Grafton-based Greensill Bros is the latest logging company to attract the unwanted and illegal activities of protestors. The protests began at Nambucca during thinning operations in May and have continued as teams move from site to site. Source: Timberbiz
After moving from Nambucca to Wild Cattle Creek more protests followed with police requiring search and rescue crews to remove protestors locked onto the machinery
The protestors prevented logging from going ahead at Bagawa State Forest this week, the fourth time the illegal activities have halted work on the NSW Mid North Coast over the past six weeks.
Grensill’s office manager Cherie Brown has a “protests” folder. In it she has chronicled the day, date and details – including photographs – of the protestors.
The company has hardwood harvest contracts for northern NSW with Forest Corp, around six hardwood logging crews, about 43 trucks, softwood harvesting crews, some private property harvesting crews and in all about 100 people work for the company.
Ms Brown said that the moment the crews arrived at Nambucca the protestors arrived.
“They blocked the trucks on a daily basis by physically standing in front of them.
“We had to have a police presence simply to get the trucks in and out.’’
On one occasion, 80 to 100 protestors walked onto the harvesting operation and surrounded the machines. But what they were actually protesting about seemed to be in debate among them protestors themselves.
“The boys even mentioned that a lot of the people there were conflicted about their protesting,” Ms Brown said. “Some were there about the koalas, some were protesting over the cultural indigenous angle, some were there to see what it was all about.
“There was a little bit of infighting about what they were actually there for,” she said. “The biggest angle turned out to be the indigenous cultural heritage angle.”
Ms Brown said Forest Corp brought in some local elders and they inspected the job and were happy with it. The majority of the protestors were not from the local area.
“Our guys are not able to work in a safe environment at the moment,” she said. “The police have been absolutely fantastic.”
Police helped keep protestors away while trucks arrived and left.
At Nambucca there were no arrests; the protestors were given the option to leave instead.
“The majority of them did leave, but they took their time about it.
“Or they would walk off into the bush and then reappear later.”
Things changed when Greensill was offered some private property to store its machinery at night.
“The first arrest happened when a woman went onto this private property and locked herself onto a harvester.”
Search and rescue was called to remove the female protestor from the harvester and she was arrested.
The owner of the property was away at the time his wife and children were still at home. Ms Brown said the owner’s wife tried to leave the property with her children to take them to school and the protestors barricaded the driveway.
“We felt terrible that we had put them in that situation,” she said. “We paid for security guards to come and sit with the machinery at night after that because we didn’t want to put our gear back on their private property.”
Greensill soon after moved operations on to Wild Cattle Creek. Even during the move they were still harassed by protestors who followed the trucks back to Grafton and onto mill sites, and onsite protests soon followed.
“We had a situation where two people arrived at a harvesting site and walked up to the harvester while it was felling trees,’’ Ms Brown said.
“A couple of days after that we had a couple of people lock themselves to our gear at Wild Cattle Creek.”
They were arrested.
“Last week we had another protestor lock onto another crew at Lower Bucca. The crews arrived at work and there were masked activists there again and one had locked himself onto a harvester.
“Search and rescue had to attend again.
“And on Monday at Bagawa there were masked protestors there again and one was in a tree attached to two machines.”
Staff mental well-being has been important to the company.
“We’re not trained to take on these situations,” Ms Brown said. “We have a really good working relationship with WorkSafe and we report all of this to them.’’
Greensill is continuing to work with police concerning the protests.
