If I said I was about to dam a river to supply water for a cement factory the plan would  most likely be labelled as an environment disaster.

Back in the nineteen twenties in the central west of New South Wales someone did exactly that and the result is Dunn Swamp. Although not a particularly attractive name the area is now part of Wollemi National Park  and is listed as an important wildlife habitat.

It strikes me as funny that so many industrial landscape modifications become part of our national park system. Hill End (gold mining), Newnes (shale oil mining), to name two within an hour of two of Sydney. The inclusion of these areas is obviously to remind us of our history and perhaps our mistakes. To me however they  demonstrate the occasional futility of human endeavor, we often make wrong decisions and walk away. In the case of Newnes the shale oil was uneconomic, at Hill End the gold simply ran out. More recently we built a desalination plant (this last one by the way, I would label as a disaster).

The positive side to the story is the way that nature engulfs the remains of our intervention, even the huge factory complex that was Newnes is slowly being reclaimed by fire, flood and regrowth. When we have finished hollowing out the earth and finally “developed” ourselves into a corner from which we can’t escape, it is encouraging to at least contemplate the possibility of the earth recovering some of its previous grace.

Is everything we do “bad”? Can we live within the bounds of nature? What will the winning lotto numbers be? Desalination plant or dam you judge…………

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