Thin edge of the wedge

Helicopter tourists set an unwanted precedent, argues fly-fishing identity Greg French

GREG French has plenty of back stories about the environmental flashpoint known as Halls Island, Lake Malbena, in the remote Western Lakes of Tasmania’s Central Highlands.

The fly-fishing author and guide loves the place, and not just because he and his wife conceived their son, Tom, there 28 years ago.

We’re sitting at Badger’s Bike Cafe in New Norfolk when he flails his arms to demonstrate the way Frances waved and called “I’m ovulating” across the water on a strategic visit to his campsite all those years ago.

He has slept on the island many times since, but he can’t go back there now, having been banned by new leasee Daniel Hackett, the proponent of a tourism venture that would see helicopters flying guests in and out of the tiny lake island in Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Hackett runs RiverFly1864 and employed Greg as a flyfishing guide.

He also commissioned him to build RiverFly’s existing huts in the Western Lakes, which are on private land near Lake Ina, just outside the Walls of Jerusalem National Park (the area was later included in the World Heritage Area).

“Lake Ina is an example of good development,” says Greg.

“It is outside core wilderness, on private land, where everybody was in agreement, and it enables people to access an area who would not otherwise access it, and become advocates for it.

“My view of managing wild places is you make the front country so good that most people have their needs met there, and then the back country is left for those who just have to do it.”

For diehard fly-fishers and walkers, he says getting there under their own steam is an integral part of the experience.

He describes his fallout with the younger Hackett, whom he mentored for years and considered a close friend, as “unbearable”, but says the thought of commercial choppers operating in core wilderness is worse.

Speaking ahead of tonight’s meeting of concerned fishers, walkers and other citizens at Great Lake Hotel, Greg is here to talk about why he sees the proposal as a line in the sand.

“The bad governance on this is extraordinary,” he says, accusing the State Government of unilaterally rewriting a long-standing management plan that was previously subject to extensive and routine consultation and to the original drafting of which he contributed in 1999.

“The reckless trashing of those plans is beyond the pale,” he says.

That disregard, he says, is just one indication of the Government’s disrespect for community views and wilderness values. He describes “unilateral rezoning of wilderness” to help facilitate the Lake Malbena development, which would see small groups flown in to stay at new demountable huts.

He also objects to what he describes as “the privatisation of our national parks” over what he believes is a long lease by the developers (operating as Wild Drake Pty Ltd) for an area much larger than the lease first secured from Reg Hall’s daughter for $1.

“For me, the biggest problem with all this is the precedent of giving a chunk of land in a World Heritage Area national park to a developer without notifying the public, without even doing a costbenefit analysis,” says Greg.

“In the new management plan, you can do that through regulation rather than legislation, where previously you couldn’t.”

Then there is the issue of helicopter access. A core value of true wilderness is that it is free of mechanical access, he says. Prized as one of the top five wild trout fisheries in the world, the remote Western Lakes are historically a walkin destination with flat, easy terrain ideal for daytrips on foot.

He predicts that if the developers weather the storm of opposition to get the Lake Malbena plan through — it has already cleared federal environmental hurdles and will be assessed by the Central Highlands Council when a DA is submitted — it could have profound ramifications.

“There are other leases in the Central and Western Lakes and most of those people have been contacted by tourism operators to see if they can buy the leases out,” he says. “And it’s off the back of the Malbena proposal: ‘If Daniel can do it, we can do it…’ It undermines the whole idea of wilderness.”

It’s no surprise author Greg loves language — he swoons over the seductive nomenclature used in mapping by original Halls Island huts builder Reg Hall in the 1930s — but his argument over what constitutes “wilderness” goes beyond the semantic.

In December, Tasmania will host the 39th World Fly Fishing Championship, an event expected to attract many international journalists.

“The Franklin Dam and forest wars led to bad publicity all around the world,” says Greg.

“It gave us an image overseas as a petty, bigoted, redneck island that nobody wanted to go to. It is no coincidence our tourism industry has boomed after the forest wars were effectively stopped.”

Is it really worth risking that bad rap again over Lake Malbena, he asks.

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