MY FIRST TRIP to Queenstown last Thursday was an enlightening experience.
I had heard about the “moonscape” but driving past the many lakes including the breathtaking Lake Burbury, “moonscape” seemed fiction until I rounded the last bend before the downhill run into the town.
I was boggled at the sight of what must be for now, Tasmania’s biggest environmental disaster.
As the days unfolded I would learn more.
The typical Tasmanian friendliness obscured a tragedy of epic proportions.
The smelting has long gone, but its industrial legacy is everywhere.
The odorous sulphur dioxide that mixed with rain and destroyed the trees and vegetation was replaced many years ago by grey bubbling sludge that became the King River.
People on the ABT rail told a story of a river that would not allow skipping stones to sink with any haste and how they waded through a putrid cess to reach school.
The forest east of Queenstown is Gondwana personified if you can keep your eyes averted from the reddish brown foaming snake of what the King River is now as it winds its way through rain soaked Huon Pine and lush Leatherwood stands.
As the train nears the coast and the landscape changes from steep hills to lowland scrub thick with Melaleuca species, the acid silt from high above “Queenie” lies metres thick either side of the King many kilometres from where it had laid for eons.
Long dead trees now jagged stumps protrude from the red lunar desert in a contrasting rainforest of extreme green.
Someone on the train remarks how this region has two percent of the population, but has produced 35 percent of the wealth for the state. How much money really went to the state and more importantly the people?
Who really pays?
I look to the river as she speaks and my mind turns to the incalculable damage that this alleged wealth has caused and the burden to be carried by future generations.
Who will pay for this cataclysmic devastation?
A million tonnes of acid silt lies through and on the banks of this once jewelled and majestic river, once a lifeblood for all who shared its gifts.
While “Queenie” remains virtually vegetation free the soil continues to combine with gravity and rain to continue its path to the “King”.
As the loco tugs its human cargo steadily towards the tourist mecca of Strahan my mind turns to the latest industrial monument held up to the folk of Tasmania.
Longreach — another Queenstown in the making?
A few quick sums have my heart racing. The Longreach pulp mill proposal will be allowed to deposit tens of thousands of tonnes of solid waste into Bass Strait over the life of the project as well as organochlorines and a hundred or so compounds and chemicals of dubious reputation.
Who will pay for the long term lack of vision that this alleged injection of wealth will supposedly bring our state?
With taxpayers’ money to the tune of tens of millions of dollars already being hurled at this private venture into the unknown it seems that we are already on the path to “Queenie part two”.
What legacy will be left for our successors in fifty years? Will the proponent, like Mt Lyell Mines just walk away from the ecological disaster that is pending?
Will the people of Tasmania foot the cost for corporate environmental damage?
Why should we breathe Sulphur Dioxide emissions that cursed Queenstown, emissions that our government has given exemption to the proponent of this so called “industrial museum” to be built on the banks of the Tamar River?
What of the silt that curses the Tamar that has our short sighted leaders ready to stick on a $500 million bandaid in a bid to out race siltation emanating from poor land use or land abuse, blatant vandalism if you like.
To be or not to be?
It will take leaders of vision to realise the potential that Tasmania really has.
It will take people with will and foresight to make what could be a reality.
We can be so much more than a monument to industrial degradation, more than a living example of man’s ignorance of his own environment and his never ending quest for wealth and triumph over nature.
For all those who think we are on the right track, take a trip to “Queenie”, ride the ABT and reflect on man’s rush for wealth and his desire to have it all now and at any cost, regardless of who pays.
Cheers,
Dave
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed”.
Mahatma Gandhi
PS:
North of Poatina, May 18
Earlier: Why oppose the pulp mill
