As we rounded the scarp to see Mt Manypeaks, the road train ahead of me threw on its brake lights, first blinking on and off to let me know he was slowing - and then braking hard. Two hundred metres later, a man stood on the shoulder beside his ute.
Everyone was okay. The driver who lost his load looked a bit stressed as he worked to free his trailer. I was thinking, Well I'm glad that wasn't the truck right in front of me because it would have taken me out. I drove slowly past the wreckage, feeling my mortality (believe me). The trailer and black stuff that looked like volcanic sand was strewn all over the road and blocked the turn off to Cheynes Beach
Twenty minutes along the highway, the coppers and road works cars started passing me, heading out to the accident. An hour later the local radio news announced that the trailer that rolled had lost thirty tons of genetically modified canola seed. A spill of seed may seem innocuous, silly and historically ordinary but this particular seed is genetically engineered to colonise the country with Monsanto products and resist all herbicidal attempts to kill it. So. Thirty tons.
CBH the local mob in charge of this politically charged freight rushed out there too, trying to work out how to 'contain' a spill of this magnitude. I'm not sure if CBH actually have a containment policy. I'd like to know.
It happened right on the edge of the Cheynes Road Nature Reserve; quite a beautiful, pristine piece of country full of tea tree swamps, Banksia and grass tree country.
Bloody hell - and you saw it happen. Good job someone did. What next?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure Tom. Like I wrote this weed seed is highly invasive and herbicide resistant. Hopefully their 'handlers' have their act together or else there will be folk picking out every canola flower head in the area for the next eight years of seed stock.
ReplyDeleteI dislike the current flood of lawyers intensely, but it's a pity that a few can't be diverted from ambulance chasing to sue Monsanto out of existence. "you might be entitled to compensation" ads are an hourly occurrence on our TV here in the USA.
ReplyDeleteIn Oz the farmers seem to sue each other for Monsanto contamination of their crops. Perhaps it it just a more achievable outcome? I don't know.
DeleteJesus! I've been signing petitions against that shit for decades. The decisions a few people are allowed to make about everyone's future horrifies me. Looks like that cat is out of the bag once and for all.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are OK!!
Thanks Michelle. Talking to people today about it was pretty interesting, a few differing views about GM out there. But seeing yesterday's spill kind of put things into perspective for me. Human fallibility is so um ... fallible!
DeleteThis sort of thing is a reminder of why you should keep your bloody distance from those buggers unless and until you're about to overtake them.
ReplyDeleteAs for the seed; I'd also like to know if CBH's containment policy involves much more than scrambling a P.R. team. Maybe the uber-canola won't overrun the area, and if it does, it probably won't be within a single season. So I imagine that by the time the problem's bad enough that enough people are making enough noise that it can't be ignored, the company may be able to argue that it can't be conclusively proven that this accident was the cause.
If that doesn't work, they might be able to cut some sort of clean-up deal with the state govt in which the tax-payer foots part of the bill and – in due course – a party-member or two comes to work for CBH in a consultative role.
Regardless, I'd say enjoy that bit of countryside while you can.
All of what you have said Alex is so much why I put up this post, pics, date and all.
DeleteAt the time I was just tired after two days sleeping in my car and bothered by the road train in front of me. Hearing what the load contained later quite changed my experience of the road trip.