Michael Green

Writer and producer

Andamooka boomtown blues

In Community development on

I wrote this in 2008, after visiting Andamooka, a remote opal-mining town in South Australia. It is about the way the big mining boom was changing the character of the kookiest place I’ve visited, anywhere in the world. The story was set to be published, but then the financial markets collapsed and the nearby BHP Billiton Olympic Dam mine expansion didn’t happen as soon as expected. Now, SA Premier Mike Rann has sworn he’ll stay in the job until its controversial environmental impacts statement is approved and the deeds are signed – probably by November. So it’s time to re-visit Andamooka:

I drive and drive. North for hours in the South Australian desert, then right at Woomera and keep going; right again at Roxby Downs and on through the red glare. Finally, I arrive at Andamooka: Mars on earth. And here, real estate is booming.


By the historic miners’ huts, the barbecue sizzles. It’s Sunday lunchtime, the sky is blue, as always, and the Andamooka Progress and Opal Miners’ Association (APOMA) is holding its annual membership drive. The secretary apologises as she asks for $5 to cover my meal, as a non-member.

Ted Jones, the town’s oldest resident, is over at the picnic tables. The 93-year-old has a crinkly mouth like a turtle and broad strong hands. “I can still work a bloody pick and shovel and handle sixty-pound rocks,” he says, proudly. He’s been building a retaining wall in his backyard, with the help of his son-in-law. “You’d never find another place like Andamooka. That’s what I always tell people.”

He’s right. Homes jumble in among the tailings from the mines – mounds of dug earth like giant white anthills in the red sand. Coober Pedy, hundreds of kilometres north-west, is Australia’s famous, eccentric opal mining town, but from my table at the barbecue, I get the feeling that Andamooka matches it. About 800 people live here, in corrugated iron sheds, ramshackle weatherboards, rusting caravans and old buses. Car wrecks and corroded trucks fill vacant blocks.


“We were in the habit of doing what we wanted to do and then arguing the point about it afterwards,” says Ted, explaining the haphazard layout. “That’s the way we’ve always lived here and that’s why we don’t want it to change.”

The town has no council and no rates. No sewerage system. Neither water pipes nor street lights. The last police officer left a year ago and has only just been replaced. Only two roads are sealed – the way in and out, and the route to the nurses’ clinic. APOMA volunteers manage services as best they can on an annual budget of about $80,000, partly funded by the South Australian government.

The roads are still unnamed, but not for much longer. It’s a sign of the times: bureaucrats down south are forcing the recalcitrant locals to name their hundred or more streets and dead ends. Until now, although everyone’s address read ‘Government Road’, Andamooka has surely been among the least governed communities in the country.

In 1930, two boundary riders, Sam Brookes and Ray Sheppard, found opal at Treloar’s Hill, on Andamooka Station, a pastoral lease south of Lake Eyre. They tried to keep it quiet, but word slipped out and fortune seekers struck in.

It was a mining settlement, not a town; there were few rules. Newcomers pegged their claim and lived on it. They lived rough. “Several people got shot. Everybody had a revolver, and a rifle,” says Ted, a smile wrinkling from the right side of his mouth. “We only had the warden, we didn’t have any police.” Some men excavated their own “dugout” houses in the low hills to keep cooler in the blazing summers. There were no sealed roads north of Port Augusta, 300 kilometres away, so after every heavy rain the miners were marooned. Despite the distance, by the ’60s the opal boom was on and Andamooka was roaring.

I take my plate up for seconds. Bev Burge, with thin red hair, pink lips and pushed-up tracksuit sleeves, busies herself serving the food. Burgers, onion, gristly steaks and fat sausages are laid out on one trestle table; bread, coleslaw and potato salad on the other. Bev moved here in 1971. “When I first came up, [I saw] everyone had their washing out and it was dry in an hour. We were in Melbourne and it wouldn’t dry for days. And that tempted me.”

Bev ran Opal Air, the airline that flew daily during the boom years. She mined for over three decades and now she runs the bingo. Later, she tells me about the town’s old characters like Aggie Biro, whose car only drove in reverse: “Everyone just stayed clear if Aggie was on the road.” And Gelignite Jack, who walked along the creek bed at night, drunk, sparking and throwing explosive: “The first time it happened it went off right near my bedroom.”

She tells me about the old drive-in, which had open-air speakers: “The whole town could hear all the movies. Every night you’d hear trains and shooting and cowboys and Indians fighting all through the town.” Then she tells me about the gunfight in the Tuckabox, a local bar: “The Serbs were at one end and the Croats the other, and they had guns and they had the tables tipped up and they were shootin’ at each other.” She sighs and laughs. “We really loved those years.”

Locals say the population got as high as 4500, a mash of European immigrants escaping war and state tyranny. Opal miners and buyers found big money and lost it again with legendary excess. No one, of course, paid tax. “The whole lifestyle was gambling,” Bev says. “It was one big gamble.”

In the late ’70s, traces of the rainbow gem slowed and so did the town. In 1980, the year television arrived, Opal Air stopped coming. “All those years they kept saying the town’d finish one day. But it never did,” says Bev.

Judging by the barbecue though, I wonder if the end is nigh. APOMA had catered for 200, but after two hours the two-dozen comers have dwindled to single figures and a cold breeze has wrested control from the retreating sun. Bev has left her post and a stray dog barks at the remaining sausages.

Association president Peter Allen, clad in khaki and sitting alone on the low wall near the dugout huts, offers two explanations. First, is a scheduling clash: every Sunday afternoon, the Opal Hotel runs a popular poker tournament. That’s where Bev went and about 30 others with her – no surprise really, in this town. Second, is BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine.

In the mid-’80s, while opal rarely surfaced in Andamooka, Western Mining Corporation began trucking copper, uranium, gold and silver from an enormous ore-body not far to the west. With the South Australian government, the company fabricated the Roxby Downs township – a suburb-island in the burnt sand – to service the mine. Many Andamookians also found jobs there and commuted. It was good for the old town.

Olympic Dam expanded in 2000 and, now owned by BHP Billiton, is set to expand again – at its peak, the open cut could be the size of the Adelaide CBD and parklands. They’ll need a lot of workers. Even now, before the expansion, Roxby Downs real estate is scarce and steep.

Miners are once again moving to Andamooka in spades. But with 12-hour shifts and continuous production, the big mine doesn’t schedule for community spirit. The old timers complain to me that they don’t see the new townsfolk: if they’re not at work, they’re at home in bed.

Allen, a charismatic ten-pound Pom and ex-crocodile farmer, is wrestling with change. He wagers that the population will burst to 2000 within two years. Shacks worth $20,000 four years ago can fetch $200,000. A 62-apartment eco-village is under development. In two days, new owners will take over the Opal Hotel and will begin construction to double its capacity by mid next year.

Fresh water is in short supply. The tip, on a hill just out of town, has no fence and the rubbish pile is spreading. Ever more sewerage seeps into the natural watercourse. Allen is riled: “What we’ve been saying to government is, ‘If you want to have your two-bobs’ now with building rules and all the bullshit – all right. But give us some infrastructure.’”

The big mine is bringing jobs and money to Andamooka. It’s bringing progress, order and rules. More people will come and, eventually, the infrastructure, but then the old opal miners will leave. Many already have, striking high prices for their land.

“Even with the big influx of people from more civilised environments, I would like to think they will be incorporated into the community,” Allen says then breaks into a knowing smile. “And relax.”

Few holidaymakers stay in Andamooka and the locals are still generous. Someone offers me a free bed for a few nights in an old bus. It’s that sort of town. APOMA lets passers-by camp on its grounds for $2 per night. I leave the barbecue and walk on the abandoned opal fields towards the great white cross on the horizon, where, my new host says, a drunk man died years ago. He had fought with friends, fled their car and set out for home across the fields. In the dark, he plunged down a shaft.

Allen and a handful of flannel-clad drinkers linger all afternoon, arguing over town politics. The leftover meat and salads are stowed in the bottle shop fridge. At sundown, the stayers adjourn to the Opal Hotel. Tonight, before the pub changes hands, the long-time owner will shout the drinks. 


The great chicken coup

In Blog on

GEOFF, the Urban Bush-Carpenters’ spiritual leader, was absent from our fourth workshop last week. He is an engineer. I am not. Whenever I suggest something that won’t work, Geoff pauses a while and hesitantly says this: “Ah, well, ah, you could do it that way…” and then trails off into silence, before politely suggesting an alternative that won’t fall down. He can be frustrating that way.

In fact, Geoff says this so often that the rest of us have begun repeating it to each other, just for fun.

With that in mind, you may be surprised to read that while the big, bearded cat was away, the mice decided to build a large A-frame chook house. None of us had built one before. But hey, our workshops are free, so it would be churlish for attendees to complain. In any case, I was supremely confident. As I’ve found out, everything just seems to work out well for the UBC.

Before we split into three groups to work on the A-frames, the floor and the door, we had to decide on the dimensions of the whole. The various pieces would change greatly depending on our desired width and length, and the height of the floor. Everyone took part in a robust discussion as we considered the timber available, the ease of cleaning, the chooks’ need for roosting space and the ergonomics of the door.

It was a slow start. As we neared 2 pm, our nominal finishing time, the chook house looked like this:

In progress

If it were a challenge on a reality TV show, the producers would have been blessed with many opportunities to emphasise uncertainty and delay. If they were honest, however, they’d have revealed the fascinating and fruitful process of cooperation instead.


Here, I have an admission: despite our catch-cry celebrating irregularity (“close enough is good enough”), tape measures were used in the making of this chook house. We measured the lengths between diagonal corners on each of the sides, and the door. It’s a handy technique, because when the two measurements match, you know the frame is square, not skewed.

When finally the chook house was complete, Bobbi, one of the attendees, said: “It’s wonderful to realize that you can just go ahead and do anything!” Indeed. Even when Geoff isn’t around to check it won’t collapse. It was thrilling to see the pile of salvaged timber and tin turn into a sturdy hen home in just a few hours.


Another participant, Nick Ray from the Ethical Consumer Group, observed that while each of us would have done it differently had we made it by ourselves, the final product was very likely an improvement, courtesy of our combined problem solving skills. “The best thing is the collaboration,” he said.

Many hands

ClimateWatch

In Greener Homes on

Householders can help scientists research climate change

ONE spring afternoon, take a walk in your street and look around. Are there any purple flowers on the neighbour’s jacaranda tree? Can you see a welcome swallow – with its distinctive forked tail – perched high on the wires?

These observations might sound idle, but they could help scientists understand the way climate change is influencing our birds and bees.

“Climate change isn’t just about hotter weather,” says Richard Weatherill, from Earthwatch Institute. “But so far we don’t know much about how changes in temperature, rainfall and more extreme storm events are affecting the behaviour of our plants and animals.”

Together with and the Bureau of Meteorology and the University of Melbourne, the institute has developed ClimateWatch, a website that aims to fill in some of those gaps, with the help of the public.

Over 2500 people around the country have begun monitoring the behaviour of common species of birds, plants, insects, mammals, frogs, reptiles and spiders – both native and introduced – and recording their observations online.

The study of the timing of natural cycles is known as phenology. Because of the changing climate, it’s expected that spring and summer will come earlier. But what might that mean?

Last year, a study by the University of Melbourne showed that a one-degree increase in the city’s temperature had led to the common brown butterfly emerging from its cocoon ten days earlier than it did in the mid-twentieth century.

Mr Weatherill says that while such a change might sound innocuous, it could have far-reaching results – such as those demonstrated by a similar website in the UK, called Nature’s Calendar.

“Researchers found that butterflies were emerging and birds were nesting earlier, but there was a mismatch: where the young chicks would have fed on the caterpillars, they were no longer available,” he says. “That kind of impact starts to cascade in the ecosystem.”

Lynda Chambers, from the Bureau of Meteorology, says the breadth of the observations by householders in ClimateWatch will reveal some of the cascading effects in Australia for the first time.

“For example, for the pollination process we need to know what is happening both with the plant and with the insects that pollinate it. We’ll get an idea of how the ecosystem is changing, rather just a single species.”

She says the fact that the climate acts as a trigger for animal and plant behaviour has long been known. “Indigenous people knew the season was changing and food sources would become available, in large part, because they saw an indicator species – a particular plant would flower and that would be a sign that the fish would start appearing. It’s not something new, but we’ve become disconnected from how these things happen in the world,” she says.

Now, because of climate change, re-discovering knowledge about the timing of natural cycles has become especially important. But Dr Chambers says the benefits of all these observations won’t only accrue to the scientists.

“It’s easy to slip into the city mode of life where we go to the shops to buy our food and goods and we tend to forget that there’s a natural system lying behind it all providing these services,” she says.

“We forget plants and animals change their behaviour with the seasons. It can be fascinating to observe them.”

Read this article at The Age online

PARKing day

In Blog on

BRAKING NEWS: Last Friday, several citizens commandeered a parking space on Little Lonsdale Street. The idlers topped up the meter all day, but used the asphalt for nothing more than lounging around, writing letters, hula-hooping and lively conversation. When questioned, they said it was PARKing day.

We arrived at seven o’clock in the morning, rolled out fake grass, positioned pot plants and a petite picket fence, then spread out an umbrella and deck chairs. PARKer extraordinaire Alicia brought most of the props, as well as fruit, sandwiches, hot drinks, cold drinks, baked goods and KeepCups. During the week, she’d contacted some local traders to let them know we’d be sitting around.

Passers-by were intrigued: some stared, some questioned us, some glanced and turned quickly away as though we’d made them accessories to the crime.

We said hello, invited people to join us and explained that along with hundreds of groups around the world, we had turned a car park into a park for pedestrians to enjoy. It was a fine place from which to ponder the use and misuse of public space in our cities.


My favourite visitor was a radiant nun, Anneliese, who had strayed off course in search of Collins Street. With a cup of tea in hand, she shared stories from her deeply reflective and, to us, wholly unfamiliar, existence. Anneliese, who wore a purple jacket and pearl earrings, had joined her order 54 years ago in Germany and subsequently dedicated over five decades to service in Australia.

Sculptor Benjamin Gilbert and philosopher Samuel Alexander also stayed a while. Karen, a sprightly woman who lived nearby, explained that a group of residents had been working on a plan to convert the neighbouring Wesley Church grounds into the only parkland within the Hoddle Grid.

We’d chosen the location for its slow, one-way traffic and proximity to a nice coffee shop. Fortuitously, an estate agent’s board directly across the road proclaimed the existence of a “UNIQUE INNER-CITY OASIS”.

Three employees of Melbourne City Council visited us throughout the day. Two of them, who worked in urban design and sustainability, cheered us on. The third fellow, who seemed to have something to do with permits and insurance and drove a large white car with orange lights on the roof, told us our behaviour was illegal and that we were “a danger to ourselves” and warned that other officers would come shortly to move us along.

No one came, however – aside from a parking inspector who declined to check our (up-to-date) meter, but instead, asked if he could take a photo.

Many people took snaps. We didn’t solicit media coverage, but we were photographed by The Age and the Melbourne Times Weekly, and also appeared on the Wheeler Centre’s blog. Architect-turned-photographer Nick Stephenson took plenty of pics too.

I had a wonderful day. It reminded me of one of my favourite memories from the two years I lived in Canberra. On a fresh spring day, my housemates and neighbours held a garage sale on our wide driveway. We gossiped with all-comers and ate home-cooked pizzas. It was the first time I appreciated the joy of neighbourliness.

PARKing day was similar. We had a quirky excuse to smile and say hello, and the perfect place to meet people we’d never otherwise come across. There is something to be said for sitting still. 


Changing chairs

In Blog on

LAST week, following Greg Hatton’s advice about learning from old furniture, I spent a day with Michael Kelly. It has been over a year since we finished building the tiny studio, though I have visited his shop often in the meantime.

Michael decided we would refurbish old dining chairs, by replacing the seat with lath (thin timber strips used in old plaster interior walls), stripping them back and shaping them smooth.

The original chairs were rickety and ugly, with a flaky stain obscuring the timber. The Oregon lath, in contrast, has a rich and varied grain. Before long, it was clear that the chairs would become very attractive.

Throughout the last few weeks I’ve been shifting uncomfortably at my desk. As spring emerges from winter, I haven’t been able to write much. I have had little in my head besides the desire to work with my hands more often.

I sat in the shop and looked at all the things Michael had made from lath. There were bookshelves, coffee tables, tables, boxes, cabinets, shutters, and several small studio-sheds. So I said to him: “Lucky you came across lath – what would you be doing without it?”

He replied that wherever he went, he built with whatever material was in abundance. “In the city, forests of hundred-year-old timber are thrown away. There’s a constant supply that very few people make use of.”

He explained that when he lived in an old gold mining town in New South Wales, he had built with abandoned stone. He made stone walls and dry stone walls.

“And when I was living on a block with good clay soil,” he said, “I made mudbricks.” As a teenager, he built a mudbrick hut in the bush, spending only $30 on glass for windows.

Michael told me he took great confidence from the knowledge that wherever humans go, we have the capacity to use what is around us to gain the necessities of existence. Although life can seem complex and expensive, what is truly important is simple. Building, too, can be simple.

He showed me photos of timeless things he had built from timber, stone, brick and mudbrick – materials that humans have used for so long that we feel immediately comfortable in their midst.

And so we passed the day in this fashion, talking about life and building while we trimmed the wood and hammered dozens of small nails into the chairs, making them both firm and beautiful; unwanted objects that now will be treasured for decades.