WILDERNESS

A new book about the amazing places saved by the conservation movement has just been published.

Growing up in Victoria, Geoff Law spent his teen years poring over glossy picture books showcasing the beauty of Tasmania’s wilderness. As soon as he finished his High School Certificate the then 17-year-old headed straight to Tasmania to walk the Overland Track with a bushwalking club, immersing himself in the beauty of the lakes, mountains and waterfalls which form part of one of Australia’s most famous hiking trails.

It was a “dream come true” and a life-changing experience for the now 60-year-old, a veteran conservationist and former The Wilderness Society campaign manager and key figure in stopping the damming of the Franklin River in the early 1980s.

He’s now helped create a glossy new book — just like those he read as a youngster — which he hopes will inspire a new generation of conservationists across Australia.

Aptly titled WILDERNESS: Celebrating Australia’s Protected Places, the impressive hardcopy celebrates 40 years of wilderness campaigns across the nation and features more than 100 striking images from some of Australia’s most beautiful places including Kakadu, the Kimberley, Cape York, Gippsland, Daintree Rainforest, the Great Australian Bight and Great Barrier Reef.

Tasmania features prominently from Lake Pedder and the fight to save the Franklin to the Styx, Weld and Florentine valleys, Douglas-Apsley National Park and the Gunns pulp mill.

The book, produced by The Wilderness Society and launched this month, was the idea of long-serving TWS member Amanda Sully. Law wrote and edited text for the book, which has a foreword by Tasmanian environmentalist Bob Brown.

Law says as well as being visually spectacular, the coffee table book was a well-deserved tribute to the hard work and passion of so many ordinary Australians who had successfully pushed for change over the past four decades.

“I think it’s a wonderful testimony to the work being done,’’ says Law, who was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 2013 for his lifelong commitment to conservation. “I found it quite a privilege and quite inspirational to tell the story of campaigns in other parts of the country. Add it all up and it’s a phenomenal success story. It’s empowering.’’

Law came to Tasmania in the 1980s “with very little experience of the world” but “desperate to be involved” in the effort to save the Franklin. He has fond memories of communal lunches at TWS Hobart headquarters, where passionate activists took a break when they weren’t doing the latest round of letterbox drops, hand-delivering media releases or organising film nights. “If you were young and adventurous in the 1980s you came to Tasmania to save the Franklin,’’ he recalls. “It was an experience I shared with so many other young people.’’

Many of the campaigners are pictured in the book, along with images celebrating the landscapes they protected. “There are pictures of places that were threatened but have been saved,’’ Law says. “And that serves as a call to action to the current generation. The message of this book is to get involved and trust your fellow campaigners, trust the public, take big steps and things will fall your way. The book is an exercise in celebration and also, we hope, an inspiration, so people who read it know that people power works, that you can save threatened places.

“Even when it appears that everything is against it, the power of a great idea and a beautiful place can prevail.’’

Wilderness photographer and conservationist Rob Blakers curated the images for the book which he says was a great hon-

our. Like Law, Blakers was a mainlander drawn to Tasmania in search of adventure just before the Franklin blockade. “I came down here for a three-week holiday after I finished a uni degree in Canberra,” the now 61-year-old recalls. “It got extended to four, then six, then eight weeks and the next thing I knew I was living down here.”

Blakers got involved with conservation groups and was asked to take wilderness photos to make greeting cards. He quickly realised the power of images. “Gradually, photography became a more important part of what I was doing,” Blakers says. “I could see imagery was really important for showing people who can’t necessarily get to these places what they are like. I find the more time you spend in places, the more you get to relate to them, to understand them.”

The book has a mix of iconic and lesser-known images which come together to tell an important story. “Technically superb, aesthetically brilliant” photographs from the late Peter Dombrovskis were an obvious standout, with many of the esteemed lensman’s images in the book, including his famous Rock Island Bend image which appeared in full-page newspaper advertisements in major Australian newspapers during the Franklin campaign, later becoming a defining symbol of its success.

Blakers’ landscape images are also included. He says the book’s “world-class design and attention to detail” makes it an “impressive and beautiful” tribute to the value of people power in saving wild places. He says each campaign was impressive on its own, but bringing them all together revealed the magnitude of what has been achieved in the past 40 years.

“The impetus for these places to be saved was people power,’’ Blakers says. “It happened bit by bit, over many years and when you look back now … if you look at what we wouldn’t have now … that is a horrible thought.

“I think this book, what it does is tells us that what we do — despite all the setbacks, all the losses, all the heartbreak and hard work — is worth it. Nature is so complex, so beautiful and so beyond our understanding. We need to keep looking ahead to continue to protect places.’’