After 100 years of growing Australian food and fibre, and enhancing their farm’s environmental assets, the Ettershanks now face their biggest challenge, power lines. 

Under the recent release of Transgrid’s proposed route for the Victorian New South Wales Interconnector (VNI West), Simon and Carly Ettershank’s 2,000-hectare property now has twenty 75-80-metre-tall towers across their home. 

“I’m angry about their [Transgrid] engagement,” said Simon, who received the news while on holiday just before Australia Day.

“I was always one of the few people that actually did sit down with them with a map of the property and point out to them where important areas were, such as my house, high value irrigation land, camping sites that are part of our business and environmental areas that I have fenced off and planted trees.

“They’ve managed to put it through all of it, right through my house, through the irrigation, through environmental areas and past the campsites.

“I don’t know if that’s because I did engage with them and they thought, well, this bloke’s easy to deal with and might be easier to deal with people who aren’t engaging?”

Simon is bitterly disappointed with the engagement by the company in charge of building the NSW leg of VNI West, Transgrid.

“It took four hours on the phone to actually speak to someone who was involved in deciding where it will go.

“I found there is a lot of people at Transgrid just to keep us farmers at arm’s length.”

Community engagement for renewable projects has recently come under scrutiny, and a recent report paints a pretty bleak picture. Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner Andrew Dyer has released his independent Community Engagement Review, which shows 92 per cent of respondents were dissatisfied with the level of engagement from renewable energy project developers. The survey also found more than 90 per cent of people were not happy with the information provided or with their concerns being resolved.

Simon said that some of the information provided has been contradictory.

“The map I was originally shown showed the line crossing the property next to me.

“The man I’ve been dealing with on-farm, the farm liaison officer, told me yep, that’s where it’s crossing.

“I was astonished by that, because my neighbour hadn’t dealt with them at all, had chosen not to.

“Then, on Monday I find out, no, that isn’t the actual crossing, they have to wait for Victoria to decide. 

“I’d like to see genuine consultation with landholders. At the moment, we just feel like we’re being ridden roughshod over, we’ve seen it all before with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, it’s ticking the box consultation.”

Simon fears the power lines will have a lifetime of impacts to his farm and family, impacting production and dominating the landscape. 

“We have nice, beautiful big red gums over our property – that is the main feature of the landscape here on the floodplain. I estimate those trees to be 30 to 40 metres tall and these towers are going to be 75 to 80 metres tall, so it’s going to absolutely dominate the landscape here.

“If it happens, I’m gonna have to look at them every day of my life, I’m going to be working under them every day. 

“Someone gave me a good analogy the other day, that it’s like looking at a failed crop, it’s just a bit of a mental kick in the guts.”

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 8 February 2024.