ABSTRACT
This chapter presents three eco-activist stories about Yarloop, a small rural town south-east of Perth in WA. It outlines the creation and history of the local activist group, Community Alliance for Positive Solutions Inc (CAPS), to show why some community members came to undertake activism. The chapter provides some examples of their proactive and resistive strategies over an extended period of conflict in a slow violence situation. It explores issues of leadership in the aftermath of the bush fire and some of the author’s challenges in undertaking the research. The conflict began in the late 1990s with health concerns about emissions from Alcoa’s alumina refinery at Wagerup, just two kilometres from the northern outskirts of Yarloop. The international and government research evidence at the time was inconclusive with regard to health impacts from alumina refineries. An unrelenting desire for justice for their people has sustained CAPS members for more than a decade to the present time.
