Few if any places along Australia's vast coastline offer a view as inspiring as the one provided at Port Stephens' Tomaree headland.
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This and other surrounding vantage points attract millions of tourists each year with their unrivalled vistas of the famous bluewater wonderland and the Pacific Ocean.
Now, picture the same view except with an array of 250 metre tall wind turbines dotted along the horizon like a forcefield.
It's a powerful image that some in the Port Stephens community are using to argue why the Hunter Offshore Wind Project is not welcome in one of Australia's top tourism destinations.
If the visual blight isn't enough, opponents point to a plethora of unanswered questions relating to their concerns about the potential impact of turbines on the sensitive marine environment.
For instance, how will the vast amounts of new cables and floating infrastructure affect the annual whale migration and commercial fishing that support the local economy?
They are issues that should have been the front and centre of the federal government's recent 62-day community consultation project.
Instead, many locals say they only found out about the proposed project less than a week before the consultation process closed.
These valid concerns and frustrations have manifested as a community rally opposing the project to be held at Nelson Bay this Saturday.
Meanwhile in Newcastle, supporters of the Hunter Offshore Wind Project point to its enormous clean energy and job creation potential.
In addition to generating five gigawatts of energy - the combined output of Bayswater and Eraring power stations - it will create an estimated 3000 construction jobs and 1500 ongoing maintenance jobs over several decades.
It will also serve as a catalyst to kick start a Hunter-based green manufacturing industry that will indirectly support thousands more jobs.
It's a compelling case that carries even greater weight at a time when the pressure to transition the Hunter, state and national economies to a clean energy future grows greater every day.
The question for the government must be: is it possible to achieve a result that doesn't impact on the Port Stephens environment while preserving the project's energy and job creation potential in Newcastle? The harsh reality is probably not.
The project's footprint was already reduced from 2810 square kilometres to 1800 square kilometres as a result of the recent community consultation process.
To reduce it further would likely limit its generating capacity as well as its commercial viability.
In addition to the environmental, economic and social aspects, the government will need to carefully consider the potential political implications of its decisions.
While Newcastle is regarded as a Labor heartland, the Paterson electorate is notionally marginal.
To ignore the concerns of Port Stephens residents and businesses would almost certainly have electoral repercussions.
The organisers of Saturday's rally point out that they are not opposed to transitioning to renewable energy, only to the proposed location of the offshore wind turbines.
The government needs to carefully consider their argument. To compromise this unique section of the Australian coastline and its associated economic value for the sake of a few turbines hardly makes environmental, economic or social sense.
