Toora Wind Farm

…or how to ruin one of the prettiest spots on the planet.

A few months ago my business took me to Victoria’s South Gippsland coast, past a tiny town named Toora. A side road leads northward to a lookout, at an elevation of about 220 metres, giving spectacular vistas across Bass Strait (click photos to enlarge):

You can certainly imagine the wind blowing a lot up here, and it was when I visited. But is that enough of a reason to destroy the beauty with another bloody wind farm?

Plenty of helpful information for the casual visitor:

The foreign owner doesn’t seem to mind the despoiling of the Australian countryside; they seem actually rather proud of it.

And the noise? I stood almost right underneath one turbine as it was turning at a rate I measured at about 15 revolutions per minute. I’ll try to describe it: imagine a flexible plastic tube of about 1 inch diameter, with a length about a yard (or 2.5 centimetres and 1 metre if you prefer). You hold one end up to your ear, while another person whispers into the other end, whishhh, whishhh, whishhh… After a few minutes listening to it, I definitely felt slightly dizzy, and I now have no doubt as to the detrimental effects of infrasound I have read about.

All for how much electricity produced?