The Winter Road

by Kate Holden

  4

  Before farming could operate on a large scale the country had to be cleared by ringbarking and burning. Jack Parker and Les Stevens would light fires early in the day and late in the afternoon would set fire to the heaps. Next morning hot shovels of hot coals were carted to light other heaps. At night these fires looked like fairyland to we children.

  —Gretta Fea Uebergang, And So the Story Goes: The Croppa Creek District, 1848–1987, 1987

  On a hot December evening in Tamworth, ecologist Phil Spark sits back in his motel-room chair and prepares to discuss his involvement in the Turnbull story. It has haunted him since 2012.

  ‘My work takes me all around the northwest into all the back blocks.’ He sighs. ‘So when you get off the main roads and into the back blocks, that’s when you start to comprehend the extent of the clearing.’

  The thicket of silence, as Spark describes it, is as tight as brigalow scrub itself. ‘And it’s really, really difficult to break through it. Everyone knows someone, or is related to someone, who’s been into illegal clearing. I have good friends out there, people that I consider good friends, who won’t say anything to a journalist, won’t say anything. And I think, Why not? You know it’s wrong, you know it’s wrong as I know it’s wrong. But there’s this pressure. This really tight community thing.’

  Spark is a burly man in middle age, with hooded eyes and a thatch of sandy hair. Freckled arms, a barrel chest, worn-in Blundstones over seed-pocked socks. A thoughtful, practical individual of apparently unlimited diligence. He was a farmer himself, taking over from his parents at eighteen. ‘I was the sort of kid that had lizards in boxes. I’ve been a nature freak since day one, really.’ At thirty-three he began studying conservation, and at fifty handed the farm over to his son. ‘I persisted [on the farm] because I wanted it to be there for him to take it on.’ Like Turnbull, Spark felt the freight of legacy behind him, the responsibility to land and family. ‘He’s now running the farm. So that ticked my box.’

  Since the mid-1990s, Spark has been conducting biodiversity surveys, a skilled task requiring wide knowledge and close attention. He gets to know local areas in minute detail: the landscape of cropped fields and remnant stands of vegetation, and the secret one hidden in groundcover, nestling amid fenceline scrub or in the middle of paddocks. He loves seeking out the tiny marvels of endurance. One of his current favourites is Belson’s Panic (Homopholis belsonii), a rare little low grass that grows along verges such as those in Talga Lane. He speaks of it tenderly: it is ‘a lovely thing’, listed as vulnerable in the Commonwealth and endangered in New South Wales. Groundcovers such as Panics are often overlooked or carelessly ploughed, but they are critical in knitting together an ecological community. It is Spark’s job to track these remnants and alert authorities to their existence so they can be protected.

  After a lifetime of amateur interest, he began professionally by ‘kicking around the bush a lot’ during then New South Wales premier Bob Carr’s campaign of biodiversity surveying. Gaining some contracts, Spark and a friend would go out for whole summers and examine everything. By the early 2000s, he had contracts to cover the entire east coast, the Tablelands and more. Now he works as a consultant ecologist for the OEH, for National Parks and Wildlife Service, and for Local Land Services, almost entirely with a focus on conservation. He sometimes gives talks on biodiversity at country primary schools. ‘The kids are great. All kids love wildlife, especially all rural kids. As long as you want to talk about animals they’ll talk to you.’

  Spark had work out near Croppa Creek around the time the Turnbulls bought ‘Strathdoon’ and ‘Colorado’. Perhaps 85 per cent of land around the hamlet was already cleared, mostly converted to cropping; the rest was mainly gullies or sandstone, soil too poor for good agriculture. Spark was contracted by Local Land Services – then the Catchment Management Authority – to set up long-term koala monitoring in the scrub areas near Croppa Creek.

  Alaine Anderson, on the property adjoining ‘Strathdoon’, alerted him to potential clearing on the blocks in late 2011. County Boundary Road, three hours’ drive from Spark’s home in Tamworth, is fairly out of the way. But, ‘Yes,’ Spark says with a wry look. Since the Turnbulls took over the blocks, ‘I drifted up there fairly frequently.’

  Spark began to document the activities on ‘Strathdoon’ and ‘Colorado’, taking photographs from the road showing the dozers at work. Spark could see koalas on those blocks. It was he who gave the talk in the Croppa Creek hall about protecting the animals in February 2012, which Ian Turnbull and Alaine Anderson both attended. ‘The koala population was a really big thing.’ He quickly had the Northern Inland Council for the Environment, the Total Environment Centre and the NSW Environmental Defenders Office interested. These organisations exist to monitor transgressions and support conservation. He and Anderson started sending letters to state members of parliament, especially Robyn Parker, the Minister for the Environment, informing her of the dramatic land clearing at Croppa Creek.

  The properties, Spark readily admits, were not virgin land. They had been cleared in the past. ‘But it’s still an endangered ecological community that should be protected to mature! To regenerate itself back to the original community! Whereas Turnbull ignored all that.’ He shakes his head. ‘That brigalow on that rich soil, there’s so little of it left. So little of it.’ But the type of farmer Turnbull was, he believes, ‘just thinks of their land as a factory’.

  Spark, an experienced reporter of infringements, called the OEH and spoke to Glen Turner. Spark was surprised the local Catchment Management Authority hadn’t red-lighted the Turnbulls’ activities. Turner assured him that the OEH had certainly tried; though the stop-work order hadn’t stuck, they were still on the case. The CMA hadn’t given approval, even if Turnbull kept implying it had. The two men began to exchange information.

  Minister Parker was sent more briefings and photographs. Alaine Anderson was also in touch with the federal member, Mark Coulton. There was no action to stop the clearing, so Spark amplified his campaign. He sent material to the Greens, the Labor Party, the media and conservation groups. He began working with the Total Environment Centre in Sydney. Everyone agreed it was terrible, that someone should be doing something to stop the Turnbulls. But the Turnbulls stolidly went on clearing.

  ‘Well, yeah, you look at all my correspondence with the ministers … I wrote to everyone I could, and we had the Environmental Defenders Office on the case with us, and they wrote to the minister. We got the feeling all along that Turnbull was being told by someone in a position of power, “It’s all right, mate, we’re going to look after ya.” It just reeks of it.’

  CHRIS NADOLNY, WHO HAS had plenty of exposure to landholders’ feelings about compliance officers and ecologists, gives a faint ‘Yeah?’ when asked if environmental crime is a concept that means much to farmers. ‘I think a lot of the attitude there relates to the fact that the regulators are not seen as local and are seen as a foreign culture.’ A local Landcare group’s advice might be welcomed, but the arrival of government officers, ever since the days of the Border Police and the Land Commissioners, is not. ‘There is that sort of them-and-us attitude, particularly among the big clearers, because that’s their way of life: they’re aiming to get money by developing,’ Nadolny says. However, he emphasises, while many push a few trees, ‘it’s relatively few people who do most of the clearing’.

  But many feel blamed for it. Farmers become antagonised by authorities’ implications that they’re all potential vandals. As social researcher Frank Vanclay puts it, in a defence of the complexity of farming attitudes, ‘Farmers do what they consider to be the “right thing”.’

  Nadolny agrees. ‘I started out assisting with the Landcare movement, and I had a lot of contact with farmers who did have a lot of social responsibility and were very strong on management, whereas more of my later career was involved with illegal clearing, where the attitude was very, very different. In some cases they still
held a Landcare-type ethic but a different set of values, a different set of standards. Like, “My clearing wasn’t really that bad, I left these paddock trees, I left this and that habitat.” And you can have the two coinciding – a person who, on the one hand, does a lot of clearing, but on the other, supports community action, gives money to things like revegetation.’ Ian Turnbull had been a champion of conservation farming. Under questioning, he spoke often of ‘restoring’ the properties and of his progressive agricultural techniques. But he was comfortable with ball-and-chain destruction of thousands of native trees and their habitat.

  Farmers are by necessity practical people. Some have inherited the life and the devotion; some have chosen it. A few are ‘land miners’, scraping what they can from the earth’s riches, but most, even if they gaze upon scraped fields and crumbled scrub, adore the land they live on and sense their privilege and responsibility as well as their opportunities. Farmers eat responsibility for breakfast: to their families, to their mortgages, markets, animals and boundaries, as well as to the future. Those who broadacre-crop must spend many thousands of dollars of chemicals; those who use rotational grazing management must constantly adjust their programs and rarely take a holiday; those who pursue regenerative agriculture must study constantly; those who go rogue and plunder the earth despite regulations must prepare for years of legal combat.

  After decades of talking with farmers about their attitudes and practices, Vanclay concludes that the broader social context of land management challenges is not duly appreciated. Many of the environmental damage issues they preside over, farmers point out, are the result of earlier regulations, such as mandatory land clearing, or recommended scientific methods, like dry fallow farming. The advice, not the farmers’ attitudes, is to blame for the results. Governmental ambitions, agricultural research, market demands, changing climate: they’ve shaped the land as much as any individual behind the wheel of a tractor. And when push comes to shove for sustainability over profitability, they can baulk at being the ones to make sacrifices. ‘Farmers,’ says Vanclay emphatically, ‘do not believe they are “raping the earth” while driving their tractors.’

  But they can be ignorant or naive. ‘As an ecologist,’ admits Nadolny, ‘I think we haven’t really done what we should have to explain to farmers the value of native vegetation.’ He gives an example of farmers observing shade trees in grazing paddocks. Grasses grow softer and richer under a tree. Stock are tempted to it; they eat it out and trample the stubble. The farmer, Nadolny explains, only sees the bare soil and concludes that trees inhibit grass growth. Thus he pulls out the trees, believing he’s helping the environment. ‘So a lot of what’s driving farmers to overclear is this false perception of the environment. And we just haven’t extended that knowledge.’

  They want to pass the farm on in good condition. This, Vanclay claims, is more important than any economic decision: it makes all the costs, labour and stress worthwhile. They worry that their children won’t want to continue; they feel blood flushes of obligation to previous and future generations. The dread of failure in this special regard is suspected to be the cause of many suicides. The land is one part of farming, the longer purpose and social element are others. ‘For farmers,’ Vanclay writes, ‘sustainability means something along the lines of “we as a family, on our farm, in the future”.’

  ‘GLEN WAS A REASONABLY experienced officer,’ reflects Simon Smith, ‘but he did lose his cool a bit. He did get a bit personal; he was invested in the whole thing. Glen would call a spade a spade. He could very easily be offensive, or be taken to be offensive. Yeah, he was emotional, and wore his heart on his sleeve.

  ‘Glen tended to get worked up; he did get fiery. He’d give back as much as he took, which isn’t necessarily a good thing if you’re trying to be an impartial investigator. Glen was impassioned about the issue [of illegal clearing] and trying to stop it, but at the same time he was also very reasonable, and could hear both sides.’ He understood and respected farmers, his former manager says. ‘But his view was that the law was designed to achieve a purpose. People make mistakes, he said, but the people who deliberately and repeatedly break the law when they know that’s what they’re doing: that got up his nose more than anything.’

  The next time Turner visited ‘Strathdoon’ and ‘Colorado’, on 21 August 2012, he went with his full crew, as instructed. Beaman and Wood were to help collect evidence, Gary Spencer to facilitate access and Nadolny as the expert ecologist. They had entry permits and GPS receivers to map and record locations.

  The OEH vehicles parked outside ‘Strathdoon’ on County Boundary Road. Emerging from a waiting car nearby were the Turnbull men: Ian, Grant and Cory. Spencer asked his colleagues to wait. They watched as he went over to the Turnbulls and spoke with them. There were thoughtful faces, a short exchange. Then Spencer returned and the others watched the Turnbulls drive away.

  They entered through the ‘Strathdoon’ gate. There were stacks of piled vegetation, including mature trees. About 400 hectares had now been cleared since May.

  Bill Scott’s niece, Anna Simmons, was living in the cottage on the property. She was alone at home, cleaning a deer head for her husband, when Turner and Spencer came to the door. Turner, interested, took a photograph of the head to show a friend. The officers spoke to Simmons about inspecting the property; she shrugged and they left to look at the site.

  By the edge of a clearing on ‘Strathdoon’, Turner and Nadolny found three koalas in trees. There was also koala scat in the shadow of felled poplar box trunks on the ground; they couldn’t see what else was buried beneath the heavy wood. It was the first direct evidence they had of the animals living on the property. Turner became very quiet, and headed back to the cottage with Spencer to interview Simmons. He looked, remembered Nadolny, upset.

  According to Simmons, Turner raised the prospect that her uncle Bill could be held responsible for the Turnbulls’ clearing on the land before the contracts of sale for the two blocks were finalised. He also mentioned darkly that Roger Butler, Turnbull’s lawyer in Moree, had been a trustee beside old Bill.

  ‘He was really aggro when he was speaking to me,’ she complained later in a statement. ‘He spoke with a raised voice. Turner had a harsh and very stern manner. He kept stepping towards me.’ Simmons thought he might be recording the conversation. ‘I was scared of him because he kept coming at me. I felt he was hammering me with all this personal information and I felt like I was going to jail.’ He was out to get the Turnbulls, she said, and he threatened to take her to the Supreme Court.

  ‘Spencer stood there with a really shocked look on his face,’ she claimed. ‘He then tried to end it. He said, “Alright, I think we’ve got enough information, thanks for your time, Anna.”’

  Before the men left, Simmons asked Turner to delete the photo of the deer head.

  What Simmons didn’t relate in her statement was her fury at Turner’s intimation that the matter could become criminal. She ‘gave him a serve’, Simon Smith marvels, remembering Turner and Spencer’s account to him afterwards. ‘She abused the hell out of him.’

  ‘You’re just a selfish bitch,’ Turner apparently flared back. ‘You only want the money.’ Koalas were being killed just outside her home. But she, just like the Turnbulls and the Scott brothers, seemed more interested in human affairs.

  Simmons was on the phone to her landlord, Cory Turnbull, as soon as the officers left, and fled in tears to her uncle’s house. Cory told his grandfather. Ian called Spencer, who called the senior manager at OEH. Turner, Simmons had told them, had said he’d keep at the Turnbulls until he put them off their farms. Ian ‘didn’t like that at all’, she said in a court statement in 2016. ‘Not at all.’

  Within days, Simmons complained to the OEH directly. ‘I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, but Glen needs to get some disciplinary actions,’ Simmons wrote. ‘If he had handcuffs, he would have locked me up then and there.’

  After they’d left an
inspection of Turnbull properties, Nadolny recollects, ‘Glen used to say – he said this a couple of times in a joking, kind of half-serious tone – “Well, I bet Ian Turnbull’s on the phone to Kevin Humphries right now.”’ Humphries, National Party star and state parliamentarian, was gearing up to take ministerial power in the O’Farrell Liberal–National government. A former schoolteacher, he had been in parliament since 2007 and presided over an enormous electorate, comprising a massive 44 per cent of the state’s landmass. It housed some very wealthy people, including influential members of the NSW Farmers Association. He had apparently met groups of farmers and assured them that land clearing would soon no longer be impeded by the old native vegetation laws. The legislation would, he had indicated, not just be amended but wholly trashed.

  THAT AUGUST NIGHT IN the motel dining room, Nadolny sat talking over the day’s events with Turner and the other officers. After leaving Simmons’ cottage on ‘Strathdoon’, the group had continued on to ‘Colorado’. On that property, there was a belah pushed over. A bimble box felled nearby. Nadolny found a koala and her baby in one remaining stand of trees, and another koala nearby. He noticed there were no bodies to be found, though koalas had likely died there. The men mulled over their frustration. If the threat of inspections didn’t work, then what? Surely there was more than one way to get things done.

  Turnbull was probably thinking the same thing as he picked up the phone to his lawyer.

  THE FRONTIER MELTS INTO the interior and comes out the other side. Few places are hidden in our continent. There are no bushrangers anymore. Getting lost in the bush makes the news. Settlers and convicts wanted property for suffrage; now, in post-colonial democratic Australia, they’re tax-paying, subsidy-receiving, drought-assisted, legislated subjects of the Commonwealth.