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Barmah firewood collection

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Peter Walsh MP,  The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper

All roads led to Barmah at the weekend as hundreds of people scrambled for access to hundreds of tonnes of flood-damaged fallen trees rescued for use as firewood.

Coming out of the Barmah Forest, the wood was originally pushed into 70 large piles and was going to be burnt by Parks Victoria staff.

But a public backlash, supported by Yorta Yorta elders and The Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, saw the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) backpedalling very quickly.

Local charcoal burner Nick Marijancevic was one of the first to sound alarm bells when he saw the wood being stockpiled and approached Parks Victoria to see if he could access some of it for his business.

When that was rejected his second option of making it available to the financially vulnerable and pensioners in the district – to offset Victoria’s soaring electricity costs – was also dismissed.

“At the very worst, if it was a no for me, I would have thought a logical next step would be to offer the wood to pensioners and those on lower incomes for heating during the frigid winter we have been having,” Mr Marijancevic says.

“When I was told no-one could access it, I was horrified, it’s bureaucracy gone mad. If it is going to be burnt, why not burn it where it can do some good?” he says.

“I know it’s not the fault of local DEECA staff, they’re only doing what they’re told, but if people in Melbourne think this is the best outcome, it’s just crazy.”

At the time, a DEECA spokesperson said, “flood debris in the Barmah National Park will be burned during the coming weeks to clear strategic fire breaks ahead of this fire season.

“Strategic fire breaks help protect communities, and the environment, from future bushfires,” the spokesperson said.

“The flood-affected wood was assessed, and where possible, will be used for habitat, erosion control and other environmental projects within the park.

“Firewood collection is not permitted in Barmah National Park or Barmah Island.”

Mr Walsh, who was in Barmah on Friday morning when the wood was released to the public, says “sanity finally prevailed, albeit on a very small scale.”

He says he spoke with a lot of people who all had the same story – utter frustration with the sheer scale of fallen timber they are banned from collecting while being forced to pay soaring electricity costs and being told their gas heating is going.

“For me though, the saddest and most disturbing thing I saw, and talked with people about, was local senior citizens out there trying to pick up the smaller bits of wood to supplement pensions,” Mr Walsh says.

“They didn’t have chainsaws or axes, so were scavenging the smaller broken pieces – these are some of the people Premier Jacinta Allan and her government needed to see if they want a real understanding of the damage they are doing,” he says.

“Fortunately, in classic regional Victorian style, I saw several other collectors, who were armed with chainsaws, coming over to lend them a hand.”

Mr Walsh says the DEECA decision “to waste such a valuable resource had left me gobsmacked.”

He says it is confirmation of the total disconnect between the citycentric Allan Labor government and regional Victoria.

“This is just another decision by a government which has transitioned from reality to its Greens-driven leftist fantasy land,” Mr Walsh says.

“It’s all very well people being told there are free firewood collection points twice a year, but if you live in my electorate, you face a minimum round trip of two hours. Make no mistake, the many people in northern Victoria who collect firewood for their own use don’t do it for a fun day out, they do it out of economic necessity.”

Barmah identity Dean Adams agreed even as he and son Jake worked through the day collecting several loads of timber to be distributed to locals without the capacity to collect it on their own.

He and his family and friends also established Barmah’s Food Shack after the 2022 floods as a small step to help “a very damaged community” regain some independence.

The Food Shack is a small shed on the roadside near the Adams’s house and it offers food support to anyone who needs it.

Mr Adams says it gets some amazing backing with donations “from local vegie patches to amazing support from bakeries in Echuca- Moama, including Beechworth and Moama bakeries and Aldi for all sorts of foodstuffs.”

He says they also get help from Foodshare, but with the demand it is facing, those donations are shrinking a little bit.

“I don’t see anyone here from the government today, the ones who would have been happy to burn this wood,” Mr Adams says.

“It is worth so much to so many local people it would have been ridiculous to waste it, and if anyone needed evidence about the urgency of having a coupe in this district, they only had to be here today,” he says.

“You can drive all around here and see fallen wood everywhere, but no-one is allowed to touch it – it’s just wrong.”

The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper 3 October 2024

This article appeared in  The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 3 October 2024.

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