Chopping And Changing In The Scrub

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday March 10, 2007

Daniel Lewis

IT WAS in 1965 that Tom Underwood bought his sawmill in Gwabegar to cut the famously termite-resistant white cypress pine of the mighty Pilliga Scrub.

Back then Gwabegar boasted four mills and a pub that did a roaring trade catering to thirsty timber workers.

Now there is no pub, and the screaming saws of Mr Underwood's mill are silent. His was the last to close in 2005 after the State Government put a vast area of the Pilliga Scrub into nature reserves, against the wishes of the locals.

"It was a great industry," Mr Underwood said. "I was the last of the Mohicans."

Timber is Gwabegar's only industry, and 20 jobs were lost in the tiny community.

The Government provided generous compensation, but Mr Underwood is still furious about its "disgraceful" decision - aimed, he said, at pleasing green groups.

The industry had been operating sustainably for more than a century, he said. "Cypress, it just grows up like hairs on a dog's back."

The scrub sprawls over thousands of hectares between Narrabri and Coonabarabran, but it is just a corner of the massive Barwon electorate, which stretches from the baking plains beyond Bourke to the snow gums in the high country around Coolah. Its size means there are myriad local issues, and candidates building profiles have to wear out tyres and shoes.

Inside the scrub, resentment burns hotter than the bushfire that blackened the region a few months ago, scorching timber that remained available to the loggers. Angry locals also blame the Government and its "green" management for that fire.

It all sounds good for the National Party, which has held Barwon since 1950.

But the sitting member is retiring, and critics say the party has taken the seat for granted. They are backing an independent, Tim Horan, 36, a police sergeant and the Mayor of Coonamble Shire, who threw his hat into the ring late last year.

Mr Horan became known to a wider audience when he helped raise more than $1 million for the children of Coonamble's Conn family. The children were orphaned when their parents died in a farmhouse fire in 2005.

He and his wife, Michelle, have four children and have cared for 47 foster children.

Mr Horan is being supported by the independent MPs in previously National neighbouring electorates - Richard Torbay (Northern Tablelands), Dawn Fardell (Dubbo) and Peter Draper (Tamworth) - using the slogan "Independent but not alone".

He also had the federal independents Bob Katter and Tony Windsor at his campaign launch at the Narrabri Golf Club. One of Mr Katter's famous Akubras fetched $250 at auction.

Among the crowd was the cotton industry pioneer Paul Kahl, previously a Nationals stalwart, who said the party had lost his support because the Coalition had stopped supporting the rural sector. Other supporters said they had seen independents gain far more for their electorates than the Nationals had for Barwon.

The Nationals candidate, Kevin Humphries, 46, is a school principal turned management consultant from Moree, and the ABC's election analyst, Antony Green, is predicting he will win.

Mr Humphries says Labor is deliberately depopulating the Pilliga to fulfil a green agenda and that only a Coalition government can stop it. On a recent visit to the area that got priceless page-one coverage in the Coonabarabran Times, he declared: "The Nationals policy is to open up access to the Pilliga [for sawmills] and rely far more on the local community managing their areas, instead of the contrived consultation process which has centralised management to Labor-Green headquarters in Macquarie Street."

Mr Horan wants to see the same outcome for the scrub, and said he would deliver it no matter who formed government.

The Nationals have accused Mr Horan of being a Labor stooge - an accusation he denies.

Jamie O'Brien is a Baradine farmer who fought the Government's closure of the local rail line. He said the Carr-Iemma Government had created a vicious cycle in the bush, with reduced services leading to population declines, which were used to justify more cuts in services. The unemployment rate in Baradine is estimated at 34 per cent; Gwabegar is virtually a ghost town; the Pilliga's women must travel to Dubbo or Tamworth to have their babies.

Mr O'Brien will be voting for Mr Humphries because "we need change and the independents can't deliver it. Country people feel they have no ownership over the legislation affecting their lives. The Nationals ... are promising the right things."

A supporter of Mr Horan is Bevan O'Regan, a farmer who has been a Narrabri Shire councillor for 25 years.

"We only get the bare essentials because Labor know they can't win [Barwon] and the bloody Nationals think they can't lose it," he said.

Ray Harris, 60, is one of 12 famous shearing brothers from a Baradine family of 18 children. Asked to give the Government a mark out of 10 for what it had done for the Pilliga, he was in no doubt. "Zero. Very much zero."

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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