MY roots are in the North East, where as a lad I trapped hawks and even a pair of wedge-tailed eagles for pigeon club bounty for the mining town in which I lived.

Some of us grow into maturity with abhorrence of our past callow youthful deeds.

To believe that such natural beauty can be imperilled by so-called responsible governments defies explanation.

It’s high time our elected took a walk through this region and a drink from a crystal stream and applied some conscience to their deliberations.

Paradoxically it seems that as the human metamorphoses into the politician, he sheds his skin with his conscience and slithers into that unique club, so remote from Lesley Nicklason’s world, that to acknowledge its presence, would destroy him through conscience.

Can mere words and sentiment save what is so precious?

It hasn’t saved the great white bear from drowning for want of an icy stepping-stone to its hunting ground.

And yet we return ignorance to its rightful place every polling day.

What catastrophies will visit the North East wilderness over the next four years now that for the sake of stable government we have re-honed their chainsaws for yet another term.

Let Lesley continue her essays and give us more photos lest we forget what once it was.

Lesley Nicklason: What we want to save, why we want to save it

And,
Two poems:

The Magic Forest
By Paul Tapp ©1972

Shadows fleeing,
Forest waking,
Shafts of yellow light…
Day’s breaking.
Luminescent web is melting
Droplets swelling, sparkling, falling
Pardelote, currawong, cockatoo calling.

Wand’ring young man.
Forest steaming.
Breath is vapour.
Young mind dreaming.

If you had seen it.
Felt it.
Smelt it.
Had you wandered.
Knew it.
Loved it.
Living forest.
Whispering air.
Had you wandered by my mountain
Magic forest still be there.

But look about you mister.
Mister MP.
Through that hilly vista.
Tell me what you see.
You won’t find a tree.
Came a rumbling convoy.
Carted them away.
No trees here today.

What brand of humanity.
What kind of insanity.
Condones the depravity
That cuts down the trees
Brings a forest to its knees?

Go away now mister
Leave this barren, smould’ring vista.
Tell the people where you’ve been.
Tell the people what you’ve seen.

The Tasmanian Beast
By Paul Tapp© 1985

Within my dream
There lives a scream
Which fills me so with fear
I feel its breath upon me
The beast is drawing near
It’s breath is hot and fetid
And it vomits in the seas
The beast has dogs
Which carry logs
The monster feeds on trees.

Within my dream there came a scream
Like I’ve never heard before
Something like the shrieking
Of the modern bushman’s saw
The beast is eating Paradise
And knocking at my door.

I see the silent , sleeping stream
Swallowed in one gulp
Hear mother nature weeping
As her children turn to pulp.
Hear the wailing of a people
Who fell for the charade
And wake to find the beast from Hell
About in their back yard.

So sleep a troubled sleep
The beast will let you sleep
But wake up if you care
Wake up if you dare
The beast is omnipresent…
That means it’s everywhere
I hear him in the haunted hills where he reaps without relent
I hear him lying in the halls of the people’s parliament
I see him standing at the bar
The saw-dust on singlets in ranks
I hear a jingling continuum
The beast owns all the banks
And see the people all in lines
Like sheep we often see
The silent shepherd is the beast
The stupid sheep —
Are we.