Media release – Restore Pedder Campaign, 8 September 2021 

Pedder can be restored without compromising Tasmania’s energy security

“Premier Gutwein said in this week’s budget estimates that Tasmania has 250MW spare capacity for Twiggy Forrest’s hydrogen plans. Not only that in true Tasmanian form, I have no doubt that the Premier would be prepared to sell it to him at a discounted price. It makes the 57MW from the Pedder impoundment insignificant in the scheme of things,” Christine Milne, AO, convenor of the Lake Pedder Restoration Inc. said today.

“With the Cattle Hill and Granville Harbour windfarms already generating 154% of the energy from Lake Pedder, Tasmania already has moved way beyond regarding Lake Pedder as essential to Tasmania’s energy security.

There is nothing to stop the restoration of Pedder except a lack of political imagination and willpower.

The welcome news comes as the Restore Pedder campaign launches a new podcast series. ‘Pedder Unplugged’ sharing the stories of exploration, adventure, mishap and heartbreak of campaigning to save the original Lake Pedder. The tales are told by the Pedder people themselves.

Today’s podcast launch coincides with the 49th anniversary of the tragic disappearance of campaigner Brenda Hean and pilot Max Price. The pair took off in a tiger moth aircraft to fly to Canberra in 1972, and protest the flooding of Pedder by sky writing ‘Save Lake Pedder’ over the capital. But they never made it. Not a trace of Brenda, Max or the aircraft has been found since.

The first episode remembers stalwart, Brenda Hean, spending a night “in a boat, up a tree, on a lake’, in the final vigil as the impoundment waters rose.

If Brenda was alive today she would have welcomed the Premier’s statement about surplus energy  but would have added “The job is never done, until we get there”. So let’s get on with it. The impoundment is redundant. It’s time to restore Lake Pedder.

Listen to the Pedder Unplugged podcast here.

Featured image above: Lake Pedder as seen from Mt Solitary, courtesy Denis Garett.