The importance of MOONBI

Excerpt Fraser Island Bulldog (chapter 2), a memoir by John Sinclair

At the time of the formation of FIDO when mining leases were being opposed in the Mining Warden’s court, (Christmas New Year 1970-71), one of the methods we had of keeping Fraser Island in the news in the light of media reluctance to promote the issue was through our ever-growing network. We had almost 500 members and a very large distribution list. Thus, I documented our side of the case as concisely as I could and then included these articles in our FIDO newsletter MOONBI. It was sent far and wide. Thus, despite being ignored by some of the commercial media, FIDO’s story of Fraser Island had an enviable circulation and was being relayed to friends, neighbours and relatives of the recipients.

MOONBI had a huge flow-on effect and I found myself constantly at the handle of the old Gestetner duplicating machine running off hundreds of copies of every edition, then with the assistance of my family and a small team collating, folding them and posting them out. It was tedious but the effort and expense was well justified. It still is. After more than forty years later I am still producing MOONBI with some slightly more sophisticated tools of the computer and using commercial photocopying machines. MOONBI became one of the more widely read conservation journals and was to help our cause enormously.