The Times on Tasmania

Heather Rose The Lennon government’s actions continue to bring widespread disrepute to our island.

And then Gill continues: “The sound of chainsaws trills over the forest; the ancient trees and their undergrowth are being clear-felled so they can plant a mongrel weed, shining gum, most of it sent to Japan. The forest is being rubbed out by a special pleading, arm-twisting and back-scratching corruption.”

As a visitor to the UK I was initially delighted to see Tasmania headlined on the front of The Times on Easter Sunday. It pointed readers to a five page article by A.A. Gill for The Times Magazine complete with colour photos. Gill paints Tasmania as an antipodean phenomena — the island of extremes — with a “black belt in ruggedness.”

Of our forests Gill says: “This is some of the oldest living landscape in existence. If you travelled here for nothing else you should see this forest; its the stillness that’s so gorgeous and unnevering. A huge silent library of greenness. Things do live here, lots of things, but none of them say anything.” And then Gill continues: “The sound of chainsaws trills over the forest; the ancient trees and their undergrowth are being clear-felled so they can plant a mongrel weed, shining gum, most of it sent to Japan. The forest is being rubbed out by a special pleading, arm-twisting and back-scratching corruption.”

Will someone please point out to Paul Lennon that while he might live on an island he is not an island. Here in Europe climate change and carbon dioxide emissions are an urgent and daily concern. The government’s sanctioned destruction of our natural forests not only looks short-sighted in the extreme, but criminal. Considered just for a moment in the long-term (say only ten or twenty years ) it is ecologically corrupt, economically corrupt and morally corrupt. And a third rate pulp mill will only make it worse.

Heather Rose
Charlotte Square
Edinburgh