Earthship Freo
Documentary directed by Ron Elliott
In Cinemas October 13

Review by Barry Healy

Between 2015 and 2019 an anarchist environmental protest group, organised by Forest Rescue, occupied a group of government-owned houses at Fremantle’s Stirling Highway/High Street intersection. The intersection was a key part of the infrastructure taking freight to and from Fremantle Port.

The protest camp aimed to stop road-widening construction that would destroy a line of Tuart trees, which are native to the Perth coastal plain but which are endangered by the city’s relentless urban sprawl.

The protest blockade was a component of much larger movement centred on protecting the Beeliar Wetlands from the proposed Roe 8 Extension. Roe 8 was a dream project of consecutive WA governments and came to be a centrepiece for Tony Abbot’s federal Liberal government.

I should declare an interest in this film. Even though it was filmed after I moved away from the area I was involved with the people and places shown. As a member of the Fremantle Road to Rail Campaign I encouraged the blockaders and worked to link them into the broader campaign.

The story behind the issue dates back to the 1950s when a grand plan for the future of Perth was unveiled by town planning consultant, Gorden Stephenson. It reflected the then-current thinking of car-dominated urban planning.

Stephenson’s vision has guided the road engineers of WA’s Main Roads Department ever since, despite being redundant.

Main Roads is not funded out of the WA state Treasury. Petrol excise collected by the Commonwealth is given straight back to the state, into Main Roads.

Main Roads serves as a cash funnel for WA construction companies. It has no interest in transport outcomes, its bureaucratic inertia is directed entirely at road building, which results in over-engineered projects.

For many decades community campaigns have fought Main Roads. In 1984, residents unsuccessfully battled bulldozers to stop the extension of Farrington Road, on the periphery of the Beeliar Wetlands. Later residents’ protests stopped the Fremantle Eastern Bypass.

However, the Roe 8 proposal, which the Abbott government inflated into a $1.8 billion freeway-plus-tunnel white elephant was the greatest struggle and the biggest victory. When the bulldozers moved in, protestors created a political crisis resulting in the electoral victory of the McGowan ALP government, which scrapped the plan.

However, in a sop to the companies that had missed out on the bonanza the ALP proceeded with the part of the Roe 8 plan dealing with the traffic snarl at the Stirling Highway/High Street intersection. The solution to its problems, as the Road to Rail campaign pointed out, could have been solved with simple realignment of road lanes and increasing the amount of freight going to Fremantle Port on rail.

Instead, a massive roundabout was designed, costing $110 million. It was this project that the Earthship Freo community blocked.

The problem for the protesters was that they found themselves politically isolated. After the main forces of the Roe 8 movement tasted victory the movement subsided. Also, the vigorous, direct action Forest Rescue methods made united front campaigning difficult.

Faced with government implacability, Forest Rescue negotiated an agreement whereby they would peacefully evacuate in return for Main Roads planting 500 Tuart trees for every one they destroyed. That is well over 5,000 trees.

If you visit the Main Roads website you can see how Main Roads reneged on that promise, which is typical of the Department.

For Perth activists this film will serve as a bit of nostalgia. If it were combined with a political analysis of the overall struggle its footage could contribute to documenting an important historical period in Western Australia’s environmental struggles.

However, as is ever the case with Main Roads, what is old is new again. The Department still has a daydream of doubling the capacity of the Stirling Highway bridge, turning it into a double-decker monstrosity. Communities can never be safe while Main Roads is structured in the way that it is.