Forsaken beauty
pears that could prove more than a handful to remove if they get properly established.
The importance of the Pitt Water-Orielton estuary up to the Coal River has been acknowledged over the decades with the creation of the likes of the Pitt Water Nature Reserve, the Penna Beach Coastal Reserve, and the Pitt Water Orielton Lagoon Ramsar site. The wetlands and its birdlife are of global significance, featuring some of the planet’s rarest migratory shorebirds.
Many people who see the beauty work hard around the state to conserve, rehabilitate and enhance long-neglected and scarred landscapes like these but, without a major change in community sentiment, projects by such well-meaning groups often amount to little more than a windblown sign in an abandoned field of weeds.
IN the wake of a pandemic lockdown and when governments are crying out for jobs, why can’t we take on clever labour-intensive projects to create parks, gardens and recreation areas in degraded landscapes to draw communities back to these long-abandoned places?
Why can’t we use native plants and trees to create shelter and trails to direct people where they can enjoy and learn about the landscape, but in turn steer them away from fragile habitats and bird nesting areas?
Why can’t we employ experts in self-sustaining ecosystems to design community areas for degraded landscapes that will, when established in years to come, largely look after themselves, draw back native wildlife, and revive parts of the ecosystem that can be restored to health?
Such areas will help create happier communities where people better understand and appreciate the environment, and provide tourists and visitors an experience to remember. They could reduce demand on pristine Tasmania while providing authentic experiences of nature closer to home.
These could be Tasmanian designs, not transplanted English and European ideas for gardens and community settings, but unique gathering places for families, musicians, actors, visitors and picnickers — designed by experts in local plants and ecosystems, and local architects and designers.
SADLY, the opposite is set to happen, with a creed of “growth at all costs to pay off the debt” to be used to justify “improving” our roads by redoing them with canyonesque runoff verges filled with tonnes of blue metal, massive roadside drain pipes, expanses of stony bitumen that create maddening road-tyre noise, and miles of metal guard rails.
It’s overkill, it’s ugly and it creates wastelands where the only signs of life are the blood and guts from marsupials that dare try to cross to the other side. I hold my breath in fear of the monstrosity that will be delivered in the form of the Hobart Airport roundabout.
The growth-debt dogma will be used to justify building many things we don’t want. Isn’t it time that community, nature and life itself were written into the designs that surround us? Isn’t beauty, so long forsaken as a luxury, a legitimate consideration?
Lockdown revealed an essential value of Tasmania — most of us felt it as a wave of gratitude that we are here, not elsewhere — let’s treat that precious essence with respect.