Queenstown Moonscape Tours – once was temperate rainforest
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A wee ‘tea and scones’ tourism boom could be encouraged in Tasmania, treating visitors to Tasmanian reality art exhibitions – with themes such as:
‘Convict Tourism’ – Cannibal Alexander Pearce at it, days in the life at Maria Island, Cascades, Port Arthur, Martin Bryant’s gun collection, Risdon’s worst.
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‘Ecoterrorism Tourism’ – See Forestry Tasmania at it in the Florentine Valley, See Stihl at work felling old growth, take Clearfell Tours, watch the wildlife scurry, see a ‘Scorched Earthing‘ photographic exhibition.
Watch loggers Rodney Howells, Jeremy Eizell and Terrence Pearce ecoterrorism videos: Sample video below on 21st October 2008, shows these Tasmanian loggers attacking two young forest defenders in a car, using sledge hammers. [^Read More]
WARNING ! THIS FOOTAGE CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND MAY BE DISTRESSING
(Turn sound up)
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‘Grenade Fishing’ – see it demonstrated on Tasmania’s Penstock Lagoon, now that petrol outboards are banned.
‘Wildlife Bagging’ – see the live action on Tasmania’s Moulting Lagoon – Black Swans and Pied Oystercatchers – shot plucked and gutted. Fun for all the family!
‘Mutton birding’ Tourism – Visit Flinders Island. Watch them rip the native Short-tailed Shearwater chicks out from their burrows and throttle their necks – give it a go yourself – it’s easy!
[Source: Gourmet Farmer 6th October, Flinders Island, Series 2, Episode 7, SBS Television].
“Hi Everyone, Just a quick reminder that mutton bird season is open from the 2nd April 2011 until 17th April 2011 on Flinders Island…
Just remember if you don’t have a mutton birding licence then please visit your nearest Service Tasmania Shop or their website to obtain one. A mutton birding licence will set you back $27.20 for a full fee or $21.75 of a concession fee.”
Or try Flinders Island Wallaby…”Bennetts Wallaby and Pademelon Wallaby are found in large numbers on the Island. The gathering of wallabies are restricted on a quota basis that is reviewed annually and is independent of market demand.” [Source: ^http://www.flindersislandmeat.com.au/]
Bennetts Wallaby
Native to Tasmania and surrounding islands such as Flinders Island
[Source: ^http://www.davidcook.com.au/images/images_mammals/bennetts_wallaby.jpg]
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“Native animals are considered pests by the Tasmanian rural community and their control a wasteful cost. Lenah Game Meats of Tasmania..”is attempting to turn this situation around so that with time and market development it is hoped the rural community will come to see the animals adapted to the Australian landscape as ‘friends’ rather than foe….Lenah were the first people to harvest and process wallaby and market it to the restaurant trade.” [^Read More]
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‘1080’ PoisonTours – how it works, watch it in action, proof exhibits, discount taxidermy home delivered
‘Queenstown Memories’ – Mount Lyell moonscape tours, Queen River cruises, spot the three eyed fish games, sample Macquarie Harbour cuisine
See the copper flows in the once pristine Queen and King RiversIf the copper doesn’t kill you, then the cadmium, lead, cobalt, silver or chromium will.
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‘Self-drive Tourism’ – play ‘I spy with my little eye’, or ‘count the roadkill’, or dodge the log trucks
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Photo taken by Editor while driving along the Tasman Highway, Tasmania 20110927, free in public domain
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Cape Grim Heritage Tourism – discover its namesake (massacre of Tasmanian Aborigines on 10th February 1828) – learn about early colonial hunting. [^Read More]
‘Burn offs by Air’ – see the smoke by air
‘Tassie Holes’ – see the mines by air
‘Scarefaces by Air’ – see the native forest clearfells by air
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All such Tasmanian Reality Tourism can be delivered direct from the window, and what better than with home made piping hot Tassie tea and scones!
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“The Styx State Forest will continue to be sustainably managed, providing the public with Australia’s finest timbers, protection for Tasmania’s unique biodiversity, and a popular recreation resource. Tours of the surrounding forests are available from the Maydena Adventure Hub.”
~ Forestry Tasmania
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Wilfred Batty of Mawbanna, Tasmania, with the last Tasmanian Tiger known to have been shot in the wild.
He shot the tiger in May, 1930 after it was discovered in his hen house.
Source: State Library of Tasmania eHeritage
If you go down into the woods today you’re sure in for a big surprise…but in Tasmania’s South-West it ain’t no teddy bear’s picnic.
One has to first get past the many infamous locked gates. Forestry Tasmania (aka the State-sanctioned corporate logger) is sure to have locked its steel gates for very good reason – Forestry Tasmania doesn’t want the public to know the truth about what it is doing to Tasmania’s remaining wild forests.
Forestry Tasmania’s locked gate on the public road to the top of Mount Tim Shea
(Suspiciously this public access road was deemed unfit for public travel coincidentally around the same time as Forestry Tasmania opened its ‘Adventure Hub’ in Maydena,
and equally coincidentally one of the hills they charge people for a ride to the top from reads ‘Adventure Hub’).
(Photo by Alan Lesheim)
Locked Gate on Five Road in the Upper Florentine
(connects to Cook’s Track which enters the Gordon River Road short of Camp Flozza)
(Photo by Alan Lesheim)
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Forestry Tasmania has hundreds of these padlocked gates throughout Tasmania’s wild forests.
The Wilderness Society’s spokesperson Amanda Sully said “Forestry Tasmania have a locked boom gate over the Huon Valley Wilderness and are refusing entry. This is just one of hundreds of gates on forestry roads in Tasmania.
“It’s very clear who is locking up the forests. People are sick and tired of seeing log truck after log truck coming from the clear felling behind these padlocked gates.
These are publicly-owned forests.
Forestry Tasmania is supposed to manage them for the benefit of all Tasmanians, not just the loggers” Ms Sully concluded.
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[Source: ‘Forestry Tasmania – Locking up our forests‘, ^http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/forests/19980924_mr
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Forestry Locked Gate on Blue Road, northern section of the Upper Florentine Valley
(Photo by Alan Lesheim)
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Author Anna Krien was on a quest for the truth described in her revealing expose book of 2010 into what’s stihl happening in Tasmania’s wild forests:
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‘Most people travelling through Tasmania will never know of the long-running hide-and-seek taking place in the labyrinth of logging roads beyond the bitumen.
Sightseers walk among 300-year-old trees, some of them 90 metres tall, in the Styx Big Tree Reserve, chainsaws can be heard in the distance.
The road into this attraction is lined with stage sets of wilderness.
At the rise of a hill, just before the nose of the car tilts downwards, passengers might glimpse a balding peak, a fleeting insight into the world behind the verge.’
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[Source: ‘Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests‘, 2010 by Anna Krien pp.25-26, published by Black Inc. ^http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/woods, includes video interviews].
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So, this Editor, half way through the book, last month flew down to Hobart, hired a car and retraced the author’s journey into Tasmania’s South-West …
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Driving west along the old Hydro Electrical Commission’s (HEC) Gordon River (Access) Road, through Forestry’s logging town of ‘Westerway’
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Noticeably, when driving out of Hobart I passed clearly wealthy residential suburbs, yet driving along the Gordon River Road these few isolated hamlets are not wealthy. Their construction mostly seems temporary like mining companies would construct while the mine delivers. The highway through the hamlets of Westerway, Fitzgerald and Maydena seems only for forest access, not for community.
I parked the car and walked through Maydena.
There is only the odd person out and about. The place seems impoverished – one small primary school, a notable lack of shops, lack of amenities, and little sign of any vibrant community.
It’s as if the profits from logging have driven right through the guts of these local villages and on to big corporations eastward.
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Past the National Park Hotelwhere Tasmania’s champion wood-chopper ‘Big Dave’ holds pride of place above the pub’s fire place.
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Driving through Forestry’s old logging town of ‘Fitzgerald’.
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Driving through the old logging town of ‘Maydena’
– a closed so-called ‘Adventure Hub’ on the left, yet its diesel bowser (circled) open for Forestry Tasmania vehicles and observed in used by Editor 20110928.
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Reminiscent of Australia’s 1850s Gold Rush, Tasmanian folk would have been lured west by Forestry to the promise of bountiful tall timber delivering reliable logging income and the promise of building personal wealth.
But along the Gordon River Road there is a stark absence of Forestry wealth. Instead it seems Forestry has abandoned these Gordon River Road communities.
What Forestry has done is to sell out Tasmania’s traditional woodcraft industry for short term profit from flogging quality Tasmanian hardwood as cheap asian woodchips, destroying Tasmania’s forests timber communities in the process. Then Gunns got greedy and Tasmania’s timber reputation has deteriorated thereafter.
Now Forestry Tasmania are clearfelling and selling out Tasmania’s rare forests to the asians direct, to the likes of Ta Ann. Forestry Tasmania is no more than a corporate pimp of Tasmanian rare forest heritage.
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“The road into this attraction is lined with stage sets of wilderness.”
Driving further west along the HEC Gordon River Road
– bulldozed in 1964 through 64km of pristine wilderness forest by the Hydro Electric Commission, and
funded by the then Menzies federal government at a cost of £2.5 million (likely twenty times that in today’s terms – i.e. $50 million..Gordon River Road – signposted logging country
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“At the rise of a hill, just before the nose of the car tilts downwards, passengers might glimpse a balding peak”
The balding peak of Forestry Tasmania’s cable logging…’a fleeting insight into the world behind the verge’.
(Photo by editor 20110928 while on Gordon River Road heading west)
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An entire hill of wild Tasmanian forest savagely cabled logged bare by Forestry TasmaniaTourists can now see this from Gordon River Road.
(Photo by editor 20110928. Click photo to enlarge.)
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Beyond the lock gates lies the ecological holocaust
(Photo by editor 20110928. Click photo to enlarge.)
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Styx Valley Holocaust (Photo by Rob Blakers)
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Tasmania’ s Styx HolocaustSeptember 2011 (Photo by Alan Lesheim)
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Forestry Tasmania’s Killing Fields
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Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Killing Fields
(Human mass murder comparable to Tasmania’s mass forest murder
– both crimes consistently against life)
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Google Maps (September 2011) satellite view of the forest rape by Forestry Tasmania..Camp Flozza’s symbolic goddess of the ancient Florentine Forest
~ eco-raped by Forestry Tasmania in its January 2009 raid
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And they wonder why the people protest and are prepared to be arrested?
(Photo of forest defender being arrested at Forestry Tasmania’s police raid on Camp Flozza,
Upper Florentine Valley, 13th January 2009)
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Styx Valley Holocaust by Forestry Tasmania, September 2011
(Photo of editor 20110928. Click photo to enlarge.)
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Forestry Tasmania padlocks gates 10 kilometres from clearfell around a protected Wedge-tailed Eagle nest
‘In the breeding season, a clear felling operation in Tasmania’s wild Upper Huon Valley has breached guidelines by smashing down forests next to an endangered Tasmania’s Wedge-tailed eagles’ nest. The Tasmanian Wedge-tailed eagle, with wingspan up to 3 metres, are one of the Earth’s 6 largest eagle species.
“After repeated controversies about woodchip operations burning or destroying eagle nests and causing failure of nesting because of bulldozers and chainsaws operations near nests, this failure of protection in the Huon is inexcusable. It makes a mockery of logging industry propaganda,” said Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown.
“The Ministers for Forestry and Environment who are responsible for Australia’s rare and endangered species don’t know, and don’t act in any helpful way.”
“It is as if the Howard Government never left office. These ministers have washed their hands of their role in the Wedge-tailed eagles’ fate. Logging laws in Tasmania state that a minimum of 10 hectares be left around an eagle’s nest,” said Senator Brown.
Forestry Tasmania has erected locked gates 10 kilometres from the nest logging site preventing public or media inspection.’
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Footage of the logged area and nest available here (on YouTube):
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Meanwhile Forestry Tasmania on its ‘Adventure Forests‘ website promotes its ‘Top of the World Tour‘ from Maydena…
…’Go wild where eagles soar…Make the escape to the Eagle’s Eyrie on a Top of the World Tour.You’ll experience all the fun of the Railtrack Rider as you travel into the heart of the forest to explore long-abandoned bush heritage, before emerging to an alpine wonderland and an eagle’s eye view over the Tasmanian wilderness.There’s plenty of time for indulgence as well, with an individually-prepared gourmet lunchbox and fine regional wines enjoyed in the fireside comfort of the Eagles Eyrie.’
The Forestry Propaganda continues as follows, but we consider it appropriate to intersperse the spiel with photos of Forestry Truth in the Styx Forests nearby inflicted by Forestry Tasmania and continuing to happen right now in October 2011!
Styx Big Trees decimated around the corner by Forestry Tasmania
(Photo by Alan Lesheim Photography, 20110928)
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‘Standing in the pouring rain in the middle of the one of Tasmania’s state forests, is not something I would usually consider fun (the things I do to keep you guys informed). However, on this particular day it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Where am I…? I hear you ask.
About an hour and 15 minutes north-west of Hobart, is a little town called Maydena, and just a short drive past the town, is the Styx Big Tree Reserve. Well, now you know where I am, let me tell you about the day I spent up there.
I headed up through New Norfolk, along the Lyell Highway, through some charming, little country towns like Glenora and Westerway. Along this road, Maydena is the last point of service, and so I called into Maydena Adventure Hub (Forestry Tasmania’s latest tourism venture) to refuel both the car, and myself. The coffee is lovely, and they have a range of foods, such as toasted sandwiches, salad rolls, and the like. From here, I headed about ten minutes further along the road, to a turn-off which leads you into the heart of the forest, and to the Styx Big Tree Reserve.
The road is gravel; however it had been recently graded so it is suitable to all car types. If you keep your eye out, the signs located along the road will point you in the right direction, and it’s about 15km to the actual reserve. After the initial turn-off there is only one other turn-off and then you basically just following the one road the rest of the way. You can tell you are getting closer if you notice the trees are getting bigger.
(Photo of Styx Forest by Alan Lesheim Photography – click photo to enlarge)
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The reserve is equipped with toilets, disabled access and a car park. It also has some lovely picnic facilities throughout the forest. Due to my unorganised nature, and the fact that the decision to come up here was very spontaneous, I was not well equipped to deal with the wet weather, or the forest. Luckily, someone in the office leant me their waterproof jacket, and with my jeans tucked into my socks to keep away the leeches (paranoid I know), I told myself to toughen up and get out there!
Styx Big Trees incinerated in a irreversible holocaust fire by Forestry Tasmania…”a lack of regular wildfires”…we’ll fix that!
(Photo by Editor 20110928, free in public domain)
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The Big Tree Reserve has a boardwalk, which takes you on an informative tour of the giants that call this forest home. It turns out that the trees here can grow so big due to a combination of factors including, high rainfall (1000-1500mm per year), high soil nutrient content, and a lack of regular wildfires in this particular area. The trees in this area are over 85m tall, and are swamp gums.
The Styx – what is and what was
(Photo by Editor 20110928, free in public domain)
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There is so much to learn here, and I won’t tell you anymore, you will just have to come up and experience it yourself! Or, if you like, Maydena Adventure Hub can set you up a guided tour of the Styx Forest, or other areas in the region. The staff in there are very approachable and will be happy to help you out with anything you need to know.
Forestry Tasmania’s infamous tourist ‘Welcome’ sign…welcome to our ‘Styx Holocaust’
(Photo by Editor 20110928, free in public domain)
Rain or no rain, it was a lovely experience. Heading back from the reserve you can either turn right and continue further west to Lake Pedder and Strathgordon, or turn left and explore the rest of what Maydena has to offer. As I left it so late to leave from Hobart that morning, and the wet weather, I thought it would be best just to head back home. However, don’t worry, I will be back shortly and then I will let you know what the rest of the South-West wilderness has to offer.
Gullible tourists directed left, while Big Tree ecocide lies in a battle field right nearby. (Photo by Editor 20110928, free in public domain)
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Until next time, get out there and explore some of these wonderful sites for yourself. Oh and by the way, someone was just trying to scare me and I didn’t even come across any leeches!’
Styx Forest after Forestry Tasmania has been through(Photo by Editor 20110928, free in public domain)
Queenstown Moonscape Tours – once was temperate rainforest
[Source: ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/tasmania-kicks-off-duck-hunting-20090305-8pdc.html]
[Source: ^http://www.aact.org.au/ducks.htm]
[Source: Gourmet Farmer 6th October, Flinders Island, Series 2, Episode 7, SBS Television]
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Bennetts Wallaby
Native to Tasmania and surrounding islands such as Flinders Island
[Source: ^http://www.davidcook.com.au/images/images_mammals/bennetts_wallaby.jpg]
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This photo is taken from the main road down to Cockle Creek, at the start of
See the copper flows in the once pristine Queen and King Rivers
If the copper doesn’t kill you, then the cadmium, lead, cobalt, silver or chromium will.
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Photo taken by Editor while driving along the Tasman Highway, Tasmania 20110927, free in public domain
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Wilfred Batty of Mawbanna, Tasmania, with the last Tasmanian Tiger known to have been shot in the wild.
He shot the tiger in May, 1930 after it was discovered in his hen house.
Source: State Library of Tasmania eHeritage
Styx Big Trees decimated around the corner by Forestry Tasmania
