Ulan and the Bylong Valley - Saturday 10 September

Local groups hadorganised for us to be taken on a tour of the local area to see what is there .. and what is coming in the way of the rapid expansion of coal mining in the Mudgee area.

Chris and Bev had given up their day to show us round.

We were picked up at 9:30am in Mudgee and strated with a look at a map of where we would be going. At 10am we all bundled into Chris' car (including Shelley) and were on our way.

Fist stop was Ulan, a village about 30km North of Mudgee towards Coolah/Dunedoo.

Open cut coal mining has been underway here for a number of years. It has had a devastating impact on the village and the surrounding area, including the Goulburn River. We had passed through Ulan on Thursday as we headed in to Mudgee. It was depressing then. Now we heard about the extent of the impacts and it was even worse.

We called in to have a look at the village of Ulan.

Even the local church is being dismantled for removal.

The local school has air quality monitoring.

We also saw the first of what became very common signs bolted to fences in the area

The coal companies have bought up many properties and close them off or remove them.

From the village we headed off to have a look at the coal mines.

They have had to divert the Goulburn River into a man made channel

At the Moolarben mine just north of Ulan we saw the mine in operation (from the road of course). The two black dots in the middle of the picture are trucks the size of a two storey building.

We headed on for morning tea at The Drip, just north of Ulan. The Drip is on a section of the Goulburn River just downstream of the mines. It gets its name from the water 'dripping" through the porous sandstone cliffs. The area is very significant for the Wiradjari people. It was reportedly a birthing place. It is on vacant crown land. The locals have done a lot of work in the area to rehabilitate it and have been campaigning for years to have it declared a National Park.

We have too many pics to include in the blog. Boy, is someone going to have a doozey of a slide night when we get home LOL.

The impact on water and water aquifers from the mining is evn acknowledged in reports from consultants to the mining companies ... but still they press ahead.

Here is Bev Smiles, long time environmental campaigner in the area and one of our hosts for the tour talking about this issue.

We next visited the village of Wollar which has been devastated by the arrival of the mines. There are only about 6 families left in the village.If one particular family leaves the village the school will close.

Residents are not taking this impact lying down.

We travelled on through the Bylong Valley and met up with Craig and Peter from the Bylong Valley protection Alliance. We had met them at Muswellbrook where they did a presentation to Rivers SOS at the same meeting we attended. It was great to catch up with them again and to see the country their maps talked about.

It is a beautiful valley and extremely rich in terms of agriculrural production.It also adjoins the Wollemi National Park and is surrounded by striking sandstone escarpments and cliffs.

Bylong Valley Protection Alliance have put up signs protesting against mining.

We travelled home through beautiful scenery, surrounded by sandstone cliffs and wildlife as we travelled along the edge of Wollemi National Park

We arrived home exhausted and, after a little lie down, were treated to a lovely dinner by members of the local groups at the home of Bev and Norm, who had hosted us during our stay in Mudgee.

We slept well that night!

Cheers
Michael & Julie