Mike Campbell OAM (left) with CEN Executive - Gary Chestnut, John Asquith and Samantha Willis.

29 January 2025

ALAN HAYES

 

ALWAYS a team player, Mike Campbell has been fighting environment issues, and for the community, for 50 years, but like so many individuals who care about the importance of protecting and preserving the fragility of our planet, do-what-they-do without the expectation of reward or recognition.

 

He, along with the late and well-known identity Morry Breen, and on behalf of the schools and community, managed to prevent the destruction of Riley’s Island – a campaign that ran from 1977 to 1980. It was a classic tale of community and union strength, which was underestimated by Hooker Developments, culminating in a ‘Green Ban’ that stymied work on the site.

 

Mike Campbell said that the Riley’s Island all came to a head at a meeting in Gosford, when community members and union delegates met with Hookers, their lawyers and Gosford Council. The developers said, “What’s this about a so-called green ban stopping us?” To which Morry Breen replied, “What this means is that there will be no telephone services, electricity services, no postal services, in fact no work will be done on the Island, according to community’s wishes, and you will have to advertise this fact in your sales brochures!!”

 

The Hooker lawyers were unimpressed with Breen’s statement, crying, “You can’t do that!”

 

“It’s done ...your too late,” came the wry reply.

 

It was a community victory that saw the land bought back by the then Labor State Government, thanks to local politicians Frank Walker, Brian McGowan and Keith O’Connell.

 

“Politics in the 70’s and 80’s was a much simpler matter then,” Mike Cambell said. “Far-more-black-and-white than it is now. Now it’s smoke and mirrors, double speak, double dealing and shafting - happening so often.”

 

Mike and the team applied the same pressure to prevent Wyong’s sewerage Norah Head outfall being built but was thwarted by Government pressure.

 

He worked with others in the Wyong community to fight off development of a sea-plane base on Tacoma Oval and to save destruction of Wyong Old School Park by having the new courthouse built where it now stands.

 

“Always there was a team effort involved; many names not mentioned,” Mike said.

 

In the late 1970’s a proposed power station was to be built by ELCOM at Chittaway. This would have transformed Wyong itself into a polluted, heavy industrial site. Fortunately, Mike Campbell, along with other stalwart community activists, was there to stand against a power company giant.

 

The ELCOM power station proposal was not the last push to try and annex Wyong, Tuggerah, Wyong Creek and Jilliby – swallowing them up as the southern extension of the Hunter/Central Coast coal and power industry. In 1983, Mike joined with Tony Spiers and others, including residents of the Dooralong and Yarramalong Valleys, to fight the electricity commission once again. The massive battle to prevent two power stations and ten coal mines from being built began.

 

After the enormous effort, and four exhausting years, culminating in victory, to stop the Mardi and Olney Power Stations in the early 1980s, campaigns were then needed to save Pioneer Dairy (now Central Coast Wetlands, Tuggerah Nature Reserve and Central Coast Sporting Complex) from eventually being sold off.

 

“Those campaigns in 1996 and 1997 involved people like John Asquith (Community Environment Network), the late Councillor John Axford, and Tacoma’s Neil Hinton and their respective teams,” Mike said.

 

Mike Campbell’s commitment to his community did not go unnoticed. In 2004 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his then 30-year dedication and commitment for the benefit of others. “It came out of the blue,” Mike said. “There were others who were just as noteworthy.”

 

A life member and past president of the Dooralong Progress Association, Mike has always been immersed in community issues. Yet resting on his laurels and taking life easy was not to become a reality – a duel spectre was looming on the horizon; coal seam methane gas mining and longwall coal mining were about to cast a new threat over the Central Coast. A threat that could have seen the obliteration of the Central Coast’s major drinking water catchment.

 

Mike took up the challenge yet again as a team player in the gas mining fight, joining with community activists and stalwarts and many others to secure victory after only fifteen months. It was a community victory that had the Carr Labor Government legislate to excise the Central Coast’s water catchment district from the Onshore Petroleum Lease Area (PEL 5).

 

On the heels of the proposed gas mining, the South Korean Government-owned mining giant, KORES, was hell-bent on extracting coal for 42-years beneath the water catchment district. It was a project that would have seen the loss of a major water resource that would have taken 500-years to recover.

 

But the first whispers of the coal mining project began with BHP Billiton in 1996, who later sold to the South Koreans – again Mike Campbell was there in the thick of the campaign and with the forming of the community group ‘Central Coast Mine Stop’.

 

In 2006, when the South Korean Government took over the mine lease, ‘Mine Stop’ rebadged itself as the Australian Coal Alliance – the 25-year campaign to victory became dynamic; the familiar Water Not Coal slogan was everywhere.

 

“The last 20-years of the coal fight to protect our drinking water was the most dynamic campaign that I’ve been involved in,” Mike Campbell said. “It’s a long story indeed; a book waiting to be written.”

 

“I have worked with most other environmental activists here on the coast at some point,” he said. “Those I miss most now are Morry Breen, Peter Clifford, Freddy Keep, Don Craig, Ron Sokowloski, Jim Thomson and Tony Kirk.  Other recent people we have lost as well.”

 

Last December, Mike Campbell was recognised by the Central Coast’s Community Environment Network (CEN). He received the 2024 BAT (Be A Team) Award.

 

Deputy Chair of CEN, John Asquith said, the BAT Award is given to a person who has put in a valiant effort on behalf of the environment and sustainability. “I’m pleased to present this year’s award to Mike Campbell, a founding member of the CEN.”

 

“Mike worked with the great Central Coast environmentalist Allen Strom on a campaign to save the Wyong Valleys with a pivotal land study,” he said.

 

“He has been a long-term campaigner to protect Porters Creek Wetland, the largest wetland on the Tuggerah Lakes and was involved in another campaign to stop the building of a chemical plant by Bayer at Wyong. His environmental activism spans decades.”

 

Mike Campbell was a member of the Pioneer Dairy Trust Board for a decade and a member of the Tuggerah Biodiversity Committee on a campaign to protect and restore the lakes and helped to produce a report on the Wetlands of Tuggerah Lakes.

 

Mike’s commitment to CEN continues and was their treasurer for more than ten years. He helped set up CEN’s old and new nurseries and continues to be active on the Central Coast Community Better Planning Group and with Future Sooner’s campaigns to close Vales Point and Eraring Power Stations.

 

“Mike continues to be an active member of the Central Coast Community Better Planning Group and Future Sooner,” John Asquith said.

 

Mike Campbell has always been immersed in community issues. He worked at Wyong High School as farm manager for 15 years and at Jilliby School and believes that young people’s future and the environment are the most critical issues.

 

Mike said, “I could not have managed all these things without the support of my wife Lyn and my two boys Joe and Jamie, who had to endure a lot over all those years.”

 

Mike Campbell is a local hero who has given unselfishly of his time as a team player for the benefit of others.

 

The fire in his belly is still there!

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE to the Grapevine News Online and to the monthly e-book edition of the Grapevine Community Weekly. Our online news platform and monthly newspaper is about real local news and events. We will not spam you or share your details with third parties.