Most landholders in regional Victoria support renewable energy – if they get a say. But planning approvals are riding roughshod over community concerns
The wind never really stops on Peter Watts’ hill. On his grazing property, 90km north-west of Bendigo, it sweeps in across the plains and picks up strength as it climbs. “I can go up there any time of the day,” Watts says. “It might be completely still down here but it’s always windy up there.”
For five generations, the hill was just part of the landscape. Then, in 2002, scientists told him it was the “perfect spot” for a windfarm. Developers came knocking a decade later, proposing to build six turbines on the hill, each one 95 metres high