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Reviews
The River Runs Free,
Geoff Law
Tasmanian Wilderness
Battles, Greg Buckman
On July 1,1983 the High Court of
Australia ruled to halt the damming of the Franklin River by the Hydro Electric
Commission. The twenty fifth anniversary of this decision has prompted the release of two
books that explore the Franklin River blockade and Tasmanian environmental campaigns.
Tasmanian Wilderness Battles by
Greg Buckman is a comprehensive history of the nature-inspired conflicts of this century. The
River Runs Free by Geoff Law is a personal account of his experiences during the
Franklin River campaign and the adventures that helped to carve out his own commitment to
protecting Tasmanian wilderness.
While Greg Buckman has several
publications to his name, this is Geoff Law’s first. Both authors are accomplished
bushwalkers who know the mountains, rivers and forests of Tasmania like dear friends, and
are long-time activists for the protection of places of high conservation value. Both
books carry forewords from Australian Greens Senators who obviously hold the authors and
their writing in high regard. And both books study Tasmanian conservation battles,
celebrate the triumphs, rue the losses and keenly scrutinise the heavy involvement of the
Tasmanian state government in all these cases.
Despite the fact that Let the Rivers
Run Free and Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles share some subject matter, the
two books are vastly different in style and approach. They are excellent insights into the
grit and tenacity of environmental activists but, while one is a rambling tale, the other
is a reference for those wishing to know the details of events that have shaped the
political landscape of Tasmania. Rather than competing for readership, these books
complement each other perfectly.
Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles,
written by a former accountant and skilled numbers man, is steeped in detail about the
history of efforts to conserve Tasmania’s natural assets and explains the history of
the industrial mindset of governments, developers and individuals. Buckman studies
Tasmania’s three big industries — hydro-electricity, mining and forestry —
and provides surprisingly easy reading for what is essentially a meticulous reference
book. His review of the national parks system is critical of how governments of both
political persuasions have made the conservation ethic subservient to tourism development
in national parks management. It contains an excellent index and timeline of events, which
further cements its usefulness as a text. It is a dense book due to the thorough use of
supporting facts, figures and references, but made light by Buckman’s conversational
tone
The River Runs Free is simply a
compelling, nail-biting and funny book. Law spins a great yarn, keeping the reader in
suspense throughout his stories of near-death bushwalking and rafting adventures and the
Franklin blockade, even though the outcomes are known by all. Hand-drawn maps are an
important addition for those who are not familiar with Tasmania’s south west. For
readers new to the culture of environmental campaigns, some of the details of the daily
activities on the Franklin blockade may be slow, but given the enormity of the event, Law
has shown discerning restraint in compiling his anecdotes. He avoids the temptation to
become bogged down in minutiae that would be fabulous for those who were there, but
grinding for those of us who were not.
As Buckman’s book illustrates,
issues relating to Tasmania’s natural areas have featured right through the Twentieth
Century, yet most of the stories of the conflicts have been told through the editorials
and letters pages of the daily newspapers. Consequently, our understanding of the
protagonists and their motivations are limited to the restricted space and editorial
policies of the day. The value of Buckman’s and Law’s accounts lie in the
descriptions of people, events and their context. If Tasmania, a state riven like no other
over a single issue, that is the environment, can ever achieve some reconciliation within
its communities, then such narratives may prompt the understanding and humanising of all
participants.
These subjects are of particular interest
to me as an environmental activist of some years, and a keen observer of the continuing
debate over forest conservation in the carbon age. These books are openly partisan
accounts, so I was predisposed to enjoying them, knowing the authors and recognising some
of the places written of. However, both stand on their own merits as excellent pieces of
writing and well-presented publications.
If, as Dr Kate Crowley asserts, Green
politics of Tasmania are the ‘politics of place’,* then these books reveal to us
the places of the politics. The Franklin, Lake Pedder, the Tarkine, the southern forests,
Wesley Vale and beyond have played a huge part in shaping the Tasmanian parliament either
by prompting the election of Green party candidates or featuring strongly in policy and
debate. The useful inclusion in Tasmanian Wilderness Battles of excerpts from
the1998 Labor Green Accord helps to detail an important feature of Tasmanian political
history which is frequently referred to but seldom explained. The sinister power wielded
by the Hydro Electric Commission over compliant premiers is vividly illustrated in both
books. The poetically named Doubts Removal Bill that was enacted in 1972 and again
in 1982 to facilitate the removal of land from within established national parks for
flooding by the HEC has an uncomfortably Orwellian ring to it.
Some environmental conflicts are ongoing
(rightly so, in my opinion), but is it time to put the old ones to bed? It would be grand
to read other sides of the same stories; not as a contradiction of the validity of the
accounts in the books by Law and Buckman, but simply to add flesh to the history of this
state by telling everyone’s version of events. A bulldozer driver on the Tarkine
‘Road to Nowhere’, a logger at Farmhouse Creek or a police officer on the
Franklin may disagree with the perspectives voiced in The River Runs Free and Tasmanian
Wilderness Battles and have a vastly different story to tell. Bring them on, I say. A
little bit of narrative therapy might do us all good.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Stephenie Cahalan is a Hobart-based
editor, researcher and conservationist.
*See
K.Crowley, ‘The Place of Nature? Electoral Politics and the Tasmanian Greens’, People
and Place, vol. 16, no. 2, 2008 p. 12