I was happily operating Mt Barney Lodge and raising a young family when plans for a dirty brown open-cut coal mine just up the road caught my full attention.
As someone whose life revolved around eco-tourism I was horrified and immediately worried about the impact on country and wildlife. I soon learned that even the unique World Heritage-listed Mt Barney National Park could be drilled under and exploited.
Gary Corbett - who was working as a journalist for Beaudesert Times - quickly helped me understand that no help was coming. I couldn’t just hand over my concerns to a non-existent superhero who would set things right.
My initial motivation was to save our business. Mt Barney Lodge had been built by my husband Innes Larkin’s family and it was now my home and the home of my children. It was also a special place where people came from far and wide to be in nature. That was not an experience that I could see alongside mining. No tourist wants to visit a gas field or camp next to a coal mine.
Driven by a sense of injustice and concern for the future, I envisaged a few months of involvement. Obviously I had no inkling I was at the start of something that would last a decade.
The first two years were hugely intense. What began as one coal mine became two … and then we realised coal seam gas exploration permits covered the region. I could not look away.
I already had a full-time job raising children, and another running the lodge, and now I had another job: fighting off coal and CSG extraction.
Initially, the most important thing was to spread the word and mobilise our community. Stuck behind a computer - in the early morning hours before everyday life began or late into the night - I became one of the key organisers. I helped strategise, co-ordinate events and I’d write - over and over again - letters and submissions to lobby anyone who’d listen, including councils, governments and tourism bodies.
My husband, Innes, was spokesperson for Keep the Scenic Rim Scenic (KTSRS) and we were a dynamic and effective tag-team, getting big ideas off the ground. I was his sounding board and it was a constant stream of evolving ideas, formulating actions and phone calls. Often
Innes was away, speaking and lobbying as far away as Canberra (in the days before Zoom!), and I was carrying more of the load of our business and family. But, despite the mental challenges of both our volunteer actions, I mostly remember it as being a dynamic and positive time, and something I wanted to see through to the end.
Although taking action could have led to the direct loss of Mt Barney Lodge guests and distraction from the business, taking no action would have been more damaging. Our activism became part of our successful brand. Leadership sometimes looked like my decision to get arrested at the Kerry Blockade, where considered actions fast- tracked the media attention. It is true that I phoned ahead to Lodge staff to check my arrest availability and baby sitting plans first!
Protestors on Peaks was one of my ideas - more than 1,000 people took part and we created amazing photos that showcased our spectacularly beautiful region to a significantly wider audience.
I organised the Climate Stripes float entry into the 2019 Boonah Christmas Festival Parade which was planned as low-cost ‘guerrilla activism’ to gain wider awareness for the newly formed Business 4 Climate Action group. It felt great to be doing something creative with other like-minded people for the build and parade. And it felt really positive to be taking action on climate change so soon after the Black Summer Bushfires.
I am still operating Mt Barney Lodge and am very pleased to know that my efforts contributed to this region remaining environmentally special. In 2021, the Scenic Rim featured in The Lonely Planet guide’s Top Ten Regions in the World to visit in 2022.
I got through with the mantra “Eat the elephant one bite at a time!”
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