Green day: Bridget Ure is one of the faces driving the push toward sustainability in the Geelong region.
Andrew Mathieson
BRIDGET Ure was hooked from the day she smelt the fumes of pollution and heard the chants of protest.
Living in bayside Melbourne as a pensive 15-year-old, she had become accustomed to sandy beaches and green trees framing her backyard.
“It was back when the Alexandra Parade median strips were being removed and was joining onto the Eastern Freeway,” she reflects now.
“There was a big uproar about pollution and a few of us ended up making a tram out of cardboard just for the protest. We participated in what I’d say was a passive protest and we were in the paper.”
The protest was a turning point, enough to convince Bridget of her new calling.
She became environmental warrior, a face behind a cause.
The schoolgirl immediately signed up to volunteer countless hours for Friends of the Earth.
“I’m sometimes the defender of the undefendable – that’s what the environment is in some way,” she declares.
“Someone has to stand up and speak.”
Bridget is not just about tough words.
“I walk the talk,” she happily boasts.
Bridget has cut down on her water use and consumer goods, never takes paper or plastic bags at the supermarket checkout and has been a vegetarian for the past 16 years.
Now 31, she left the congestion of Melbourne for the surf of Ocean Grove before joining Geelong Sustainability Group.
Now Barwon Water hires her to monitor water conservation during tough times.
“I love the coast and I like to surf,” she adds.
“I also ride my bike from Ocean Grove to work in South Geelong.
“I do own a car but if the bus services were a little bit more regular to Geelong, a bus rather than a car would probably be an option.”
Bridget sells the message like a missionary preaching in the South Pacific.
She’s quick to point to Easter Island – known commonly for its 887 moai statues – as an example of a civilisation that collapsed because it run down its natural resources.
“My point of view is that, regardless of climate change or not, the way we live is currently not sustainable.”
Sustaining civilisation is just one challenge. Rehabilitating an ecosystem damaged by the effects of acid rain in a neglected former Communist bloc is another.
Bridget was one of only 12 environmentalists from eight countries who Earthwatch handpicked to travel to the Czech Republic for the clean-up mission.
They monitored sites around the Jizera mountains near the Polish border to collect water samples in streams, check on fish breeding and habitats, gauge soil acidity and measure tree heights and oxygen and temperatures levels inside them.
“They call it the black triangle this region,” she explains, “because there are three coal-fire power stations in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.
“There’s quite a real heavy industry in this part of the world.”
One of the stations’ sulphur emissions was responsible for the acid rain. For decades the water supply was contaminated, killing aquatic life and weakening trees.
A world away now from acid rain, Bridget can still raise a smile over her experience with Earthwatch. The volunteers, for one, installed new weather stations for Prague scientists to improve monitoring of temperature, water and soil measurements.
“There were some times when I was standing on the mountains, looking out over everything and thinking how amazing it was,” Bridget sighs.
“This is the sort of job you do for no pay.”
