Tarkine Defenders

Did you know that as I write this, people in the north west of Tasmania are taking on the good fight to stop a toxic tailings dam being built for a mining company in the heart of Australia’s largest remaining cool temperate rainforest.

A Chinese mining company will clear 140 ha to build a holding for the toxic waste produced. The toxic water will run downstream afterwards. What economic benefits do these mines really bring us? We fail to tax operations like this adequately, jobs are also taken by people coming in from off shore. Actually we are paying them to take out these minerals in so many cases with tax breaks and handouts.

Really, though the biggest cost is the irreparable damage to wilderness and a forest that works as an active carbon sink, giving us the fresh air we breathe. With the recent elections in Tasmania, there clearly isn’t local support for saving such beautiful, unique and important places.

Every day another person is arrested chained to the front gates of the mine. I am so in awe of the incredible team of people that have the foresight, wisdom and fearless attitude it takes to put themselves at an important yet so fragile position.

It honestly breaks my heart. When will we learn? Let’s hope that with the predictions for the Covid boom that’s about to dawn on us, we do take on our politicians and their disgusting underhanded back handers from the corporate world. I hope we can put our planet and home first for a change. I hope, I truely do, that we can become wise to the cause and effects of our everyday lives and the changing climate.

The Australian Weather Bureau (BOM - Bureau of Meteorology) is funded by the Australian gas and oil lobby and is strictly banned from using climate change in any of thier reports about weather events that continue to demonstrate climate change. Just one example of how we have let the big end of town control the voting public of our country.

I know this old tree loving hippy is ranting a bit here, I apologise. It has just been so hard lately to see this total lack of acceptance here in Australia of our impacts at a political level. I am embarrassed to be an Australian at the moment.

I have to take a moment to thank Bob Brown for keeping the fight for the Tarkine alive. I do wonder how I’ll feel when I am there photographing it in a few weeks time.

The Tarkine, Tasmania, Australia. Photographs and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2021