Economy
Bob Brown gives away greenie HQ
NESTLED below a craggy bluff, beside a fern-lined river, is an old weatherboard cottage. It’s an idyllic scene and one that has played a role in tumultuous events that have shaped the nation.
Here at “Oura, Oura”, a 14ha property at Liffey in Tasmania’s north, a young doctor-turned-activist plotted a global campaign to save a wild river, created organisations that would protect vast swathes of the bush and began the quest for a national greens party.
Tomorrow (yesterday), that doctor, now 66-year-old federal Greens leader Bob Brown, will gift his retreat of almost 40 years to future generations.
“I want to have it become part of the public domain — and I believe in sorting that sort of thing out while one is hale and hearty,” Senator Brown told The Weekend Australian.
And so the forested land beneath Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers — home to platypus, peregrine falcons, quolls and bandicoots and visited by Tasmanian devils and wedge-tailed eagles — that has been both “a huge inspiration and a friend” for 38 years, will be gifted to Bush Heritage Australia. It was here, in the Liffey Valley, 20 years ago, that Brown created Bush Heritage, using prize money from an environmental award as a deposit to buy nearby forests threatened by logging.
Oura, Oura — an Aboriginal name for the yellow-tail black cockatoo — will become Bush Heritage’s 33rd reserve, bringing to almost 1 million hectares of land it holds around the nation.
Canonised by some and demonised by others, the seasoned politician recalls many of his early, controversial ventures beginning with a discussion around the kitchen table at Oura, Oura.
Among the first was in 1976, soon after Dr Brown had joined local forester Paul Smith in making one of the first successful navigations down the Franklin River in Tasmania’s wild southwest.
Dr Brown and 15 others dedicated to saving Tasmania’s remaining wild rivers from flooding by hydro-electricity dams had gathered at Oura, Oura.
“There were 16 greenies in beanies in the kitchen in a very cold last Saturday in June in 1976,” he recalls.
“(Activist) Kevin Kiernan suggested we take the name of the great American environment group The Wilderness Society, and it was agreed.”
After years of campaigning, including the famous Franklin River blockade and Bob Hawke’s support for the stop-the-dam cause, that battle was finally won in the High Court on July 1, 1983.
The decision stopping the dam set important markers for commonwealth powers and emboldened a generation of activists. Throughout this period, and in his later political career, Liffey was Brown’s “anchor on existence”.
He and partner Paul Thomas will continue to return to the property, but now as volunteers with Bush Heritage.
bushheritage.org.au
youtube.com/watch?v=NTCWkAXz8Q4