddenly be taken out of consideration mid-way through the assessment process for the Galilee Coal project. 

The Queensland Government must quickly pass legislation to fix this loophole that puts millions of litres of water at risk.” 

Bimblebox nature refuge is an important habitat in the Eastern Desert uplands and lies right in the middle of the mining proposal.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR UPDATES

More articles on Clive Palmer’s disastrous mine

Clive Palmer’s company renews plan to build coal mine four times bigger than Adani’s Carmichael https://www.sbs.com.au/news/clive-palmer-s-company-renews-plan-to-build-coal-mine-four-times-bigger-than-adani-s-carmichael

Clive Palmer company reapplies for mine four times size of Adani’s Carmichael https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/22/clive-palmer-company-re-applies-for-mine-four-times-size-of-adanis-carmichael

Green group slams Clive Palmer’s Galilee mine bid https://www.tweeddailynews.com.au/news/green-group-slams-clive-palmers-galilee-mine-bid/3860027/?cspt=1571906275|87094f82defdf02669c79ed7cf4dc681 Melanie Whiting 22nd Oct 2019 11:28 am (Permission pending)