The Great Turbulence took 20% of Victoria’s landmass on April 1st, 2030! Most of the Bellarine Peninsula, following a jagged line north to Ballarat, thence southwesterly, including the cities of Colac, Camperdown, Hamilton, Warrnambool, Portland, Coleraine across to Mount Gambier, and numerous smaller centres, simply disappeared. A massive earthquake, molten lava, a cataclysmic series of eruptions as the volcanic reawakening tore through the regions, turning everything into a jelly-like slush, that over the coming week slid off into Bass Strait!
South Eastern Australia had embarked upon a massive expansion of its hydraulic fracking activities. Federal Energy Minister of the day, Tug Seamor talked of research showing commercially rewarding returns from fracking, in the old caldera of SE Australia’s extensive magmatic volcanic uplifts.
Almost all of the 400 calderas, stretching out between Mount Macedon and Mount Gambier were under scrutiny. Many, by 2025 were covered by fracking licences held by the international energy consortium, Hydraulic Oil & Alternatives Xploration Ltd. Their CEO, Louise Muscovy’s [nee Seamor] commitment to delivering lower prices, supply securities and virtually unlimited, renewal energy reserves, was beautifully wrapped in appropriately syrupy, sweet, political jargon. Even before the first holes were drilled, share prices were in free-climb, punters eager to get a toe-hold, “money for jam…”, a bonanza, driving a frenzied market.
Against this noisy, speculative madness, little was heard of the dissenting advisory group, Vulcanic Observatory & Intraplate Consultative Enterprise Pty Ltd. CEO, Tim Nimbello was urging caution, based upon extensive historical research into earlier Icelandic, and Indonesian volcanic-sourced gas extraction mishaps.
Records suggest it was at one of the early ‘fracks’, where hot magma was first encountered. Company hydrologists were able to dismiss the intersection as an anomaly, authorising deeper penetrations into a satisfactorily-rewarding gas field. Good news travels at lightning speeds, early successes driving HOAX prices stratospherically. But the not-so-good news travels like a tortoise.
By early 2030, a network of extractive infrastructure was connecting Portland Bay, the massively expanded export hub, with the world. Tankers jostled for moorings, the Port, a bustling hive of opportunities. Employment, across Victoria, and much of Australia was intensely focussing on the energy sector, the call for engineers, hydrologists, system analysts, surveyors, and of course the heavy machinery maintenance teams, drivers, loaders, night-time entertainers, spivs and semi-skilled labourers.
It was welder, Antonio Incendio who had the dubious distinction of being the first casualty. He and his team were working on the Mount Buninyong caldera. Spears had penetrated down to 5,000m and were capped, waiting for Tony’s team to complete the intricate welds necessary to connect the well into the network. Mates recollect super-heated steam erupting adjacent to Tony’s station. Seconds later, a deafening cacophony, a roar. Tony disappeared, the team ran as the mountain dissolved, the township of Buninyong swallowed.
The only survivor, Mustapha Mahomed, sustaining burns to 75% of his body, was subsequently interviewed from the hospital. Through hiccupping tears, his softly-delivered account of molten lava, house-sized boulders, a sulphurous, enveloping cloud, screams of terror, serpentine redness, oozing, shocked the nation! Shock turned to horror as the eruptions continued over the following week, cities dissolving, thousands of square kilometres simply slithering into “…a new Australian Bight”!
Like ducks in a row, 174 of the 350-odd calderas connected to the gas-extraction network simply exploded, in a cataclysmic display felt around the planet!
CEO Muscovy was initially taken into custody. That first accident claimed 2,324 lives, but hundreds of thousands of people were to perish that week, hundreds of billions worth of infrastructure and the confidence of a nation were shattered!
The entire magmatic field was obliterated. A Royal Commission was established. An early finding, leaked from a source unauthorized to speak, suggested that “the activity was anomalous”, 99% likely to be a one-off event, triggered by mistakes made by the welding team as they worked to tap that gas reservoir on Mount Buninyong. New regulatory procedures were agreed, but volcanic fracking remained off industrial agendas.
Estimates of the death toll ranged between 750,000 and 1 million people in that first week. The impact sent the national economy into a recession, the Greens called for a government of National Unity, and HOAX Ltd was declared bankrupt. No criminal charges were ever laid, but instead, its CEO and Directors were banned from holding executive office for ten years!
Next week marks the centenary of that volcanic implosion with satellite and drone imagery of the conflagration continuing to be played, capturing countless moments of horror, titillatory vision, writ large and reported at the time as a “Warning to the World”*.
*Borrowed from the original title of Wilfred Burchett’s Hiroshima expose.