Latest updates from Mark Hillman | Public figure
Latest updates from Mark Hillman
Phone: +61 458 862 752
Reviews
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25.01.2022 My music lecturer from last year, Mark C Smith, and Townsville Brass bringing something smooth to our lockdown speakers! Love it!
24.01.2022 Yes, indeed. Ideas for when?
20.01.2022 BatPhink #RockinforWestPapua @ The Folk Club Townsville
19.01.2022 Copied and Pasted, a longish read but an informative one. "hi everyone. my name is bruce walker, you might remember me from ABC TV yesterday, i'm one of the su...rvivors of the wytaliba fires of last friday 8th november 2019. responding to this well informed fuckwit here - Anthony so mate - first up, i've been an RFS volunteer for close to 20 years, and am part of the highly regarded Wytaliba RFS - one of the most respected and hardened crews on the northern tablelands and beyond. our crew number over 50 and include decorated vets of ash wednesday and many other national distaster catastrophic level fires. regarding hazzard reduction. let me fill you in. for my time here, we used to do managed hazzard reduction whenever it was viable in winter. however - sadly, the moment gina and rupert went halves and purchased the LNP wholesale, we saw a MASSIVE increase in wholesale industrial logging across the nation. tell me, anthony - do you garden? do you use MULCH? compare a mulched garden to a non-mulched garden. you'll see a near instant difference. if you're not schooled on how soil works, try standing all day in the sun with no hat on. what happens? that's right, anthony. your head gets fucking hot. that's what's happened to the planet. now. as anyone who's dabbled in, you know... physics, will spell out better than i can - an increase of just one degree is quite significant. another neato thing physics talks about is the water cycle, anthony. you see, part of the water cycle is this cool thing called "transpiration" it's part 4 of this essential way in which trees send up moisture to meet clouds, creating low pressure troughs which draw rainfall inland. in fact, it's physically impossible to get rain on the lee side of a mountain, without trees doing this very thing. impossible. ask the residents of the atacama desert in chile - who haven't had rain for one THOUSAND years. why? no fucking trees, anthony. so anyway, back to the greens enacting a ban on burnoffs - that time we elected them to majority government and they had the final say. when was that again, anthony? i'll wait. nah. lets move on, since we ALL know this was never a thing . ever. so anyway - here in wytaliba, we used to have an incredibly green lush valley - right up until industrial loggers finally broke in to compartments to our north. right about this time, there was a near instant and significant drop to our vital streamflow. this happened again after each and every highland logging operation - and with LNP slashing and burning every national park in sight, well... you know, lets' not go there. climate change is a hoax, right? so wholesale burn quotas came in with LNP too. this... well.. i just want to pause here and say "wow" because this did indeed make us say wow. in recent years, we've seen hazzard reduction burns take place completely surrounding our once green, lush valley. so much so, that after the last july burn - of an area once supplying most of our water - well... 27 years of no burn had left a healthy and regenerating semi-arid rainforest. now it's simply arid nothing. despite this burn and 3 more last year, we got the following result - fires flared up in this dry mulchless wasteland and burned for 6 weeks, destroying 2 more former rainforest areas, leaving them also tinder dry and unable to transpire - hasn't actually rained a drop since then. weird. almost like cause and effect took place. clouds pass over, for sure. they get rain on the tablelands even - but - as physics reminds us, when air drops, it warms, expands, and rather than raining, sucks even more moisture from trees and soil. oh well. i mean, this is normal for australia, isn't it? watching 200 or more year old trees slowly wither and die right in front of you. that's normal. happens all the time. rivers dry up too, even though ours is home to platypi - who aren't known for travelling much - and hasn't dried up in probably 100,000 years minimum. until last summer, and it's been bone dry since august. this has never happened in my entire 25 or so years here. no local elders remember such a thing. wow. now, we all know about the bees nest and kingsgate fires and the hundreds more around the state. my crew and many other heroic RFS volunteers have been fighting them for months on end. yet another backburn actually got lit up about a month ago, on our south side, just half an hour before high southerly winds were due. the responsible paid agency, then ran out of paid hours, packed up and left it to spot onto our property and threaten 80 homes. we're like the mujahideen of firefighting though, so we got it after about 10 days nonstop hectic battle. this... brings us up to date, andrew. we've got bare, blacked out dust for 50km in all directions. right up to the actual eaves of half the homes here. which is why, friday's hellstorm caught all of us by surprise, andrew. a mushroom cloud went up at 3pm, 20 or so km away. within 30 minutes, high winds turned that into a 20km long front - strangely, this front was on ground burnt black as recently as 3 weeks ago - crown fires too, since every tree was literally a giant matchstick with dead leaves and nothing else. this then switched to 80km/h southerlies and rained hell on 3500 acres of already blacked out ground. well... you can't say we didn't prep or do hazzard reduction redneck style, can you andrew? or can you? curiously, within 1 hour we'd lost 20 homes, a school, a fireshed, and a contrete fucking bridge - meaning only 2 outside units even got in to help. falling trees in the hundreds blocked the old grafton road, so no one could even help neighbours. by dawn, of 80 homes in our community, 52 were lost, 2 dead (one a sex party voter, the other aplotical - this one is for you, barnaby fucking joyce) we had many injured, thousands of local animals died, and.. it' looks like a warzone here. which it did almost before, except we had homes. so, Anthony and ALL you fucking armchair experts out there, tell me. how again, was this the greens fault? thanks. looking forward to your well thought out response. bruce walker, wytaliba RFS member and survivor. "
19.01.2022 Can't go busk for the troops this year, so I thought I'd do a short session here. Lest we forget.
17.01.2022 I'll be going live (if it works) in roughly 15 minutes (11:50pm) for a short ANZAC tribute. Lest We Forget.
14.01.2022 Looking forward to this!
14.01.2022 The firelight Collective @ the #RockinforWestPapua gig last Saturday here in Townsville. Thank you to all who came along, gave your time energy, money, love,You... make the world a better place. ill be posting more vids later. This is Bobby singing some soul reggae with the firelight collective See more
13.01.2022 Here is a small sample of the comments we’ve received in the past 24 hours about the bushfires. "It’s the greenies fault for stopping back burning/hazard reduct...ion comes up every time there are severe bushfires. Conservative commentators and politicians spread this lie because they're trying to distract from the fact that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of bushfires, while major party politicians have been quietly cutting funding for rural fire services and taking millions in donations from fossil fuel companies who they then govern for. Our policy on this is clear. We support evidence-based hazard reduction including controlled burns and back-burning, particularly where it is informed by thousands of years of Aboriginal knowledge on how to use fire to manage the land responsibly. We always have. More: https://greens.org.au/backburning Our Queensland representatives have made statements on this and you can see these here: Senator Larissa Waters: https://www.facebook.com/larissawaters/videos/589095078526406/ Michael Berkman - Greens MP for Maiwar: https://www.facebook.com/michaelberkman.greens/posts/1446170072206771 Jonathan Sri, Councillor for The Gabba: https://www.facebook.com/jonno.sri/posts/2396858117248157 You can also see a fact check on this by The Guardian: "Is there really a green conspiracy to stop bushfire hazard reduction?": https://www.theguardian.com//is-there-really-a-green-consp If you’d like to help people affected by the bushfires, check out: http://www.givit.org.au and https://www.abc.net.au//bushfire-donations-heres/11696418
09.01.2022 If you have a subscription go across and vote for your favourite Townsville act https://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au//900e931498fa24c8218
08.01.2022 BREAKING: Coal trains to Adani’s Abbot Point coal terminal have been stopped this morning, with a man locking himself to the Newlands rail line. 53 year old car...penter Devan Tisdale locked himself to the rail track this morning while a group of 20 gathered out the front of Abbot Point, saying if people are serious about stopping the climate crisis we need to stop the coal trains. Mr Tisdale said by now enough scientific studies have been done. We know climate change is a crisis we’re already living in. I’m not trying to convince anyone climate change is real, I’m trying to inspire people to do something about it. Actions like this are an example of what anyone can do to stop the coal that is destroying our planet. This week more reports warned of the disastrous effects of climate change. A statement signed by over 11,000 scientists said We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency humanity faces untold suffering due to the climate crisis. The federal government’s drought policy report by Stephen Day, released yesterday, warned As a consequence of climate change, drought is likely to be more regular, longer in duration and broader in area. Mr Tisdale said It’s not enough to blame government inaction. It’s all of our responsibility and there’s no time now for excuses. If we really believe climate change is a crisis, we need to get out here and stop the coal trains. JOIN DEVAN: frontlineaction.org/redalert
08.01.2022 This was another reply to a good mate - who i like despite us fighting a fair bit. regarding all the hate on greens, the wankers who actually think all those ex... RFS are somehow paid off by the greens, etc. where is the anger at government slashing funding to the RFS? we could have another 100 paid RFS plus 50 or more extra trucks, maybe a water bomber or two... where is your anger there, australia? i'm actually really dissapointed in you people right now - you've been using this for point scoring all over the shop - if you actually showed a little balance now and then it'd be forgivable - are any of you posting a single mention critical of gladys and our government for slashing funding to the RFS? you keep posting about 'greenies' blocking burns, under labor AND LNP - when was labor in power again? 10 years ago or more? what's your excuse now? and people talking about indigenous people burning - well... sure. 200 years ago the climate was different. but on top of that, we used to practice small patchwork burns all the time - even under labor, as well as LNP. the thing is, with lack of funding, we're now burning off plenty - but - the're huge, huge burns covering tens of thousands of hectares in one go. this is not even remotely similar to how the indigenous people did it, and what this does is turn a cool burn into a hot fire, plus totally kills essential soil microorganisms which work to break down fallen trees into a humus layer which is 100% essential if you don't want a cycle flipping from drought to flood then back to more drought - losing ever more topsoil every time it rains, rather than that water soaking in - this is why we're seeing trees which are hundreds of years old starting to drop dead right before our eyes. you keep talking about climate hoaxes and inner city fringe lunatics but you haven't got a clue because you haven't been to places like this and seen the actual very real changes happening. your expertise is non-existent and your talk about australia always being a place of fires is rubbish - we might have had big fires like ash wednesday, black saturday - but this many fires in August? come ON! the greatest changes have taken place in the last decade, at an accelerating rate - even redneck farmers up here have realized now what's going on - you inner city latte sippers have no clue - you're just parroting what Murdoch and the mining companies want you to believe with no actual REAL on the ground knowledge. as i said - if you actually cared, you'd be just as angry at our government as 99% of RFS are - and those retired RFS leaders are able to speak up - people still having jobs aren't able to say boo - because if they do, they'll lose their jobs. it really makes your platitudes seem like crocodile tears. if you actually have so much hate for the greenies - maybe match that with the ones who stole your water (joyce, littleproud) and the ones hiding right now (SCOMO) who are there in canberra behind closed doors RIGHT NOW - ignoring our cries for help, slashing funding to the RFS, keeping 100 or more fire units from being bought while they give themselves a pay rise - denying our farmers and battlers basic human decency of giving them water - because they've either sold it to the chinese (all profits to their own personal families btw - because they used their power to first hand over those rights to themselves) - or adani - 12 billion liters per year, basically forever. or gina - free, unlimited water to wash rocks with - while farmers? according to joyce and scomo - those losers need to get another job. wow. so the backbone of australia, are now classed as bludgers too? nice work national. as i said you arseholes are outing yourselves as what you've always been - you're not sticking up for real Australia at all - you're simply arseholes more interested in being arseholes to 'lefties' than you are about Australia's future - or the REAL criminals here who are robbing YOU blind and preparing to murder you all just as they're currently doing to those in the bush. despite appearances here, greenies are actually on your side. divide and conquer is working pretty well. i wonder... by the time you work this out and shit is so dire you try to bail to some other country, will you be super surprised when other places treat us the way we've been treating refugees this last few years? that'd be ironic, wouldn't it? :/
07.01.2022 I have this episode of QnA on file if anyone is interested.
05.01.2022 Fun new toys Also, I'm playing a solo acoustic show at Seagulls Resort Townsville this tonight. 5.30pm start by the bar, on the deck overlooking the pool. I can think of worse ways to spend a Friday evening
04.01.2022 The line-up of performers for our next concert certainly gets our stamp of approval! Don't miss out on this awesome concert on Sunday 24 November. Details in the link below... https://www.facebook.com/events/709798752823290/
03.01.2022 Check it! Local creatives doing awesome things for and with other local creatives!
02.01.2022 A fun gig today with Caitlyn Goodes, Jason Clark, Mark Hillman, the Lettuce Dance Band and yours truly. Definitely plenty of variety in this Townsville Community Music Centre show!
