If I had to describe, in one word, what the Upper Hunter needs to be in the future, that word would be ‘innovative’. I say this because my family has a long connection to innovation in Australia.
My great-grandfather, Fred Mills, was mayor of Clermont in the Isaac region of Queensland for 40 years. During his time in office, he supported the establishment of Australia’s first open-cut thermal coal mine, Blair Athol.
In 1930, Clermont was struggling through the Great Depression. Fred, like many others, saw open-cut mining as an innovative opportunity for local employment.
Fast-forward to today, and we must once again look to new technology and innovation to future-proof our communities.
My family farm, located on the outskirts of Singleton, is one example of how innovation and technology are changing our way of life here.
As a fourth-generation farmer on this land, I had to consider what the future would look like if I didn’t take climate action. Singleton is prone to both floods and fires, and if I had continued to work the land as we always had, I believe I would have been the last generation to farm here.
Multiple years of drought, followed by a bushfire on the property and then flooding rains, left the farm with significant debt, poor groundcover, and substantial erosion – we needed to change our farming practices and be innovative.
The property is now powered by solar and batteries, reducing energy bills by 70 per cent. We use sustainable farming techniques, such as rotational grazing to increase soil carbon sequestration, and we have planted large tracts of native tree and vegetation shelterbelts to increase biodiversity.
For farmers, capturing renewable energy and sequestering carbon on our own land is innovative, and it makes financial sense.
Yet sadly, in my region of the Hunter Valley, we are not being innovative, with more approvals for extractive coal mining stretching into the 2040s. This is a regressive approach, and we simply don’t need it anymore.
We have an opportunity to look to the future and show our support for the innovation that will ultimately change our way of life for the better.
We all have a responsibility and a role to play in shaping our future.