To Save a Beach
The Story of Reckless Renewables
Sandra Bourke
Foreword by Chris Uhlmann
Release date: Mid-October 2026
Paperback, 350+ pages, $39.95
ISBN: 9781923568969
When plans for offshore wind turbines reach Hawks Nest, Sandra Bourke believes she is fighting to save one beach: endangered petrels, migrating whales and the community bound to its shore.
She discovers a much bigger map of Australia.
With Bruce and campervan Rogue, Sandra crosses rainforests, cattle country, coastal towns, farming valleys and polling booths, meeting Australians resisting turbines, grid solar, pumped hydro and transmission lines as the machinery of government rolls on.
But beneath the campaign runs a darker current: intimidation, division, and hatred gathering force while those in power look away. The closer Sandra comes to power, the clearer the pattern becomes: warnings dismissed, dissent vilified, the government pressing on without listening.
To Save a Beach is a hard-hitting narrative non-fiction about reckless renewables, political power, and democracy. It asks what remains of the social contract when government stops listening, and what Australians do when looking away is no longer an option.
About the author:
Sandra Bourke is an Australian former federal law enforcement officer, national security specialist, and political advocate. She is currently the Director of Myall Coast Consulting Services. In 2024-25, she served as a spokesperson for ADVANCE, a conservative political group, and is a prominent critic of large-scale renewable energy projects in regional areas.
Gems from the book:
Our energy security is being eroded, our costs are rising, and our environmental footprint is getting bigger. Look at the land and the sea being taken. We are walking towards the top of a cliff, blindfolded, and the cliff is collapsing towards us. It’s a kind of stupid, self-destructive national suicide. Chapter 9: The Cost, Professor Stephen Wilson, Brisbane, Queensland.
What is happening out here in rural communities is out-of-sight and out-of-mind for city people. Out here we see the destruction first-hand. The stories from communities around the country are horrifying, and we are ringing the alarm bells. Once we lose our precious Australian landscapes and habitats, they will be gone for good. Chapter 14: Katy McCallum, Borumba Pumped Hydro, Black Snake Range, Queensland.
Across the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone, developers have drawn up more than fifty wind and solar projects. If they all proceed, this district will carry upward of a thousand turbines and nine million solar panels, along with the transmission lines and substations that follow them. Build all of it, and the embodied energy swallows any benefit the machines might ever return. What stays behind is the local wreckage: productive farmland surrendered to steel. You would struggle to invent a worse way to make bulk electricity. It ruins the countryside and turns neighbour against neighbour. I want to stay. So, one question sits with me from waking to dark: how do we stop this? Chapter 13: Grant and Annette Piper, Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone.
The mass media in Australia is not asking our politicians the hard questions. Can Chris Bowen please show us a map of where these renewables are going? Where are they planned? Where are they proposed? What’s the cumulative impact? What are the issues for regional communities, high-value agriculture, high-value biodiversity? Chapter 10: The Cartographer with a Camera, Steven Nowakowski, Ravenshoe, Queensland.
