2020 Vision

It’s New Year’s Day, 2020 and another year has passed. As I climb the cathedral stairs, I can’t help thinking back to 2009, when I first started coming up here each year to enjoy the views of Newcastle. The awareness campaign that year convinced most Australians that climate change was a reality and we were willing to face it and deal with. I finally felt some hope for the future.

Right up at the top of the cathedral, I can see all around and the view from here is amazing. The sun glints off countless banks of solar cells, invisibly running heating, lights and power in thousands of homes and businesses I can’t even see. There are wind turbines scattered around. I love the look of them although some still think they’re strange. They’re so quiet now, there is no objection to having them in backyards. There are few houses without a water tank and there is no shortage of water for residential and industrial use. It has taken a long time to convince Australians, but Burwood was one of the first sewage treatment plants in Australia to pump pure water back into our waterways.

There are patches of green everywhere. Community gardens have become great places for the family to get together. There are children’s gardens with nursery rhyme characters, vege gardens and mazes, herb gardens, lovely walks and benches to sit on when you just want to stop and look around. And there are spaces for teenagers and young adults – skate parks and graffiti walls, murals and mosaics, nooks and crannies to explore and work to get involved in. I love it! I can’t imagine why it took us so long to make these spaces.

Trees are flourishing everywhere and organisations like Trees in Newcastle and the Australian Plant Society are flourishing too. On the harbour foreshore, shady trees have been planted and from here I can see many rooftop gardens. Hanging gardens are being planted around the city, covering the walls of buildings, reducing temperatures, cleaning the air and sometimes providing food to eat. The council has been planting fruit and nut trees beside the footpaths for some years now and everyone appreciates the free food they provide.

I can’t see from here, but there are so many revitalised suburbs around. The urban revitalisation programs have worked better than anyone could imagine. When I walk through Mayfield, I’m surrounded by planters covered in mosaics, flowers in bloom, drawings and sculptures and shopfronts hiding wonderful secrets inside – workshops for the community in all sorts of things. You can learn how to build a mud brick house, or how to plant a vege garden. You can join a quilting group or a woodworking group and you can make artworks to put up around the town. There’s something for everyone and no one feels left out. Bush regeneration and urban revitalisation have taken over from sport as the national pastimes and people are reconnecting with their families through shared activities.

Out even further away, I can imagine the huge wind turbines turning around on farms in the Hunter Valley. Since the national feed-in tariff was introduced, farmers have been clamouring for investors to put their money into wind and solar farms on farm land. It’s been a great way to diversify! As long as the sun shines and the wind blows, the farmers know it doesn’t matter so much if the rain doesn’t fall.

Of course, there’s much more to the great prosperity I see all around me. The Honeysuckle development has changed over the last ten years, becoming something different to what anyone might have imagined back then. There are few cars along the waterfront now. Families, couples and individuals have taken over on their bikes. There are bike hire shops at Nobbies and at Scratchleys and they are springing up all over Newcastle, as people begin to take to the streets on their bikes. I love watching mothers take their children to go shopping, taking the kids with them and bringing back groceries in their bike carts. It reminds me of a visit to Holland years ago.

Most of the cars on the streets are smaller than they were ten years ago, now that petrol is so expensive and the taxes on registering larger vehicles have increased enormously. 4WD enthusiasts join clubs where they share vehicles to take on adventure holidays and farmers and tourist businesses have been given special concessions to allow them to continue running larger vehicles. Many of the cars I see now are electric cars. They plug into the grid to recharge and as most of the electricity in the Hunter Valley is now renewable, they’re running on green power! Cycleways and public transport are extensive in Newcastle, encouraging many to forego cars altogether.

People still have lovely homes, but they’re smaller and more energy efficient now. Our appliances have been improved, new homes are built to comply with strict solar design principles and every new house has to have a renewable energy source, a water tank, a sustainable sewage treatment system and a grey water recycling system installed. There are more regulations being introduced for retrofitting old homes with some of these things too.

Since the rebates for renewables for businesses were introduced in 2010, there has been a huge take-up of renewable energy by companies in Newcastle and pressure from the public has forced governments to fit all of their office buildings with renewable energy sources.

Our local schools also look very different to what they did ten years ago. There are vege gardens, native tree plantings, wind turbines, annual energy audits and courses on action against climate change. Children are becoming aware of the importance of the climate and young people are speaking up to ensure that we honour our promise to become an increasingly sustainable country.

The coastline is different too. There are few ships waiting off the shore and most of them are container vessels. Coal is still exported from the port, but although the second coal loader, finished less than ten years ago is being used, the old coal loader has been shut down. Some countries have been slow to switch to alternative energy sources, but there is enough pressure throughout the world to make it an imperative and I think that soon we’ll see the last of the coal exports going through our port. I think back to the closing of BHP all those years ago and I know we’ll survive the shut-down of the coal mines and the coal export industry. We’ve had plenty of warning and there are all sorts of measures in place to ease the burden on those affected. The proliferation of renewable energy in the Hunter Valley has seen so many new jobs created that few worry about the closing down of the coal industry anymore.

Even our garbage has changed over the years. With the opening up of more farmers’ markets, the price placed on plastic bags and the new recycling system that separates garbage at the source, we have “clean” waste disposal sites. It’s hard to believe that just ten years ago, we recycled so little and now we use everything we throw in the garbage for some productive means, whether it be to produce methane for power production, or to feed the worms and produce worm castings to fertilize people’s gardens.

Agrichar is huge in the Hunter Valley. The vineyards are the best in the world, with this amazing product of burning green waste without oxygen providing the most fertile soil scientists can manufacture. Of course, many Novocastrians recycle their own green waste now, with worm composting in a lot of backyards and mulchers available for loan through permaculture groups.

It’s taken all these years, but geothermal energy is just taking off too. We continue to export energy-based products like aluminium, using the energy from geothermal systems to supply what is needed to produce them.

Now, as I look out from the cathedral windows I can’t wait to get back out into the fresh air outside. The room is filling up with tourists and it’s time for me to catch the light rail to the local Coop. I love shopping there. I can buy all sorts of locally produced foods by weight and take along my own containers to hold what I buy, avoiding packaging. I can take along my shampoo bottle and refill it and, through fair trade, I can buy foods that aren’t grown locally. It’s so much more fun than shopping at the supermarket used to be. And when I’ve finished, I can catch the light rail home. It stops just a few blocks from my front door.

Every year when I come here I look back and reflect on the changes that have taken place over the years. Life has changed a lot and sometimes it’s been hard to adjust, but they’ve all been changes for the better and I love it!