Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Haven’t really had time to find out. Although I was briefing a TV crew from Melbourne who’d come two days early to get background footage and interview the protesters who are already here. We were standing out of the rain under a fish-and-chip shop awning this afternoon and a woman came out wiping her hands on her apron, obviously the proprietor. “All yer do is film the greenies, the filthy greenies. Youse never even think about the people of Strahan!” she shouted at us.

  ‘So the TV reporter said, “Come on then, give us a comment, madam,” to which she replied, “I just bloody did!” The TV man pointed at his cameraman. “Here, directly to camera.”

  ‘The woman put her hands on her hips, unaware that the camera was still on. “If me husband was here he’d give yiz a comment orright – a boot up the whatsit! Lemme tell yiz, youse’d be walking real strange for the next few days, mate.”

  ‘“So, where is he, your husband?” the reporter asked.

  ‘She glanced down at her watch. “Probably down the pub trying ter buy more fish from the fishermen.” She gave an impatient sigh. “Look, I ain’t got time to stand around. There’s lotsa strangers in town gunna need feedin’ ternight.”’

  Marg laughed. ‘It’s going to air tomorrow night. I’m not sure Bob is going to approve. I think he wants a bit of spit-flecked acrimony, not a good laugh on nationwide television.’

  Marg had been assigned to help the team coordinating the media, the most essential aspect of the blockade, in fact, the primary reason for it. Maintaining the momentum for the nation’s radio, television, newspapers and magazines was critical. A blockade that isn’t national news is simply a waste of time and effort.

  The activists had learned from their failures with Lake Pedder. They now knew better than to appeal to parliament and the local media, and had concluded that peaceful confrontation was their only hope of involving the mainland media. And they needed their involvement to galvanise national opinion, especially as the blockade was to start on the 14th of December, the day the World Heritage Committee would announce its decision on the application to list the south-west wilderness area. They were gambling on a positive outcome. The Federal Parliament would be in recess and there would be the usual paucity of news over the Christmas period. If all went well, the blockade could be front-page news.

  On the evening of the 14th of December, Marg phoned again, sounding elated. ‘Nick, it went brilliantly today! Over fifty of our people have been arrested and we managed to get the media across the harbour in some abalone fishermen’s boats! Bob Brown flew over the river with Norm Sanders and radioed in to say that what took place upriver looked like a cross between a navy battle and a regatta. There were dozens of our little red and yellow rubber inflatables filled with protesters holding banners and waving flags, and police launches like sharks hunting for mackerel, trying to get to our inflatables, dodging between the media and the tourist cruise boats.’

  ‘What are they arresting you for? I mean, it’s a peaceful protest, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course, no resistance is offered. They arrest us for trespassing. It goes like this: “If you do not leave immediately I will arrest you for trespass.” We then say, “This is a national park and I am entitled to be here.” Then the cops say, “You are under arrest.” We signal our whereabouts for the media boats and then obligingly climb up onto the deck of the police launch chanting slogans.’

  On the first day the police launches were up the Gordon near the dam site and made their arrests there, but the number of protesters arriving had taken them by surprise and police now began to arrive in Strahan and Queenstown in much greater numbers.

  Marg’s voice on the phone began to sound increasingly concerned. ‘Nick, there are police everywhere you look. This is a town that usually has one policeman who spends most days with his feet up on his desk. Today a hundred and fifty moved into the district. There are police boats on the harbour and everyone’s looking grim-faced. I tried to talk to three young uniformed lads today who looked nervous enough to bolt. “This is a peaceful blockade, why are you here?” I asked them. “Dunno, lady,” one said. “Just told,” another mumbled. Then a sergeant came up. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I was just telling your men this is a peaceful protest, sergeant,” I said, giving them my most winning smile. “Then keep the peace and move on, lady,” he instructed.

  ‘Remembering Bob’s caution to keep my nose clean, I turned to go and he called, “You tell your mob if they want trouble we’ll be waiting.”

  ‘I couldn’t help myself. “Sounds as if you can’t wait, sergeant.”

  ‘“Move on, madam!” he said with a flick of the wrist.

  ‘I’m afraid I lost my patience. “My name is Marg Hamilton and I’m a member of parliament and I can’t say I like your manner, sergeant. What is your name, please?” I used my crisp admiral’s-widow voice and took a notebook and pen from my handbag.

  ‘“Docker, madam, Sergeant Danny Docker. Our orders are direct from the premier. Perhaps you’d like to take it up with him, madam?” Whatever else he was, Sergeant Docker wasn’t stupid or lost for a rebuttal and I guess he won that round handsomely,’ Marg admitted. ‘Besides, I shouldn’t have used that “do you know who you’re talking to” pathetic bullshit, Nick.’ Then she added, ‘And now it’s raining!’

  As the blockade wore on, and the weather didn’t improve, I could hear the weariness in her voice. It was much the same routine – welcome the press, arrange transport across the harbour and up the Gordon to the protesters’ camp or see that they were present if anything was happening in town, attend the magistrate’s court in Queenstown each night, then, exhausted, call long distance to Beautiful Bay.

  Marg was getting to know the townspeople and often expressed her sympathy for them. ‘Nick, it’s basically a working-class town, miners, lots of men who are pretty much unskilled. The Mount Lyell copper mine, the biggest employer around here, has closed down most of its operations because the price of copper has fallen through the floor. For the locals it’s a disaster. Strahan now has twice the unemployed of the rest of Tasmania.’

  ‘Hmm, not the best situation to find yourselves in. Are they making it difficult for you?’

  ‘Nothing we haven’t been told to expect and in some ways better than the anti-dam rabble we often had to put up with at rallies when we were protesting Lake Pedder. You know, the usual shouting out in the street, some of the young blokes, from Queenstown mostly, wanting to start fights. We dare not go into the pub. But the older townsfolk are not too bad. You get accustomed to being served silently in the shops, but then again, they realise we’re bringing income into the town.’

  ‘I must say I can see where they’re coming from. They’re depending on the Hydro work and you’re threatening it. How many jobs are involved?’

  ‘Four hundred and fifty at the dam site, and of course the Hydro also brings ancillary jobs to Strahan.’

  ‘Marg, for these people it probably seems that the ingredients for happiness have arrived in the nick of time: food on the table, shoes for the kids, a beer or two at the pub after work, a bet at the TAB and the ability to meet the monthly payment on the truck or the washing machine.’

  Marg laughed. ‘Very eloquently put, Nick. Whose side are you on anyway?’

  ‘People have to live, Marg.’

  ‘Of course, and it’s not all one-sided in the town either. The local population is divided between those who believe it’s necessary to destroy some of the wilderness and the rivers to put food on the table and those who want it kept for the growing tourism trade. One of the pro-dam councillors put it rather neatly in this morning’s paper: “These jobs are here and now, guaranteed. Must we bet on keeping the wilderness for the potential welfare of strangers?”’

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t realised there was a tourism issue.’

  ‘Strahan is one of the gateways to the south-west wilderness. Last year it attracted sixty thousand tourists.’

  ‘That’s pretty impressi
ve, but I don’t suppose tourism supplies too many jobs for people who earn their living by working from the neck down.’

  ‘Nick, that’s a bit harsh! But the truth is that at best the dam work is short term and when it’s built the town will be back in the doldrums, but tourism can only grow and make more jobs. Of course, the government claims the dam will attract the same number if not more recreational tourists and will become a sort of Tasmanian lakeland – yachts, motorboats, fishermen, weekenders. It’s a lot of hooey, of course, and besides, not what the wilderness is all about.’

  ‘But from the Hydro’s viewpoint they’ve chosen the perfect town as their entry point. They’ve relieved the unemployment situation and frustrated the protesters. The construction site is very difficult to get to and so it’s going to be relatively easy for the police to keep the wilderness activists in check and, moreover, dampen the enthusiasm of the media and discourage them from prolonging their visit.’

  ‘All too true,’ Marg said ruefully.

  But as Marg’s nightly calls indicated, there was no dampening of the spirits of protesters, who kept arriving in the town from the mainland, surprising everyone by their sheer numbers, including TAA and Ansett who had to put on extra flights. Most of the protesters were young, but many were older middle-class people who were determined to add their voices to the protest and stoically put up with the appalling mud, the constant rain and the primitive conditions.

  ‘Nick, people keep surprising me. A more miserable experience would be difficult to find. Most of the time they’re soaked, cold and violently seasick with almost every harbour crossing. At night they sleep in muddy conditions in wet sleeping bags. If ever a protest called for courage, dedication and persistence it’s this one. Yet spirits are high and people are laughing.’

  Bob Brown, as head of the Wilderness Society, was the logical spokesman for the activists, who were not all ‘greens’. There were hippies from Nimbin, housewives, teachers and pensioners, students from all over Australia making a stand during their uni vacation, and working professionals who gave up their Christmas holidays.

  While the protesters could get to Strahan by road, the trip to the dam site from the town began with the notoriously rough crossing of Macquarie Harbour. Once they reached the other side they still had to travel by boat up the Gordon River to the proposed protest camp near the dam construction site.

  It was here that local Strahan tour operator Reg Morrison stepped up and announced he’d donate the use of his boat, the J. Lee M, together with fuel and crew. ‘If you bring the people I’ll run ’em for ya. I’ll provide all the transport.’ He and his skipper Denny Hamill ferried most of the blockaders across the harbour and up the river to the protest site.

  Marg often talked about Reg, whom she referred to as ‘the salt of the earth’; he had founded tourism on the Gordon River, taking tourists up the river after the war, and he had been on a one-man crusade to save the south-west wilderness for years. ‘Damming the Franklin and the Lower Gordon would be like cutting off my arms and legs,’ he’d once told her.

  ‘Nick, he’s everything good about being Australian, a man of conscience who stands to lose everything by siding with us. He’s rough-hewn, weather-beaten and softly spoken and he hasn’t had a lot of education – he’s one of those men who you wouldn’t notice in a group. Yet faced with something he believes in, he becomes an intractable and formidable foe. I just love him! The template for Reg Morrison was forged at Gallipoli and Pozieres and the killing fields of France.’

  I laughed. ‘Well said, darling. Any man would be happy with those words as his epitaph. Nice to know you’ve made a friend in the town.’

  Marg went on to say how Reg Morrison had known and worked the river since he was a boy of seven, following his father, who once ran a small pining gang, and made a simple living from the river.

  ‘Bob Brown likens him to the Huon pine because they’re unique to the south-west wilderness. The analogy is perfect. The Huon pine looks unpretentious to say the least, gnarled and wind-battered, misshapen and usually covered in lichen, but its core wood is beautiful. It’s self-oiling, it never cracks and will last indefinitely. Logs found in the river, still in perfect condition, have been shown to be ten thousand years old. There’s one near the River Camp called the Lea Tree that’s over three thousand years old! Can you imagine, Nick? It was already a thousand years old when Cleopatra met Antony and they sailed down the Nile together.’

  Decades later, a conservationist writer described Reg in these words:

  Reg Morrison loved the river and couldn’t imagine its runnels and ferny creeks, the wide bends and sudden twists, the rapids with their rocky roar, the quiet sylvan stretches of calm water, the waterfowl and platypus and windblown beds of rustling reeds, the essence of the glorious Gordon, all gone forever. He couldn’t bear to see the beauty of the valley lost, turned into a giant and turgid pond, the so-called national park a playground for Sunday sailors, where the high cry of eagles would be replaced by the raucous roar of outboard motors and sudden snap of sails tacking to a breeze that swept across the drowned and desolate waterscape, all in the name of a few extra megawatts of electricity to run the mix-masters and those weapons of mass distraction, the television sets of the nation.

  Bob Brown contends that without Reg Morrison the blockade would never have got off the ground. Reg was the first to stand up for the rivers and the south-west wilderness, and this simple self-effacing man became the whole difference; he demonstrated the power of one man’s persistence and sacrifice. Reg Morrison earned his colours by transporting the protesters up the river to the camp, as close to the dam construction site as the police – determined to keep them as far away as possible – would allow.

  Marg and other workers found a second important friend in Strahan, all the more surprising as he was the town and district warden. Harry McDermott allowed the protesters the use of the council-run camping ground near the town centre, known as Peoples Park. Later they were forced to move to a larger site on the outskirts of town organised by Harry and donated by the son of a sympathetic councillor. It became known as ‘Greenie Acres’. Without these two men, the blockade would have been almost impossible.

  In the same article on the blockade the writer concluded:

  Without Reg Morrison and Harry McDermott, the blockade would have been well nigh impossible. Such quiet and largely unsung men and women who give our nation its essential character are seldom recognised as heroes and receive few of the glittering prizes, unlike the highly profitable companies who are still actively destroying the wilderness and turning the old-growth forests into minced wood and money while spouting the same greedy, self-serving and duplicitous twaddle about jobs for workers. These are big corporation men who blithely face the TV camera and talk of building a pulp mill they assert will do no ecological harm when each day it empties 60 000 tonnes of polluted effluent, the detritus of destruction, into Bass Strait. Some of the nation’s superannuation funds happily buy shares in these logging companies and see no paradox when they boast that they are growing a safe and secure future for their clients.

  But at the time, much of the local media was less than sympathetic. The Hobart Mercury gloomily predicted: ‘The movement increasingly resembles a mortally wounded beast that just won’t lie down and die.’ The paper almost gleefully swallowed anything fed to it by premier Robin Gray and turned it into headlines: ‘Protests by greenies could provoke bloodshed! Unions call for a State of Emergency to prevent greenie harassment! Violence of some kind seems inevitable at this indefensible blockade.’

  It was obvious local media could not be relied on for unbiased and even-handed reporting. Even the venerable local ABC radio station seemed to forsake its usual fair-minded approach by allowing a lot of time for pro-dam comment of the ‘They’re taking our bread and butter!’ variety. Truth was an early casualty. Despite the peaceful behaviour of the protesters, carefully managed by the organisers, the warden of Queenstown broadcast a
typical and widely held opinion: ‘The protesters’ half-truths and platitudes are like that of Hitler before the war. If there’s bloodshed, which is not unlikely, the responsibility will rest with the Wilderness Society.’

  Communication was never going to be easy for the protesters. Marg was part of an initial team of four media coordinators, although later there would be others. With her were Pam Waud and Cathie Plowman, two extraordinarily dedicated and competent women, and Geoff Law, a young bloke mature beyond his years with a very black beard reminiscent of the nineteenth-century cricketer W.G. Grace that belied his tender age and made the cops instinctively suspicious of him. The team spent most of its time organising the media, for whom they were able to set up a media centre in the middle of town.

  Accommodation for the protesters proved to be the real nightmare. Marg would often say how guilty she felt that the media team were housed in an old customs building and were able to stay warm and dry at night while the protesters arriving in the incessant rain were forced to camp. Conditions generally called for a fair bit of character and determination, but toilets were dug and kitchens constructed of canvas. And the Town Camp was described by the protesters as sheer luxury compared to the River Camp, which was closer to the dam site on the Gordon. Some of those returning from the River Camp would go down on their knees and kiss the ground at Greenie Acres.

  Keeping the camps clean in such bad weather was difficult. Marg told me that Bob Brown had expressed real fears of an outbreak of dysentery or a flu epidemic. He’d set up a rigid routine for maintaining hygiene in the public areas of the camps and there were a great many veteran Tasmanian protesters who volunteered to do latrine duty and other unpleasant tasks. Without them disaster would almost certainly have befallen the campsites.

  Marg was one of the people responsible for communication between the two camps. Norm Sanders, fellow member of parliament and first director of The Wilderness Society, had helped set up a radio shack at the River Camp so that the two protest sites could communicate with each other, although the frequency was often jammed by the police.