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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Benita Kolovos Victorian state correspondent

Fast-tracking or ploughing through? Renewable energy shaping up as defining issue for Victorian election

Grazier Peter Watts leans on a fence on his property, with wind turbines visible in the background
Grazier Peter Watts near the Coonooer Bridge windfarm, on his property 20km south of Charlton, in Central Victoria. Photograph: Stuart Walmsley/The Guardian

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

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