Warrick Jordan Musings from Tasmania’s remnant wildlands
The Airwalk is a monument to the packaging of the wild, accompanied by a broken record with only three words – ‘world’s best practice.’ A token raise of the chin to the Melukerdee people, in the form of a plaque and an Indigenous flag, is the ultimate in disingenuity; only kilometres away, Forestry Tasmania refuses to protect the forest adjacent to caves containing some of the world’s most ancient art, or to encourage their protection in the neighbouring World Heritage Area. What kind of society requires the construction of an elevated metal cage as a pre-requisite to experience nature? I’d venture that all the Huon pine fittings and pioneering folklore in the world can’t compensate for the fact that, at $22 an adult, I would feel at best slightly fleeced in being sold a sanitised wild. I’m sure that if I realised that my $22 was being used to build roads into the pristine rainforests of the Lower Weld, hidden behind locked gates a couple of kilometres down the road, I’d be calling Today Tonight with an expose about the tourism experience from hell.
IN A world where commodification extends even to the heart of wilderness, the ability to connect with nature appears ever more distant. Armed with delusion, we feebly grasp towards her, hoping, like a dominating partner who has realised his mistake, that our spurned lover will once again take us by the hand.

I could never argue that the selling of Rock Island Bend to the Australian public was in any way a negative act. The work done by that one image demonstrated the power of projecting nature’s power and tenderness into the wider world. Likewise, the work of contemporary Tasmanian wilderness photographers such as Geoffrey Lea, Grant Dixon and Rob Blakers has revealed to many the two sides of the Tasmanian coin, and, indeed, the subtle and complex shades which exist between – that is, if people care to look for them.

I often pity, though, those busloads of tourists treading the well-worn and taxpayer funded road to Forestry Tasmania’s latter day version of the Berlin Olympics; the Tahune Airwalk. From the bus windows people can view the clearfells and their pyres of burnt life peaking through and over the ‘landscape managed’ visual buffer; although not quite as visible as a triumphant Jesse Owens, and with their only possible victory a Phyrric one, they are powerful nonetheless.

The Airwalk is a monument to the packaging of the wild, accompanied by a broken record with only three words – ‘world’s best practice.’ A token raise of the chin to the Melukerdee people, in the form of a plaque and an Indigenous flag, is the ultimate in disingenuity; only kilometres away, Forestry Tasmania refuses to protect the forest adjacent to caves containing some of the world’s most ancient art, or to encourage their protection in the neighbouring World Heritage Area.

What kind of society requires the construction of an elevated metal cage as a pre-requisite to experience nature? I’d venture that all the Huon pine fittings and pioneering folklore in the world can’t compensate for the fact that, at $22 an adult, I would feel at best slightly fleeced in being sold a sanitised wild. I’m sure that if I realised that my $22 was being used to build roads into the pristine rainforests of the Lower Weld, hidden behind locked gates a couple of kilometres down the road, I’d be calling Today Tonight with an expose about the tourism experience from hell.

How many of us search in vain for that moment when nature is something we are, not something we pretend to be a part of? Walking through wild, wild places, I am acutely aware of how real it is, and how much of an intruder I am. I can’t pretend that I have broken this curse, but a few moments of late have been as close as I’ve ever come.

Occasionally, a person has that rarest of experiences – an interaction with the natural world that feels like it was designed just for you. This can occur in the most mundane of places; a couple of straggly native shrubs blooming in an abandoned urban block, for example, or the first time witnessing the snap of a trigger plant.

Fifty metres up in the crown of an ancient and stately ash, with the snow capped dolerite crags that ring the Upper Florentine valley providing significant atmosphere, I was privy to a sight that amazed me, though I was certain that it was mundane to the strong-billed honeyeatersthat were busy showering me with bark chips.

In the join of a branch that had the form of its trunk partner – solid, ailing, yet destined to stand for many more years, was a micro scale ecosystem. Situated among some nutrient providing detritus, with a bed of sphagnum moss and a couple of minaturised tree-like lichens for company, stood a 30 centimetre high tea-tree. The tea tree, a common Leptospermum lanigerum, looked perfectly content with its role in life.

Would I be equally happy with a community that provides everything I need in the fashion of this tea tree and its companions? The somewhat cramped, lonely, wet and cold conditions notwithstanding, I imagined that a food source, a spectacular view, sufficient water, a few permanent companions and a varied stream of interesting visitors should be enough (if these conditions sound like something you could get used to I’d recommend spending some time at a forest blockade).

A few weeks subsequent to this, I spent a mist-shrouded day in the place that has been alternately and concurrently my home, church, workplace, and playground for the last half decade. Often-times my trips to the Weld Valley involve an imagined funereal shroud that complement the mists that blow across its dramatic and breathing landscape. This day, however, was different.

Staring across the valley, I sat transfixed for hours as the sun broke through the clouds and swathes of mist responded to its touch. As sunlight warmed the mist and the air above it, small asymmetrical spheres broke off and floated skyward, dispersing in thin strings and creating symbols in the sky unreadable to the civilised. Mist streamed off of a ridge in seemingly endless volumes, resembling the rolling movements of a volcano’s plume caught in time lapse.

As the clouds again covered the sun and dark clouds loomed to the north east, I left, making it a few hundred paces before being halted again by the spectacle of a white capped Snowy South – the mountain plateau that dominates and delineates the northern side of the Lower Weld.

For this day, the carnage of civilisation’s encroachment on this ancient place, and the pain I and many others have borne from being witness to it, was obscured by emotions much more powerful. Instead of tears, anger, and impotency, there is only hope, determination, love, and above all, gratitude. Gratitude most of all to this place for providing me with real feeling, real emotion; running the gamut from true hate to perfected love; and real purpose, real life. So often our privilege as a society destroys us with false choice, built expectation, and removal of the tools to build communities and relationships. For me, a landscape, a place, has restored those tools, and provided people and nature to share them with.

It would be simplistic and misleading of me to pretend that one beautiful, unique day, or a connection to one, beautiful, unique place can easily provide all answers to lost souls or lost lives – the petrol burned to get there and the broken people that litter the unwritten histories of valleys like the Weld, or anyone of a thousand places like it, evince this. But to feel connected and free for a few seconds, minutes, or hours is a rare thing, and should be treasured, remembered, and carried throughout our existence.

These experiences, as well as providing connection and purpose, can be used as weapons and shields in moments of necessity. The destruction of a place that means much is never easy to bear, but it must be remembered when the next is threatened. This summer of 2008-2009 is a time when these sources of strength will be much needed.

Destruction of Tasmania’s ancient Southern Forests is continuing apace. The final refuges of wild tall forest, in valleys such as the Weld and Upper Florentine, are threatened now. A bridge over the Weld River and a scar into the heart of the Upper Florentine are planned. If these projects succeed, the values of the last tracts of unprotected tall eucalypt forests of Southern Tasmania will be irrevocably degraded and destroyed.

The Camp Florentine blockade, fast closing on the Weld Ark record as Tasmania’s longest running forest blockade, needs you. So does the North Weld. And the Picton. The Arve. The Styx. and the Counsel. Come and find yourself a forest ( or re-discover one); they’ll definitely give you something back.

I hope to see you there soon.

This article was originally written for the first edition of a new national social and environmental justice newspaper, WAI, available soon. waiquarterly.wordpress.com.

For details of the good people campaigning for the forests referred to in this article, visit:
www.huon.org
www.stillwildstillthreatened.org,www.myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened

Warrick Jordan

Warrick is a student, activist, and aspiring yeoman. He waits patiently for the coming environmental collapse, firmly believing that Tasmania will experience a future that resembles one long wine and pepperberry-cheese night.

Photo by Laura Minnebo.