Power to the people.

I travelled up to Tamworth on the weekend and saw several opportunities to take some photos around Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales. The city limits have the sign "Welcome to The Upper Hunter Valley. Bursting with energy" as there is lots of a) COAL and b) Power plants powered by coal and c) power lines.

Now one is a moral quandry here.......

Does one take photos and comment as part of Green agenda (look at all these filthy power plants spewing CO2 into the atmosphere adding to the Greenhouse effect and look at the impact of these coal mines on the environment)?

Or does one take a "wonder of modern engineering" aspect, man vs nature (and wins), taking into account the massive-ness of the whole operation with hundreds of interested companies, thousands of people and billions of dollars??....

Or perhaps looks at the economic benefit/detriment angle? (BTW Australia is in good shape economics wise as we export tons of coal overseas to power overseas generators that power the factories that sell us back goods....)

Or does one take the man-made forms in nature angle and look entirely at the aesthetics of the whole deal?

Or does one take this conspiratorial stance. How this plays into "the man's" hands in term of economics, control of the population and the non-possibility of alternative power sources, given the political and economic power of the companies in control?

I'm not sure, so I've posted a little from aspects of each train of thought.

Here I was, ducking around with a camera taking pictures of power plants and coal mines...... expecting agents-of-the-man to stop me..... as it seemed to be "suspicious behaviour". ....even from my own perspective.

I did a couple of U turns in a couple of places, found a great angle, hopped out of the car and took some snapshots in the middle of no-where. Got back in the car, found another spot, did a U-turn, backed it up, hopped out and took another couple of pics. I did this several times.

Creative behaviour can seem a little abnormal in this "normal world".

That is the "crackdown on freedoms" part of it, I suppose. Should I feel guilty and a little fearful of taking some photos of pretty cool scenes and sharing them?

Anyway, I hope people enjoy my observations as much as I did (or didn't) making them. There are quite a few posts (and lots of pictures) below taking the above themes.