Helen Kvelde
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I HAVE BEEN involved in activism for 55 years – starting with moratorium marches during the Vietnam war when I was 18 – taking part in protests mainly about social justice issues and environmental issues.
When I was living in Manly Vale (1994 – 2018) I became very active in an environmental group called Save Manly Dam Catchment. This was an area which had several endangered species and was being encroached on by developers. It was a huge learning experience for me discovering the extent of dishonesty in business and in government. The lies and obfuscation, the pretending to consult the community but actually ignoring them. The complete disrespect of nature and living beings – trees, animals, frog and birds – was shocking to me.
Although we lost every battle we kept fighting by doing all the “right” things – petitions, rallies, marches, concerts, letters, visits to politicians.
My final straw was when the Baird government approved building a superschool on the site of the Manly Vale Public school and the removal of five hectares of rare Duffy’s forest which had five endangered species living on land owned by the Education Department. This land had been a “nature area” for 40 years. Several generations of children had loved the nature area, including me as a child and my own daughter. We never found out why the plan was approved even though there had been other possibilities which would not have involved destroying that bushland. It was “cabinet in confidence”.
When the trees were bulldozed I said to my husband we had to move, I needed my own trees so no one can cut them down. So seven years ago we bought seven acres in Wingham which not only had a few very large old trees on it but sometimes koalas as well. However, I didn’t retire from activism.
A duty of care
We experienced drought, fires and floods in the first years of living in Wingham, followed by logging in three local forests – Bulga, Yarratt and Kiwarrak. These catastrophes radicalised me even more. I knew people who had lost their homes in the fires and one lady who had lost her sister. My own daughter’s house in Wingham was flooded the first night she moved in.
While it is beautiful living in the country one is closer to things like drought, fire and flood and you become much more aware of the climate emergency. I joined the Knitting Nannas and my husband and I joined Extinction Rebellion. I wrote letters, signed petitions and visited politicians without result. I began moving towards civil disobedience. I did non violent direct action training in readiness and participated in several actions with Extinction Rebellion in Sydney and Taree.
What finally pushed me to face arrest was Sussan Ley winning her appeal in March 1922 AGAINST a Federal Court finding that she owed a duty of care to Australia’s children to consider climate change when deciding whether to approve new fossil fuel mines.
About a week later Dominique Jacobs and I blocked a road in Port Botany as part of a rolling series of Port protests in 2022. Our case was heard in December 2022 and we got a good behaviour bond until December 2023.
We felt direct action was the only thing left to us to try to bring attention to the climate emergency we face and that next time we’d like to act to protect forests.
When logging recommenced in the Bulga State Forest late last year we locked on
We walked into the forest in the dark on December 3 and locked on to the massive harvester at about 5am with two bike locks each. It was incredibly beautiful looking out over the forest surrounded by bird song. It was fairly uncomfortable having the locks on and a bit scary not being able to move or even pick up something if we dropped it.
We took knitting and books and wore nappies just in case.
The first contractor turned up about 6.30am and immediately called the NSW Forestry Corporation. A representative arrived an hour later and ordered us to leave. We explained we didn’t have keys and he said he’d call the police.
We slept a bit, read our books and knitted.
Two police officers, a female detective and a male, arrived. The woman spoke very fast. I asked her to slow down as I have hearing aids and was having trouble following her. She spoke just as fast but louder, which didn’t help me hear her so I tuned out a bit and asked Dom what she had said.
She angrily asked us where the keys were and said if we didn’t tell her police rescue would cut us off and they’d be five cms from our necks so there was a strong chance we’d be hurt. I said:
“You’re trying to scare us, they wouldn’t hurt us.”
She gave up and talked to the NSW Forestry people in a chummy way as if they were on the same side, against us. She told us police rescue wouldn’t be here for hours, that they were doing their real job and we were wasting their time,
For a while police and NSW Forestry looked for the keys and then about 12.30pm drove off. After they left one NSW Forestry guys came down the hill behind us so maybe he was there to keep an eye on us?
They all came back an hour and a half later.
I had foolishly assumed that police rescue would be nice and caring so when they arrived about 3pm I felt fine. One of them kind of rushed at me, grabbed my knitting and book and threw them away, saying “First we’ll get rid of this shit”.
I burst into tears and said something like “You’re not going to hurt us, are you, she said you’d hurt us”. The female detective denied saying they would hurt us. However the one that had grabbed my stuff said much the same thing as she had, that they’d have an angle grinder close to our necks and there was a risk. I was so upset I said to the other police rescue man I didn’t want the scary one to touch me. I was still crying through all this, holding Dom’s hand.
They asked who wanted to go first. Dom. They explained what would happen, gave her goggles and ear muffs, put a heat blanket over her head and cut through the lock. The scary one did the cutting and the other one sprayed water, to stop sparks burning I guess. Dom was arrested and put in a paddy wagon.
My turn. I asked if I should take my hearing aids out. They started talking more slowly and clearly and checked I understood what they were going to do. It was actually much quicker cutting mine off. I was arrested and put in the paddy wagon with Dom.
Then came the horrendous drive down the mountain
The male policeman drove way too fast, too close to cars in front and I think he drove past Bobin school at 80 km/hr in a 40 km/hr timed school zone zone. I’m not sure if he was just impatient wanting to get back or it was part of them feeling entitled to punish us. It was very uncomfortable and very scary. If there was an accident we would have been killed or badly hurt. No one should be transported like this regardless of what they have done. Dom and I wondered how indigenous people are treated.
Once we got to Taree police station the police there were better – calm and more professional.
For about a week after my arrest I would wake up at night thinking about the police rescue guy who had scared and upset me. I wondered if he had a family and if he was like that to them. I felt like I wanted to have some kind of mediation session with him and try to explain why he shouldn’t talk to anyone like that regardless of his opinion of them and what they’ve done. And if he can’t change he shouldn’t really be doing police rescue.
No one involved had any idea of our state of health so it’s really not in their own interests to try so hard to scare people. We were obviously not young and even if we were we could still have had health issues. And the end result is they succeeded in further radicalising us.
They don’t seem to understand that we cannot give up because everything we love – people, land and earth, animals, birds and trees – is under threat, so how can we stop?
And we are doing it for them and their families too, not just our own.
