CHARLES WOOLEY

Protesters against the Mt Wellington cable car perch precariously on the Organ Pipes to draw attention to the tension we as Tasmanians feel towards this beautiful but terrifying land

O ne windy night this week I was kept awake by two young blokes, precariously hanging between heaven and earth. I live where wind roars down the mountain, shakes the house, splits trees and blows vegies out of the ground. In the small hours I thought of those windswept protesters 1100m high on a swaying platform perilously anchored to the ancient dolerite columns of the Organ Pipes.

“We’ve got a ledge here and where we’re sitting now is where the cable car’s going to go,” climber Simon Bischoff told ABC radio. His mate remained anonymous, perhaps because he didn’t want to freak out his poor old mum.

Assuming it wasn’t as dangerous as it looked, this protest was surprisingly effective. The dramatic pictures went all over the nation and made a great front page here. The Franklin River argument showed how sometimes nature most eloquently expresses its own defence as with the image of those two tiny human specks hanging from the ramparts of the mountain. Below, forested slopes are dramatically streaked with light and shadow. In the far distance we see fading glimpses of the rugged shores of the Tasman Peninsula and the heights of South Bruny. To my mind this is among the best of Tasmania 20 minutes from home. “Then you’re a bloody Greenie, Charlie!” “Guilty as charged, your worship, but in mitigation I do have a four-wheel-drive and I do go into the high country and kill trout.”

“Then you’re a bloody red-necked Greenie!” “That’s a fair cop, your worship.” Contemplate Tasmania from the summit and clearly there was no better place for Britannia to cast off the worst of her wayward children. There could be no escape from the foreboding bulwarks and stormy moat. Nor any escape today from our historical relationship with that old gulag. Imagine the island as homesick convict settlers and their guards must have seen it. Some things don’t change. The first colonists hated the joint and determined to tame it, clear it and replant it with familiar oaks, pines and hedgerows. They built little English villages like Richmond and Ross, complete with English humpbacked stone bridges. Many locals still like to think this “other England” is the best of Tasmania.

The colonial cringe has gone but the desire remains to remake an unsatisfactory homeland in another image. Today many want it just like the rest of the modern world, with glittering hotel towers, Club Med-style resorts, cable cars and helipads. I’m not blaming anyone for this. It’s in our DNA. Since the beginning we have conducted a War on Nature. Some love this island as it is, though the evidence from polling is that many don’t (perhaps subconsciously) and want to make it like some other place. This “war” started early and its casualties were firstly the indigenous human beings as well as the wildlife. Later came the damming of rivers and flooding of lakes and after that wood chipping with industrial clear felling of forest.

Back then conservationists argued, “Instead of destroying our natural wonders surely tourism should be our future. We should preserve and share what we have with the world.”

Was there ever a stronger case for being “careful what you wish for”?

I had lunch at Rockwall recently with the new-ish editor of the Mercury.

Chris Jones has settled here from Queensland and, as you might have noticed in editorial policy, already he has a passion for the place. I often get the feeling arrivals from the real world are perplexed by what it is that Tasmanians really want. We are a fractious mob. Some of us are fiercely in favour of every development, wanting it all, from Chinese resorts for honeymooners or the terminally ill, more cruise liners and floating hotels, giant skyscrapers, wilderness lodges for millionaires. And, of course, the more cable cars the better. While others belligerently want nothing more than to quietly rusticate in a remote and unchanging island paradise as far from the madding crowd and the 21st century as it’s possible to get.

“What do you want for the state 20 years from now?” Chris asked.

“More of these fabulous Bruny Island oysters for a start.” But I took the real question on notice. “I know really well what I don’t want but I’ll have to take some time to consider what I do want. I’ll give it to you in writing next week.”

Fortunately I’ve run out of space. But I do think we are putting the cart before the horse here. Fifty per cent of our population is illiterate. It’s a shocking figure. (Check the Australian Bureau of Statistics website on functional illiteracy by state.)

If you are old enough to vote but unable to read and write then you can’t even make educated guesses. Odds are you will come up with all the wrong answers.

Then again I had a pretty good education but that doesn’t help me understand why our leaders aren’t as obsessed with learning as they are with cable cars.