Save Beeliar Wetlands and the Roe 8 Protest 2014-2017
When the State Government attempted to extend Roe Highway through the middle of Cockburn’s precious wetlands and remanent bush, a community driven campaign managed to stop the project.
Protestors walking over the pedestrian bridge that used to connect Hamilton Hill and Coolbellup, 2017, photograph by Gideon Digby, Cockburn Local History Collection.
Rethink Perth Freight Link sign, 2016, courtesy Kim Dravnieks, Cockburn Local History Collection.
The Beeliar wetlands, named after the Beeliar tribe of the Whadjuk Nyungar nation, were at the centre of one of the most significant environmental protests seen in Western Australia.
Proposals for a stage 8 and 9 of the Roe Highway extension from Kwinana Freeway through the Beeliar Wetlands towards Fremantle had been stalled for many years, but the Barnett Liberal state government were forced to put it back on the table after funding for the 'Perth Freight Link' was announced by the Commonwealth Government in May 2014.
Opposition to the plan was there from the early 2000s, building on from the Farrington Rd protests in 1984. The new proposal was met with staunch opposition from community groups affected in nearby suburbs of Fremantle and Cockburn, and other environmentally aware people from across the metropolitan area, who valued the wetlands immensely. The most important of these was Save Beeliar Wetlands, a community advocacy group that formed in 2008 and led the fight.
After the Federal Government announcement, the Greens formed a non-partisan group in 2015 called Rethink The Link. Together with Save Beeliar Wetlands and others, they rallied thousands of people to participate in protests, which culminated in an intense 4-month conflict period from commencement of clearing in December 2016 until the Labor party won the State election in March 2017.
Ultimately, the people won, and the project was halted, but not before hectares of irreplaceable bushland were bulldozed.
In the early stages of the campaign, Save Beeliar Wetlands concentrated on informing the local community about the environmental consequences of the project and taking on goliath legal battles. At the same time, Rethink The Link was organising an outreach program to inform communities on wider implications of the proposed freeway that wouldn't even get to the port.
Social media was used widely and distinctive orange Rethink the Perth Freight Link signs soon appeared in front yards all over the metropolitan area and at every rally.
As the bulldozers neared, campaigning against the road intensified. When clearing began it escalated into one of the most high-profile environmental conflicts in Western Australian history.
~ Andrea Gaynor and Peter Newman
Protestors with Rethink the Link placards and Black Cockatoo flags. Front row, L- R: Unknown, Felicity Bairstow, Pam Nairn, unknown child, Suzanne Smith / 2nd row, L - R: Carole DeBarre, Rex Sallur, Denise Crosbie, other unknown protestors. Photograph by Gideon Digby, Cockburn Local History Collection.
Together with the
Road 2 Rail (R2R) group,
Save Beeliar Wetlands formed the
Rethink Perth Freight Link, an alliance of community organisations, local governments and political parties.
The Beeliar Group - Professors for Environmental Responsibility also formed which had members that as Murdoch University students had tried to blockade the building of Farrington Rd through the Beeliar Wetlands in 1984. They wrote influential papers published throughout Australia and later organised the book
Never Again: Reflections on Environmental Responsibility After Roe 8 (edited by Andrea Gaynor, Peter Newman and Philip Jennings) to be written and published.
Good communication was the key to the success of the campaigns, starting with door-knocking outreach, information stalls, town hall meetings, festivals and then mass rallies. A high media profile was maintained and used to counter misinformation. The community was empowered to initiate their own groups such as the the Non Violent Direct Action (NVDA) and Wetlands Watch groups to act across a broad front.
A banner hanging in the Beeliar Wetlands during the anti-Roe 8 campaign, photograph by Gideon Digby, Cockburn Local History Collection.
Save Beeliar Wetlands also took a leading role, challenging the Government in the courts, and in late 2015 sought a review of the state EPA Roe 8 approvals in the WA Supreme Court which held up work for a year until the action was overturned on appeal in 2016.
On hearing this result, Kate Kelly (convenor of
Save Beeliar Wetlands) on hearing this result, replied: 'It appears that there is nobody who can hold the government to account for meeting its own conditions, other than the community, and that is what we will do'.
In early 2015,
Save Beeliar Wetlands, Rethink the Link, and Road 2 Rail, along with with thirty-three other local organisations including the Greens, formed an umbrella group
Rethink the Link Alliance. Kate Kelly, Kim Dravnieks and Sam Wainwright were elected as co-convenors. Five WA local governments also joined including City of Fremantle (under Mayor Brad Pettitt) and City of Cockburn (under Mayor Logan Howlett). Both councils were strong supporters of the Beeliar Wetlands.
Build Roe 8 sign, 2016, photograph by Jo Darbyshire.
Jan Rodda locked on to machinery, 12 January 2017, photograph by Jo Darbyshire.
More than 2,000 people from the Alliance, many of them carrying signs, marched together in the November 2015 Fremantle Festival parade, the largest group in its 116-year history.
In opposition, the City of Melville set up a group called
Save our Suburbs which supported Roe 8 and the Fremantle Eastern Bypass and became a major lobbyist for building Roe 8.
As early as 2013
Save Beeliar Wetlands supported non-violent direct-action training programmes to introduce new protesters to peaceful ways of civil disobedience. This was with activists like Jess Beckerling, Nicola Paris, and others with histories going back to the Franklin Dam and Farrington Road campaigns, Tactics included delaying clearing with lock-ons to machines and trees, organised trespass events, and tree-sits for weeks at key sites.
Roe 8 protest walk on Malvolio Road, Coolbellup, 13 January 2017, photograph by Gideon Digby, Cockburn Local History Collection.
Large-scale police mobilisation against protestors was intense and occurred frequently throughout the campaign. Kate Davis from the Greens organised a large number of lawyers to support people through the court process and $30,000 was raised to pay the fines of the 213 people who were arrested.
Other mass protests aimed to galvanize media attention. The first, ‘Enough is Enough’ on 12 January 2017, was a callout for mass action, which brought around 2,000 people to a clearing site at Malvolio Road, Coolbellup.
The largest collective display of civil disobedience the state had ever seen took place when those gathered at the site collectively pushed over fences, breached the area under clearance, supported two protesters who had locked on to machinery, evaded police on horseback and demanded the government stop all works until after the 11 March election.
Protestors with Black Cockatoo feather flags, photograph by Gideon Digby, Cockburn Local History Collection.
Treesitter Julia Waltham during a Roe 8 protest, photograph by Gideon Digby 2017, Cockburn Local History Collection.
The silent crowd at the 'Silence Speaks' demonstration held at Forrest Chase in 2017, photograph by Gideon Digby, Cockburn Local History Collection.
The ‘Silence Speaks’ event, held on Saturday 29 January 2017, saw hundreds of protestors stand in silence for an hour in Forrest Place, the civic heart of Perth. The protest aimed to raise awareness about the destruction of the wetlands amongst the broader population.
‘By taking the protest about a distant urban bushland to the city centre’, as writer and academic Danielle Brady has written, ‘they claimed the issue as one of state importance’.
Aboriginal people had a strong presence at the Beeliar site and within the anti-Roe 8 protests. As early as 2000, Nyungar Elder Patrick Hume, who had lived in Fremantle from the 1930s, joined with other Aboriginal people to lodge a native title claim over what were traditional spring and summer camping grounds, but he feared it would be too late to save the wetlands from Roe 8.
Federal Fremantle MP Carmen Lawrence acknowledged at the time the well-documented significance of the area and said, 'breaching Aboriginal Heritage sites would certainly stop the road'.
An Aboriginal flag flying in a tree during the Roe 8 protests, photograph by Gideon Digby, Cockburn Local History Collection.
Nyungar Elder Patrick Hume featured in the Cockburn Herald, 29 August 2000.
Aboriginal people used to camp in the Beeliar wetlands right up to the 1970s: my grandparents used to travel through there when they were young, and one of my great-grandfathers used to hunt and camp there too. One of my aunties was actually born in the wetlands, and that would have been in the fifties or sixties. I decided to challenge Minister Peter Collier’s Aboriginal heritage approval for Roe 8 because this place means a lot to me, it’s who I am, it’s where I come from… It’s a place of significance, and we grew up learning from our grandparents and parents about this place.
~ Corina Abraham
However, in 2015 the Liberal state government, in their determination to develop Roe 8 by any means, removed the Heritage registration of Aboriginal sites located in the road reserve, including sacred women’s sites in the Beeliar Wetlands. The injustice of this political action outraged both Nyungar and non-Aboriginal people.
In March 2016 Nyungar custodian and long-time Coolbellup resident Corina Abraham (with pro bono support from Eddie Mabo’s former lawyer, Greg McIntyre) lodged an appeal in the Supreme Court of Western Australia. The appeal asked the court to review the decision to overturn the 2013 recommendation against Roe 8 on Aboriginal heritage grounds. Though well fought, this case was unsuccessful.
Nyungar activist Corina Abrahams during a Roe 8 protest, 24 Nov 2015, photograph by Jo Darbyshire.
In February 2017 a less public ‘Women in Song for Country’ was organised in collaboration with local Nyungar women to create a space of shared cultural meaning, sorely needed at the height of the conflict.
Women participants were led inside the Beeliar Wetlands and stood barefoot on the dry ground of the swamp, where they sang a Nyungar language song
Dabakarn, especially composed for the event by Della Rae Morrison.
Gail Beck, a Nyungar woman and organiser of the event explained:
The decision to sing in the language of the land was made out of respect for the traditional custodians and their sacred sites, and with a desire for all women of all cultures to connect with the land they are working so hard to protect.
~ Gail Beck
Artwork attached to a fence at a Roe 8 protest, photo by Gnangarra, Wikimedia.
The Reverend Sealin Garlett addressing crowd at Fremantle Rally, 2017, photograph by Simon Stevens.
Reverend Sealin Garlett, a Nyungar Elder and traditional custodian, welcomed people to country at numerous events including thousands of protesters to Kings Square, Fremantle, on 26 February for the ‘We Deserve Better’ rally
.
This place here goes deeper than just being a birthing place…This place here, in a sense, brings the deep identity that we Aboriginal people have with this land. And there we continue to believe, and we continue to walk, and to tell those stories. Tell of the early beginnings, tell of the deep importance that families are cared for, children are loved, children are meaningful, and children have a destiny.
~ Sealin Garlett
In another small but significant act of protest Mary Dixon (a Fremantle resident and Save Leighton campaigner) created thousands of tiny 'Beeliar blue' badges from carefully cut up scraps of blue cloth, and gave these away at every event. This ingenious, grass-roots, low-tech act of protest became ubiquitous, with campaigners, politicians and supporters wearing them daily. They were a tiny flag of courage against the massive state machinery of destruction.
Throughout the campaign community leaders played important roles in sustaining the community in the face of despair. These included Kate Kelly, Kim Dravnieks, Phoebe Corke, Shona Hunter, Piers Verstegen, and Sam Wainwright (Road to Rail) group; along with prominent politicians Scott Ludlam, Lynn MacLaren (the Greens); and Melissa Parkes, Josh Wilson and Simone McGurk (ALP).
Fremantle local Colin Storey created this short film during the campaign to save Cockburn's Beeliar Wetlands from the proposed Roe Highway extension.
The campaign also utilised a range of creative tools and strategies to increase engagement and visibility.
Artists made banners, posters, tee-shirts, signs and other interactive art projects.
Performers dressed up in black cockatoo costumes; and poets, writers, academics, photographers, video makers and many others documented the protests and spread the word on social media.
Children were noticeably present and active in many of the protest activities.
Musicians also contributed including Ewan Buckley, John Butler, Donna Simpson, and local songwriter Kevin Smith.
'Dogs and Thieves (Rethink the Link)', a protest son by local songwriter Kevin Smith.
Note attached to a fence at a Roe 8 protest, photo by Gnangarra, Wikimedia.
Protesters were jubilant when the McGowan Labor party won the State election in March 2017. The ALP strongly opposed the project and promised to use Roe 8 and Perth Freight Link government funds to build MetroNet rail projects instead.
Rehabilitating Roe 8 is a project that aims to restore habitat cleared in the summer of 2016/17. It will run between 2018 and 2028 and is implemented by the City of Cockburn, with assistance from the community.
Amendments to the Metropolitan Region Scheme, which reclassified part of the Roe 8 land from Regional Road Reserves, were finally enacted on 29 November 2024.
While more than 80 per cent of the original wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain have been destroyed, the Beeliar Wetlands, the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the south-western suburbs of Perth, were saved.
A sign reading 'Well done Cockburn, You stopped Roe 8, Now let's repair our environment' erected after the election of Mark McGowan who promised to abolish the plans for the Roe 8 extension, photograph by Kim Dravnieks, Cockburn Local History Collection.
A sign reading 'I survived Roe 8' hung in one of the trees protestors managed to protect from the bulldozers during the anti-Roe 8 campaign, photograph by Kim Dravnieks, Cockburn Local History Collection.
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