I have a special bowl in my house. It is black, both in and outside.
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It is filled to the rim with water. When you look into it you see a reflection of your face floating in the black nothingness.
It has a title: “When you drink water, remember its source.”
After attending the showing of Our Power – a film about the Hazelwood coal mine in the Latrobe Valley – at our local cinema recently, I am tempted to create a set of stickers to place next to my electric switches, which states: “When you use power, remember its source.”
The film tells the story of the power industry at the Latrobe Valley, and focused for a large part on that devastating fire which burned for 45 days during 2014 in the open cut mine.
It showered Morwell with smoke and ash and, in the process, created a terrible health risk. In addition, it frightened the locals since many had no other place to go. This industry is now closed.
What has been occupying my mind is he fact that although the Latrobe Valley used to supply 80 per cent of Victoria’s power needs, they never seem to meet the insatiable demand for electricity unless we, the users, change our ways.
In the main we take electricity, and our relentless use of it, for granted.
When you feel a little cool do you crank up the heater instead of putting on a jumper? When it gets a little warmer do you reach for the control to turn up the air conditioning?
Is it a matter of discerning our needs from our wants?
Of understanding that our needs are easily satisfied but that our wants are, and will, never be satisfied? Wanting never stops.
I was amazed some time ago when a tradie plugged two of his electric tools, plus his phone, into one of my electricity outlets without asking my permission.
Another example of taking the use of power/electricity for granted. While many people are using power with care, there are countless industries that keep on pumping out designs for more and more devices that use more and more inordinate amounts of electricity.
Devices which, for some unknown reason, need continuous replacing/upgrading.
Just think of it. This power industry is where many workers are spending the best part of their lives.
“The roar of the furnaces, the rattle of the conveyors, and the occasional whoop of a siren marked out both day and night at Hazelwood. The pungent smell of brown coal permeates the air, and the fine particles would work their way into your clothes, hair and shoes. The noise also represented continuity of employment for more than 450 workers who go about their heavy work in that terrible environment.”
For what? To provide power for electric toothbrushes?
This was not mentioned in the film and to me seems an important part of our considerations.
The forgotten aspect of the creation, in relation to the use/misuse, of this absolutely magical resource.
The fire which seems to have been the result of the spontaneous combustion of the coal in the mine surely was a not too subtle pointer that we are doing something wrong here.
After the movie there was Q and A session. One question from the floor expressed interest in what would happen to the land and that gaping big hole now that the industry was closed.
On the way home I had an idea – create a huge sculpture by using the hole for a landfill project.
Then use all the discarded white goods plus other electricity devouring devices, which for some reason or another we are meant to continuously update, and replacing the emptiness of the hole with the now useless stuff for which the hole was created in the first place.
The work’s title: “When you turn on the power, remember its source.”