This isn’t the image I have of sea kayaking. We are stroking gently, silently, through wide, calm, coffee-coloured water. There are no waves, and even if it seems unfathomably deep, I have no fear of sudden capsize or drowning. And that’s because we’re not at sea, but on the Gordon River.
The high banks and hills surrounding the river are decked in luxuriant vegetation, reminding us that this is a wild, water-soaked part of Tasmania. Huon pine, tea-tree, paperbark, native laurel, horizontal and myrtle all grow prolifically here. The sky today is blue and cloudless, but the river’s present calm belies a dark recent past.
Two society-changing environmental battles have brought me to the river. The 1972 drowning of Lake Pedder, a stunning quartz-fringed lake in Tasmania’s remote west, was, and remains, a terrible loss: a “temple ransacked” as environmentalist Kevin Kiernan poignantly put it at the time.
A decade later, the grief at the loss of that sacred place turned to joy at the saving of another. When the Hydro-Electric Commission began working to dam the Franklin River below its confluence with the Gordon River, the Franklin Blockade, a non-violent protest against the dam, began. In 1982 the long campaign succeeded: the Franklin would stay wild and free.
As we make our way up the Gordon River on the third day of our 10-day trip, our friend and guide David names some of the river’s landmarks. It begins to fully dawn on me that we’re travelling past places I have known through story – you could say legend – for nearing 40 years.
Marble Cliffs, for instance, was a “beauty spot”, much photographed. The real thing surpasses any image. Beautifully pale, steep-sided, impossibly-vegetated, the cliffs plunge decisively into a long, straight stretch of the Gordon. We are rendered speechless, spending more than half an hour slowly drifting beneath this geological marvel.
David and his wife, Judith, both have a long association with these wild rivers. David was a Franklin River rafting guide and operator in the 1980s, including during the blockade. Judith was a blockader. As we approach Butler Island, vivid blockade stories bubble to the surface. Judith recalls the day a barge carrying a huge bulldozer smashed recklessly through their rubbery flotilla. A banner stretching between the island and the bush-clad river bank was flicked aside like a party streamer.
She shivers at the memory, at her feeling of impotence.
Blockade leader Bob Brown spoke later of that episode. “The bulldozer came up [on the barge]. There were environmentalists in the water, including divers underneath and lots of rubber rafts … peacefully protesting. ... I just want to recapture [the mood]. It was terrifying and it was dreadful and we could see that we were being overrun by the power of the state. We had federal politicians calling for the army to be brought in to remove us from the campsites.”
. . .
That night we camp near Sir John Falls on a sandy river-side beach. Directly across river from us is Warners Landing, the place the very same bulldozer was put ashore. The landing itself is still obvious, large treated pine logs stacked and supported to form an industrial-strength jetty. It's the first clear sign of what took place here all those years ago.
The rest of this place is the antithesis of industry. We stay for four days, and spend many hours sitting out on the beach, absorbing peace and greenness through our skin. David points across the river to where the bulldozer had shoved a road, scraped a vast clearing, begun its push towards the dam site near the Franklin River. Now only the landing itself can be seen. Otherwise the forest has reclaimed the clearing, refoliated the road, obliterated the work site.
All is still and calm, the river mirroring a forest twin, inverted yet just as vividly verdant. Night falls slowly, birds call their reveilles, moon and stars shine from the river's depths as well as from a clear sky.
Then comes Christmas Day. Our gift is to paddle gently upstream towards the Franklin River through a gorge of ever-varying beauty. The steep sides reach higher now, the forest stacked so impossibly far above us that we have to crane our necks to see the sky. Clouds are darkening and spits of rain begin to fall.
As we round a bend, David points out the proposed dam site. We paddle slowly, solemnly, each considering what was nearly lost. And then we continue upriver and paddle a short way up the Franklin River itself. It’s a river for rafts and river kayaks, not unwieldy sea kayaks. But we push our way up as far as Pyramid Island, where we put ashore for a bit fruit cake washed down with wild water.
. . .
I feel privileged to be seeing the place that thousands of people marched, protested or lobbied to save. I am especially grateful to the blockaders who fought so hard to keep this place a wilderness, and to those High Court judges who voted – by a slim majority – to prevent work from proceeding.
For those who love and enjoy these wild places, it’s sobering to remember how close they came to destruction. And remembering is vital. It demonstrates that when we show up, we can make a difference; that we can defend these rare wild places from future ransacking.
Peter Grant lives in the foothills of kunanyi with his wife. He worked with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service for 24 years as manager of interpretation and education. His passion for the natural world led him to write Habitat Garden (ABC Books) and found the Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. More of his writing can be seen at naturescribe.com.
