The crusade of Mary Morris

Mary Morris knew immediately when she was on the right track in her campaign to have houses around Waterloo wind farm tested for low frequency noise and infrasound.

It was when the Clean Energy Council began its smear campaign.

“They said I was telling people to make up complaints,” Mary said today.

“That made me feel like I was getting to the core of the problem. I was getting under their skin. I knew I was touching a nerve.

“And it made me totally committed to what I was doing. The complaints are genuine, the people who are complaining are genuinely affected and I knew, when they started telling lies about me, I was on the right track.”

The CEC is well known for its attack response to wind industry criticism.

But its move against Mary Morris was particularly underhand.

It accused her of whipping up bogus complaints, of effectively lying to her community. Nobody from the CEC contacted Mary. Nobody from the CEC spoke with residents at Waterloo.

A pathological wind-supporter blogger, who is quoted extensively by pro-wind farm media, repeated the slander.

Waterloo wind farm operator TRUenergy was also quick to join in. It said on ABC radio it was being subjected to a “spurious complaint campaign”, with emails distributed urging people to formally complain.

But it’s the CEC that is a repeat offender.

It is threatened by the wind farm push-back rolling across rural Australia. It targets individuals who oppose its scorched-earth renewable energy agenda.

And Mary Morris is a farmer’s wife.

And like many farmers’ wives across Australia, she is the backbone of her family and an integral party of her community.

It used to be said Australia rides on the sheep’s back. But rural Australia rides on the backs of women like Mary Morris.

And any organisation dismisses these women at their cost.

Mary’s great grandfather, J.W. Armstrong, was one of the original pioneers in the Robertstown district in the 1870s. Old Armstrong was one of the original local councillors.

A magistrate, he was a community leader for decades. Since then, four generations of her family have been stanchions of the community.

This is a lineage that has been deeply involved in areas of social justice, the local church, sport, teaching, nursing, youth groups and local government.

They were founding members of the local RSL, board members (including chair) of Eudunda Hospital, regional Board of Health members, and chair of the school council for 22 years.

Mary’s family has farmed this part of rural South Australia almost from time eternal. Their roots are in the soil of the communities of Robertstown and Buchanan, and throughout the 23 km of farming land in between.

But Mary also sees herself as more than just a “farmer’s wife”.

In an email to STT, she said:

I also have a fair idea about scientific method and what constitutes proper science.

What genuine scientist would ever say … we have all the answers?

My science and agricultural qualifications and experience:

3-year diploma secondary science teaching – South Australian College of the Arts and Education.

4- years – technical assistant pasture research, Adelaide University Waite Agricultural Research Institute

1-year graduate diploma in agriculture – Roseworthy Agricultural College

7-years teaching high school agricultural acience up to and including year 12.

20 years co-running our 1500 hundred acres of cropping and livestock.

It would only be someone like the CEC’s Russell Marsh who could underestimate such a pedigree, who would accuse someone like Mary of generating fake complaints.

Mary said her local community welcomed the study done by Adelaide University’s Zhenhua (Frank) Wang as an opportunity to publicize what was going on in her community since Waterloo wind farm began operation.

She said a member of her community who was dealing directly with Wang kept telling her to hold her fire, that the study would be released to residents.

But when the university blocked residents’ access to it, Mary decided there was no other course.

The residents would conduct their own research.

Our next post:

How one small community convinced a bureaucracy to take another look.