Happy third annniversary
Posted on 30th January 2009
To a background of tumbling coal prices and with the threat of drilling hanging over Happy Valley, dozens of committed activists walked in sweltering heat to celebrate the three years of occupation at Happy Valley. The swimming hole was a welcome reprieve from the heat, and we were pleased to see that our presence was still delaying the long-planned drilling programme in the Valley.
The love and time that has gone into building the occupation camp oozes from every worn floorboard and carefully cut notch in the knife rack. Hundreds of people have visited this camp over the last three years, to lend their voice to the calls for this beautiful and valuable place to be saved from rapacious capitalism and consumerism.
It is not that camp that people come to visit, however. It is the red tussock wetland, the gray rock pavements and the stunted green forest. It is the snails, the spiders and the kiwi. Why visit offshore islands to hear kiwi when they can be heard every night in Happy Valley?
While the wheels fall of the capitalist economy which demands that all nature must succumb to its merest whim, Happy Valley lives on in blissful ignorance.
Solid Energy claim "the occupation itself had made no material effect on the development". And yet the start of the drilling was announced as soon as the weekend was over.
