The Eyre Peninsula Environmental Protection Alliance (EPEPA) held a community fundraiser event last week at Lincoln Cinema.
Last Tuesday’s event was well attended by people of various ages in the community, with money raised through ticket sales helping the alliance’s campaign to ‘Keep Whalers Way Wild’.
We had a massive turnout, over 80 people attended, which was awesome,” EPEPA member and event organiser Gaby Coard said.
Shown on the big screen was the Bob Brown documentary ‘The Giants’, which looked at Mr Brown’s life story and his history in Tasmania protecting rivers and forests.
“Bob Brown’s story was really inspiring. Listening to his story from being a young boy growing up in New South Wales to go on to be a young medical doctor in Tasmania who gave up his career to completely dedicate his life to protecting the wilderness,” Ms Coard said.
“It was great to share that with the community here and definitely very inspiring.”
Ms Coard said a lot of the film focused on the logging of native forests in Tasmania, “which are a comparison to Whalers Way in that maybe the necessity of protecting that native vegetation that we do have left is really important”.
“Whalers Way is completely untouched, remnant vegetation. We don’t really have a lot of that left here on the Eyre Peninsula,” she said.
“To lose that if the rocket launch facility was approved would be pretty devastating.”
Ms Coard said the alliance was not against rockets, but is “against rockets in a conservation zone and in an area that is considered high bushfire risk”.
“We think there is a more appropriate location for it, maybe somewhere that has already been cleared, and is much more safer in terms of bushfire risk, and risk to local residencies.”
