TROLLING the usual haunts in a long carouse late last week Hag took Green Fairy Absinthe with a most unhappy parent.
And heard a quite fascinating story about Guilford Young College, which Hag cannot vouch for, but being a faithful relayer of gossip and scuttlebut, passes on to her startled readership nevertheless.
Hag was told that students studying a TCE Course (Year 11/ 12) called something like Science of the Environment have been “studying” under the tutelage of Forestry Tasmania.
Worried parent — who at one point became rather nervous when Hag unsteadily poured herself a seventh shot of Green Fairy Ansinthe — said the students had been taken to the Styx where they were informed how effective hot regeneration burns were.
And, how appropriate current clearfelling practices were and what a fabulous environmental result the whole thing produced.
Then there were further excursions with Forestry Tasmania to a sawmill in Sorell to show them how effective the downstream processing was — and how necessary the woodchip industry was because so little of a tree can actually be used in a sawmill.
And lastly they journeyed on again with those friendly Forestry Tasmania tour guides to look at Wielangta (scene of current court case, Brown ponders FT contempt) to get a real understanding of the effectiveness of plantations and the care FT extends to the environment.
The parent claimed there was was no mention ever been made of any current disputes, breaches of the forest practices code, alternatives to clearfelling, the differences between rainforests or mixed forests and plantations etc …
The parent said, as Hag hazily recalls: “I do not believe any other tree scientists or forestry specialists other than those employed by Forestry Tas have been educating these young (some of voting age) people in their course on Science of the Environment during their highly informative Term One”.
Seems to Hag that it’s a little akin to learning about the benefits of nuclear energy from the people who ran Chernobyl — or BHP running courses on geology.
Then again, perhaps I’m just an old, totally biased, cynical drunk.
TT note: Tasmanian Times sent Hag’s offering to Guilford Young via email but hasn’t had a response.
