My connection to Western Port Bay started in 1996 when we purchased land fronting the bay. Elizabeth Island is now my home. I feel lucky to wake up to the sight of Western Port Bay all around me, every day.
Most days I circumnavigate the island in my pedal paddle kayak. It takes just under an hour. Then I jump in and swim for a while. This connects me intimately to the water, the shoreline and the birdlife and leaves me feeling alive.
The bay is a special place that rewards for spending time with it. Day by day it grows on you. It doesn’t show its splendour at first. It wants you to slow down, stop and be with it a while. Over time you get to know its tidal shoreline. Orange lichened rocks, ancient sandstone, pebbles, sand, mudflats that become lakes with the tides. The shoreline has rockpools and mangroves with pink pigface and other plants with names like bidgee-widgee and beaded glasswort. Fish of all sorts nurture their young amongst the mangroves. In the bay are gummy sharks, King George whiting, snapper, Australian salmon. We pluck oysters from the rocks and eat them fresh. Pacific gulls and oyster catchers sit atop shoreline rocks, looking like they’re standing on water. Herons and spoonbills stalk around the mudflats finding food. Swallows, wrens and willy-wagtails eat the insects on land.
You can tell it’s a delicate balance of interwoven life.
I am horrified and aggrieved that any government would allow a private company to irreparably destroy our beautiful natural resources for their short-term gains.
My home, Elizabeth Island, and the bay, belong together. The bay is integral to my life and my wellbeing. I will soon be publishing a book about my relationship to this special place. I want to share with you an excerpt from my upcoming book, which is about that relationship. Elizabeth Island has grounded me and given me a sense of place. The bay is integral to that. This excerpt describes my first encounter with the island.
‘Half-dried sea grass lined the high-water mark. It sat in a continuous line atop a shore of partially submerged brown pebbles and rocks. Shells washed smooth by the tides were caught in the browned sea grass. Through the lifting light clouds, the sun warmed the brown and grey burnt sea grass salty bath to barely visible steam and marshy odours.
We ventured into the tussock grass above the shoreline, nervous about what might lie under the thick grass. Two black swans glided past, poking out their necks at us, as if wondering what we were doing in their territory. Other sea birds squawked and landed on the rocks.
I could tell this was a unique and special place.
Michael returned to the boat, concerned about the fast-running tide. He got us all aboard and the boys pulled up anchor.
We began to circumnavigate the island, approaching the northern point. We could see less than half a metre of water under the boat. The fast receding tide forced us back.
That was my first encounter with Elizabeth Island. Tides ruled. Back then I’d fancied myself as close to nature. Many years on, I marvel at what slowly unfolded: an engagement with that island and surrounding seas that brought me into a dance with nature I could never have imagined.
The feel and direction of the winds, the heaviness of the rain, the height and direction of tidal flow, the seasons, moonlight, cloud cover, sunlight. The response of the sea between the island and the mainland to daily, monthly and yearly cycles of the sun and moon – this all determined decisions about where and how to be, explore or do, on and around the island.
Having so squeezed me into Elizabeth Island time, the surrounding sea would dance its moods to my passage on or off land.’
Westernport Bay surrounds my home and greets me with stunning vistas every day. It is my home.
On most important things that happen or are about to happen around the bay, the instigators reach out to locals. I have not seen this happening from AGL in the same way. I am not aware of organised engagement by AGL with residents. It is indicative of a disregard for the people and place they are impacting. I wonder how much our government has engendered in them that stance.
I guess it’s difficult to comprehend that you would have to tell this to a government. Of course, this proposed project will destroy our valuable bay and its delicate ecological balance.
This development is on the other side of the bay to me, so I won’t see the visual impact. I can’t imagine how it would be for anyone who walks that shoreline, to have to look at a large gas platform like that. But I know the ecology of the bay is so interconnected, and we as humans are so interconnected, that I will notice the impact over on this side. I have already noticed the effects of climate change. There are fewer insects on the island now, and this means fewer land birds. The special sea birds that used to be around feeding off the mudflats seem to have disappeared, replaced by hardier breeds.
We are already seeing the impact of climate change on our planet and our local environment. It is a result of putting big business ahead of smart connected communities in healthy environments. We want a government that will recognise what matters and put people and our environment first. A government that approves this AGL project will not get my vote.
Anne Tillig
