Prince’s stand for the Wilderness
The Duke of Edinburgh spoke out against drowning Lake Pedder and was an ardent voice for conservation, even down to a row with Electric Eric Reece, says Bob Brown
IT will be fitting if Prince Philip is buried this Saturday in an eco-wool coffin, borne by a hybrid electric vehicle, as the London Sun has predicted. The prince was an environmentalist and his advocacy was at its courageous best here in Tasmania.
In 1972 Australia was experiencing its first national environmental controversy over the needless flooding of Tasmania’s Lake Pedder as part of the Middle Gordon River hydro-electric scheme.
Besides having more than a dozen unique species of plants, fish and insects, Lake Pedder was renowned for its scenic beauty. It was a grand camping spot for the backpacking adventurers then making their way into the Tasmanian wilds. Two kilometres square, 300m above sea level and with its waters washing onto a stunning pink sand beach 800m wide, it was protected as a national park in 1954.
But the all-powerful Hydro-Electric Commission was intent on damming Tasmania’s rivers and the Serpentine River flowing out of the lake was to be next. Flooding the lake was a sideeffect of the Middle Gordon Scheme, which centred on the largest concrete arch dam in the Southern Hemisphere to harness the Gordon River’s flow for electricity. The Pedder component would provide less than 70 megawatts of power, equivalent to a small modern solar or wind farm.
The HEC was backed to the hilt by Tasmanian premier Electric Eric Reece. He was scornful of the protests spreading across Australia and famously remarked that mainland bushwalkers “come to Tasmania with one shirt and one five pound note and go home having changed neither”.
The controversy gave rise to street marches, vigils in the Pedder sand dunes, and the disappearance of a campaign leader, Brenda Hean. She had organised a Tiger Moth flight with pilot Max Price from Hobart to Canberra to skywrite “SAVE LAKE PEDDER” over the national parliament. She received a death threat and the hangar housing the plane was broken into the night before the flight. The plane disappeared, without trace over Bass Strait.
Into this Pedder controversy stepped His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh. Philip accepted the post of president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
He came to Tasmania and flew over the wilderness to see the lake for himself. He met Premier Reece in the state’s parliamentary building. Reece’s biographer Dr Jillian Koshin says “they had a dingdong row behind closed doors in Reece’s parliamentary office that could be heard down the corridor”.
Ruefully, Philip wrote to Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam, that “the
Tasmanian government simply does not understand the point of conservation”. A mooted move by Whitlam to compensate Tasmania for not flooding Lake Pedder was rejected out-of-hand by Reece. The lake was obliterated.
Philip, who also became the president of the World Wildlife Fund, had a more successful role in the contentious (“probably the hottest of hot potatoes”) issue of setting up Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory.
“The worst feature of this and the whole situation in the Northern Territory”, he advised, “is that it is a direct responsibility of the federal government. You may find it embarrassing in the future if the states turn around and draw attention to the federal government’s record in this area. On the other hand you have a marvellous chance to set an example in the whole sector of special reserves and in their management.”
Kakadu was saved and is now a national heirloom listed as World Heritage.
On a trip to Nepal in 1961 Philip, his uncomfortable wife nearby, had shot a large tiger. This had caused a global controversy. He also backed fox hunts, which Oscar Wilde described a century earlier as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible”. But as he got older and wiser he became an ardent advocate for protecting Earth’s species from extinction. Twenty years after the tiger kill, the World Wildlife Fund raised millions of dollars to set up 12 reserves for tigers in India and help them retreat from the brink of extinction. Philip travelled the globe advocating protection of endangered wildlife from pandas to penguins and, in particular, protection of habitat such as the forests and oceans upon which so many species depend.
In 1982, at the height of the next great Tasmanian controversy — the Gordonbelow-Franklin dam which would flood the Franklin and Lower Gordon Rivers and their rainforests — Philip was
interviewed in Brisbane where he opened the Commonwealth Games. He wanted the rivers saved. “When I die the lower Gordon (and Franklin) will be written all over me,” he told journalist Liz Hickson.
“I can see that. I’ve been to Tasmania several times in the past 10 years. The state
government wants to develop something that has been dedicated a national heritage. Then there is the economic argument that the state needs the extra power because that’s the only way it’s going to attract industry. It’s not frightfully convincing but that’s it. I’ve talked to various premiers of Tasmania and
discussed the problem, asking them to consider alternatives. But I can’t wield a big stick.” Yet this time the rivers were saved.
The prince was concerned by population growth, need for environmental education and lack of money going to environmental projects. “All I can do is go on because I think it is worth doing. At least for my grandchildren …”
On his last visit to Australia with the Queen, in 2011, I met him at the Parliament House reception and thanked him for speaking up for the Tasmanian Wilderness — because his influence had counted and because he had given heart to many people who despair about environmental ignorance in high places. I told him there were moves to recover Lake Pedder. Then in his 90th year, he simply replied with a smile.
It would be fitting for a sturdy boulder overlooking the modern Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to be inscribed with
Prince Philip’s name and the words “he spoke out for this wilderness”. Those will resonate all the better if Lake Pedder is restored to its former natural glory.