DAYNE PRATZKY, aka Frackman, is not your average eco-warrior, taking on the persona of bogan superhero with “No Fracking Way” splayed across his hazmat suit.
The former tunnel digger and logger—who enjoys pig hunting—joined the anti-fracking movement in 2009 when a bloke in a suit drove onto his 100-hectare property in rural Queensland and said gas wells were going to be sunk on his land.
“My response was ‘get in your car and fuck off’” Pratzky recalls. “Then I researched fracking and discovered all these ordinary people—I’m talking families and mums and dads from places like Pennsylvania and Texas—were really badly affected by it. It wasn’t the usual suspects, like politicians or environmental groups with a cause, but everyday, ordinary people.”
Following the stoush, Praztky embarked on a one-man crusade against coal seam gas hydraulic fracturing—fracking for short—by organising blockades of trucks and bringing national media attention to gas bubbles leaking from the bed of the Condamine River.
“When big industry with powerful lobbyists gets hold of our governments, they don’t just contaminate our water—they contaminate our democracy,” he says.
The 41-year-old says in the years since he started his crusade his two pig hunting dogs have been poisoned, his house broken into seven times and his car windscreen is constantly being smashed.
Tara, Queensland. Photographs from a week of anti Coal Seam Gas mining protests around Tara, Queensland in conjunction with the documentary film, “Frackman” being produced by Smith & Nasht. The documentary centres on anti CSG mining activist, Dayne “The Frackman” Pratzky, a local Tara resident. Photo: Andrew Quilty / Oculi for Smith & Nasht.
WA documentary maker Richard Todd—who fought off a mining project near Margaret River in 2010—was intrigued by Pratzky and followed him around for years, chronicling his crusade in the documentary, Frackman the movie.
He says the film’s release in WA is extremely topical as a two-year state government inquiry into fracking is expected to be completed this year.
Commercial fracking has not started in WA but exploration permits have been approved: “This doesn’t just affect Aboriginal people living in remote sites in the Kimberley—it’s right on our doorstep.”
Recently, Buru Energy was allowed to frack in WA’s north without an environmental protection authority assessment, leading to a fracking network on Yawuru land without permission last year.
Sydney-based company AWE discovered what could be WA’s largest onshore gas field in the Perth Basin and this has led to the early stages of three wells.
Fracking supporters say the mining process—fracturing rock with high-pressure water and sucking out the gas—has relatively minor environmental impacts, is done far enough away from aquifers to have no effect on water sources and is a relatively inexpensive way to access plentiful fuel.
But critics are vehement in their opposition, claiming fracking contaminates water and can cause earthquakes.
“I think the recent cases in America are pretty black and white—fracking is not good for the environment,” Todd says.
In February the Tasmanian state Liberal government extended is moratorium on fracking for another five years.
Frackman is showing at Hoyts Millennium in Fremantle on May 28.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK
