Egg Island Canal Rally

Last weekend, the village of Franklin in the Huon Valley celebrated its annual festival, Focus on Franklin. It was a wonderful event attracting large numbers of visitors to this gorgeous area of Tasmania. As a part of the celebrations, there was much activity on the Huon River itself, with Dragon Boat races, night time light displays and ferry rides and general boating fun.

I took the opportunity on the Sunday to row through the historic Egg Island Canal in Franklin, one of the oldest canals in Australia. This canal has suddenly found itself the subject of a proposed water pipeline development by Southern Water in its planned upgrade of water to Cygnet and to ensure water for proposed future development in Cradoc.

Southern Water intend laying a large plastic pipeline directly across the Huon and straight through Egg Island Canal. This has generated much community and state wide anger, especially as alternate designs are available. Most people recognise the heritage significance and sheer beauty of this unspoilt navigation waterway and argue cohesively that the pipeline should be buried out of sight on Egg Island in areas of little or no conservation value. And such areas do exist.

On Sunday afternoon a friend and I took to a small boat and we set out across the river. It is always such a pleasure to see the dark waters of the magnificent Huon up close in a row boat, able to trail a hand in the water and look up and down its length towards the Sleeping Beauty range at one end and the Hartz Peak at the other.

But then you enter the canal – and things change. It is a little like entering a different world. There is a strange silence and tranquillity in there that seems so private, so untouched. The waters are still, the sound of birdlife intensifies and is only metres away. The trees close in overhead and you feel a million miles from anywhere. It is easy to see why people call this little canal an enchanting place. Because it is exactly that: enchanting.

I heard someone describe it once as like being lost in the Mekong Delta. Others speak of rowing out there just to sit when things get too much. And of course there are the dozens of school kids who regularly row through this canal and learn to understand their river.

For all intents and purposes, when in the old canal you could be anywhere on earth. It is so unspoilt, so wild – and so important. It may be a man made waterway but it feels like wilderness.

But while I was moving through the canal, every now and then I’d get a sharp mental image of a large black plastic pipe, with its metre high fixing posts every few metres, covered in mud and weeds and with river debris tangled around it and silted up along its edges. I looked at all the roots of the beautiful over hanging trees and saw that they’d inevitably have to be removed to even allow the pipeline to be laid. The future of those trees is very uncertain.

I could see the inevitable graffiti scribbled all over the pipe and the plastic bags and drink bottles tangled up against it. I looked at the canal at low tide and realised that with its sloping banks, there is no way a pipeline can be hidden or disguised. It is impossible to hide it. It will be very very visible.

And I wondered. I wondered if any of the proponents of this crazy plan had even travelled this precious water way. And I prayed they had not. For if they had, their actions are inexplicable.

And so, with this in mind I am calling out for help. I’m calling out to anyone who feels this plan is something for which future generations will damn us if we allow it to go ahead.

I am asking you to make your presence felt at a rally at 10.00 a.m. on the Huon River at Franklin on Easter Monday. If you have a water craft of any kind, boat, canoe, kayak, surfboard – anything – I ask you to just be there.

Just be there and make a silent comment.
It will only take a couple of hours.
The pipeline will be there for decades.
It’s a fair swap.

Mike Peters
Franklin

I have provided a link to an artist’s impression of the canal – as it is and as it may become.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWBAtZfdPA