The Protest that Turned the Tide of Global Green Opinion

By Kathy Marks, The Independent UK. Posted July 2, 2008.

In a remote corner of south-west Tasmania lies the Franklin river, wild and beautiful, in the same pristine state as when the first British convicts arrived on the island 200 years ago. Sea eagles soar above canyons and ravines fringed with ancient rainforest; platypuses swim in the calm pools that punctuate the waterfalls and rapids.

Yet the Franklin could have been obliterated 25 years ago. The plan, if the government of the day had had its way, was to build a hydro-electric dam that would have flooded the river and swallowed up large swathes of bushland. Only the efforts of a determined band of protesters -- combined with a change in the political landscape -- saved this unique wilderness area.

The dam project galvanised public opinion in Australia and beyond, inspiring one of the greatest conservation battles of all time. On 1 July 1983, the High Court threw out a final challenge by the Tasmanian authorities. It was a spectacular victory, and a defining moment for the global environmental movement -- proving, possibly for the first time, that direct action could defeat the massed forces of government and big business.

Among those who celebrated the 25th anniversary at a dinner in Hobart last night was David Bellamy, the British naturalist, one of 1,400 people arrested during a summer-long "blockade" of the river. Dr Bellamy, who spent his 50th birthday in Hobart's Risdon Prison, later described the protest action as "the most uplifting thing I have ever been part of."

But the scrapping of the hydro-electric scheme was not universally welcomed, particularly in Tasmania, where many locals equated it with new jobs. And while the dam was stopped and the river given World Heritage protection, the logging of old-growth native forests continues apace and there are plans to build a pulp mill in a scenic valley, an issue that David Bellamy says he would go to prison over again.

In the early 1980s, the environmental movement was still relatively young, and Tasmania was a fitting backdrop for its coming of age. The state had already given birth to the world's first Green party -- founded in 1972, after protesters failed to prevent another of the island's outstanding attractions, Lake Pedder, from being dammed. When the Franklin came under threat, they knew they had to change their tactics. They had to take the campaign into the living rooms of middle Australia.

Television pictures of the Franklin in all its majestic beauty -- and of the machinery poised to destroy it -- shocked mainland Australians. Thousands converged on Tasmania's west coast, where they threw themselves in front of bulldozers and dived into the path of barges transporting equipment to the dam site.

While the blockade made international headlines, it was not until a federal Labor government, led by Bob Hawke, came to power in March 1983 that real progress was made. Mr Hawke, whose pledge to save the Franklin helped get him elected, overruled the Tasmanian premier, Robin Gray, who dismissed the river as a leech-ridden "brown ditch". Mr Hawke's wife at the time, Hazel, wore earrings adorned with the words "No Dams" -- the campaign slogan -- on election night.

Mr Hawke was among the guests at last night's anniversary dinner; Mr Gray, who now sits on the board of Gunns, Tasmania's biggest logging company, declined his invitation.

The Franklin Blockade was led by Bob Brown, who had recently arrived in Tasmania to work as a doctor. He founded the Wilderness Society, and was one of more than 500 protesters jailed during the blockade; the day after his release, he was elected to the state parliament -- Australia's first Green MP.

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