Dave Groves
One visitor is keen to move here, a self funded retiree who likes to spend on fine food and visit tourist icons. I go out on a limb here, hopefully not one in a coupe earmarked for the chipper, and say that we could do with more like this person in Tasmania. His arrival would be a positive influence on our economy, our clean tourist businesses and our service and maintenance industries. Like me, coming from a city with no wild places, he easily sees the folly of a huge forest abattoir that will consume predominately native forest and pour toxins into our air and water.
A CLOSE friend is off to Sydney in a couple of weeks and was trying to persuade me to travel north for the brief visit.
In my mind I went through the reality of such a journey … the airport shemozzle, the traffic, the foul air, the expected road rage, then to arrive in a north western suburb to sit in a lounge room and watch television.
Day two out on the harbour, wander with the masses round the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.
That’s my trip to the big smoke covered.
My Tasmanian friend suggested perhaps a walk in the bush?
I roared with laughter. “What bush would that be I replied?”
“What about Katoomba?” my friend said.
Things may have changed since I was last in Katoomba about six or seven years ago, but I clearly remember turds on the footpath and thought that there must be some grotty animal owners about till I saw a human adding to the collection.
What an eye opener.
Tasmania has magnificent bush all around, easily accessible and a delight to visit.
I had two friends whiz down to Tassie from Sydney late last week for a few days and took them and my Tasmanian friend for a sightseeing tour to Devil’s Gullet.
We were all stunned at the beauty, the silence only broken by the roar of the river in the valley way below. The air was fresh, the sky was clear and as far as the eye could see was untouched bush.
The forest was a carpet of green, except some clown has been in there doing a spot of “clearfelling” to mar the vista.
Can’t these moronic bastards leave one place alone, one place where people can go and dream of what the planet was like before the white boys arrived to trash the place?
Still, it beats Sydney hands down.
It’s funny though, because I know quite a few “born and bred Tasmanians” and when asked where they want to go for their holidays it is always a trip to the mainland.
When I mentioned “Devil’s Gullet”, the reply was, “where is that?”
Amazed at them not knowing this extraordinary place I show them the photos.
“Oh yeah, not bad”, comes the nonchalant reply.
To me apathy and an ignorance of what Tasmania has to offer is a common denominator in many Tasmanians.
Football and horse racing are far more magnetic than a trip to the wild country.
We have the Jim Bacon Gates and I suspect when our Premier’s time is up there will be a similar monument erected at Elwick.
I make no judgement here, just observation and comment.
Such is the promotion of the proposed pulp mill, the saviour of the human race in Tasmania.
Born of ignorance, this paradigm of perversion will help trash native forest faster than a lap with the favourite in the fifth at Elwick.
My two friends spent around $1200 in the three days they were here; even I dug deep and lashed out on some fine Tassie fare.
One visitor is keen to move here, a self funded retiree who likes to spend on fine food and visit tourist icons. I go out on a limb here, hopefully not one in a coupe earmarked for the chipper, and say that we could do with more like this person in Tasmania.
His arrival would be a positive influence on our economy, our clean tourist businesses and our service and maintenance industries.
Like me, coming from a city with no wild places, he easily sees the folly of a huge forest abattoir that will consume predominately native forest and pour toxins into our air and water.
I can see some merit in Bob Brown’s notion of an appropriate sized closed loop, plantation only supplied pulp mill sited in amongst the swathes of the North West monoculture as a realistic alternative to the native forest, water guzzler that is proposed for the Tamar Valley.
To add a paper making facility would really value add to what has naively already been planted in the ground.
A timber driven pulp mill to me it is still a folly, a step back in time, a short term vision, perhaps no vision at all.
It has been nearly forty years since man did the return trip to the moon and here we are in the first world poised to dispose of some of the finest tracts of cool temperate rainforest on the planet to make paper.
Do we really need glossy white paper on which to scribble our notions?
Is that a Klu Klux Klan theory?
Where is the logic in destroying a gift that will keep many people enthralled for eons for the sake of something that is obsolete in the world of its intended dispersion?
We need to move away from the retarded concept of a piggyback ride on the Titanic and focus on the health and happiness of all.
It will be a marvellous journey of wonder.
