The Great GECO Scone Action

Scotty slaved over a hot stove for hours baking an abundance of scones. We scoured the valley for the best homemade jams. And then we set off to blockade a working coupe near Big River, in Ellery.

The GECO truck full of Greenies with scones and the necessary tea making paraphenalia arrived before dawn in the calm before the ring of chainsaws and dozers set to work in this lush patch of old growth forest.

We had the fire going and the tea and scones at the ready for when the workers arrived. However when they saw people lounged across their dozer and logloader and what looked like people locked-on underneath they weren't into staying around. We offered scones and a cup of tea - but they declined our offer. Photograph - Shelly Nundra

We had the fire going and the tea and scones at the ready for when the workers arrived. However when they saw people lounged out across their dozer and logloader and what looked like people locked-on underneath they weren't into staying around. We offered scones and a cup of tea - but they declined our offer.

They returned a little later with some East Gippsland Logging thugs in tow. Things got a little more aggressive this time and the dozer operator ran to start his machine while someone was underneath. He revved it a bit but didn't move it - which was lucky, for the protester underneath was determined and hadn't budged.

One of the EGL thugs was Mr Peter Capes, who is more commonly known as the Ada River Psycho due to a previous action. (He is now employed as a forest operations supervisor with EGL, thus he is responsible for ensuring that all environmental regualtions are adhered to.) Well it was none other than the Ada River Psycho leading the loggers in this little burst of aggro.

One of the protesters disturbed by the turn of events exclaimed "this was supposed to be peaceful, we even brought scones". And the response from the Pyscho of course we don't want your f.....ng scones you stupid looking bitch.

Things dissipated and the loggers left again and we remained to eat our scones alone. It was a fair wait before the police arrived. But when they did we simply packed up and began leaving before they even started threatening arrests. The cops were cheery if not a bit perplexed by our unusual behaviour. The Ada River Pyscho had one last go by trying to run us over while we were sitting in a circle and debriefing.

All in all it was a really successful action, we stopped logging for half a day with no arrests.