Antinuclear

Camp Concern: protestors recall and reactivate anti nuclear campaign in Kakadu

“The mining company that has benefited and profited from the use of this area and the mining lease now needs to move towards a comprehensive clean-up.

“We’re still not completely aware of contamination problems that need to be rehabilitated.

“What’s promising is the protest from Aboriginal communities against the mining is as strong as ever. There’s a lesson [from Camp Concern] in partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists sharing information together.”

Camp Concern: Activists reunite for anti-uranium mining protest 40 years later inside Kakadu 105.7 ABC Darwin  By Emilia Terzon and Lisa Pellegrino , 27 Oct 15 As uranium mining near Kakadu faces an uncertain future, activists calling themselves Camp Concern have reunited inside the Northern Territory park to mark 40 years on from the launch of an anti-mining protest.

Camp Concern was an anti-uranium mining protest camp that started with five people on October 26, 1975, on land now encompassed by the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

The camp ended up witnessing hundreds of participants, before being disbanded after four years. The Ranger Uranium Mine was controversially completed in 1980………

Mr Strider said the Mirrar people’s knockback of the Ranger mine lease extension was cause for celebration, given Camp Concern was originally set up to support Aboriginal anti-mining concerns in the 1970s.

Mr Strider and his friends came up with idea for the camp protest after a meeting between conservationists and traditional owners in nearby Gunbalanya in August 1975.

“It was at that meeting that an old [Mirrar] lady said it would be helpful if we had a visible, durable, white anti-uranium presence in the district,” Mr Strider said.

“She was afraid a situation could arise where all black people were opposed to uranium mining and all white people were for it, and she didn’t want to live in that future.

“We really had no contact [with the traditional owners] after that initial meeting and there was no need to. We knew what needed doing.”

Two months later, Mr Strider and four others set themselves up underneath a banyan tree in the Alligators River region, the chunk of land at the time forecast for uranium mining by the federal government……..

Disbanding the camp after mine approved

As time went on, the camp’s focus moved to conservation and fire management for the surrounding land, and pushing for it to be turned into a national park.

Mr Strider and his friends moved on in 1979.

“It was all over. There was no point us being there anymore … People were coming in for the mine’s construction and they didn’t like us very much,” he recalled.

But the surrounding land was shortly after declared as Kakadu National Park, leaving the township known as Jabiru and the Ranger Uranium Mine sitting in the middle of a now World Heritage-listed chunk of land.

“I think that’s kept the miners on their toes. The national park is downstream from the mine and there’s interest in having no pollution come downstream,” Mr Strider said.

This month, ERA found itself in hot water after backburning started at the Ranger mine spread into Kakadu, threatening important cultural sites.

Lauren Mellor from Environment Centre NT said it was time for the federal and NT governments to ensure ERA and Rio Tinto provided hundreds of millions of dollars needed to clean up the area.

“A lot has happened in the last 40 years,” Ms Mellor said.

“The mining company that has benefited and profited from the use of this area and the mining lease now needs to move towards a comprehensive clean-up.

“We’re still not completely aware of contamination problems that need to be rehabilitated.

“What’s promising is the protest from Aboriginal communities against the mining is as strong as ever. There’s a lesson [from Camp Concern] in partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists sharing information together.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-26/camp-concern-recreate-uranium-protest-kakadu-national-park/6884862

October 28, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Northern Territory, opposition to nuclear