The Story of Wielangta: How Environmentalists Mistake ‘A Timber Town That Disappeared’ for Pristine Wilderness
Posted by jennifer, November 22nd, 2006 - under Uncategorized.
Tags: Forestry, Mining
There is a lot of forest in Tasmania.
In the south east of the island, there was once a thriving timber town known as Wielangta. In its heyday it had a general store, bakery, blacksmiths’ shops, a school and of course several saw mills.
Wielangta was ravaged by bushfires in the 1920s and abandoned in 1928.
I visited the area yesterday with Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney – the Irish born producers of Mine Your Own Business.
All we saw was forest. The town has disappeared.
This is some of the beautiful blue gum forest we saw along the Wielangta forest drive.
The forest has re-grown and like most forest in Tasmania is now falsely considered pristine wilderness. But within the forest there is a rusted boiler and decaying tramlines — all that remains of the once thriving timber town known as Wielangta.
Interestingly, according to the website dedicated to Bob Brown’s fight to stop logging in Wielangta forest, this forest is described as “the most untouced and secluded area within 50 km of the Hobart CBD. It is a tiny fragment of the complex biodiversity here at the end of the last Ice Age.”
Wielangta forest is home to the swift parrot, wedge-tailed eagle and broad toothed stag beetle.
Parts of the forest have been cleared felled and then burnt by timber workers since European settlement. And the forest has always regrown.
Here’s Phelim in a recently burnt coup, perhaps looking for the town that disappeared?
Here’s Phelim perhaps looking for the ancient Wielangta (broad toothed) stag beetle.
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Thanks to Alan Ashbarry for taking us to Wielangta and for organizing the Tasmanian showing of Mine Your Own Business. Following the screening last night there was much comment over drinks, about how relevant the film is to Tasmanian timber communities struggling to survive against environmentalism. The film will be screened tonight (Wednesday night) in Sydney and tomorrow (Thursday night) in Perth. For more information visit http://ipa.org.au/events/event_detail.asp?eventid=120 .
Your search – pristine wilderness which ALCOA had not yet raped and pillaged – did not match any documents.
Search – pristine wilderness which ALCOA – hmmmm – hansard
Sorry Luke, meant to use the name Gavin in both the second and third paragraphs. My apologies.
Helen: Perhaps I should explain. From my background of observing and occasionally dealing directly with forest management in say Tasmania before the first RFA I became just a bit cynical about their wood supply and reserves both private and public. I had been very involved with the rapid growth in cellulose manufacturing in the pulp & paper industry. It led me to make a few suggestions around the Federal level at a critical time for their first review. Our export licenses had been a big consideration re our 20/20 view and beyond.
Helen, this post is more about intervention but I guess a lot about a particular situation. Where are you really?
After the mid eighties I got very involved with the detail of mapping again for our national communications and other assets. That involved my using a great deal of imagination regarding terrain, vegetation, population distribution, transport routes, access etc before computer data could be reliably employed.
Helen; if you are truly an outback person I had to know a lot about DRCS radio systems and remote communities as well as all cites. I spent hundreds of hours pouring over maps, directories and models of our ranges, slopes, vegetation, clay pans, bays and probable views from just about every tower in this country.
Note; trees and dampness affect radio propagation depending on wavelength. I can say we don’t have a lot of good forest left. I can also say we built a lot of timber houses with bits of wood from round about.
Progress requires us to cut down even more trees as we expand. How many will we turn into paper or dust as we go?
IMHO help for good farmers in land care and recovery is grossly under funded at both the research and practical level. My region today is suffering major drought. Many types of woodland have gone way past the dieback phase. Individual trees of various species won’t survive as they are. Litter can’t become mulch anymore, all crop organics become the next bushfire hazard.
Back to timber: Fifty years ago my father and his carpenter mates conducted our first experiments in kiln dried hardwoods for a big pulp & paper complex. They also made plywood and hardboard sheet. In my working lifetime I have seen a lot of change including our definitions of forests and reserves. Today we are seeing a major revision of the practice too and I hope its improved right across the country now.
Helen: A few self made men still have a lot of learning to do. I also write about the plight of small contractors and their complete dependence on big business for the means to pay of their rigs. In door to door sales I met quite a lot who benefited most from building their own machinery.
Worst case was when they hocked the farm and didn’t tell the family or the man at the door. Mr Howard helps the timber industry a lot these days (wink). Ask Cinders about that.
Helen might not it still be locked up as you called it, except a different person has possession of the key?
What do you recommend if the assets to be ‘conserved’ or ‘preserved’ (loosely used) are of public interest? Who gets access & how?
Cinders says: “It’s only a pity that the money meant to be spent on helping mankind, especially dragging communities out of poverty and providing the dignity of work, is actually funding environmentalists who want to stop this progress.”
Progress in the forestry industry is a move from:
(i) small scale to gigantic scale;
(ii) selective logging to mass clearfelling;
(iii) from handsaws to bulldozers;
(iv) from a regime that allowed regeneration to native forest (albeit in a more limited way) to one where vast corporate monoculture tree plantations replace our native flora;
(v) from local entrepreneurs to transnational corporations;
(vi) from mass employment to a relative handful of insecure, low-paid and dangerous jobs;
(vii) from no chemicals to pesticide and weedicide inundation;
(iix) from local landholders to absentee landholders;
(ix) from an acknowledgement of the mixed value of native forests to one of every value being a commercial one. Love of local landscape is gone;
(x) where family farms producing ten times the annual income have been bulldozed to be replaced by tree plantations that bring in an income once a decade (if that);
(xi) from local communities to community domination by powerful TNCs that will sue the guts out of their neighbour if they speak up;
(xii) from work with dignity to disempowerment and exploitation.
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