People's Blockade of the World's biggest Coal Port 2011

Join hundreds of other people in a fun, peaceful, and effective action against Australia's single biggest contribution to climate change.

What's happening
Hundreds of people, young and old, will peacefully occupy Newcastle Harbour, and prevent the passage of coal ships. This will be the sixth action of its kind in Newcastle. No one has ever been arrested. This is a legal protest and the police have been duly notified. At the last three blockades we successfully stopped all ship movements in the harbour for the entire day.

There'll be plenty happening on the shore too, so please come along and show your support even if you can't get out on the water. Good food will be available by donation.

There'll be a ceremony of home made rafts! Check out the funky floating masterpieces, and enter your own creation!

What about boats?
Bring you're canoe, kayak, tinnie, surfboard, whatever pleasure craft you like. Don't have you're own boat, and don't fancy yourself a raft-maker? That's fine. Rising Tide is organising as many kayaks as we can, and making them available for general use. If you have access to a multitude of kayaks, please get in touch!

What about safety?
There will be fast rescue boats generously provided and operated by Greenpeace. If you get into trouble, someone will save you. We will also have a first aid tent on shore.

Why should we blockade the coal port?
As we witness the increasing devastation of climate change in Australia and around the world we must turn up the heat on the coal industry, Australia's single biggest, and fastest growing contribution to climate change.

Newcastle, already the world's biggest coal port, opened its third coal terminal last year, bringing the export capacity of the Hunter Valley coal chain to an incredible 178 million tonnes of coal per annum. That's the climate change equivalent of 30 Bayswater Power Stations (nearly equal to Australia's entire carbon pollution from all sources). A fourth coal terminal is on the cards, and within ten years, the coal corporations plan on exporting more than 300 million tonnes of coal per annum.

Tripling coal exports means tripling coal mining. As Newcastle coal exports boom, more precious bushland will be razed, more waterways polluted, more communities ripped apart as the transnational coal companies carve their way westwards into the Liverpool plains. The profits will be exported, but the devastation will stay here in the Hunter. The catastrophic effects of climate change will be felt all around the world.

This madness has to stop. The climate crisis is deepening, and time is fast running out. Politicians are failing to take action against the rampant coal companies, so we have to do it ourselves.

Hundreds of people will be doing just that in Newcastle on 13th March 2011, and we'd love you to join us! We'll be taking to the harbour in a big way, occupying the world's biggest coal port with a mass of people, and demanding:

* An independent Federal economic inquiry into all the costs and benefits of the coal industry in Australia

*An immediate ban on the massive expansion of the coal industry in Australia

* A swift phase out of coal, replacing all coal industry jobs with jobs in renewable energy and other sustainable industries.