It's the town residents want to escape from, but they simply can't.
The PFAS contamination of Williamtown, or the red zone, has been plaguing the residents since the scandal was revealed in September 2015.
Kim-Leeanne King is just one of the many who lives along Cabbage Tree Road, one of the areas within the primary contaminated zones from PFAS. It's also the same road of a possible "cancer cluster" after Fairfax revealed at least 24 people who had lived on the road over the past 15 years had been diagnosed with cancer.
The cancer cluster reports were revealed earlier this year and labelled as being "too large to be coincidental" by One Nation Senator Brian Burston.
Kim-Leeanne has seen the effects of cancer firsthand after her father died of bowel cancer in 2005.
"Thyroid and colon cancer are known factors and the fact that my father was eating the vegetables that were grown here, I think that only adds to the worry that the rest of us have now, it's not if we get cancer but when we get it," said Kim-Leeanne.
The 47-year-old mother has always thought something wasn't quite right; her daughter suffers from various allergies and she herself has had a medical scare of her own this year.
The boundary of her property backs onto the heavily contaminated Lake Cochrane, adding to her suspicions about the chemical making her family, and her livestock, sick.
"I am resourceful, so I have done my own research on these chemicals and certainly what we are being told is different to what's happening overseas so we are doing everything that we possibly can. We no longer eat our own vegetables which we used to water with bore water."
Not eating anything grown on properties in Williamtown is one of the precautions laid out in guidelines published by both the Department of Defence and the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA), the precautions though vary. Defence says it's alright to eat some things grown in certain areas, whereas the EPA urge residents not to eat anything grown anywhere within the red zone.
"Don't come in contact with surface water, don't do this, don't do that. I mean they're telling us all there are no known health effects, you're pretty safe, you're this you're that. But if they're telling us all of this why are they putting these precautions out there if they're not worried themselves?"
When it comes to taking precautions, Kim-Leeanne says they don't even let their grandson go outside and play for fear of what the chemicals in the ground may do to his health.
"He can't even go out in the yard and play. How sad is that? And this is Australia. And all the politicians are worried about in Canberra is their dual citizenship and saving their own political lives. It's a disgrace. A national disgrace."
Now Kim-Leeanne is just begging for an escape.
"That's the saddest thing. there's no way out. And then how do you replace what you've spent a lifetime building and doing... and I don't know... even just the sentimental value of things. It's wicked what they've done to us."
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| Cabbage Tree Road. |
