WHEN I started blogging in March it was as a means to document small creative moments in my life. I have a family of busy, active teens, work fulltime, volunteer in my community as a Girl Guide leader and maintain a house and garden. I’m not complaining, this is the life of so many other people and we are a healthy, happy family. Sure there’s ups and downs, but they’re just the stuff of life. Yeah?

But today I will deviate ever so slightly from the op shopping, crafting, cooking and other small creative moments I manage to find in my days.

I’ve pondered this picture taken while bush walking on Sunday. The reserve we walked on was a magic space. It had all sorts of vegetation and topography. A small stream, cliff overhangs and beautiful flora and fauna. However, dumped right in the middle of the reserve was the mess pictured above.

I guess I am probably preaching to the converted, but this is disturbing? Yeah? The site from where the rubbish was dumped can be accessed by a tarred road. It was dropped over a cliff that is a lookout east to the sea. From that same lookout was where we saw a peregrine falcon.

Why is it people feel they have the right to just dump this stuff? It must be done under cover of darkness, or at a time they won’t be caught doing it. Right? So they have a conscious. They know it’s wrong. Right? But they still do it.

Do they know, for instance, that in the same reserve they’ve dumped their office and household waste there are two magnificent strangler figs. The one below is wrapped around a massive boulder.


The one below was once wrapped around a fallen log. The log has rotted away to leave this lattice work.

In 1989 the Federal Government released a publication called the Personal Action Guide for the Earth. I am pretty sure it’s no longer in print. I bought it aged 15 and would still count it in my list of Top 10 favourite books.

I am an average greenie. We recycle. I am thrifty. I can’t abide overly packaged product. I try to shop for Australian-made goods and the fewer kilometres they’ve travelled to me, the better. I compost. I ride and walk where possible and practical. I live in a small house and try to heat and cool it naturally. We have no airconditioner, no dishwasher, a small television and as few electronic appliances as possible. We’re not sack cloth and ashes greenies, but we try.

The Personal Action Guide for the Earth lists things individuals can do to reduce their impact on Planet Earth.

I checked, and now I can see why people think it’s OK to throw rubbish over a cliff. Quite clearly, the authors of The Personal Action Guide for the Earth failed to realise people are STUPID and didn’t think to mention it. Well, der! Or maybe the dumpers read the bit where it said to "separate the rubbish" and thought it meant packing up the rubbish and taking it as far from the other waste as possible – say the bottom of a cliff in the middle of a bushland reserve.

Come on people. It’s time to tell the tossers what we think of them. For me, I am writing to the council that operates the reserve and alerting them to the mess. Also, in March, I will sign up for Clean Up Australia Day. Is there such a thing as a blogger movement to clean up their patch? If not, I’m starting one. Pip, do you think your walkers would commit to picking up rubbish on their walks? Anyone else? Any ideas? It’s been a bit of a rant. Sorry. It’s important though. Really, really important.