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Impressions of Tasmania Part 2

impressions-tasmania-two — A lucky sunset shot coming in to Port of Melbourne

If you have a yen to go to Tasmania, here’s three key pieces of advice. Go in spring or autumn, take clothing and footwear for all seasons and, most importantly, allow more time than we had (18 days).

I’m taking up the travelogue as we arrived for three days in Hobart (having arranged to drop our car into the dealers to troubleshoot a faulty sensor). We checked in to the Hobart showgrounds, a spacious complex close to the city.

After luckily finding a good ‘local’ breakfast cafe in the city, we set off on a day tour of Hobart. The double-decker bus found its way into some tight spots (a lookout at Battery Point). Our driver informed us that Battery Point has the country’s most expensive real estate (per square metre). We spent an hour at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, a compact but very beautiful oasis with a Japanese garden (and an ice cream van we didn’t manage to find). We went to the Cascades and heard all about an early settler, Peter Degraves, who had a plan to use the crystal clear water from the Cascade springs to build a brewery.

He formed this plan while doing time in Hobart gaol for fraud. On his release in the early 1830s he set about building the Cascade Brewery, which is still operating, producing beers and non-alcoholic beverages. It is not only a working brewery but a tourist attraction.

In the afternoon we headed off on a catamaran which took us to one of Hobart’s modern curiosities, MONA (Museum of new and old art). The catamaran ride was splendid, sailing at speed under the Tasman Bridge, catching sight of Australia’s $529 million icebreaker, Nuyina, which is based in Hobart. (Ed: The boat ride was nice – MONA was pretentious, IMHO)

Saturday was a day of highlights. First a day trip through the beautiful Huon Valley to Geeveston where friends introduced us to a gourmet café, The Old Bank, which serves local game dishes. Go there! In the late afternoon we set off to Rosny, which is a nearby suburb of Hobart where songwriter Fred Smith was performing that night. Fred recruited a local band to present his latest concert about Afghanistan, which includes the evacuation of 4000+ people with Australian visas from Kabul Airport. It’s a harrowing audio-visual presentation with images, videos and Fred’s narration, coupled with his insightful songs about Afghanistan and Afghans.

On Sunday we set off for Port Arthur. Like all road journeys in Tasmania, the distances are short but the roads require more careful, slower driving than we are used to on the mainland. I’d not been to Port Arthur before, but the ruins of the convict colony are evocative and the guides are knowledgeable. This is one place where you could spend an extra day, as the ticket to the historic site is also good for the following day. There’s such a lot to take in.

On balance, our colonial forebears treated convicts as brutally as they slaughtered the indigenous people of Tasmania. The cat of nine tails, which was traditionally steeped in sea water so crusts would form on the knots, was a particularly barbarous instrument of punishment. It was not uncommon for convicts to receive 100 lashes. Some of them died as a result. It’s not hard to conjure up the atmosphere when this place was home to 2,000 people, including 1,200 criminals we’d call recidivists (re-offenders) today.

From Port Arthur we drove up the fabled East Coast with its scenic wonders and wildlife. On advice from a friend we stopped at Eaglehawk Neck, a narrow isthmus containing another convict relic. An officer’s garrison was built at Eaglehawk Neck to capture convicts trying to escape Port Arthur. The Dogline at the narrowest part of the neck is where a line of ferocious dogs patrolled to prevent convicts escaping. We also took in a couple of spectacular blow-holes which are common on the Tasman coast.

Mayfield Beach Conservation Area, east coast Tasmania

We were aiming for Swansea but accidentaily ended up at a lovely free camp at Mayfield Beach. The Mayfield Beach Conservation Area was quite popular but we managed to manoeuvre our van into a site under some trees. It was right next to the road but after 7pm there was so little traffic it was not an issue. The park is maintained by park rangers but is in fact a scenic reserve. There are loads of places like this around Tassie and the best part is that, unlike a lot of Queensland free camps, you can stay for 2, 3 or even 4 weeks. (The Mayfield Beach camp sign says in small letters that merely moving to a different site after 30 days is not permitted).

Next day we did tourist stops at Kate’s Berry Farm, a popular place for people who appreciate good coffee and blackberry jam. Then we went to a strange place called Spiky Bridge. It is part of the infrastructure built by convicts with the aim of thwarting overland escape from Port Arthur.

Later we took the steep walk to the lookout at Wineglass Bay, admiring the young couple who took a two-year-old girl and a baby in a backpack to the top and back again. Those kids will grow up loving the wilderness and never know why. The mother took our photo up there, while we were trying hard to look as if we had got our breath back, given the so-so cardio fitness of a pair of 73-year-olds. Friends who have done this walk in the past tell us it used to be a rock scramble to the top. No fancy lookout and safety barriers then.

A Tasmanian devil, posing ever so nicely

We stopped the night at Bicheno at a caravan park because the Coles Bay national park camp site was full. The bonus was we could spend a good few hours at Natureworld, with its well-stocked aviaries, local fauna and a disease-free colony of Tasmanian Devils. We got there in time to watch these ugly critters fighting over a kangaroo tail. Been there, got the T-shirt. (Ed: they were a bit cute – like a Staffie!).

We ended up staying in a caravan park again at St Helen’s when, if we’d thought about it, we could have travelled into the Bay of Fires and stayed at one of the many free camps on the beach. Ah well. We had a jolly fine day trip including a walk along the beach from Walsh’s Lagoon. You can walk the whole 11km from Binalong Point to Eddistone Point along the the Bay of Fires. The walk is mainly along the beach but the trek implies a bit of organisation in a group with a car at either end. Bay of Fires is distinguished from other beaches by its orange granite rocks (the colour is caused by lichen. There are also ancient middens along this trail, evidence of indigenous settlement. We reached the northerly terminating road (The Gardens) near sunset which is the right time to be there although there was a bite to the wind.

We got chatting to a guy with a vintage Chev truck built on a Holden chassis with a V8 engine. He was on his way to a hot rod rally at Ulverstone near Devonport. The things people spend money on, eh!

Next day we set off on a hilly winding road to Scottsdale, stopping along the way at the Pyengana Cheese factory (recommended) where we had freshly made scones with home-made butter and cream. We bought our rellies some cheese to go with their Huon pine cheese board.

From there we drove on to one of Tasmania’s famous short walks – St Columba Falls. It is a short, east walk apart from a bit of downhill to the lookout. Because Tassie’s been in a drought the tallest falls in the State were not roaring like they usually do. but spectacular none the less.

The 15 minute walk goes through myrtle and sassafras groves with an under story of ferns, moss and fungi. Later on the drive we stopped at Weldsborough to check out an ancient myrtle grove with the ubiquitous understory of moss, fungi and ferns, Very dark and prehistoric.

impressions-of-tasmania-two — Old growth forest in north-east Tasmania

Not everything in Tasmania looks like that. Earlier in the day I tried (and failed) to take a ‘Tasmanian Mullet’ photo – where the lower slopes of a steep hill had been clear felled for pasture, leaving forest remnants clinging to the top, like a monk’s tonsure.

The hilly drive to Scottsdale, east of Launceston, goes through the town of Derby which has become famous among mountain bike enthusiasts. There are several bike shops there which hire bikes and take riders in tour buses to the many organised trails through the hills.

We stayed at a free camp in Scottsdale, Northeast Park, which is named after George Northeast who first established a community pool and reserve there in the 1930s. The project was taken up again in the 1980s by the local Lions group who did a lot of work establishing picnic facilities and tracks for walkers and cyclists.

On our way to Devonport we stopped in at Sheffield, known as the town of murals, to catch up with friends. Saturday morning we queued to board the Spirit of Tasmania for a day voyage. The thoughtful people at Devonport provide a toilet for people sitting in their cars waiting to board. Four stars! And five stars to Bass Strait which turned on one of its swell-less days for a smooth voyage. We arrived in Melbourne at 8.30pm and then navigated our way through the suburbs to a caravan park in Coburg. (Ed: night driving on a Melbourne freeway not recommended when towing a van). t was the weekend of the Grand Prix so the van park was full and it took a while to sort out where we were supposed to park. But by 9.30 were set up – exhausted and ready for bed.

The journey home was Melbourne to Albury, then to Cowra which has a Japanese prisoner of war cemetery and a Japanese garden. On to Dunedoo where we ran into friends who were on their way to the National Folk Festival. Somewhere along the road I got a call from well-known folk singer Bob Fagan to say that my song, ‘When Whitlam took his turn at the wheel’, was this year’s recipient of the Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice award. It was presented at the National Folk Festival’s closing concert (in my absence). My songwriter friend Ross Clark who accepted the award on my behalf, has since been sending me photos of the award (like a garden gnome) posed in various locations as he travelled back to Brisbane.

I’ll leave you with this image, from Cowra Showgrounds, with a flotilla of road rigs (ours on the left) lined up ready for a 5am getaway. These are just a few of the 800,000 registered recreational vehicles on Australian roads. As the ABC reported this week, those on the road include families seeking lifestyle changes and ditching the school system after lengthy pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. Many are on the road permanently, both for reasons of lifestyle and necessity (more on that next week).

So that’s our land and sea return journey to Tasmania, some 6,500 kilometres in 30 days. Now you know why we needed to shout ourselves a night at Armidale’s Moore Park Inn and dinner at Archie’s restaurant on the last night. Hang the expense.
(all photos by Bob & Laurel Wilson)

PS: Last Saturday I got a call from an 03 number. I ignored it, as you do, but the number left a voice mail. It was a friendly young woman from TT-Line Company, better known as the Spirit of Tasmania. Had I lost anything on my recent holiday, Sally asked? ‘Ah, yeh, I still haven’t found my teblet’, I said, realising that when I’m anxious I revert to Kiwi. After a few key questions (make, size, colour), Sally asked for my pass code. It must be a different one to the one I use at home because it wouldn’t open. Not to be thwarted, Sally asked me if I had another email address (I do). I deduced she’d spotted my Gmail address when she tried to turn it on. I’m expecting it back any day now.

Confessions of a Tree Hugger

tree-hugger-confessions — Tall timbers at Heritage Landing, Gordon River, Tasmania.

Our whistle-stop tour of Tasmania (18 days) reminded me much of my teenage years in New Zealand as a fledgling Tree Hugger. Tasmania itself reminds Kiwis of the home country, with its hilly roads, sparse population and evidence of man’s attempts to harness the wilderness. Tassie’s north-west coast in particular looks like the rugged beech forests of the South Island’s west coast.

(Photo: tall timbers at Heritage Point on the Gordon River.)

There are other reminders; the valleys cleared for cattle and sheep farming and small crops, and roads lined with poplars (a species introduced as a wind break), just starting to put on their golden autumn coats.

After just a week in the World Heritage Listed north-west national park, I could see why people keep coming back to the Apple Isle (to see and feel the magic things they missed the first and even second time).

It could all so easily have been lost to industry and development.

The informative day tour on the Gordon River from Strahan reminds us of the 1970s conservation battle to save the Franklin and Gordon Rivers from a proposed dam and hydro scheme. It is extraordinary to contemplate today the mind-set of those who opposed conservationists’ efforts to block the dam and hydro complex. It was not until Bob Hawke’s newly elected government took the Tasmanian Government to the High Court that the dam was stopped.

The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is one of the largest conservation areas in Australia, covering 15,800 square kilometres – about 25% of Tasmania. The cherished north-west attracts serious hikers, bushwalkers, bird watchers, botanists and nature lovers from all over the world. Serious walkers make the 80 kms trek from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair, which takes six or seven days. Hikers carry everything they need on their backs, stopping at national park huts along the way. Recently (2020) a marathon event was started, with runners completing the trail (which is considerably up hill and down dale), in eight hours or so.

Having walked the six kilometre undulating track around Dove Lake, reading about the ‘run’ reinforced my personal goal to cap bush walks at 6kms (up and down) or 10 kms flat. You have to know your limits.

You might think that Tasmanian conservationists, having managed to save a quarter of the island from mining, logging and development, could rest easy. Not for a minute. There has been ongoing activism and opposition to logging and mining in the Tarkine (Takanya) for a decade or more.

The Tarkine in the north-west corner of Tasmania is the largest temperate rainforest in the southern hemisphere. Veteran conservationist Bob Brown is leading the latest challenge to the Tarkine, home to ancient native forest and threatened wildlife species. Brown’s latest campaign centres on a newly discovered valley which contains a grove of 2,000-year-old Huon pines. These particular trees are threatened by the activities of a mining company which has an exploration licence in the Wilson River catchment, where Brown and rafting companions discovered the Huon pines. As an article in National Geographic explains, this is a big deal because Huon pines are now rare in Tasmania after decades of logging by “piners”. Logging was banned in the 1970s, but you can never say never where mining companies are involved. Activists are trying to stop the mining company clearing trees (as part of its exploration licence).

There are a lot of minerals under the ground in Tasmania. The early miners came with pan and shovel for the gold but later the serious money came for iron ore, copper, zinc, lead and tin. There were always tin mines in Tasmania which went in and out of operation as the international price of tin rose or fell. Today tin has become a valuable commodity because of the advent of storage batteries for electric cars and solar farms.

Tasmanian activists are mounting a legal challenge against Venture Mining’s plan to mine iron ore in the Tarkine, Likewise, there is a protest against plans by a majority-owned Chinese mining company, MMG, to build a tailings dam in the Tarkine. Tailings dams are where mine operators store the liquid waste from mining operations. As you may have read over the years, there have been numerous occasions when tailings dams collapsed or started leaking toxic sludge into local rivers.

If you want an insight into the doggedness of the Tasmanian activist, check out Ben’s blog from the Tarkine front line. Ben and his friends are serious about their mission, willing and able to shackle themselves to trees and bulldozers to stop logging before it starts.

Since I started this week’s missive with the word Tree Hugger, I should explain that the word Tree Hugger is a disapproving term used to describe someone who is ‘too concerned about protecting trees, animals and other parts of the natural world from pollution and other threats’. (Britannica dictionary).

My Tree Hugger days started in the 1960s with a track-marking programme in Te Urewera National Park (New Zealand’s North Island). Volunteers helped rangers to cut paths for the growing numbers of tourists who wanted access to the North Island’s biggest stand of old native bush. It covers an area of 2,147 square kilometres and is a refuge for rare birds and native timbers like Kauri, Remu and Totora that once covered the entire country.

As an election looms, politicians of all persuasions should remember the times that governments fell, partly due to so-called Tree Hugger campaigns. The Franklin blockade and Bob Hawke’s promises to stop the dam helped him win government in 1983. Also remember Queensland Premier Wayne Goss’s defeat in 1996 was, in part, attributed to plans to build a highway through a koala habitat.

People who progress from nature lovers to conservationists to activists inevitably don’t notice the conflicts inherent in their actions. Just like developers who never give up on a development approval, no matter how much opposition there is, protesters can become just as bloody-minded.

There was a photo on social media a few years ago of hundreds of kayaks clogging up a harbour. The flotilla was protesting deep-sea petroleum extraction. Someone commented that it should dawn on the protestors that their kayaks were made from petroleum products.

I was dwelling on this sort of irony while pumping $116 worth of diesel into our SUV, one of Australia’s five million registered diesel cars. The other 15 million private vehicles in Australia are fuelled by unleaded petrol (the majority) with a small proportion powered by LPG or electricity. All, apart from electric vehicles, exacerbate the planet’s serious climate change crisis through their emissions.

After a round-Australia tour in 2015 we worked out our carbon footprint and converted it to a sum of money which we donated to a Landcare group. The idea is that the $300 or so be used to re-plant trees and replenish the carbon sink. It’s a noble gesture but probably futile on the scale of land clearing still going on in all states and territories including Tasmania (which has only 11% of its rainforest left). As we always say (when shaking our heads at the latest flood-plain housing development) – “Who the hell approved that?”

She Who is Also a Tree Hugger says it’s a battle between people who give a shit about the environment and people who don’t. She expanded on this to describe that many of the people who don’t subscribe to environmental principles are fundamentalist Christians whose view is that they were put here to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth.

Amen, sister.

Return of The Wastemakers

wastemakers-computers — Image: INESby, pixabay.com

I had a Vance Packard moment this week, thwarting the concept of planned obsolescence, which he wrote about in his 1960 best-seller, The Wastemakers.

My triumph was no big deal, but they were hard-won as I finally, after four weeks, got my 32-year-old Technics stereo system working again.

Before we get into that, and on a similar theme, I would like to have a rant about the complexities and nonsense of Windows 10. Microsoft’s latest operating system deserves inclusion in my seldom-heard song, ‘Windows F*****g 8’, which I wrote in honour of the man who warned me to stick with Windows 7 (…”It isn’t fair, but they don’t care, that I can’t find F*****g Solitaire”….)

When we moved, my 2015 laptop, running on Windows 7, was labouring, crashing, not responding to commands, giving me blue screens and multiple hard drive error messages. My new Lenovo has a lot going for it – extremely light, fast and not too expensive at all. But it came with Windows 10 pre-installed and an infuriating voice-activated robot called Cortana, who offers to solve any problem but more often will say “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.”

So Mr Microsoft, why did you dump Windows 7 (which, after this month will no longer be supported). in favour of an operating system that tried to look like Apple Mac and failed? Just like Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1, it has so many bugs you do so yearn for good old Windows XP. IT companies constantly upgrade and invent new software and gadgets. The manufacturers of computers, smart phones, mobile entertainment and all their peripherals have no choice, if they want to stay in business, but to continue selling us flawed ‘upgrades’. In the case of Windows 10, Microsoft forced us into it by withdrawing support for Windows 7.

Windows forums have a lot to say about 10, its dodgy updates and other shortcomings. The most irritating thing is the assumption (by Microsoft) that you will take up the expensive annual subscriptions to pre-installed software trials and store all your personal data in the cloud, at a cost, of course. After some reading, I managed to install Office 2010, which I bought and paid for once already.

The good news is there are plenty of ‘fixes’ out there for Windows 10 glitches. I found one key piece of advice (not from Microsoft). In Windows 7 I used the ‘recent documents’ link constantly. It was easily found under documents/folders. Windows 10 has done away with this useful tool.

Solution: use the keystroke Windows key/e. Thank me later.

She Who Also Has Windows 10 is now regretting asking me to upgrade her laptop. The worst part of upgrading was that (initially) we could not get the printer to work, or the network sharing we previously employed.

There is now a security feature called Network Credentials which requires you to enter your Microsoft outlook name and password if indeed you succumb to that malware-type exhortation. That only took me three hours to fix – to whom should I send the invoice?

Nevertheless, if you still have Windows 7 and it decides to stop working, you will be in trouble. The good news, if you are game, is that Microsoft’s free upgrade is still available (rather than buying it for $169). Not that I recommend it, but here is the link I used to download and install Windows F*****g 10 on SWAHWT’s laptop.

Vance Packard saw all that coming, three decades before personal and business computers became a mainstream, multi-billion dollar industry. Packard was well ahead of his time, writing a number of thoughtful books about consumerism and the stealthy way the industrial-military complex manipulates people to its own greedy ends.

The thesis Packard pursued in The Wastemakers is deftly summarised in an article found on Trove.

The author of The Hidden Persuaders and The Status Seekers analysed over-production and the planned obsolescence of so-called consumer durables.

“The average American family throws away about 750 metal cans each year,” he began. “In the Orient, a family lucky enough to gain possession of a metal can treasures it and puts it to work in some way, if only as a flower pot.”

Packard claimed that in 1960s America “each individual man, woman and child was using up to an average of eighteen tons of materials a year”.

The concept of eternal growth which developed after WWII required “insidious promotion and worship of ‘consumerism’ the encouragement of waste, the temptations of encouragement of waste and the temptations of limitless H.P (hire purchase).”

Sixty years after Packard published his book, consumerism and the advertising that encourages it is no less insidious. Rampant and shameless consumerism suggests that anything “used” is shaming to its owner.

“The escalation of self-indulgence and the planned chaos leaves the buyer bewildered and helpless amid that shambles of phoney price-cuts, sales prices, special discounts etc.”

As people often do when moving, we purchased some new consumer ‘durables’, well aware that the generic 12-month warranties suggested a limited life span.

Meanwhile, the Technics stereo system, bought from one of Brisbane’s Brashes stores in 1986, was still sitting in carefully packed boxes in the garage. Sure, I was listening to MP3s on my Bluetooth speaker, but it is so not the same.

The Technics system was top of its class in 1986 and still performs well. It has seven individual components all interlinked by a maze of cables and power cords (one feeds the other until finally, one goes to AC power).

The problem this time with installation was (a) delving through the five manuals to remember how to reconnect everything and (b) the speaker leads were too short. They were always too short, but in our previous home it was never a problem.

I am not, as you’d know, not the world’s most practical chap. But I’m stubborn (and cheap). I turned to YouTube’s host of geeky how-to videos. What I wanted to do was work out how to extend the stereos leads, which is hard to do when said speakers are sealed boxes which offer no easy way to replace leads.

The first video I found (1:47) when searching ‘how to open sealed speaker cabinets’ is a classic example of why you can sometimes find helpful hints, and sometimes not!

After I stopped laughing and explored some other more useful options, I went into town and bought a 6m roll of 14 gauge speaker cable and some electrical tape. I used a box cutter and a pair of pliers to hand-cut the cable into two lengths, stripped 1cm of plastic off both ends of each cable and then used electrical tape to connect the longer leads to the short speaker cables. As such jobs go, it is not pretty. But it works.

I finished setting up the system about 11pm and rewarded myself with a cup of tea, listening to Homeless, a vinyl album by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. As you may recall, the acapella African choir’s music formed the basis of Paul Simon’s amazing 1986 album, Graceland. Simon’s song Homeless is track 1, side one. Of course I fell asleep listening to side two and never got to flip the album over.

The really good news is there are a few hundred more vinyl albums in boxes in the garage. (Ed: Not that we have anywhere to store them).

Confessions of a Tree Hugger

The derogatory label ‘tree hugger’ is worn with pride by environmental guerrillas, the ones who chain themselves to trees in a bid to prevent them being chopped down.

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines tree hugger as ‘someone who is regarded as foolish or annoying because of being too concerned about protecting trees, animals, and other parts of the natural world from pollution and other threats’. Yes, well, that’s objective.

Although chaining yourself to a tree as a form of conservation protest is more often associated with North America, you’ll find many such tree hugger examples in Australia. In Tasmania’s Tarkine forest, conservationists protested logging by direct action. Suburban tree hugger types arc up when councils decide to fell established trees for public liability or other specious reasons.

Trees, as the occasional crossword question will remind us, are the largest plants in the world. They not only provide animals and humans with shade and shelter, they pump out oxygen, suck up carbon, stabilise the soil and provide homes for native birds and animals. Trees are great for children to climb and big ones often support tree houses and swings. And as anyone who lives in a timber house could attest, once removed from the landscape, trees make permanent shelters for humans. Moreover, generations of young lovers have carved their initials in tree trunks. The latter is not world’s best practice, though, as damaging a tree’s skin (bark) can start a deterioration of the plant’s health.

tree-hugger-ooline — Tree hugger paradise – ancient Ooline forest

On our six-week outback trip last month we visited one of the few remaining stands of Ooline forest in Tregole National Park, which only achieved that status in 1995. Tregole’s Ooline forest survives in semi-arid, south-western Queensland, between two of the State’s natural regions, the Brigalow belt and the Mulga lands. As the National Parks website tells us, “the park protects a small but pure stand of ooline Cadellia pentastylis, an attractive dry rainforest tree dating back to the Ice Age”.

Ooline has been extensively cleared and is now uncommon and considered vulnerable to extinction.

In Queensland, a very large northern state of Australia, trees have been under siege and remain endangered by forestry activities and by clearing for agriculture or mining. Only 9% of Queensland is forested, compared to 16% of Australia overall.

The ABC did a fact checking exercise during the last state election, to verify the claim that Queensland was clearing more timber than Brazil.

Some 395,000 hectares of regrowth and old growth vegetation was cleared in 2015-16, a 33% increase over the previous year. Queensland accounts for more than half of Australia’s total losses of native forests. This dire statistic generated critical editorials in international media.

The ABC fact checkers vindicated the claim by the Queensland Greens that more than one million hectares of native bush and forest was cleared in Queensland over four years.

“Land clearing in Queensland is now on par with Brazil,” the Greens said.

Unhappily, the rate of land clearing tends to increase under the management of conservative governments (voted in primarily by farmers, miners and the businesses that profit from agricultural and mining commerce). One of the infamous innovations of land clearing was the ‘ball and chain’ method, involving two bulldozers, a giant steel ball and a ship’s anchor chain. The chain was secured between two bulldozers (with a third bulldozer often following on behind to add weight to dislodge larger trees).

The felled trees were swept up into a giant pile and left to dry for up to a year before being torched (in itself an ecological disaster).

Although the use of a five-tonne steel ball has largely been discontinued, many landowners still engage contractors to use the dozer and chain method to clear light scrub and forest. A good contractor can clear 40 hectares a day.

Fortunately, Labor governments tend to block or reverse the worst of the land clearing excesses. Queensland’s Palaszczuk government passed new legislation in May limiting broad scale land clearing. Farmers demonstrated outside Queensland parliament as the bill was being debated.

Meanwhile, the deforestation of Indonesia, South America and other continents and countries continues unabated. The World Resources Institute says that more than 80% of the Earth’s natural forests already have been destroyed, with clearing continuing at the rate of 20,000 hectares per day.

Tane Mahuta and the risk of dieback

If you have visited New Zealand and saw the country’s oldest and largest Kauri, Tane Mahuta, you were indeed fortunate. Two thousand year old Tane Mahuta, held sacred by the Maori, is at risk of infection from Kauri dieback, a disease which has already picked off many old Kauris in the surrounding forest in Northland and elsewhere in NZ.

New Zealand’s once massive Kauri forests were plundered over the centuries for ships’ masts, houses and other buildings and simply to clear the land for agriculture. In the 1700s, Kauri covered 1.2 billion hectares. Today the coverage is less than 4,000 hectares.

Meanwhile in Maleny, Australia, we ‘small c’ conservationists nurture the native trees on our half acre block, which remains well wooded. We rid the bottom of the block of every bad weed known to man or woman, circa 2002, planted several natives and allowed the area to regenerate as native forest.

The downside is a straggly line of giant camphor laurel trees which straddle the boundary between our block and a neighbour. We felled the biggest and oldest camphor as it was too close to the house, its root system undermining the driveway, massive limbs swaying about during storms. We felt bad about hiring someone to remove that huge old weed tree, imagining its psychic pain as chainsaws did their fatal work.

Did you know the term ‘tree hugger’ can also mean someone who physically hugs a tree to become more at one with nature?

“Good morning, tree.”

“Morning, Elspeth, coffee smells good. Ahem, I don’t suppose I could have a glass of water?”

BBC culture writer Lindsay Baker found that the recent emergence of ‘tree literature’ is no new thing, quoting the likes of William Wordsworth (It Was An April Morn), John Clare (The Fallen Elm) and German poet and philosopher Herman Hesse (Trees: Reflections and Poems).

“Trees are sanctuaries,” wrote Hesse. “When we have learned to listen to trees… that is home.”

New age and literary tree-isms aside, ‘small c’ conservationists can do their bit to save trees without necessarily chaining themselves to bulldozers or a Wollemi Pine (critically endangered, according to the Canberra Arboretum, which hosts 31 endangered species).

In 2014, we set ourselves a carbon-neutral cap after towing a caravan 15,000 kms around Australia. Our carbon footprint for this epic journey was 4.77 tonnes of CO2, based on driving 15,000 kms at an average 14.5 litres per 100 kilometres. This translated to $24.15 per tonne or $115.95. We donated this amount to Barung Landcare, where we often purchase trees, plants and ferns from their native nursery.

Our 2018 outback trip (6,000 kms), which ended on Monday, should cost us around $50 as our version of the ‘carbon tax’. Or we could just wander around the block, hugging trees (hose in hand).

Recommended reading: The Bush – Don Watson, Barkskins – Annie Proulx, The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben.

FOMM back pages

Carnarvon open for business

carnarvon-business — Carnarvon Gorge – The Ampitheatre by Bob Wilson

It doesn’t seem too widely known that the once-notorious black soil road from the Rolleston turn-off to Carnarvon Gorge is now completely sealed. True, there is an unsealed section between Takarakka Resort and the National Park headquarters, but it’s a few hundred metres at best.

In the 1970s, a hired car full of adventurous Kiwis set off for Carnarvon, 720kms west of Brisbane, having heard it was a must-do wilderness experience in Queensland.

“Mind you, it’s four-wheel drive country only,” we were warned. Even with a four-wheel drive vehicle, after heavy rain, the black soil roads to Carnarvon from Injune or Rolleston could become impassable. You either couldn’t get in or couldn’t get out. We naïve Kiwis of course hired a conventional six-cylinder sedan and went close to running out of fuel as the car made slow and slippery progress. We turned back and kind people we met in the pub at Injune offered space in their homes for our tired bodies.

In 2017, the 40 kms of new sealed road from the Rolleston turn-off to Carnarvon completed in June, makes it a dream run. Even last year, when the road between the turnoff and Takarakka Resort was still unsealed, Carnarvon Gorge attracted 65,000 visitors.

The gorge is a spectacular sight after driving across the seemingly endless central Queensland plains. It’s a scenic drive in from the A7 Carnarvon Highway between Rolleston (100 km to the north) and Injune (150km to the south). The only tip for the novice in 2017 is to make sure you have plenty of fuel and to realise that you might need to forego Facebook for a few days.

There was a long period when the remoteness of Carnarvon Gorge and the spirituality of a place held sacred by local Aborigines was the key attraction for hikers keen to soak up the solitude and silence. Friends who recently stayed at Carnarvon Gorge during school holidays were disenchanted with the numbers of people staying there. They have a four-wheel drive vehicle so also visited Mt Moffat, which they said was less spectacular but comparatively devoid of people.

After spending four nights at the gorge (during school holidays), I’m wondering what sort of growth pressures the park will face in coming years. But I’m thinking that Carnarvon Gorge visitor numbers will stay fairly constant. Unless you like a 10-hour driving day, you’ll have to stay overnight at least once between Brisbane and your destination.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s 2005 management plan for Carnarvon noted there were 27 separate tourism operators allowed to do business within the national park. These include coach and helicopter tour operators but no flying in the park itself – drones, as the sign at the headquarters said, are not allowed either. Accommodation and camping ranges from a camp site at the National Park headquarters (36 sites), which, for some reason, is only available in school holidays. At Takarakka Resort, 4 kms outside the park, one can choose between pitching a tent, hooking a caravan up to power and water or staying in one of the powered safari cottages (canvas roof and walls and timber floors). Alternatively, there’s the Carnarvon Gorge Wilderness Resort just down the road where you can enjoy most of the comforts of home.

Unlike some travel articles, which carry coy disclaimers that (writer) was a guest of (airline-travel agency-resort), this blog pays its own way. She Who Organises Things paid in advance for the four nights (powered caravan site at $46 a night). We also signed up for the Sunday night roast dinner ($25 per person).

If I found anything at all less than satisfactory it was the cleaners with leaf blowers.

That minor irritation was offset by the free outdoor movie night (The Castle), which is cornier than I remember but somehow very dinky-di.

Carnarvon Gorge is rugged and remote, and even with its well-marked tracks and the support of local rangers, it would not be hard to get into a spot of bother. One has to rock-hop over the six creek crossings and there are ladders and vertical steps involved with other walks. We walked about 12 kms on our first day and ran out of water by the end of the trip. So you evidently have to carry at least one and probably two litres per person. A reasonable level of fitness is required.

If you are a serious bush-walker with a four-wheel drive vehicle you could spend some weeks exploring this 164,000ha national park and the unsealed roads into nearby Mt Moffat and Ka Ka Mundi national parks.

Carnarvon Gorge was surrounded by pastoral properties, parts of which have since been incorporated into the national park.

In the mid-1880s, white explorers Thomas Mitchell and Ludwig Leichhardt made the public aware of the area’s permanent water. This led to settlers taking up blocks in Central Queensland and sparked off two decades of open aggression between local indigenous groups and the newcomers.

Libby Smith’s historical account of European settlers living on Carnarvon Station (now owned by Bush Heritage), chronicles the hardships suffered by successive owners of the 59,051ha station north-west of Carnarvon Gorge.

They had to battle droughts, floods, bushfires and invasive pests like prickly pear and feral animals. Above all was the remoteness of the property, which sits between Mt Moffat and Ka Ka Mundi.

Even in 2001, the resident managers described Carnarvon Station as more remote than their last posting in Kakadu. Co-manager Steve Heggie said the biggest challenge was the inability to enter or exit the property after the rains. A trip to town involved four hours of hard driving ‘before you even hit the blacktop’.

“We had to plan for adequate supplies of food, fuel and work stores, medical emergencies and for volunteers stranded after rain.”

Smith writes that Carnarvon National Park was extended in the 1960s and 1970s to include pastoral holdings which had been surrendered. They include Salvatore Rosa National Park (1957) and Ka Ka Mundi (1973). The park was also extended west in the 1980s and 1990s. Smith notes there was initially fierce opposition to proposals to expand national parks into pastoral leases.

“There was a fear of any change in land use and ‘locking up country.’”

Smith’s story deals only with pastoral history, but considering that Aboriginal history in Carnarvon long preceded European settlement, the reaction by pastoralists to the conservation ‘threat’ is quite ironic.

In 2001, Bush Heritage purchased Carnarvon Station for conservation. It has since been found to contain 25 regional ecosystems, including seven that were endangered.

Feedback from last week

The Prickly Pear column, also inspired by this trip, engendered a lot of feedback. One reader wrote to say her grand-father had to walk off the land near Roma as a result of prickly pear infestation and became a land valuer instead. Some readers were keen to say the pear has been maligned and that many people grew up used to eating the fruit, which is tasty and nutritious. Another emailed to correct us, saying the river at Nindigully is the Moonie, not the Balonne.

Perplexed Pensioner of Reeseville once again took issue with my claim that white settlers introduced cats. A topic for another Friday, perhaps.

Ah well, Queensland still won!

Private interests and national parks

Let’s just imagine going for a bush walk in a national park, say five or ten years from now. As you set off on foot with your smart phone, selfie stick and water bottle, a tribe of kids and adults whiz past on mountain bikes. In the distance, you can hear the throaty buzz of trail bikes traversing the circuit reserved for them on the other side of the mountain. A kilometre or so down the track a herd of cattle cross the path to continue grazing along the stock route reserved for times of drought. Down in the gorge there’s a family of prospectors, panning for gold, while above, zip line riders scoot from tree to tree on overhead wires. There are kids swimming in the rock pool; they yell and wave to the 12 people riding horses while their guide (who once had a gig at the Sistine Chapel), holds a gaudy umbrella aloft so his charges do not stray. As you climb back up, a gondola glides silently overhead, taking punters on a cable car ride to a pricey restaurant and lookout at the summit. Back at the picnic ground, a dozen people are being given archery lessons while others queue for the hot air balloon tour.
Some of that sounds OK. Fun, even. But in a national park?

State governments are increasingly looking at new ways of increasing visitor numbers to the national parks and reserves under their control. In the pursuit of this goal they have embraced “ecotourism” which in its purest sense means: “Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people”.
People who frequently visit national parks to walk in the forest, birdwatch and just enjoy the peaceful seclusion had concerns about the Queensland Government’s decision to call for expressions of interest (EOI) for commercial projects in national parks.

In Queensland, then Environment Minister Kate Jones raised the idea in 2008 and it was further advanced by the Newman government, which made changes to the Nature Conservation Act.
It is clear the current Labor government is continuing along this path, although it has promised a review of the legislative changes to the Act made by the Newman government.
National Parks Association of Queensland executive director Paul Donatiu says the key to the review is to ensure the cardinal principle for managing national parks is maintained. This means to provide, to the greatest possible extent, for the permanent preservation of the area’s natural condition and the protection of the area’s cultural resources and values (natural condition meaning protection from human interference).

A spokesman for Queensland’s Parks and Wildlife Service said the previous government expanded management principles to include reference to education and recreation activities and ecotourism.
“The cardinal principle itself remains unchanged and is still the primary principle to be considered in the management of a national park.”
We understand that 12 expressions of interest remain on the table, from more than 40 submitted, although only three are under active investigation. The spokesman confirmed that a zipline in the Obi Obi Gorge at Kondalilla National Park (pictured above) in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, was one of the projects identified by the government. The other is Green Mountains campground in Lamington National Park. The latter includes a campground, a three-bedroom house and a barracks building. The government is continuing to work with the proponent on this proposal.
Details of other EOI proposals are “commercial-in-confidence” because they were initiated by the proponents.

Paul Donatiu says the NPAQ is concerned about the precedent that would arise from allowing private use of public land. The NPAQ does not support commercial activities and says all of these proposals have the capacity to alter how we perceive national parks. Donatiu is particularly anxious about the zipline proposal because of the potential for interference with the forest canopy.
Zipline Australia says its proposal minimises physical contact within the national park. Tour participants would enter the park on a suspension bridge from land outside the park then use cables and tree platforms to complete the journey. The tour infrastructure would be based in Montville, with participants bussed to the starting point.

The Sunshine Coast Environment Council (SCEC) says it is “inappropriate and unnecessary” to locate a commercial, adrenaline- based development within a national park. SCEC spokesperson Narelle McCarthy said the group was concerned because of the high conservation and scenic values of the Kondalilla National Park.
The Parks and Wildlife Services spokesman said the government is committed to partnering with the tourism industry to develop best-practice ecotourism experiences on national parks.
“The proposal for the Obi Obi zipline does raise concerns for government, specifically whether ziplines are appropriate in national parks. The government is considering this proposal in light of these concerns.”

There is nothing wrong with thrill-based tours like ziplines, rock-climbing, canyoning, abseiling or underground caving. These activities already occur in forest park environments all over the world. Not all tourists have the time or physical energy to take on a day hike to exotic locations, so they are happy to pay a premium to be transported, be it by tour coach (pick your destination), four-wheel drive (Fraser Island) helicopter (Fox Glacier, Grand Canyon) or cableway (Kuranda, Queenstown).
Not everyone wants to visit a national park just to walk four kilometres, admire the view then walk back again. Many want another reason and that is what the ecotourism push is all about.

In New South Wales, a task force was set up in 2008 to examine what kinds of things people wanted out of national parks. The good news is the report rebuffed large scale developments such as major resorts and hotels, theme parks, cinemas and golf courses. It also believed a total ban on all accommodation options was ‘‘too absolute’’, but supported conservation values:
“The national park ‘brand’ has marketing value for the tourism industry, but the essence of that ‘brand’ is naturalness and beauty and therefore it will only have currency if the conservation values of parks and reserves are secured and enhanced.”
Or as Joni Mitchell put it: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

The NSW Taskforce said competitors in other states and overseas had developed high quality nature tourism facilities and experiences in outstanding locations, many of which are in national parks and have multi-day walking activities with accommodation facilities.
The Tasmanian government, for one, wants tourism operators to take advantage of development opportunities inside national parks and World Heritage Areas. In December 2014, 37 proposals were lodged, including one to build permanent, hut-style accommodation along the South Coast Track bushwalking route.
The ABC’s 7.30 Report said the proponent believes numbers walking the track can be increased by up to 1,500 per year.

An article in The Conversation a while ago put up an argument that national parks need visitors to survive. It quoted data from Australia, Canada, the US and Japan to show that national park visitor numbers were declining on a per capita basis. As Susan Moore and others wrote, if you are passionate about biodiversity and conservation, you need to convince more people to become advocates for national parks and conservation – to become frequent visitors.
If you don’t, the interests that support utilitarian activities such as grazing, hunting and logging, may just get the upper hand.