Saving The Franklin: A People's Rebellion

Kate Crowley

The self-interested politics of small-minded politicians was a world away from the blockade. The blockaders were intent on refocusing the campaign’s visual imagery, away from smiling bureaucrats in their suits to the menacing bulldozers flattening incredibly beautiful places. ‘In defence of the wilderness’ wrote Geoff Law, ‘we loitered by loitering streams and secreted ourselves in secret glades’. The blockaders’s account of their efforts makes harrowing reading: the anxieties of violence, the shock of icy waters, the impossible logistics, the fear of machinery, the fallen Huon pines, the mown-down rubber duckies, the endless training, skirmishing, singing, coordinating and arrests. Most harrowing was the long haul to goal. Once there the inmates ritually called ‘no dams’ to blockaders who returned ‘no gaols’.
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…This is the river. Rising in the Cheyne Range. Falling down Mt Gell. Writhing like a snake in the wild lands at the base of the huge massif of Frenchman’s Cap. Writing its past and prophesying its future in massive gorges slicing through mountains and cliffs so undercut they call them verandahs, and in eroded boulders and beautiful gilded eggs of river stone, and in beaches of gravel that shift year to year, flood to flood, and in that gravel that once was rounded river rock that once was eroded boulder that once was undercut cliff that once was mountain and which will be again…
Richard Flanagan, Death of A River Guide

Greenie anarchists challenging parliamentary democracy

The 1970s had been dismal years for conservation in Tasmania. The drowning of wilderness photographer Olegas Truchanas and the loss of Lake Pedder were followed by the flooding of the Pieman River and the revocation for forestry of almost a third of the Hartz Mountain National Park. Further threats to the southwest from forestry and hydro-industrial development inspired the 1976 formation of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society (TWS) in a bid to turn the tide towards conservation. Kevin Kiernan, who became the first fulltime director and pursued a southwest national park, proposed the society at a meeting of sixteen people at Bob Brown’s house at Liffey in the state’s north. By the end of the year there were four hundred members, and within five years numbers had increased twentyfold.

After Lake Pedder’s flooding conservationists had been deflated and embittered, some never to accept their loss and even today dreaming of restoration. They determined not to be caught out by the forward planning of the autonomous and highly secretive Hydro-Electric Commission (HEC), nor by the steamrolling of their concerns by the combined might of the two major political parties. Where state governments had learnt to exercise exclusion tactics and legislative vetoes in order to achieve hydro-industrial goals – given the emerging threat of ecological values – conservationists had learnt to exploit democratic processes and to invoke national sympathy by politicising their demands. In Tasmania this was an affront to established politics, and for their campaigning efforts conservationists were denounced as ‘greenie anarchists challenging parliamentary democracy itself’.

The stakes were high after Lake Pedder’s flooding. A wilderness of incomparable beauty had been subsumed by the hydro-juggernaut. As an unparalleled ecological tragedy it inspired action to ensure the like would never happen again. The southwest remained one of the world’s last great temperate wilderness areas – despite hydro-encroachment – but was vulnerable, with no enduring protection. If the Pedder dam had torn the heart out of the southwest, a Franklin-Gordon dam would bisect its remnants into utter insignificance . The territorial imperatives of public development agencies were ensuring the ‘attrition and frittering away of the public domain by wasteful exploitation and ad hoc decision making’. The mighty Franklin became an international icon for all that was threatened.

Notwithstanding moves from the late 1970s to achieve world heritage recognition for the southwest, nor even the declaration of the Wild Rivers National Park, the powerful cabal of hydro-industrial proponents always assumed the Franklin would be flooded. It took some fanning of the fires of activism for conservationists to trigger renegade actions by politicians and a national campaign of unparalleled sophistication and magnitude to win the hearts and minds of the nation and the sympathy of Prime Minister Bob Hawke to save it. Hawke’s federal intervention with the passing of the Commonwealth’s World Heritage and Properties Conservation Act (1983) enabled the High Court on 1 July 1983 to confirm the legality of the federal bid to save the river.

The HEC behaved as if it owned the ‘Empty Quarter’

Initially mapped by European explorers in the 1820s, the Franklin is an extraordinary river. It was with fear that James Calder’s crew first spied it, a large and furious torrent two thousand feet below the Deception Range. Calder was twice unsuccessful in finding a crossing point for Governor Franklin’s party. But he noted the wide and beautiful river it became as it emerged from the glen, and he called it the Franklin. Until relatively recently Tasmanians were brought up believing that the southwest was an ’empty quarter’. But Calder’s party knew that the wild, mountainous country through which it ventured was occupied, as bark huts on the Upper Franklin attested. Indeed, indigenous Tasmanians had been in the region 20,000 years before, as proved by Kevin Kiernan’s discovery of the Kutikina Cave on the Franklin with its thick deposit of rock rubble, stone tools and bones.

For Richard Flanagan the notion of the empty quarter is wrong because it denies any possibility of human coexistence with the wilderness. The only history told about the ‘empty quarter’ is one of exploitation, he argues, so that the only rationale for the future becomes more of the same . In 1976, as Bob Brown and Paul Smith rafted inflatable dinghies down the Franklin – probably one of the first parties to ever make the entire downriver journey – exploitation was very much on their minds, given what they knew of the HEC’s plans. Paul Smith described Bob Brown as having been initially reluctant to undertake the trip, but still curious enough to go, inspired enough to return, and then shocked to round a bend on the second trip and see work already proceeding at Mt McCall. After that, he and many others were motivated to incredible action.

The TWS Franklin campaign was very different to the Lake Pedder campaign. By all accounts it was more proactive, brazen, strategic, media-savvy and political. The compelling Lake Pedder slide shows of Olegas Truchanas had left the politicians unmoved but the public stunned. Recognising this, Franklin campaigners pitched a dual argument intertwining visual with economic values. On the one hand they lobbied hard in the parliamentary arena, targeting and destroying the HEC’s project cost estimates, state power projections, and therefore its economic credibility. On the other they built a parallel aesthetic dialogue, visually marketing the beauty of the Franklin and readily conveying its spoiling by road construction, an oil spill, a chain saw, or an HEC bulldozer .

Visual marketing was critical to the success of the campaign. It began in state parliament with the 1977 launching of the TWS film ‘Last Wild River’ that Bob Brown and Paul Smith had made on their return trip down the river. Stickers, posters and pictorials were later joined by the yellow ‘No Dams’ triangle, that is symbolic now of wilderness and green politics. Just like the United Tasmania Group in its Lake Pedder campaign, TWS was looking for more than preservation; it was looking for a new impetus in state development. Its arguments against hydro-development were buoyed by Tasmania’s poor growth rate, the virtually stagnant population, and the few jobs from the establishment of major power-consuming projects relative to smaller industries.

Any logic was lost, however, to the extent that state planning was the de facto role of the HEC, rubber-stamped by parliament with little debate. TWS came up against the HEC tactics of withholding information, delaying the release of information, and suppressing, or failing to document options, costs and social and environmental impacts. When forced to produce material on the Franklin scheme, the HEC released ‘a multi-volume glossy publication several feet thick’, capable of ‘bamboozling’ any politician, overestimating power needs, and skating over alternative schemes. The HEC behaved as if it owned the ‘empty quarter’, and did not appreciate that the bushwalkers, rafters and conservationists witnessed the very activities it routinely denied.

If the parliament tries to work through popular decisions, we’re doomed

In a stunning turnaround, conservationists announced the HEC’s plans for the Franklin-Gordon before the 1979 tabling of its bill in Parliament. By this time they had already achieved public opposition polled at two-to-one against the scheme. For at least a decade, the HEC had been denying it had built a road into an ‘investigation site’ below Mt McCall, and in the late 1970s was denying that it had resumed activity in the region despite first-hand sightings. In early 1977 Labor Premier Neilson released a statement of its plans to dam the Franklin in two stages, flooding first the Gordon and Denison splits, and then the Franklin River gorges. Its 1979 report to parliament, ‘Stage Two Gordon River Power Development’, (to harness the Lower Gordon, King and Franklin Rivers and flood the Franklin at a cost of $1.3 billion), confirmed that $6.5 million had already been spent without approval.

It seemed that public accountability and environmental concern were about to catch up with the state development juggernaut and its trashing of the southwest. The pre-emptive actions by the HEC were being matched by the pre-emptive actions of the Franklin campaigners. The HEC had relied upon the exclusion of conservationists from decision-making, the support of the political parties, and public faith in hydro-industrialisation. With the Franklin campaign, this was about to change. The retirement of Labor Premier ‘Electric’ Eric Reece in 1975 saw the beginning of the end for the hydro era. New Premier Doug Lowe ushered in a brief transformation from autocratic to consensual politics, bringing the HEC under unprecedented scrutiny but ultimately costing his premiership.

In 1971, against the backdrop of the Pedder dispute, the HEC had briefed state parliament on the Pieman Development and the Stage Two scheme to follow. This was later realised by Lowe to have first flagged the Franklin dam proposal. Conservationists had known of the Franklin and Lower Gordon plans since the early 1960s, with leaked documents indicating that ‘the HEC’s grand design would leave few river valleys of the South West unflooded’ Given the controversy when the Stage Two was announced, Lowe did not accept it. He established his own Energy Directorate within the Premier’s Department, called for the HEC to consider options, and created further history by releasing the proposal and options for comment.

Lowe’s call for a full and open debate to precede any final decision, and the passing of the Gordon-above-Olga compromise legislation that would avoid flooding at least the lower reaches of the Franklin River, incurred the wrath of retired Premier Reece. As a member of the newly formed Association of Consumers of Electricity, Reece lobbied the Parliamentary Labor Party to heed the HEC Commissioner’s warning that ‘any scheme that didn’t flood the Franklin would have to be seen as irresponsible’. When it became clear to the HEC that Lowe was intent on public comment and a review of optional schemes, HEC Commissioner Ashton declared that ‘if the Parliament tries to work through popular decisions, we’re doomed in this state and doomed everywhere’

Lowe broke tradition by requesting options from the HEC, originally in 1971 with its plans to flood Lake Pedder while he was a member of the opposition, and in 1979 for its Franklin plans when he was premier. From the HEC’s reply to the first request, Lowe stated that ‘it was obvious no interference would be tolerated in the scheduled development program’. The second request cost his premiership. Of his attempt to independently assess the HEC’s plans for the Franklin before being deposed, Lowe later explained that ‘there was sufficient bias and distortion in information provided by the HEC that I realised I did need a separate, objective and competent group to advise me on the complexity of energy policy matters, not only power development but conservation strategies and all other related matters’.

The next eighteen months saw a remarkably effective backlash against premier Lowe by hydro-proponents. It began with the Legislative Council’s thirteen-to-four rejection of Lowe’s alternative Olga scheme and threat of blocking supply over the issue, and spread to Labor ranks, with Harry Holgate twice challenging and finally deposing Lowe twelve-to-nine as party leader. Lowe resigned from Labor’s state branch and joined Democrat Norm Sanders on the cross benches, to be followed by colleague Mary Willey. A no confidence over Labor’s ‘handling of the power scheme’ brought the Government down after a long recess. After Labor’s loss at the 1982 state election, Liberal premier Robin Gray reintroduced the HEC’s bill for the Gordon-below-Franklin into the House of Assembly.

The TWS campaign made no impact at all on the Lower House. It passed the HEC legislation twenty-nine-to-two, opposed only by Lowe and Sanders, the independents returned by the June election. Despite public pressure to save the Franklin, Labor had gone to water and executed a backflip away from its Gordon-above-Olga compromise blaming Lowe’s political style as weak and inappropriately leading the party away from its roots. Fronting for the HEC, the Hydro Employees Action Team represented a network encompassing unions powerful enough to threaten the preselection of Parliamentary Labor Party members, causing their defection throughout 1981 away from the Olga scheme to support flooding the Franklin. The same sort of union heavying had, in the end, helped to seal Lake Pedder’s fate.

While the parliament had been deadlocked by the Olga compromise, effectively arguing over which House governs Tasmania, and Lowe had been embroiled in a death roll with his colleagues and the HEC, the TWS had begun covert planning for a blockade at the dam site. As one campaigner remarked, you had the Upper House, some powerful unions and the media supporting the dam, and the Labor elite directing the Premier to back down from his undertaking to include a ‘no dam’ option in the December 1981 referendum . Public opinion was not a concern. The power to ignore public opinion in the Franklin’s case was a covert, deeply-held, clubbish power among a self-styled élite for gain well beyond politics. It was a consummate power, deceptive, arrogant and directing action within political parties and the parliament.

The Franklin is nothing but a brown ditch, leech-ridden and unattractive

During the Franklin debate Lowe remarked that ‘the HEC is an engineering organisation, not a socio-economic planning body. Previous governments may have been satisfied with a cursory perusal of its recommendations, followed by an automatic stamp of approval. This is not my style. If Lowe was a casualty of his own reformism, consensual style and ultimately political isolation, in the end he was instrumental in the subsequent reigning in of the HEC – ironically by Robin Gray – and in the saving of the Franklin with his world heritage and national parks recommendations. In the months before being deposed by his own party, Lowe convinced Cabinet to proclaim the Wild Rivers National Park and forward its nomination for world heritage listing to the Federal Government.

Following election campaigning by the United Tasmania Group, Malcolm Fraser had undertaken on assuming office in November 1975 ‘to fund a major wilderness park in the South West’ and ‘a joint Federal State Resources study of the area’. Although he believed that land use and power generation were state issues, Fraser wrote to Doug Lowe in April 1980 suggesting that the state nominate the southwest as world heritage. He sent on the nomination that arrived in September 1981 and convinced his cabinet to offer $500 million to Tasmania as compensation to stop the dam. This offer was made to premier Gray and rejected by him at the HEC camp on Mt McCutcheon where he and the prime minister took a walk in the scarred wilderness.

The Franklin blockade began on the 14 December 1982, the day the southwest was proclaimed a World Heritage Area by the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO in Paris on the grounds of its natural and cultural values. The French had been loathe to list an area that was in imminent danger of destruction and may well have succeeded in having the matter deferred had not a strong letter of support been read out from Fraser. Meanwhile, HEC bulldozers had been working at the Lower Gordon dam site since July – work made legal by large tracts of land being revoked from the Wild Rivers National Park and vested in the HEC. For good measure the Police Offences Act was amended to make it illegal to trespass on HEC land, and security was tightened in the works area.

On 1 September 1982 the TWS had established a vigil camp in the area near Butler Island to serve as an observation base for the works, for familiarisation with the area and for training. This was the Gordon River country that Olegas Truchanas had died in an attempt to photograph. In 1958 he had been the first person ever to canoe down the Serpentine and Lower Gordon, and he did it alone. He called the wild rivers country a vanishing world, beautiful beyond our dreams. His dream was of a Tasmania where man and nature were one, ‘a shining beacon in a dull, uniform, largely artificial world’. He didn’t live to hear Robin Gray say that the Franklin is nothing but a brown ditch, leech-ridden and unattractive, or that a person has to be either superbly fit or mentally ill to go rafting down there.

Whatever we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves

On September 2 2002 the TWS redeclared the land vested in the HEC as national park, arguing that all things are connected, that whatever we do to the earth we do to ourselves, and that if we destroy our remaining wild places we destroy our identity with the earth. The Australian nation came out in force in the ensuing months to show that it agreed, through organisation by TWS branches around the country which drew campaigning nous from the path previously beaten by the United Tasmania Group. Four thousand people attended a rally in Sydney in the rain, fifteen thousand walked for wilderness with David Bellamy in Melbourne, over forty per cent per cent of voters in the Flinders by-election wrote ‘No Dams’ on their ballot paper, but still Prime Minister Fraser would not directly intervene.

The blockade lasted until March 5 1983, the day Bob Hawke won the federal election and stood alongside Bob Brown announcing that he would honour his election promise and save the Franklin. A National South West coalition of conservation groups had campaigned for the saving of the Franklin in seventeen marginal seats, using the memorable Peter Dombrovskis photograph of Rock Island Bend on the Lower Franklin. More than 2,500 people from all over Australia, and sixty-seven from overseas, had directly assisted the blockade effort from Strahan and upriver at Warner’s Landing and Kelly Basin, with 1,272 people being arrested, ranging in ages from fourteen to seventy-nine. This was Australia’s largest, most sustained, and most effective action of civil disobedience.

It was not so long since Paul Smith had first dragged Bob Brown down the Franklin, nor since the return trip to make the film. Paul described an evening in limestone country on the Lower Franklin where Bob drifted about in no current in the middle of the river looking up at the clouds and soaking it all in, in typical romantic fashion. Could he have envisaged his life’s journey at that point and the terrific battle over the Franklin that was to come? How governments would fall and politics would change forever because of a people’s rebellion in a distant forest? Brown later admitted that the southwest could very easily have been lost. In their euphoria conservationists were yet to feel the backlash. It would come, and persist, and now, decades later, they stand again, in other distant forests, in city streets, again in protest.

A world pure and whole and complete unto itself …

In the late 1970s Bob Brown wrote of the Franklin’s journey . From ice-rimmed tarns and glacial lakes it snakes through forest-clad hills, veering ranges and collecting rivers till the first Huon pine leans on its banks, before reaching long narrow steep gorges and rock-strewn rapids. Here the Irenabyss, the 100-metre chasm over a dark ribbon of slow-moving, silent river. On it flows, west and south through valley, range, foothill and forest, twisting and surging, until the Great Ravine with its four long river reaches, four major rapids and floodlines fifteen metres up the scoured rock walls. On into a broad valley, low verdure banks, limestone cliffs and shingly rapids of the Lower Franklin. Several steep noisy rapids, then the remains of forest giants felled by the axes of piners that spared statuesque blackwoods, lofty eucalyptus, myrtles, leatherwoods and acacias on the Lower Gordon. But for dam site havoc there, the Franklin is today a world pure and whole and complete unto itself …

First published as ‘Saving the Franklin: A People’s Rebellion in a Distant Forest’
Island Magazine, 2003, Vol 93/94, 34-43. Reprinted here with permission.

KATE CROWLEY is an environmental politics and policy academic.

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