David Bradbury is traveling to Roxby with a small camera crew to document the actions at Olympic Dam as part of Lizard’s Revenge. He is driving down (ie. heading south) and is aware of the roadblocks the state is putting in place, but is hoping to make it down by today or tomorrow. His trip and the festival can be followed on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Bradbury/349981725057349
Letter from David Bradbury 10 July 12
Dear Friends ,I sense I am stepping into a maelstrom in going to Roxby. We’re on the road now and overnighting in Coonabarrabran before heading over the border via Broken Hill today. Trevor and I – two filmmakers – are traveling with 36 year old Aboriginal man Jarmanj and his 13 year old son to Roxby to join the Desert Liberation Army of ‘faithful ferals’ (mostly Generation Y) who have organised this protest called for by ‘Uncle’ Kevin Buzzacott. The Lizard’s Revenge is a Dreamtime story of Kalta, a giant sleeping lizard, who lies with ‘poison’ in his belly under the ground at Roxby; his giant protective tail wrapping all around Australia. Roxby is sited at the Gates of Hell, the entrance to the giant Olympic Dam uranium mine, the largest deposit of uranium on the planet……
BHP Billiton who own the mine and run it ‘like Nazi Germany’; so one of the workers told me three years ago when I was there filming after he told me not so politely to put my camera away and ‘f- off’. The miners and the huge multi national mining giant don’t like their right to earn big money and profits ripping out the Heart of Australia and polluting the precious water supply of future generations. They mine the uranium which they send to Fukushima and other places less technologically apt than Japan – which has still managed to stuff up big time. The world as we know it will end if Reactor No 4 falls apart as it is threatening to do releasing radioactive Caesium levels 5000 times that released by the Hiroshima bomb. It is perched in a bulging pond 30m above ground experiencing continuing seismic shocks and record typhoons. (ref: Mark Willacy’s excellent 7.30 Report two weeks ago). ……
My job is to record what happens to ‘the kids’, knowing how savage the South Australian cops were last time anti nuke activists staged a peaceful protest at Beverley uranium mine (owned by the Blue Bros of Nevada who invented the drone so loved by the Afghanis and Pakistanis these days). The SA cops back then sprayed the demonstrators who had showed no violence with capsicum spray, then forced them into shipping containers in the heat of summer…and then locked them inside welding the containers shut. Millions of dollars in compensation was eventually awarded against the state (and hard done by taxpayers) by the SA Supreme Court. ….
We plan to cross over into SA via Broken Hill and on to the Flinders Ranges today…to the base camp of the ‘Desert Liberation Front’ somewhere west of Lake Eyre. We’ve just received word last night that the cops have blockaded the road heading south from the base camp 300 km north of Roxby. This will force the protestors to travel for a good day (and a long, long distance out of their way) to get back down via Port Augusta and up to Roxby again with their deadline to start the protest at the gates of the giant Olympic Dam mine next Saturday.
Other than going there to film whatever happens, we are also bringing Dr Helen Caldicott across to Roxby the afternoon of 18 July to speak to mums, grandmothers and any dads who want to come about the dangers of uranium mining and living in its shadow,18 km away, to the most vulnerable of our ‘tribe’ – babies, young children and teenagers.
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