The Pilliga Doesn't Get to Speak in Parliament

Today I left the trucks of the Newell Highway for 100km or so of back roads through the Pilliga. It was quieter and softer on the nerves. That said, I do want to say up front that the truckies out here have been fantastic – slowing down, giving me space, and looking out for a lone cyclist on an e-bike.

Rolling under the eucalypts of the Pilliga, I couldn’t shake two thoughts. The first was fire. Climate change is loading the dice for hotter, drier, more destructive bushfires. Forests like the Pilliga evolved with fire, but not with the kind of relentless, high-intensity burns we’re starting to see. When fires come too hot and too often, the trees don’t get time to recover, the seed bank is cooked, the hollow-bearing giants disappear and with them go gliders, parrots and the little, hidden things that make this place alive. At a certain point, “fire-adapted” landscapes tip into something else - degraded country that can’t bounce back.

The second was gas. The Pilliga sits at the heart of the big coal seam gas push in north-west New South Wales. Locals know what that means: industrialisation of the forest, networks of roads and wells, and permanent contamination in the Great Artesian Basin and shallow aquifers that farms and communities depend on.

Fracking and CSG might look neat on a project map in Sydney or Canberra, but out here the scars and risks are real and long-lived. Once groundwater is polluted, there is no easy fix. It’s a form of slow, quiet poisoning.

So as I pedalled through the Pilliga, with my panniers rattling and the smell of dust and eucalyptus in the air, I kept coming back to the same question: what sort of economy is Australia choosing? One that treats places like the Pilliga as sacrifice zones for short-term fossil fuel profits? Or one that respects them as living, breathing Country - vital for climate, water, wildlife and culture - and backs a transition that keeps them standing?

The Pilliga doesn’t get to speak in Parliament. But riding through it today while feeling the heat, it felt very clear that our climate and gas decisions are writing this unique forest’s future in real time.

Thanks to Kamilaroi mobs for having me on their land.

The Pilliga is on Kamilaroi Country.