The Evolution of the Eye (2010) - Richard Dawkins

Kasey Chambers - Not Pretty Enough

~~FAVE QUOTES 2010~~

Winston Churchill said: "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations" ... with this in mind, here are my fave quotes for 2010 (in no particular order)

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.  --Augustine (354-430)

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.  --Glenn Clark

The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.  --Henry Miller

I was at peace. The only sounds I heard were the calls of birds and the slap of waves against the hull of my boat. An occasional jet droned high above, to remind me, you'll come back, dreamer, your life depends on those artifacts you've tried to escape.  E.O.Wilson --Naturalist

It seemed to me a superlative thing - to know the explanation of everything, why it comes to be, why it perishes, why it is.  --Socrates

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but [they are] unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. ~~Marcus Aurelius

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value to one man seems nonsense to another.  Hermann Hesse --Siddhartha

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.  --Neil Armstrong

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.  --Gerry Spence

It is not easy to remember that in the fading light of day the shadows always point toward the dawn.  --Winston O. Abbott

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.  --Oscar Wilde

A child on a farm sees a plane fly by overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home.  --Carl Burns

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.  --Marcus Aurelius

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence... and loathing seizes him.  Friedrich Nietzsche --The Birth of Tragedy

Under the absolute sway of one man the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul; but the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose proudly superior. Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved. The master no longer says: 'You shall think as I do or you shall die'; but he says: 'You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but you are henceforth a stranger among your people.'  Alexis de Tocqueville --Democracy in America

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.  Arthur Schopenhauer --Studies in Pessimism

The judgemental eye harvests the reflected surface and calls it truth. It enjoys neither the forgiveness nor the imagination to see deeper into the ground of things where truth is paradox. An externalist, image-driven culture is the corollary of such an ideology of facile judgement.  --Anam Cara

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.  --Oscar Wilde

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.  --Oscar Wilde

And thus a ready mode is provided, by which whoever is on the strongest side may dogmatize at his ease, and instead of proving his propositions, may rail at all who deny them, as bereft of 'the vision and the faculty divine', or blinded to its plainest revelations by a corrupt heart.  John Stuart Mill --Coleridge

Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something. Anton Chekhov --Notebooks

What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.  Adam Smith --The Wealth of Nations

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  Henry David Thoreau --Walden, or, Life in the Woods

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.  Bertrand Russell --The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

'So death is having all these tries at me, is he? Let him, then! I had a try at him a long while ago myself.' 'When was this?' you'll say. Before I was born. Death is just not being. What that is like I know already. It will be the same after me as it was before me.  Seneca --Epistulae Morales

Mankind cannot subsist at all unless there is an infinite number of useful men who possess nothing at all. For a prosperous man will certainly not leave his land to cultivate yours; and if you need a pair of shoes it is not a judge who will make them for you.  Francois Voltaire --Philosophical Dictionary

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.  Malcolm Muggeridge --Radio Times, 09/07/64

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.  Blaise Pascal --Pensees

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don't even arise.  Jean Baudrillard --Cool Memories

Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.  Giambattista Vico --The New Science

An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.  Karl Jaspers --The Origin and Goal of History

Many people are afraid of freedom. They are conditioned to be afraid of it.  Herbert Marcuse --New York Times, 27/10/1968

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.  Woody Allen --My Speech to the Graduates

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.  James Baldwin --The fire next time

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.  Bertrand Russell --On the Value of Scepticism

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.  George Santayana

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.  Stephen Jay Gould --Dinosaur in a Haystack

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.  Marcus Aurelius --Meditations

Skepticism is inclined toward toleration, since in its doubts it cannot choose among the competing beliefs that swirl around it, so often in murderous rage. Whether the skeptic seeks personal tranquility in retreat or tries to calm the warring factions around her, she must prefer a government that does nothing to increase the prevailing levels of fanatacism and dogmatism.  Judith Shklar --The Liberalism of Fear

The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself.  Helmut Schoeck --Envy: A Theory Of Social Behavior

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.  Noam Chomsky --Red and Black Revolution, 1996

Humans ought to preserve for themselves an environment adequate to match their capacity to wonder.  Holmes Rolston III --Duties to Endangered Species

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of 'Creation'... We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things.  Sigmund Freud --Civilisation and its Discontents

The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science - or of any honest intellectual inquiry.  Stephen Jay Gould --Bully for Brontosaurus

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority..  Arthur Schopenhauer --Aphorisms

Philosophy, beginning in wonder ... is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. Its mind is full of air that plays round every subject. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices....A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.  William James --Some Problems of Philosophy

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.  H. L. Mencken --Chrestomathy

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?  Bertrand Russell --Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.  Cardinal Bellarmine --said during the trial of Galileo

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.  Albert Einstein --The World As I See It

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.  Karl Marx --A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.  Bertrand Russell --The Conquest of Happiness

For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them; but they are the money of fools.  Thomas Hobbes --Leviathan

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.  --Friedrich Nietzsche

Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.  --Kahlil Gibran

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.  --Bertrand Russell

The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.  --Bertrand Russell

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.  --Buddha

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.  --Benjamin Franklin

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.  --Benjamin Franklin

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.  --Benjamin Franklin

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.  --Albert Einstein

Most idealistic people are skint. I have discovered that people with money have no imagination, and people with imagination have no money.  --George Weiss

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.  --Joseph Conrad

To see a World in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, To hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.  --William Blake

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute, that's relativity.  --Albert Einstein

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.  --Albert Einstein

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.  --Aristotle

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.  --Marcus Aurelius

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.  --Mark Twain

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.  --Anne Lamott

To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.  --Elbert Hubbard

The love we give away is the only love we keep.  --Elbert Hubbard

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. --Elbert Hubbard

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.  --George Bernard Shaw

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.  --E.V. Lucas

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.  --Mark Twain

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.  --Charles DuBois

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.  --Joseph Campbell

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat.  --Lily Tomlin

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.  --Shakespeare

A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.  Albert Camus --The Fall

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.  --Abraham Lincoln

Know thyself.  Thales Miletus --Quoted in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase...the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.  --Frank Herbert

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.  John Steinbeck --East of Eden

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act their dream with open eyes and make it possible.  --T.E. Lawrence

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.  --Sigmund Freud

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.  --Anne Frank

Always do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.  --Dr Seuss

It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a conscious effort to live useful lives. Their happiness, of course, is not a shallow exhilaration where life is one continuos intoxicating party. Rather, their happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that comes when they believe their lives have meaning and that they are making a difference for good in the world.  --Ernest A. Fitzgerald

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.  --Frederick Koenig

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.  --Leo Tolstoy

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armour of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day… we become seekers.  --Peter Matthiessen

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.  --Carl Sandburg

It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.  --H.G. Wells

Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts.  --Winston Churchill

If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.  --Michelangelo

If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.  --Thomas Edison

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I have done my best." That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.  --Lin Yutang

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.  --Henry Miller

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.  --William Shakespeare

I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail.  --Woodrow Wilson

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.  --George Bernard Shaw

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.  --Malcom Forbes

Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what they are not.  --E.R. Beadle

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.  --Confucius

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.  --William James

You see the Earth as a bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament in the black sky. It's so small and so fragile - you realize that on that small spot is everything that means everything to you; all of history and art and death and birth and love.  --Russell Schweikart, astronaut

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.  --Victor hugo

Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.  --T.S. Elliot

Never does a man portray his character more vividly than his proclaiming the character of another.  --Winston Churchill

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced; live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.  --Cherokee saying

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.  --Emily Dickinson

To affect the quality of the day; that is the art of life.  --Henry David Thoreau

Real learning comes when the competitive spirit has ceased.  --Krishnamurti

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a Summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.  --Sir J Lubbock (So that's how you get a knighthood! Where's mine?)

All great truths begin as blasphemies.  --George Bernard Shaw

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.  --Kahlil Gibran

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.  --Agnes Repplier

How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.  --Anne Dillard

The greater part of happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.  --Martha Washington

Life is not a matter of milestones, but of moments.  --Rose Kennedy

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.  --Henry Miller

Nature is very clear about how things work; be briefly happy it says, there can be no longer happiness and then die. This is nature's simple message. The pursuit of both beauty and happiness are noble missions only when played in the sunlight against a background of black. Look at the place I leave behind, just look at its twisted nature. If a child today finds himself born in cool meadows sparkling with streams where the answers to everything can be felt on the skin or smelled on a breeze, he will see it as a plague; because the television will flicker and bewitch his dreams 'til he runs to join our world of altered cares, to serve the only real omnipotence the world has ever known, a force beyond conscience or control, one that resides in every being at once and spins the wheel of fortune for all things: the economy. Where the dumb and lazy are powerful. Decadence comes to every empire not lucky enough to be destroyed at a stroke. DBC Pierre --Lights Out in Wonderland

Punctuality is the thief of time.  --Oscar Wilde

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as an unfinished song or an old address book. --Carson McCullers

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.  --Charles Caleb Colton

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  --Marcel Proust

Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when you pursue it is always beyond your grasp, but, which, when you sit down may alight upon you.  --Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are things that are known, and things that are unknown. In between there are doors.  --William Blake

What if you slept; and what if in your sleep you dreamed; and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower; and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Oh, what then?  --Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying: and this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.  Robert Herrick --To the Virgins, to make much of Time

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.  --Ethel Barrymore

My Inner Brat

The day was predictable

Got run down by a train

Cartwheeled along the seagulls tracks

Made sandcastles in the rain

 

I kicked a “Black Cat”

Skipped in front of a truck

So sweetly and poetic

How we justify tough luck
 

I disobeyed all the rules

Made it up in front of fools

Ran amok to meet my ends

Consider this life as my fair-weather friend

 

If I could turn back the clock

How predictable is that

I’d be twice as unpredictable

Because I am a BRAT!!

NO PLAN (B) FOR HEDLOW SUPER DUMP!! – What a LOAD of RUBBISH!!

So … in recent times ... 

Mayor of the Rockhampton region, Cr Brad Carter, and his ‘fail to think outside the box’ councilors have concocted, yet another, ‘easy-fix’ solution to Rocky’s increasingly smelly waste removal and management issue.

(The links to the documents I'm referring to can be found below)

Moreover, the Rockhampton Regional Council (RRC) is currently coercing Anna Bligh to fund a $15 million SUPER DUMP facility.

And we all know what Premier Bligh’s stance on the environment is after her run in with protesters over the damming of the Mary River.

The establishment of a 40-year landfill at Hedlow, consisting of a 400-acre section of land, would involve moving five existing dumps to one by 2017.

Council’s ‘Infrastructure and Planning Services’ general manager, Gavin Steele, said residents would still be able to use their nearest dumps, which would essentially become “transfer stations”.

That's an awful lot of rubbish and garbage being collected in one place at any one time: one shudders at the vision of what it will look like in 40 years time - particularly when considering Rockhampton’s rapid population expansion.

The RRC claim the visual impact from the area would be small. 

It will be blended in and it would be very difficult to notice so the intention is not to impact on the visual amenity.

Well, I'm thinking at a space of 400 acres, its going to take a lot of 'blending in' to hide an eyesore like that!!

In one blasé comment, Council’s chair of 'Health and Regulation', Cr Tony Williams says, “If there wasn’t a sign there on the side of the road to say it was the landfill it would be very difficult for someone to point out.”

Mayor Carter further adds, "… you won’t be able to see it from Mt Jim Crow or Mount Archer". 

His incredible claim is made despite the fact that the facility will be situated only 1.25km from Mt Jim Crow National Park.

Predictably, there will be no public access to the site.

An aesthetic, as well as a ‘Health and Safety’ issue? - perhaps.

However, I believe this highlights the ‘out of sight – out of mind’ mentality that the RRC are becoming famous for.

With the 'out of the way' location of Hedlow, Rockhampton and Capricorn Coast residents won’t be so concerned and distressed about the environmental genocide occurring if they can’t see the constant growth of rubbish that is decomposing with rats and toxic gas emissions.

Chances are though, that even if you can’t see it, you’ll be able to smell the 'modern landfill'.

One wonders - how this disgusting stench, staining the area with its inescapable rotting odour, will be met by the 1000’s of tourists who use the dump’s road during their transfers to Rydges Resort, the Capricorn Coast and the Keppel Bay National Park.

The RRC claim only a small percentage of the total grazing property will be affected, but they are also practicing their ‘bullying tactics’ in terms of forcibly removing Hedlows current farmers and graziers. 

Land owners, George and Mary Seifert, have been issued with a notice of intention to compulsorily acquire the land by council but intend to fight it.

George has declared that he is “consider(ing) all options” in the fight to keep his grazing property.

He has approached Greens Senator, Dr. Bob Brown, to warn him that a dump on his property could have serious environmental consequences.

To this, Cr Carter flippantly responds, "The possible threat of court action did not alter council’s position."

The RRC also hypothesises that the ‘modern landfill’ site, situated three kilometres from Hedlow Creek, will not adversely affect the waterway with contaminated ground water or run-off.

Carter also crows that this "... is an issue that should not occur and cannot occur and we have to design it and engineer it so it doesn’t occur".

Whilst, on one hand, Mr. Steele stiffly postulates that there is a “significant amount of naturally occurring clay” on the site which would make the landfill “water tight”.

“The clay quality is that good it might meet the requirements of being sufficient without any additional synthetic liner,”

On the other, Mr. Seifert, clarifies that, "It will scar and damage that area scenically forever, contaminate the site ... where future development will go - it will impact on that," he further believes

"[There's a] high probability of water sources of Rockhampton and Yeppoon, the whole coast, being contaminated if there is any escape from that site".

NO SYNTHETIC LINER = ENVIRONMENTAL GENOCIDE!! 

The Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) will demand no water run-off from the top or through seepage as well as consider all liquid and gas emissions. DERM will only approve the site when they are 100% satisfied nothing leeches out and that the waste is securely capped once in.

Well, let’s hope so, because if it’s not sufficiently contained, the effects of contamination in Capricornia will resonate for generations to come.

Hedlow Creek, Stony Creek and other small tributaries in the area all eventually feed into the Waterpark Creek catchment. Waterpark Creek – the main water supply to Yeppoon (and surrounds). The catchment is regarded as Queensland’s cleanest water source as it is sand dune fed. Hedlow Creek, some nine kilometres long, features as an aquatic delight for fish species such as Barramundi, Bream, Whiting, Flathead and Grunter. It is also nature’s playground for activities such as swimming, canoeing, bush-walking and photography. Water is also drawn from this source for local orchards, Eco accommodation and restaurants.

Waterpark Creek flows into Corio Bay, a haven fishing spot for locals and tourists which is also protected by the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands. Corio Bay then runs into the Coral Sea at North Farnborough Beach then through to Yeppoon’s main beach. Large tidal ranges ensure rapid transport in fast currents to Yeppoon and the Keppel Islands - hence any contamination will result in rapid contamination of the Capricorn Coast’s water supply, the Byfield National Park, Corio Bay, Keppel Bay and the Capricorn Coast.

Damage to the creeks and catchments can occur from any number of sources and the concerns of local people are reasonable. Fears of the water being contaminated by toxins and cancer causing pollutants may be one reason for the (now debunked) Livingstone Shire Council’s decision to construct a 50 kilometre water pipeline from the Fitzroy River.

Just last week, some 20 concerned residents participated in 'heated' discussions with councilors about the controversial site during a Community Catch-Up meeting.

One such resident who has lived in the area for 35 years, Bill Peff, fears his cattle will be at risk of drinking poisoned water if Rockhampton Regional Council chooses Hedlow as its new dump site.

He's deeply concerned that if the land becomes a dumping ground, the runoff from the dump would flow into Hedlow Creek, his cattle's source of water, and in turn flood into the Fitzroy River, affecting the whole community.

“With the residue from the dump, you don't know what's in the water. I have 550 head of cattle at stake,” he said.

The Capricorn region is already facing massive environmental and social pressures. Shoalwater Bay Training Area is constantly monitored for contamination from the military activities that occur, and if Tower Holdings get their way and the MEGA RESORT is constructed on Great Keppel Island there will be the waste of 2,400 additional people per day to deal with.

Other prominent locals have also been quick to voice their concerns.

Paul Bambrick, Greens representative in the Federal seat of Capricornia, calls for the Rockhampton Council to consider more rational sites.

While Rockhampton's State Independent, Bruce Diamond, believes the current proposal makes little sense considering the State's pledge of fifty million dollars towards a western industrial corridor past Gracemere; making this a more logical location.

Carter moans that he's out of options and has no PLAN B if the current proposal doesn’t get the nod;

And – the fact remains; no one wants a dump in their backyard.

So… Are there alternatives?

The simple answer is YES.

Biomass and biogas plant renewable energy production from biomass and wastes.

Based in Melbourne, Sunspun, address this issue through:

* Basic engineering/designs for biogas plant, biomass gasification plant, ethanol fermentation from sugar,

   starch and lignocelluloses, biodiesel from waste and vegetable oils and cogeneration systems

* Biogas, ethanol, biodiesel and by-product utilisation and marketing

* Biomass and food wastes evaluation and utilisation for renewable energy production

* Feasibility studies

* Greenhouse gas mitigation and carbon trading

* Recycling to achieve Zero Waste targets

* Renewable energy includes: solid biomass fuels such as wood and crop residues, biogas, biodiesel, ethanol

* Renewable energy integration with existing infrastructure

http://www.sunspun.net/

An operation like this would not only be producing a renewable ‘clean’ energy source, it would also create employment opportunities and an area for Central Queensland University students (particularly Science & Engineering) to further explore and research.

This eco-friendly alternative would prove to be hugely cost effective both in the short and long term.

For all intents and purposes, it only took me 10 minutes of cyber-surfing to find this ONE possible PLAN B for the RRC to consider.

Could someone please remind me WHY we continue to pay these councilors if the best they can come up with is waste removal practices that are out-dated and just plain don’t work – with no hope for a PLAN B.

Stop the Rockhampton Regional Council from building a shire SUPER DUMP and destroying the beautiful Hedlow Creek area. 

Email all the councilors now!!

Let them know you are AGAINST this Proposal!!!!

Email addresses:

Cr. Brad Carter

mayor@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Glenda Mather

glenda.mather@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Brett Svendsen

brett.svendsen@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Bill Ludwig

bill.ludwig@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Sandra O’Brien

sandra.obrien@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Cherie Rutherford

cherie.rutherford@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Greg Belz

greg.belz@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Stephen Schwarten

stephen.schwarten@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Tony Williams

tony.williams@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Rose Swadling

rose.swadling@rrc.qld.gov.au

Cr. Graeme Brady

graeme.brady@rrc.qld.gov.au

Also, you can voice your concerns and issues regarding this proposal to:

Capricornia Greens

Paul Bambrick

Email: capricornia@qld.greens.org.au

http://greens.org.au/capricornia

Capricorn Conservation Council

President: Ian Herbert

Vice-President: Crystal Gregson

'The Hut' 1 Livermore Street Haigh Park Qld, 4700

Phone: (07) 4927 8644

Fax: (07) 4927 8279 

Email: ccc@cqnet.com.au

Facebook Groups: 

Stop Hedlow Landfil

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=689048861#!/group.php?gid=116250528429742&ref=ts 

No Dump for Hedlow

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=689048861#!/pages/No-Dump-for-Hedlow/130168393685718?ref=ts 

Capricornia Green

Paul Bambrick

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1358463296&ref=ts#!/profile.php?id=100001456165240&v=wall&ref=ts

Council Proposal Links

http://www.rockhamptonregion.qld.gov.au/Upload/1471/14714-090309-124520Agenda_March_10_2009_

Health_and_Regulatory_Services.pdf

http://www.rockhamptonregion.qld.gov.au/Uploads/13704/13704Agenda_April_22_2008_Commercial_

Business_Management.pdf