Ironies in The Golden Bay Dune Debate

Life exhibits strange ironies; sometimes, I must step back and laugh. You see, some virtuous folks on a nearby beach say they want to save their dunes from destruction. But they are also the ones who destroyed it!

Residents who settled in Golden Bay (Western Australia) are protesting. They want to keep their precious land profile intact, and I get that. Nature and wildlife are abundant in this region. The dunes are a dynamic aesthetic. Why ruin them with bulldozers?

This kind of story isn’t new. It repeats itself wherever population expansion encroaches on areas previously untouched by development. Similarly, the protesters pick a place that represents what they’re protecting so the reporters get the perfect photo opportunity: A sand dune. It’s what the scene doesn’t show is what matters most.

I like nature, too. Dune removal is disappointing. So, too, is removing swamps, trees, grasslands, frogs, birds, forests, etc., to make way for new living spaces and infrastructure. It’s terrible, but it happens. We must accept it. We don’t have to like it; just own it. That’s what an expanding civilization must do. If we don’t want new development flattening dunes, we have to stop breeding and pushing into untouched areas in the first place.

There’s more irony (and what that dune photo excludes).

The protestors who want to keep the dunes in their natural state live in the dune area on either side of this empty dune (behind and in front of it). Their homes flattened bits of dunes, too. Folks have been levelling this scenic area for sixty years. The process didn’t start today; it continues an existing process. The only difference is the density of the development/housing. Theirs was less, the new one is more.

In a hundred years, this new development will be superseded by another. There will be concrete from the highway to the waterfront; no one will remember when someone protested on a dune today. It’s what we do because it’s what we have done.

We are all responsible for this kind of destruction. The plague of us looms large. We consume, multiply and consume some more. The protests should be about us.

Best of luck, Golden Bay-ers; I wish you well but don’t expect success in this lifetime.

–Michael (Author of SEETHINGS, Mandurah Western Australia)