Viewing Hazelwood with clarity, courtesy of 20/20 hindsight

A vision many would rather not see - a
network of power lines springing from the
 dirty Hazelwood, fossil fuel powered
plant in Victoria's La Trobe Valley.

The Hazelwood power station and coal mine are just visible from David Briggs’ property up in the mountains that surround the town of Morwell. He sweeps an outstretched arm across the valley and points, in case I miss it. His old fluorescent mining jacket hangs loosely on his frail limbs.

Morwell is a small town encircled by open-cut coal mines and power stations in the Australian state of Victoria, less than a hundred miles east of Melbourne. A few miles to the north of it stand the massive exhaust stacks of the Yallourn power plant. Farther east lies the Loy Yang plant. The Hazelwood power plant and mine complex pushes right up against the town’s southern border; only a four-lane freeway and a thin strip of grass separate the mine from some homes. All power lines from here lead to Melbourne.

In February 2014, at the tail end of a scorching Australian summer of record heatwaves, it was there that a change in wind brought an out-of-control bushfire into the northern face of the open-cut coal mine. Briggs, 55, usually works on mines up in northern Australia, but he was back home here on holidays when the fire broke out. He got a call from a contractor saying they were looking for machinery operators to help put out the blaze. He figured, Why not? It would probably be a couple of days’ work. Briggs shakes his head now, remembering, and his eyes glaze over. “Of course in hindsight, I never would have taken it,” he says.

Read the Earth Island Journal story - “Life Beyond Coal.”