VETERAN peaceful environmental activist, Murray ‘Muzz’ Drechsler visited Newry Forest Blockade’s Camp Nunguu last week delivering the rego papers for the new solar powered unit which houses a fridge and communications charging station.

A handyman fixer, Muzz converted the donated trailer and solar panels into a travelling power station for the campers who diligently work to protect the unique ocean-to-mountain forests on the Coffs Coast.

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Muzz is the founder of Mystery Dingo Environmental Tours, a protest-camp tour company fuelled in purpose by his life goal of “justice – environmental justice, governmental justice, Indigenous justice”, he told News Of The Area.

Muzz’s work is peaceful direct action, or civil disobedience, rather than the indirect action of lobbying and signing petitions.

“Civil disobedience is how Gandhi got the English out of India; and how Rosa Parks’ resistance to racial segregation was effective; and how the Aborigine people got the classification as human beings rather than flora and fauna in 1967 – peacefully protesting.”

In ten years of active protesting, Muzz has “caused much havoc, pain and financial loss to greedy corporations and dishonest, power-hungry governments”.

“I didn’t wake up one day and think I need to look after the environment.

“I was born with respect and knowledge for country, I understood nature before I understood humans.

“Joh Bjelke-Petersen (QLD premier ’68-’87) created many staunch activists, in reaction to his dictatorship.”

A Mullumbimby man, Muzz visits Camp Nunguu to participate in their education program which includes workshops to empower supporters, new and long-time.

“My proudest moment…I led the first blockade of a coal mine in Australia at Maules Creek against Whitehaven Coal…three-and-a-half years, three thousand people actively protesting, four hundred and fifty arrests and they still built the mine, chopping down Laird State Forest which was a critically endangered ecological community before the mine was built – now it just f*****d.

“Once they got the first coal out, we had to pack up which left a lot of activists very angry; that’s why the Stop Adani campaign was so big, we’d learned what it would need to stop a mine.”

For more information about Mystery Dingo Environmental Tours visit https://www.patreon.com/mysterydingo.

By Andrea FERRARI