story by bob brown a lifetime in the wilder ess · a lifetime in the wilderness in june 2013...

N o v e m b e r – D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3 6564 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c

A lifeTime in The

wildeRNess In June 2013 1700sq.km were

added to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Bob Brown looks back over the 30 years since the historic High Court decision

that saved the Franklin River.

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STORY BY BOB BROWN

Rock Island Bend, Franklin River by Peter Dombrovskis. An iconic image ever since its use in the campaign to save the Franklin in the early 1980s.

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Upper Florentine Valley, by Rob Blakers. As committed to conservation as Dombrovskis, Rob has taken on the challenge of recording old-growth forests. This area is part of the addi-tion made to the World Heritage Area in 2013.

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68 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c

Who really thinks, given the greed and short-sightedness evident in human history, that this crowded populace will not invade, occupy and exploit the remainder?

Some say there is no pure wilderness left. Everywhere – no matter how remote – is contaminated with chemicals, heated by climate change or invaded by weeds and feral animals. The beauty of the night sky is blotted out by the glow of the cities and criss-crossed by the twinkling lights of jetliners and other objects, such as the space station, which appears brighter than Venus.

As if to hasten the end of wilderness, state governments in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland have recently agreed to open national parks to cattle grazing, recreational shooting (see page 36) and off-road motor vehicles, which will cause all manner of impacts. What is more, “sustain-able” mining, logging and private-enterprise tourism businesses are on the drawing boards for some of Australia’s most far-flung and exquisitely beautiful places.

wHEN I FIRST FLOATED down Tasmania’s wild Franklin River with Launceston forester Paul Smith in 1976, this was all on the way. Although the immediate

threat to the Franklin was the contested Gordon-below-Franklin Dam, our talk around the campfire was about the loss of the remote and pristine nature of the landscape, qualities of truly wild country already missing in some parts of Tasmania.

The devastating impact of the road from Maydena to Strathgordon was already evident. It was built in the middle of Tasmania’s southwest wilderness more than a decade earlier – funded by a £5 million (about $120 million today) grant from the Commonwealth under prime minister Robert Menzies. The road increased access to Lake Pedder National Park, which was established in 1955 and folded into Southwest NP in 1968 before the construction of three dams for generating hydro-electricity flooded the lake itself. Once-fabled bushwalking destinations, including Frankland Range, Mt Anne and even the Western Arthurs, lost their character as the huge expanse of the flooding lake and its attendant white gravel roads affected the region’s landscape and remoteness.

On that rafting trip, Paul and I spent 11 days floating down the Franklin without seeing another human being. The side canyons, waterfalls, rainforests, eagles, platypuses and glow-worms had me entranced. Paul pointed out the flood levels of the proposed dams high on the Franklin’s ravine walls and, just after we passed the Franklin’s confluence with the mighty Gordon River, we were suddenly confronted by the jackhammers, helicopters and explosives of dam builders looking for the best place to secure the first of the four proposed dams. No longer entranced, I was horrified. We came back to civilisation determined to publicise the plight of the wild rivers.

Seven years of campaigning to save the Franklin River from a similar fate to that of Lake Pedder culminated in the 1982 blockade at Warner’s Landing, in which 1300 people were arrested. Domestic and international focus on the campaign grew as popular celebrities including Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Barry Humphries, Eartha Kitt, Claudio and Lesley Alcorso, and David Bellamy (his arrest created headlines in London) backed the river’s rescue. More positive headlines were created when founder of AuSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC Dick Smith arrived in his helicopter and helped set up the remote blockade’s radio communications (see page 75).

Yet it was the river itself that saved the day. The advent of colour television brought the river’s natural beauty into Australia’s lounge rooms. The first ever colour campaign poster, featuring a photo of the Thunderush rapids, in the Franklin’s Great Ravine, was produced in 1979 by Sydney’s Southwest Committee. In 1980, after a number of solo rafting trips on the Franklin, Tasmanian photographer Peter Dombrovskis Continued page 70

the whole planet was wild and there were 10 million or so human beings making a life in the wilderness. Now, less than one-tenth of the land surface is still untouched, and by the end of this century, there will be up to 10 billion of us crowded onto planet Earth.

Ten thousand years ago, before agriculture,

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TAsmAniAn pHoTogRApHeRs first pointed their lenses at the wild in the 1860s, when morton Allport lugged

fragile glass plates into the state’s centre to produce images of Lake st Clair. in the years that followed, the landscape photography tradi-tion grew. photographers such as the spurlings and John Watt Beattie brought their images to public awareness through magic lantern shows, whereby images were projected onto screens when exposed glass plates were placed in lantern boxes. in 1904, Beattie used his lantern slides to try to dissuade the government from selling part of the Freycinet peninsula, on the east coast. Four years later, he used images of the gordon River, on the state’s west coast, in a campaign to have a reserve on its banks enlarged. “The trailblazing wilderness photographers

of Tasmania are legends,” says Damien Quilliam, curator of Into the Wild: Wilderness Photog-raphy in Tasmania, an exhibition charting the development of Tasmanian wilderness photog-raphy, which is currently on show at the Queen Victoria museum and Art gallery, in Launceston. “it was these photographers who championed efforts to recognise and preserve our wilderness by creating evocative images that encouraged so many to appreciate these landscapes,” he says. in the 1920s, celebrated photographer and conservationist Fred smithies did just that when he travelled across Australia with his hand-coloured slides to showcase Tasmania’s natural beauty. in the 1960s, renowned photog-rapher olegas Truchanas took lyrical pictures of the beautiful, doomed Lake pedder. He spent years campaigning with his camera to save the lake from its eventual flooding. Truchanas

paved the way for photographers such as peter Dombrovskis, whose 1979 Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend played a pivotal role in halting construction of the gordon-below-Franklin Dam. since the 1980s, photographers such as Rob Blakers and grant Dixon – who travelled around Australia with his slide collection on a personal crusade to raise awareness of the fragility of Tasmania’s wild places – have continued the wilderness photography tradition. in 2010, with a group of contemporary wilderness photographers, they focused their lenses on the Vale of Belvoir, in Tasmania’s north-west (see Tasmania’s Veiled Beauty, Ag 98.) Collectively, they produced a portfolio of images the Tasma-nian Land Conservancy has made freely available to environmental groups to help protect what’s left of the state’s untouched wilderness. JOANNA EGAN

In Tasmania, the link between photography and the environment is legendary. CONSERVATION IN FOCuS

N o v e m b e r – D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3 69

Mersey Valley, by Rob Blakers. part of the mersey Valley in Cradle mountain–Lake st Clair national park was added to the World Heritage Area in 1991.

|BoB BRown became the face of the Franklin River campaign in 1982 and was elected to the Tasma-nian House of Assembly in 1983. A senator for 18 years, he led debate on climate change and human rights issues. in 2012 Bob was awarded the Ag society’s Lifetime of Conservation award.

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wATCH a video about peter Dombrovskis. Download the free viewa app and use your smartphone to

scan this page.


scan this page.


scan this page.


Continued page 74

captured the now legendary photograph Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend (page 64); it was reproduced an estimated 1 million times for the campaign.

I went halfway up Mt Wellington, to a Hobart suburb called Fern Tree, to visit Peter at home and look through his latest batch of Franklin River photos. I was riveted by his image of Rock Island Bend (the name I gave this scenic gem, because it would otherwise had its 1840s convict label, the Pig Trough). Peter didn’t think it was his best photo but I instantly saw its mystical qualities. I knew this bend in the river would indisputably be flooded by the proposed first dam, which added to the photo-graph’s impact. The image embodies the legendary relationship photography and conservation have in Tasmania (see page 69).

By mid-1983, determined Tasmanian premier Robin Gray had spent $70 million ($200 million today) on preliminary dam works. However, on 1 July that year, the four-to-three decision of the High Court judges endorsed the newly elected Commonwealth government’s power (under prime minister Bob Hawke) to stop the dam in order to protect the Franklin’s World Heritage values. In July this year, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of that historic decision.

In his majority judgment, justice Lionel Murphy wrote, “The encouragement of people to think internationally, to regard the culture of their own country as part of world culture, to conceive a physical, spiritual and intellectual heritage, is important in the endeavour to avoid the destruction of humanity.” The justice regarded the rich Aboriginal heritage in the Franklin Valley wilderness, as well as the area’s wild beauty, as part of our culture.

And, thankfully, the majestic wild peak of Frenchmans Cap (1446m), which is drained entirely by the Franklin, was saved

from the indignity of being surrounded by the methane-belching moat of a dammed river and drowned forests.

THE INuNDATION OF Lake Pedder in 1972 created a national furore which, in turn, helped save other wild places as well as the Franklin River: the Daintree,

Fraser Island, Kakadu, Victoria’s Little Desert and the subtrop-ical forests of NSW (see Out of the shadows, AG 102). In Tasmania, it led to the formation of the world’s first Greens party.

A decade after Lake Pedder disappeared, parts of Tasmania’s wilderness were declared World Heritage areas for the first time and soon after that, the Franklin River was saved. However, there was a backlash from developers. In the decades that followed, state governments introduced draconian penalties, including up to six months in jail, for anyone who refused to get out of the way of bulldozers invading wilderness to construct new mines or dams, or were facilitating logging or invasive tourism operations.

These operations are part of a dominant world culture of profiteering from nature, based on corporate power over elected and non-elected governments. Most conservationists are side-lined but this year’s magnificent win by campaigners, not least the Goolarabooloo people, against the Woodside gas factory and port on the Kimberley coast, WA, went against that tide.

When we gained the balance of power in the Tasmanian Parliament in 1989, the Greens ensured the inclusion of magnificent wild areas such as the Denison River valley, the Walls of Jerusalem and the eastern half of Macquarie Harbour, in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, expanding it from 7160sq.km to 13,840sq.km.

In July 2013 another 1700sq.km were

The majestic wild peak of frenchmans Cap was saved from the indignity of being surrounded by a methane-belching moat.

Crotty Road blockade, near Queenstown, 1983. Bob Brown prepares to address protesters before they block the access road for dam construction; under his bail terms, he had to keep his distance.

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‘no dams’ blockade, warners Landing, Gordon River, 1982. The campaign to stop the gordon-below-Franklin dam culminated in a blockade, attracting thousands of protesters over its three-month staging.

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TAsMAnIA’s PRoTeCTeD AReAs AnD ReseRVes

71,555sq.kmTotal protected area:

28,210sq.km 39.4%Tasmanian

wilderness wHA:

15,845sq.km 22.1%

in 1982, THe then Cradle mountain–Lake st Clair national park, Franklin –Lower gordon Wild Rivers np and

southwest np joined the World Heritage List as the 7694sq.km Western Tasmania Wilderness national parks WHA. The WHA has since been extended: a 34 per cent increase in 1989; minor inclusions in 2010 and 2012; and old-growth forests in 2013. Tasmania also has 19 national parks, only two of which (Deal island and savage River np) are inaccessible. There are more than 420 other reserves, includ-ing the Bay of Fires Conservation Area in the north-east and Tarkine Reserve in the north-west. generally, no resource extraction is permitted in these parks.

AReA oF TAsMAnIA


View from Mt Campbell, by Dennis Harding. This peak near to Cradle mountain was part of the original World Heritage Area, created in 1982.

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N o v e m b e r – D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3 75

added. The newly protected areas comprise some of the tallest flowering forests on Earth, including those of the Styx Valley, the upper Florentine Valley and the Great Western Tiers, together with Mount Field National Park and some smaller reserves.

TODAY, THE TASMANIAN wilderness is one of the world’s greatest protected temperate areas. But protecting the island state’s wild places will not be complete until the

Tarkine wilderness, in the north-west, is given World Heritage listing. The Tarkine comprises 4500sq.km of inspiring natural country, including the nation’s largest temperate rainforest. Earlier this year, the Australian Heritage Council advised then environment minister Tony Burke to list the Tarkine. He rejected that advice and opened most of the Tarkine to mining.

The Tarkine is a wonderful place, from its wild coast to its ranges and buttongrass plains, from its pristine west-flowing rivers and lagoons to its rare and endangered species, which include the world’s largest crayfish, the Tasmanian devils, the quolls and the giant wedge-tailed eagle. Its coastline is the land of the Tarkiner people, whose middens, rock carvings and hut sites are today being eroded by off-road vehicles.

In 2013, the first two Tarkine mines have been authorised by state and federal ministers “for the environment”. What will save the Tarkine? Only one formula will work and that is Franklin campaign-style public action: lobbying of politicians, funding of campaign groups (including Save the Tarkine), voting for

candidates dedicated to its protection and, if need be, peacefully getting in the way of the destruction of this national heirloom. Although, perhaps before all else, the first thing to do is to visit the Tarkine, because to go there is to want to save it.

I was arrested in the Franklin blockade in 1982–83 and spent 19 days in Risdon Prison (600 others also went to Risdon). Arrested twice more in the 1990s for peacefully obstructing bull-dozers that were compromising the Tarkine’s remote and pristine qualities with roads and logging, I spent a further 11 days in Tasmanian jails with a bunch of other wilderness-loving citizens. The concrete walls of those prisons were the antithetic cultural statement to the wild places we had been defending.

Why is there so little public alarm about the death of the wild world? This was the question that was obvious to Paul Smith and me as we sat by the Franklin, and that I pondered in those cells, but which now challenges us all with greater urgency than ever.

Nearly two centuries ago Thoreau wrote, “in wildness is the preservation of the world”. It follows that in wildness is the saving of ourselves. It is time we all got a little wilder about the plight of planet Earth, its wild places and all its creatures, ourselves included. AG

Lake Pedder, by Luke o’Brien. The flooding of the original Lake pedder in 1972 resulted in the formation of Australia’s conservation movement. Today, Lake pedder is contained by three dams

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in 1982, WHiLe completing the first solo round-the-globe helicopter flight, entrepre-neur and Ag founder Dick smith headed

to Tasmania to help campaigners stop the gordon-below-Franklin Dam. in his single- engine Bell Jetranger helicopter (now at the powerhouse museum, sydney) he airlifted radio transmitters to a remote mountain range above the gordon to set up a relay station that would allow communication with the blockaders. “it was some of the most difficult flying i have ever done in my life,” Dick says. His helicopter wasn’t fitted with a hoist or winch, so he took off its doors to allow a campaigner to manually unload the gear. “There was nowhere to land, so i had to hover in very difficult con-ditions as the person in the back lowered the radio equipment down onto the mountain top,” he says. “Radio communication was incredibly important because it meant that the people in

strahan knew what was going on up on the river, where the blockade was.” Dick’s lifelong passion for the Tasmanian wilderness was born when he flew into Lake pedder as a boy scout in 1966, six years before it was flooded. “it was the most magnificent place

Disappointment over Lake Pedder made Dick Smith determined to help.A FRIEND IN A HIGH PLACE

i’d seen,” he says. “unfortunately there was nothing i could do to save Lake pedder, but by 1982, when the Franklin campaign was on, i was quite well known and i knew i had to do some-thing to try and save the beautiful Franklin.” JOANNA EGAN

strahan, 1982. Dick smith, at left, arrived in town by helicopter and asked Bob, right, what he could do to assist the campaign. |

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74 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c

see the Warners Landing protests. Download the free viewa app and use your smartphone to scan this page.|

Editor’s note: The new Federal Government, which came to power in September, has expressed a desire to have the 1700sq.km 2013 addition to the WHA removed and opened up for logging. It’s not clear whether this unprecedented move is legally permissible. Turn to page 19 to learn more.

story by bob brown a lifetime in the wilder ess · a lifetime in the wilderness in june 2013...

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