KNAG power: knitting nannas on the march against fracking polluters

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This was published 6 years ago

KNAG power: knitting nannas on the march against fracking polluters

By Elizabeth Farrelly

We're standing by the highway, on public land deep inside the Pilliga forest, snapping an idyllic scene.

It's several fenced hectares of some deep-green, ankle-high crop – oats, perhaps, or barley – under irrigation from one of those creeping long-arm, centre-pivot jobs. Within moments, we're confronted by a falcon-sized drone, perhaps three metres above ground and five metres distant. It buzzes us from the fence line, very blowfly-at-window; spins midair, hovers, dances off to squizz our car and returns angrily to buzz us some more. We wave, photograph it and eventually, tiring, drive away.

Illustration: Simon Bosch

Illustration: Simon Bosch

This is my first experience of drone attack. My colleague is excited because no one has seen the sprayer actually working before, because the drone's actions may be illegal and because – although a state forest and therefore Crown land – across the fence is Santos territory.

So, backstory. The water that is being so sweetly drizzled over the crop is recycled mine water from Santos' "exploratory" coalseam gas mines within the forest. The paddock sits adjacent to the recycling plant, which is designed to collect millions of litres of toxic mining waste water, clean it via reverse osmosis and stockpile the poisonous sludge.

Narrabri farmer Kim Revell locks herself to a heavy vehicle trying to enter Santos' Leewood reverse-osmosis plant.

Narrabri farmer Kim Revell locks herself to a heavy vehicle trying to enter Santos' Leewood reverse-osmosis plant.Credit: Dean Sewell/Oculi

For a second I wonder why this water cleansing provoked a year-long Greenham Common-style protest camp, including by-the-neck lock-ons. And not by some radical rent-a-mob, but by those unlikely goddesses, the Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed. KNAG.

The reason for their protest is also why the Nannas, who number roughly 200 across the country (plus some in the United Kingdom and the United States), should be swamped by wannabes. Anyone who cares about the future should make becoming a Knitting Nanna their life goal.

Coalseam gas is basically methane; a fossil fuel, a hydrocarbon. So although it's less filthy and climate-changing than coal, it's still much filthier and more climate-dangerous than sunshine or wind.

But climate change is just one way CSG threatens life as we know it. The others relate principally to water. Santos has applied to expand its wellnumbers in the Pilliga, near Narrabri, to 850. If approved, this will be catastrophic for the forest, creeks, animals, local aquifers, bores, water tables, agriculture and perhaps – most terrifyingly – for the Great Artesian Basin that supplies almost all water to this surface-dry region and happens to lie directly above the enormous eastern gas reserves.

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Already Santos' mining uglifies this pristine forest environment, cross-hatching it with roads and tracks, flare stacks and well heads, spill zones and vent installations, and countless kilometres of hurricane wire fencing. Already the bush is scarred by swathes of dieback around the gas flares and marking massive spills from years, sometimes decades, ago. In theory, these death zones are undergoing rehab but, even decades later, there's a marked failure to thrive.

Yet that's nothing compared with what's coming if and when the Planning Assessment Commission (which approved Packer's disgraceful casino on public land) ticks off Santos' 850 wells.

To drill each well uses 30-60,000 litres of fluids – either water (CSG) or water-borne chemicals (fracking).

Fracking – which injects underground several-hundred undisclosed chemicals including acids, sodas and salts, as well as carcinogens such as sulphites and acrylamides – is currently used in Queensland but banned in NSW, although few trust the ban to hold.

Dennis Cooke, from the University of Adelaide's Australian School of Petroleum, estimates that "perhaps only half of CSG reservoirs" can be extracted just with water. The rest require fracking.

Either way, between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of the injected water returns to the surface with the gas.

This means that when chemicals are used, more than half of them stay down there in the rock, perhaps filtering into the GAB that drilling must penetrate, and that supplies water for all the Pilliga. Even when no chemicals are used, the flow-back brings up toxic pollutants including heavy metals and volatile hydrocarbons such as benzene, as well as radioactive uranium and radon.

How much of this can reverse osmosis remove? Opinions differ. Some say all, some say not so much. But even if all pollutants are removed, it's like a Dr Seuss story. These vast toxic sludge piles still have to go somewhere – where?

A report this week from the Independent Expert Scientific Committee sounded the alarm on these issues of waste water disposal, accidental spillage, leakage into groundwater and long-term storage of toxic waste in the order of 115 tonnes per day.

The IESC is not alone. KNAG was formed in 2012 after visiting Queensland's massive Chinchilla-Tara CSG field, on the Darling Downs. Confronting the scale of destruction, experiencing for themselves the nosebleeds, difficulty breathing and skin rashes, they realised this was serious stuff. Game on.

KNAG has no structure, except self-formed regional "Nanna loops". They proudly self-describe as "a disorganisation". What binds them is the four-paragraph Nannafesto.

"We peacefully protest against the destruction of our land, air and water," it reads. "We want to leave this land better than we found it ... We sit, knit, plot, have a yarn and a cuppa and bear witness to those who try to rape our land and divide our communities."

With roots in Les Tricoteuses (who, having been politically silenced, knitted at the guillotine) the Nannas commit to non-violent direct action, mutual support, losing the ego, defending the future, representing the voiceless and "annoying all politicians equally". They do knit, although you needn't. They sing, from an entire Nanna song book of biting anti-CSG lyrics set to familiar tunes ("Nannas all let us rejoice, we're women strong and free!"). And they wear yellow. Addressing them en masse is like talking to a sea of highly motivated sunflowers.

There's no earnestness here, no self-importance. At protests they bring Eskies full of icy poles for both sides and at AGMs chide each other to "get your saggy arses up here". Rather, there's humour, energy, generosity, frankness and wild musicality plus a determination both to defend the environment and to repudiate the veil our culture still imposes on women over 50.

Big Brother is watching? Pah. Let him. We'll sit, knit, be kind and – defiantly – be counted.

Twitter @emfarrelly

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