Compensation challenge for wind farm communities

There’s new farms planned for Flyers Creek with 44 of these things, at Bodangora near Wellington, where Infigen Energy has received approval this week to put up 33, and work has begun on 80 turbines on Gullen Range near Crookwell.

A nearby landowner reckons if they’re so good and won’t interfere with people’s lives, why aren’t they on Red Hill in Canberra or on Sydney Harbour where it gets windy.

Wildlife artist Humphrey Price-Jones is in favour of green energy, says he’s an environmentalist, his green credentials are as good as anyone’s and he’s keen to see pollution levels drop, but he says to suggest wind is a substitute for coal-fired stations is ludicrous.

You could put a turbine on every ridge and hill in NSW and it wouldn’t make any difference to greenhouse gas emissions because they can’t store energy generated, he says.

The turbines, as high as a 40-storey building and with an annoying whoosh-whoosh-whoosh noise, have split communities, causing bitter rifts between families who don’t want them and next-door neighbours who agree.

The wind farms are also copping flak overseas so the Poms have come up with a plan to bribe homeowners within 1.6km of a wind farm with a 20 per cent discount on their power bills in an attempt to reduce opposition to the green technology.

People will also get university fee bursaries, village halls and free home improvements as part of government attempts to win community support.

The government hopes asking developers to provide the benefits will reduce new wind farm objections despite critics calling them green energy bribes.

Now if Carcoar or Flyers Creek people or others near these proposed windmills need any free home improvements or a new community hall or two, they should hold out their hands.

But then trying to get compensation here would be about as hopeless as trying to sneak the dawn past the rooster.

Duck and run

‘SPRING is sprung, da grass is riz, I wonder where dem boidies iz.’

With apologies to the poem’s author Frederic Ogden Nash, we could modify it to read: ‘Spring is sprung, da grass is riz, I wonder where dem Cook Park duckies is.’

Well, they’re spreading their wings, so to speak.

The other morning five or six of them waddled across the Summer Street/Hill Street roundabout, getting much closer to the central business district in their travels.

Cars were going in all directions to avoid them, but it didn’t seem to faze the ducks even though they were unintentionally playing chicken (oh, dear) with the drivers.

Usually they stay pretty close to their own turf around the park in Sampson and Kite streets and it’s something new to venture that far away, particularly mixing in with all the traffic.

So drivers should keep an eye out.

Blink and you’ll miss it

DRIVING to the garage to get a pink slip, Pat says to his mate Mick: ‘I’m turning left now, can you stick your head out the window and check whether the blinker’s working?’

‘Sure,’ says Mick. ‘Yes it is, no it isn’t, yes it is, no it isn’t, yes it is...’

Baffling buildings

ORANGE has some magnificent old buildings in the central business district, particularly in Summer Street where many have been since the late 1870s, some with more recent face-lifts.

 But their wonderful character has been retained and they’re certainly one of Orange’s top attractions and a talking point for visitors.

So it’s disappointing to see the architectural standard of some of the buildings now being stuck up from slabs of concrete and bits of steel and put together like Lego.

They’re unimaginable, ugly, certainly don’t fit in with our heritage buildings and would probably fall over if there was any sort of an earth tremor.

The new thing in Summer Street on the Summer Centre car park, opposite the fire station, is a good example of a boring building.

It’s just a big square brick box with windows and doors at the front and no other features whatsoever.

It does nothing for the area and while councillors block northern development like Maccas, they approve these awful buildings without so much as a blink.

Sheep might fly

MINING magnate and MP hopeful Clive Palmer’s run-in with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over refuelling their jets is a reminder of the time Orange aviation pioneer Max Hazelton took on Bob Hawke when he was ACTU president, also over refuelling aircraft.

But unlike Palmer, who claimed his jet was deliberately grounded for hours and his election campaign disrupted while forced to wait for Rudd’s VIP jet to be refuelled first, Max Hazelton won his stoush.

Bob Hawke had threatened to black-list the major airlines if they flew live merino rams out of the country and when he discovered Max Hazelton was doing the job with two light aircraft, he ordered his fuel supplies be cut off so unions blocked delivery of tankers to the Hazelton Cudal base.

But Max Hazelton was adamant the ACTU ban wouldn’t stop him and arranged to get fuel from other sources for pilots to refuel their planes from drums.

Hawke also ordered trade unionists in the country to watch airports and private airstrips to stop the merino flights but for Max Hazelton it was business as usual and his aircraft made 21 trips to Fiji with the sheep.