ENVIRONMENTALIST ARRESTED IN HUGE AUSSIE DRUG BUST

Tofino man known for tree spiking and Wizard of Oz

A high-profile Vancouver Island environmentalist has been arrested in Sydney
in what Australian drug cops are calling the country's biggest-ever drug
bust -- $40 million worth of ecstasy tablets.

The Christmas Eve raid that led to Carl Hinke's arrest netted 750,000 pills
allegedly smuggled into the country.

Hinke, along with Australians Francis Ballis, 56, and Wayne Moore, 52,
appeared in court Christmas day, charged with drug offences under the
Customs Act.

Police now say the trio are believed to be part of a "trans-national crime
syndicate."

Authorities are continuing investigations in Australia and the Netherlands
and expect to make further arrests.

The drugs were most likely headed for the ecstasy market in Sydney,
Australia's largest city.

During a stint in Tofino in the early '90s, Hinke -- also a noted scholar of
the Wizard of Oz children's book series -- was christened "Spike" for
advocating the controversial tree-spiking techniques used to try to stop
logging in Clayoquot Sound.

In 1992, police in B.C. charged Hinke and three others in an alleged
conspiracy to import five tonnes of hashish. Hinke was acquitted together
with two of his co-accused. A Courtenay man was sentenced to two years in
prison.

Under the pen name C.J. Hinke, he has authored both a Latin edition of The
Wizard of Oz and Oz in Canada, a bibliography of books connected to L. Frank
Baum's classic.

Australian police arrested Hinke after seizing the ecstasy tablets as part
of a four-month international investigation.

"Any organized criminal syndicate dealing in drugs would have its eye on
when drug usage is likely to be high," said Sen. Chris Ellison, Australia's
federal minister for justice and customs.

"No doubt the holiday time is when they're looking at that."

Born in New Jersey, Hinke, 52, moved to Canada after playing an active role
in the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States.

In 1989, he became a lightning-rod figure in the so-called War in The Woods
after claiming that 23,000 trees on Meares Island had been spiked -- a
practice that can injure or kill loggers when their tools bounce off long
nails driven into trees.

Reached in Victoria, Hinke's daughter -- who declined to be interviewed --
said her father now splits his time between Thailand and Australia. Hinke's
wife lives in Bangkok.

Police in Sydney said that Dutch authorities were assisting them in the
investigation, which continues overseas.

The pale-pink and green ecstasy tablets were concealed inside metre-long
lengths of PVC piping in cardboard boxes. Police believe the drugs were
imported from the Netherlands.

Hinke and co-accused Moore were busted after police found the drugs in a van
parked inside the garage of Moore's apartment block.

Within two hours of their arrests, police arrested Ballis at his high-rise
apartment.

The men did not seek bail when they appeared briefly at a special hearing of
the Parramatta Local Court.

They are being held in custody to reappear in court Jan. 15.

They face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted of
drug-trafficking.