There was a massive shit fight when the natural gas fueled Newport power station was being proposed, and ultimately built. It’s a few kilometres from the Melbourne, Victoria CBD. Its job was to cope with heavy electricity loads, particularly in winter. Loads that couldn’t be handled by the dirty, CO2 factories that are the coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley, much further away from Melbourne.

Greed for electricity created the need for the power station and it was an interesting decision to put the station right near where most of that greed is generated. Could be a solution for the eventual replacement of those crappy power stations down in the “Valley”: sprinkle them throughout the suburbs.

In keeping with typical responses to environmental embarrassments, there has been lots of work done around the Newport power station to placate angst. In the process, a largish planting has been done of indigenous plants; most on the eastern-most spit for the hot water outlet channel leading from the power station.

Putting aside the irony of recreation of the natural environment beside the station (ruefully described as a “Corridors of Green” project) the spot is worth a visit to see how beautiful the native vegetation is, and to mull over how beautiful the whole area must have once been.

It’s a reminder why utter despair was a factor in rapidly falling birth rates for the first nation Kulin people who lived in and around Melbourne. (Not to mention the other small matters of taking away food sources, introduction of disease, creation of a welfare dependency; all the the things we Australians did very efficiently.)