Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

Some of the protesters found the strain of defending Lake Pedder and the forests too hard on their family, jobs and lives and, worn out, retired from any further involvement in the conservation movement. They had become convinced that the opposition, a combination of big business, the state’s political elite and the rapacious and arrogant Hydro, couldn’t be defeated. But Marg, while bitterly disappointed at the outcome, was, if anything, strengthened in her resolve. She knew with absolute certainty how she was going to spend the remainder of her life and she set about preparing for the difficult times ahead. ‘Nick, we have to believe that political movements are like the rivers we’re trying to save – first a trickle, then a rill, then a creek, and perhaps finally a roaring river.’ Marg had not lost her spirit and lived to fight another day, another year, another decade.

  It had become apparent to the activists that the politics of the environment were too important to be left to the pragmatism of politicians. The 1972 Tasmanian state elections were coming up and it was decided by the remaining Pedder protesters to form a new political party to be called the United Tasmania Group to contest it. The world’s first Green political party had emerged. Its birth was met with hilarity and ridicule in political circles, from the vast majority of the Australian public and certainly the media, who, after the loss of Pedder, had almost entirely lost interest in the environment movement.

  Marg immediately became a member of the new party and threw herself into the organisation, so much so that she very nearly failed to get the marks required to do an honours degree. There had been some talk of her standing as a candidate but it was decided that she was too valuable as an organiser. Besides, as a mainlander until recently, her chances were too small with the locals.

  The new party failed to gain a seat but surprised everyone when they lost by a mere handful of votes. It proved that while many Tasmanians were reluctant to come out and publicly protest, they nevertheless objected to the drowning of Lake Pedder and didn’t want any more damage done. It also proved that it wasn’t only the ratbags who cared about trees and rivers.

  The last hope to save Lake Pedder disappeared when Gough Whitlam, elected in 1972 after the famous ‘It’s Time’ election campaign, decided it wasn’t time to help in Tasmania. A year into office he was not prepared to jeopardise Labor’s chances in the coming state election or risk antagonising the federal Labor members in the island.

  Marg’s war career had been as a Naval Intelligence officer and she had earned a considerable reputation for her ability to infiltrate, in particular, the American Naval Command in Australia, an essential and covert task if the Australians were to know what their Yankee allies were planning in the Pacific before, as often happened, they were officially and often belatedly informed. She’d also guided a naval officer, no more intelligent or bright than his fellow officers, to the rank of admiral, a considerable exercise in guile, sagacity, opportunism, anticipation and long-term planning. Now, as a student, she began with a hard core of friends to quietly build a network that could infiltrate the memberships of the state Labor and Liberal parties, the government bureaucracy and the Hydro-Electric Commission. The concept of planting moles is not new to espionage but to be effective it needs time. And while information from an insider is important for planning it can’t be openly used. What was needed was a weapon that could be wielded in the political arena in the cause of the rivers and the trees.

  Over the next ten or so years, as Anna was building a business empire that was to make her the richest self-made woman in Australia, I watched as not very much seemed to be happening in Tasmania, even though Marg was always inordinately busy. She talked constantly about the need to become more radical, to use civil disobedience and to try to inform and change public opinion. I was wary of the first tactics and sceptical about her chances of changing public opinion and often felt that she was wasting her time. She was certainly committed and enthusiastic and, of course, when it came to trees, I was very much on her side.

  There was no point and little chance of dissuading her; it would have been easier to move the Rock of Gibraltar. But I often concluded a discussion with the words, ‘Marg, please, just don’t do anything stupid and get yourself arrested.’

  ‘Oh, but I probably shall,’ she’d always reply. ‘We simply have to make our presence felt.’

  I’d sigh heavily. ‘I can already see the newspaper headline – Admiral’s Widow Jailed! Rob will turn in his grave and the navy establishment won’t be at all pleased. But you can count on me to post your bail, darling.’

  ‘Don’t you dare, Nick! A stint in jail is essential. The only thing politicians understand is public pressure – Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King. I’m not suggesting a comparison but arresting an admiral’s widow is always going to be news.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. The public doesn’t seem overly excited. They’ll write you off as a silly old menopausal moo. You know what people are like, distracted and generally apathetic. If it isn’t football or cricket it isn’t news. They’re not exactly shitting their britches in Canberra or Hobart either.’

  ‘Well that’s just too bad and thank God my menopause is largely over. I Am Woman!’ Marg laughed, quoting the title of a song made famous by Helen Reddy.

  While the Greens still failed to gain a seat in the subsequent Tasmanian elections, Marg assured me that they’d been hugely encouraged by their campaign and it was only a matter of time before the trickle became a runnel and then a creek. Even Marg didn’t dare refer to the prospect of a river in her earlier metaphor.

  To support the nascent political party two new organisations were formed during this period: the South West Action Committee immediately after the elections, and in 1976 the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, the organisation Marg believed would lead them to the radical and confrontational stand she felt certain had to become a part of the movement. Marg was wildly excited about this last group, which had grown out of the experiences of a shy young Launceston doctor named Bob Brown. Dr Brown was known as a pleasant, mild-mannered man who wasn’t one of the original Pedder firebrands, although he’d shown support quite early over the issue of Lake Pedder when he paid for and placed a large advertisement in the Australian newspaper. His interest in the lake was coupled with a search for the Tasmanian tiger and in this endeavour he’d fallen in with the Launceston Walking Club, joined the Tasmanian Conservation Trust and was encouraged to become a member of the United Tasmania Group where Marg had first met him. His involvement at first was as an enthusiastic bushwalker sympathetic to the cause.

  This all changed when, in a conversation with a friend, local forester and adventurer Paul Smith, he’d expressed some doubts about the possibility of saving the south-west wilderness. Smith had immediately challenged him to raft the Franklin with him and to see the area for himself. Smith explained that the river had only been successfully navigated twice by pioneering adventurers and in both cases it had proved a hazardous experience. ‘It’ll be heaps of fun,’ Smith concluded, downplaying the danger involved in the proposed adventure. The young doctor, never one to back away from a challenge, accepted, unaware of what he was in for. Like most Tasmanians, he knew almost nothing about the river.

  When Smith and Brown returned after successfully navigating the Franklin and on more than one occasion having come close to losing their lives, the young doctor knew he would never see things in the same way again. Smith and Brown, two of the commonest names in the lexicon of English names, were about to change forever the direction of environmental protest. Smith for his initial enthusiasm; Brown because he’d been born again as a devotee of the pristine rivers, lakes and forests of his adopted state. As a doctor he’d dedicated his life to healing the sick, but now he re-dedicated it to preventing the wilderness from being destroyed, to keeping it, above all things, healthy. He had become a fierce guardian of trees, lakes and rivers and the abundant life that depended on them.

  He later described the experience as if it had indeed been an epiphany b
y declaring how he found himself ‘fused into the inexplicable mystery of nature’. Several weeks after his return, on the last Saturday in June 1976, sixteen people, a hard core of true believers, met at his house in Liffey and formed the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, Marg, of course, being one of them.

  Although, to her chagrin, Bob Brown didn’t stand as leader, pleading he still had a medical practice to run, Norm Sanders, a Pedder veteran, became the director until Bob Brown finally took over when Sanders resigned to stand for the Democrats in state parliament.

  Brown was the right person at exactly the right time. What is the expression? Oh, yes: ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man.’ He was young, had the status of his profession, was unattached with no family ties to consider, hadn’t been beaten down by the Lake Pedder failure and finally wasn’t subject to the social pressures of the old guard or tainted by any previous activism.

  It was difficult to call the young Dr Brown a ratbag: he was a member of the medical profession, dressed in a suit and tie for media interviews and spoke quietly and reasonably. In one interview broadcast nationally in 1980 he hadn’t lambasted the state government or the Hydro-Electric Commission, both of whom had gone out of their way to discredit him. He simply declared, ‘Within a few years, the wilderness areas of the world – and there are only a few left – will be gone. We have a chance to save this one in Tasmania, not so much for this generation but for the future, and not just for Australians but for mankind.’

  Marg had obviously fallen under the spell of the young doctor and during one of our nightly phone conversations she said, ‘In him we seem to have someone who can make the mainland sit up and take notice, someone whose voice isn’t drowned out by the clatter of politics. People are beginning to see that this is no longer a parochial problem in a state where the politicians are a bunch of reactionaries; they’re starting to realise it involves us all.’

  ‘Hey, wait on, it isn’t all political clatter down there. Didn’t I read somewhere recently that your Labor premier Doug Lowe proposed a compromise? Some of the Franklin River could be saved? Isn’t that a sign that things might be changing?’

  I could sense Marg’s sniff of derision on the phone. ‘Like all compromises, both rivers would be wrecked and the politicians would claim as usual that they had made everyone happy. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Hobart Mercury pointing out that two half rivers don’t make a whole ecosystem. To my surprise they printed it and Norm Sanders, the Australian Democrat, read it out in parliament.’

  ‘Yes, sure, but at least it indicates some ambivalence, a crack in the armour —’

  ‘Crack? Not even a tiny dent!’ Marg snapped, but then immediately calmed down. ‘But, I admit, Lowe’s a cut above the rest of the scoundrels. He passed me in the street several days ago and stopped briefly and gave me a pat on the shoulder, then said softly, “Brave girl, keep up the good work.” I couldn’t believe my ears! He’s even come out and said . . .’ Marg paused. ‘Wait, I have the clipping right here on my desk.’ Moments later she started to read. ‘“The Hydro-Electric Commission is an engineering organisation . . . it is not a socio-economic planning body. Previous governments may have been satisfied with a cursory perusal of the Commission’s recommendations followed by an automatic stamp of approval. This is not my style.”’

  ‘There you go!’ I exclaimed. ‘You have a friend . . . well, at the very least, not necessarily an enemy.’

  There was silence on the other end. Then Marg, not without a tincture of drama in her voice, announced, ‘Last night in a late sitting of the Labor Party caucus, Doug Lowe was deposed as leader by the majority pro-dams faction in the party. They elected Harry Holgate, whose support for the Hydro is almost as vociferous and one-eyed as that of the leader of the opposition, Robin Gray.’

  ‘Oh dear, as bad as that?’ I said, the egregious Gray being at the top of Marg’s hate list. ‘Pity, Lowe sounds like a good man.’

  Marg laughed. ‘About as good as they get around here, which isn’t saying a great deal.’

  ‘Marg, you’re beginning to sound like a politician.’ Which, as it subsequently turned out, proved prophetic. Doug Lowe resigned from the Labor Party and sat as an independent with Mary Willey, also ex-Labor, and Norm Sanders. Norm Sanders then brought a motion of no confidence against Harry Holgate’s now minority government and, supported by the other two and the opposition, the Labor government collapsed and an election was called for the 15th of May 1982.

  Bob Brown proposed to stand and asked Marg to do so, too. She called me at Beautiful Bay, her voice excited. ‘Nick, Bob has asked me to be a candidate for what’s to be known as the Tasmanian Greens; it’s a new party we’re forming. What do you think?’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I exclaimed. ‘But what about the United Tasmania Group?’

  ‘Mostly the same people, same purpose, different name – United Tasmania Group is simply not specific enough. Besides, Tasmania is anything but united behind our cause; we want people to know exactly what we stand for.’

  ‘Yes, sure, but won’t that leave you open to being accused of being a one-issue political party?’

  ‘Well, yes, but the Libs and Labor are also electioneering on one issue – jobs for workers. Now that they’ve decided to dam the Franklin and the Gordon, there aren’t any other issues, except a few strictly parochial ones, and they won’t be ones we’ll be contesting. Everyone knows it’s pretty well a revolving door between the two parties. At least we stand for something different.’

  ‘Well, yes, but they’re standing for food in the mouths of their children and you’re standing for a couple of rivers and a bunch of trees. Different, yes, but is it a significant difference? I mean, to the voter?’

  ‘Nick! That’s not fair! They’re two stunning rivers and the old-growth forests can never be brought back . . . well, not in several lifetimes anyway.’

  ‘But paying the bills is in this lifetime,’ I insisted. ‘Don’t get me wrong, darling, I’m on your side. But food on the table, shoes for the kids will always be an issue. People haven’t got around to making trees a priority in their lives. They seem to be in abundance, everywhere they look! And who cares about two rivers nobody’ll ever visit?’

  ‘What are you saying? It’s hopeless, that I shouldn’t stand?’

  ‘Of course not, you must. I’m proud of you, but you’re in for a rough ride, my girl.’

  ‘Nobody said it would be easy. I take it I have your blessing, then? I’m . . . We’re going to need campaign funds. We’re holding fetes, raffles, that sort of thing, but it won’t be sufficient. We have to print pamphlets, posters, pay the postage for thousands of letters . . . it’s going to cost a fortune.’

  ‘I see. When Anna calls later today I’ll ask her to back you with the ingredients for two thousand sausage rolls,’ I joked.

  ‘Nick, that’s not in the least funny!’ Marg scolded, then laughed.

  ‘How much?’

  A moment’s hesitation. ‘Five?’

  ‘Hundred?’

  ‘Thousand. We won’t waste a penny, I promise,’ Marg said in her most compelling voice.

  ‘Yeah, okay. But Anna won’t be pleased that I’m supporting you,’ I added.

  ‘How could she possibly know?’ Marg shot back, then, ‘Nick, you wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘No, of course not! However, you two always seem to know what the other is up to. Don’t these donations have to be declared to the electoral office?’

  ‘Yes. I never thought of that. But surely she wouldn’t think of that, would she?’

  ‘Look, I shouldn’t be doing this. I try very hard to follow the rules the two of you made, but I’m also having some ongoing personal difficulties with Anna and trees.’

  ‘You mean Princess Plunder raping the forests of Borneo?’

  ‘Oh, you know about that?’ I said, astonished, not yet aware of her connections with Roger Rigby, her intelligence contact in Canberra and ex-colleague in Naval Intelligence during the war.

/>   ‘Of course!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s not important, and besides, you’re breaking our rule,’ Marg reminded me, forcing me to silence.

  ‘Right, tell you what. Tell your mate Bob Brown to expect a cheque. If Anna looks up the electoral donation lists I can work my way out of a donation in my name to him – personal conscience, general concern, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, I do love you, Nick,’ Marg said. ‘You will be especially rewarded next time I visit Beautiful Bay,’ she promised, but then added, ‘But you do understand that with this election, I may not be able to keep to the Beautiful Bay schedule each month, at least in the next little while.’

  ‘Oh well, I guess I’ll simply have to spend a little more time with the soap in the shower,’ I joked.

  ‘Nick Duncan, that’s naughty! You mean you won’t know me from a bar of soap?’ she replied cleverly.

  Marg and I hadn’t resumed our former intimacy straightaway. The Calendar of Nick’s Joy didn’t come into regular use until Marg had graduated with honours. This proved to be a good thing, as it seemed to help Anna to adjust to the new arrangement.

  I was to learn in snippets over the years what transpired during Marg and Anna’s telephone call about sharing yours truly. It seems they quite quickly decided they could make it work using the calendar idea. After this decision it would appear that most of their conversation concerning me involved whether they could endure my numerous shortcomings, a subject they constantly returned to whenever I failed to please them in the years that followed. They would allude to this original telephone conversation with statements such as, ‘We discussed this highly annoying (vexing, irritating, alarming, unfortunate, tedious, cunning, duplicitous, selfish, vainglorious) aspect of your personality at some length, Nick. Our sincerest hope at the time was that it wouldn’t play, as it disappointingly now has, a part in our future relationship.’ That is, of course, a paraphrase of several hundred different statements that meant roughly the same thing. If I were to string all the accounts of my shortcomings together, the phone call must have lasted several weeks. Moreover, these conniptions, spats, quarrels, dummy spits, call them what you may, seemed always to end with roughly the same sentiment from both women: ‘Well, what can I expect? After all, you’re only a man.’