[birds singing] [woman] Tasmania is an island
off the bottom of Australia. Quite a long way from anywhere. [man 1] Sometimes they don't
even put us on the map. [man 2] Tarkine's more
than a million acres
of wild country, including the biggest
temperate rain forest in Australia. River systems, largely
unsullied by humanity. A wild coastline, across which blows the cleanest
air on the planet. There is no other place
like it in the world. [man 1] It's like being
in fairyland. It's just magnificent, these great big, gnarly
old trees with growths on the side
and fungus growing off them. You just go, ahh, this is
just so amazing, you know? [man 3] It's over
60 million years old. You know, the trees that you see
standing around you we can see as fossils
in Antarctica. [man 2] It's a stronghold
for a whole suite of rare and endangered wildlife, and it's got
this Aboriginal heritage
of the takayna people. They were out here with spears
and clubs and waiting for
the seals to lie on the rocks. [woman] This area
is so under threat. Mining leases going up. The destruction of thousands
of years of Aboriginal heritage and forests like these
being felled. If all things proceed
as planned, this forest that we're
sitting in now won't be here by the end of summer. To see our forest industry
reborn, that's our plan. Clearly,
environmental protestors have a different view. [reporter] Just days out
from the state election, a crowd of more than
1,000 people has rallied on Hobart's Parliament lawns,
calling for protection
of the Tarkine. [woman] When you have
your state government dedicated to the resource
extraction side of things, and then you have
the grassroots uprising
of people who have got
a hell of a lot of resilience,
intelligence, creativity, there's inevitably going to be
a clash of epic proportions. [indistinct shouting] [woman] Yes. Yeah, good, thanks, guys. Good to see you again.
Come on in. Take a seat. OK, so, Phil, we might
just get you a script sorted. I'm Nicole Anderson.
I'm a rural doctor
in the town of Smithton in the northwest of Tasmania. We have a medical service
which services 8,000 people 24/7. Your day is basically
just drilled out in 10-minute consultation
after 10-minute consultation. Although my consultations
average 12.5 minutes, so, yes, I run behind, like a typical doctor
runs behind. When I came to Tasmania in 2004 and started work up here
in Smithton in 2005, this northwest area
was a big mystery. And what that gave me
was a lot of inspiration to get out here, to get myself
into this landscape. Running is a great way
to learn about a place for me, because I don't have much time and I love to cover
big distances. I'm certainly not
an advanced athlete. I'm slow as anything. I wouldn't say lazy up hills,
but I pace myself. My biomechanics are pretty shot. So my strengths definitely lie
in my ability to handle
discomfort and exhaustion, to stay the distance and just
to keep going no matter what. I love to run by myself. Off-track, off-road. Literally, no trail to follow. I'm trying to think of a time
where I didn't run by myself. Nope, can't think of any.
No, always by myself. What I want to get out
of being a runner is more of a connection
to my environment. What is the Tarkine giving me,
what is takayna giving me? It's reconnecting me as
a human to a landscape. As human beings,
when we're born, we're
immediately wrapped in plastic. We're numbered, we're branded. There's something in me
that wants to break out
of that unnatural system. It's teaching me to be
a true human because a true human
is not what 200 years of industrial civilization
has produced. A true human goes back
200,000 years, more, two million years. [woman] Human beings
are designed
in a way we can run. We can run long distances
and we can run
in the heat of the day. We've got a chest structure
with our clavicles that gives us that crucial
ability to breathe heavily, long periods of time,
for endurance. When people go through
a rain forest, they're breathing in fresh air,
they're breathing
in fungi spores, fern spores, particles. Your body and your mind is processing that information
and you feel better because you're in
a natural environment, which we have evolved in
for a couple of million years. We've only been
in the Industrial Revolution for a couple of centuries. And so what we have
is a very artificial system, which we see as normal
in our modern society, when in reality we are
still part of forests. [Nicole] Genetically,
physically, biochemically, emotionally and spiritually, we are connected
to natural landscapes. And being mostly alone
out in the Tarkine has left me a lot of time
to discover, to learn, and reestablish
that relationship, and so the Tarkine has given me
back my sense of identity, my sense of self, who I am and what I could be. [bird calling] And then to find that this area, which was starting
to really grab my heart, it was so under threat, and being destroyed for what? [man] The Tarkine faces
an array of threats, and unfortunately they've been
going on for many years. Mining, and open cut mining
of all things, which we know is the most
damaging type of mining. That will not be fixed
in our lifetimes, our kids' lifetimes, their great grandkids'
lifetimes, that will
not be fixed. Permanent scarring
on the world. Ninety percent of the Tarkine
is under mining tenure
right now. The coastline, such an important
cultural area of the Tarkine, people bombing down there
in four-wheel-drives all over Aboriginal history
and trashing the landscape. [woman] The coast is home
to burial sites, hut remains and shell middens. Because people don't understand
how to read that heritage, they don't have a value for it. As a community,
there's grave concerns over the government willfully
allowing four-wheel-drives to enter into that region, without any control practices
that protect that heritage and that story that
belongs to this island. [reporter] Today
the Bob Brown Foundation held a protest to make
the Tarkine a World Heritage-protected site and return the land
to its traditional owners. How great it would be
if Aboriginal rangers were
on that land protecting it. [reporter] But the Premier
says it's not a priority
for his government. [Sharnie] One of the stereotypes
that we deal with here
in Tasmania is that there actually is no
real Tasmanian Aboriginal
people left. The Tarkine is significant
because it's uninterrupted. So it is a true physical
connection to what was, and our ability to then
continue culture. It's about the future. [man] This was a forest
just a few months ago. This coupe, the whole area
that's to be logged here, is 40 hectares,
or about a hundred acres. In the Tarkine, there's
currently 159 coupes targeted for clear-fell logging. The loggers drive a road
into the wilderness, then they clear-cut it,
cut everything down, having removed the logs
they want, firebomb it, and that eliminates the whole
of the native ecosystem. The reason for the firebombing
is to create a heat so intense that nothing native can survive,
so it won't compete with the artificial plantation they're going
to replace this with. End of ecosystem, end of
these giants of the forest. Every morning we wake up
to less forests on the planet than ever before
in human history. It's high time
this destructive industry was made part of history, and a very good place
to start that process is right here in the Tarkine. -[Bob] Lisa.
-[Lisa] Yeah. -[Bob] How you going up there?
-[Lisa] Yeah, good. How's the river? Fantastic. How long you been
up there this time? [Lisa] Um, I came up
on Thursday. [Bob] Did you? [Lisa] So this
is my third week, yeah. I've been
back-and-forthing a bit. Listen, thanks
for being up there. You know, I know that
if 25 million Australians knew you were there,
the great bulk of them would be supporting you,
totally. [Lisa] It's pretty special
to be able to be here. I've been pretty overwhelmed
with support from people and it's been really nice 'cause
it does get hard sometimes. [Bob] Yeah. [Lisa] The more time
that I've spent out here, the more emotionally attached
I get to these forests. Only gonna get harder
if they do decide to come in and start destroying everything. [Bob] Big criticism, isn't it,
of environmentalists that we're emotional. -[Lisa] Yeah.
-Uh... As if you can still be
a human being without it. -[Lisa] Yeah.
-[Bob] You've got a basket
up there, haven't you? [Lisa] Yeah, there's just a bag
down the bottom you can
put stuff in. [Bob] Oh, can I?
I'll do that, then. All right, there you go. A week's reading
and half an afternoon's fruit. -[Lisa laughs]
-[Lisa] Thank you. [Bob laughs] [chainsaw revs] [reporter] Half warrior,
half man of peace. Bob Brown heard his calling
in Tasmania's wilderness. [woman] Bob Brown is the former
leader of the Australian Greens. And he remains to me to be
quite an inspirational person. The fight for the Tarkine
is not over. [man] He's devoted his life
to campaigning to save these special places. I often hear people say,
"Who is the next Bob Brown?" And I think there isn't
another Bob Brown. [Bob] I came to Tasmania
as a young<i> locum,</i> that means temporary doctor. The very weekend
I drove onto this island, off the ferry,
and into the mountains, I was galvanized by
the beauty of Tasmania. In fact, I sent
my parents a card saying, "Dear Mom and Dad,
I am home." I was a pretty pent-up
young fella. You see I happened to be
a Presbyterian and gay
at the same time, and those two things
don't mix very well. The criminal penalties
for homosexuality were 20 years in jail. And I was the son
of a policeman to boot. I was internally
hemorrhaging a bit, and I found in nature
a great ease. It doesn't try
to hone us all down to one
particular description. It celebrates variety. In 1976,
a forester in Launceston, Paul Smith, asked me
if I'd raft with him down the Franklin River. It was ten days of canyons,
waterfalls, sea eagles floating
in the gorges. Remarkable wildness. Pretty quick they announced
this hundred-meter-high
rock-filled dam, the biggest
in the Southern Hemisphere, and I spent the next seven years as a campaigner
for the Franklin River. This is a natural
and a national heritage area. It belongs to Tasmania,
it belongs to Tasmania
of the future. -[protestors chanting]
-No dam! [Bob] There we were, this huge
campaign going in Australia, 20,000 people out saying,
"Save the Franklin"
in little Hobart. [reporter]<i> ...as the marchers,
led by the director</i> <i> of the Wilderness Society,
Dr. Bob Brown...</i> [Bob] Fifteen thousand
out in Melbourne and similar numbers
in Sydney and Canberra and Adelaide. [protestors chanting] At the end
of the Franklin campaign, 500 of us went to jail. If you do not move,
you will be arrested. I spent Christmas and New Year
of 1982-3 in jail, and the day after I came out
was elected into the Parliament. And the Franklin became
a key to World Heritage for the Tasmanian wilderness, but a vital component
was missing: the Tarkine. [band playing] One government leader
of the day said, "There'll never be
a national park in the Tarkine while there's a chance
of two cents' worth
of tin being got out of it." [Gray]<i> The environmental
significance of that area</i> <i> has been grossly overstated.</i> [Bob] The mining mentality,
the logging mentality, "dig it up,
cut it down, dam it," was still rampant. It's changing now. But that old mindset sticks. [man] For their next victim. Took 300 years to grow
and took 20 minutes to fucking
lay it on the ground. [Nicole] Well, Tasmania has a long history of environmentalist activism versus destructive
extractive industry. It's often very divided
and very polarized. If you express anything
that could be "Greenie" or otherwise,
you could be subject to significant intimidation
and threats. We've had a few visits
from locals. Some friendly, some unfriendly. -[men shouting]
-It's almost like you're
behind enemy lines sometimes, being a conservationist
in Tasmania. -Fuck off, jackal!
-You don't need to do this! [woman] No, mate, we're not
looking to fight, mate. [woman screams] You fucking dogs have cost me
that much fucking money! I have had a few people
lose their temper. I have had a few shotguns
out of windows, in fact a few shots
over the head. I have been beaten up
a few times. We cannot decide
the future of the world simply by being angry
and acting out of impulse. Lose your temper, you can very well end up
losing the argument. I see a lot of
activists burn out,
but Bob's not one of those. This guy's still going strong. I look at his endurance
in the political scene and his enduring optimism. What has he got, you know? What has he got?
I want that, you know. There's Nicole,
many decades younger than me. Also a young doctor. Also sees wildness as being
an elixir of life. So she's become
a campaigner for wildness. I'm not a person who
chains herself to trees
or anything like that, but I suppose, if you're doing
stuff to help activists, you're definitely
an activist yourself. [Jenny] In Tasmania, we have
a very bad practice here on behalf of the government
that things are very secretive about what goes on
in the logging industry. You have many, many,
many gates out there that lock off 20,
30 kilometers of roads. Behind those locked gates,
logging is going on without anyone being able
to see it. It's public lands. We should have a right
to know what's going on
with those lands. So we needed a scout
in the Tarkine. There's actually already
a forestry road
that comes in off here, already a clear-fell area
in this region. Then there's actually tape.
One of them was 16K... [Jenny] When I'd be asking
Nicole about, how long would it
take for us to walk in, she'd be giving me the details
how long it took her to run in. And through time, I was like, "What do you mean
you're running?" And she's like,
"I just go out for a run." Nicole is a scout,
but she's a running scout. [Nicole]
So when I go out for a run,
I feel a responsibility to use whatever skills
and talents I have. Maybe I have the choice
of running through 60K's
of beautiful rain forests and getting all
those feel-good feelings, but sometimes I think, no,
I think my time and my energy might be better served
if I go for a 50K run
through forestry operations. And just have a look. [Jenny] I'll be in touch
with Nicole and say, "Forestry Tasmania has
this coupe planned. Can you go and check it out,
can you document it,
take some photos, understand more about it,
you know, access points for us to be able to take
people in there? Can you give us any sort
of information that you can
for the campaign?" [Nicole] So when I go out
for a 30K or 50K run
amongst forestry operations, what I'm looking for
from an ecological perspective is, what's going on here? Who's who in the zoo? What are the good things about
this forestry operation? What are the bad things
that I'm seeing about
this forestry operation? We've heard that this fairly
remote bit of rain forest has been logged. Oh, fuck. This was an area
I knew very well, and now it is virtually
unrecognizable. Look, there's people out there
in wild nature all the time doing things
for their own personal gain. Nicole's taking it
that step further by actually giving back
to society and documenting
what's threatened out there. [Nicole] So, I know I'm taking
pictures of shit, but that's the scat
of a Tasmanian devil,
a listed endangered animal. Big chunks
of Eucalyptus obliqua. That's just gonna
be incinerated. Looking at the size
of these blackened stumps,
these trees are 500 years old. They're clear-felled
horizon to horizon and all I can see
within this is weeds. I'm 20 kilometers
behind a locked gate. The public does not see this. [Jenny] If you're not gonna
stand up for those forests, they're just going to fall
without anyone knowing
about them. We see it as our role to get
in there on the front lines and say, "These forests
need to be kept intact." [Nicole] When the back is
against the wall and you have places
of exceptional value
about to get the chop, people will put
their bodies on the line
and occupy these forests. Logging was imminent,
so I came out here one night and set this up,
and that was three weeks ago. We'll stay until we're
forcibly removed. [man] In your right mind,
is there any way that they can get
your arm out of this? -[man chuckles]
-[protestor] There's no way
they can get in. This could be saved.
This old growth forest
could be saved. You can see over there
the blue flagging tape. Well, that blue tape means
that's the edge of this
particular logging coupe. Before they cut down the trees,
somebody comes through and just marks out
the parameters which
they can go to, and then the contractor
just moves in and just
flattens the lot, really. I was intrigued by
this other tree also. They've left it standing
despite its size. Well, this tree is
a Eucalyptus obliqua. It's actually considered
a habitat tree because of the hollows
that are formed. The forestry people like
to congratulate themselves for being so sustainable
by leaving trees such as this, which are identified
as habitat trees, but the reality,
the grim reality is, is that this tree is now
so exposed to the environment because of the clear-fell
around it that it's just prone now
to falling over. This is why it's important
to have people who can come in and actually document
this destruction so then that can be
contrasted with the spin that comes from state government
when they say this is sustainable
timber harvesting. Like how the fuck is this
sustainable, for God's sake? [man] Sawmilling's an intensely
satisfying business, turning predominantly
plantation timbers, at the end of the day,
into homes. Some of what we sell
straight out is raw timber and a lot of it we add value
to it by drying it and reprocessing it
through molding machines. Timber is
an extraordinary product. It's something that, provided
you do it in the right way, is a very sustainable business, because you can plant a tree,
build your house out of it. You can create furniture
out of it. You can heat your home by using
the scraps of firewood, and you can regrow a tree
and do that in your lifetime. But that's quite different
and not to be used as an argument to justify
native forest logging. A lot of people spuriously
use the argument that somehow forestry
in Tasmania is sustainable, but the native
forest sector is not. It relies on public subsidies, well over a billion dollars
in the last 20 years in Tasmania alone,
just thrown away, torn up, given to the native
forest industry. To go into a native forest, particularly rain forest
in Tasmania, and to clear-fell them
and wood-chip them is the ultimate obscenity and the ultimate act
of stupidity
and economic vandalism. You're reducing one of the most
valuable resources, if you like, as far as timber goes,
on the planet, into the lowest common
undifferentiated denominator that ends up as a cardboard box
or a bit of toilet paper. It's totally insane. Last year, cutting forests
like this, Forestry Tasmania
lost $67 million. [man] We have quite enough
national parks. We have quite enough
locked-up forests already. In fact,
in an important respect, we have too much
locked-up forest. [Bob] The logging industry
has such a powerful lobby on weak-spined politicians that it's able to say, "If you don't subsidize us
with taxpayers' money, we'll go away
and you'll lose jobs," in an industry that has less than one percent
of the jobs in Tasmania. And still they swallow it. [reporter] The Liberals say
locking up the area will cost thousands
of jobs. We are not of a mind, nor do we have any policy intent
to lock up the Tarkine. Problem in this country,
and I don't know if it's the sas short term government. They just want to be elected. I'm frightened. I'm frightened because you guys
have got Trump. I don't know what his bloody ag- You know, "Is my dick longer
than the bloke in Korea?" You know,
I feel sorry for you guys there. But that could happen here. Because I'm not gonna vote for someone who's gonna kick me out
and call me a redneck. You know, people have got to wo,
people have got to eat. You talk about the timber indus. We want the timber industry.
Let's just do it right, you kno? We want those industries. So -- I'm hopeful. We're all hopeful.
Am I confident? I can see us going down your ro. And I think that's bloody dange. So the conflict is between peopg
to make a living from the forest and maintain what they've
been doing for hundreds of years and also people trying
to maintain what they believe is sustainable and old growth fore. [man] Have you been into a clea? -A clearfell? Yes I have. Yup.
-[man] What does a clear fell
look like to you? To me, a clear fell looks like d
that has been logged, heavily. I think there's a lot
gained from that industry. The old growth will never be
the old growth is always was but the sustainable timber induy
will forever be there and the way they're doing it,
they're doing it well. [man 2] So what's this got to do
with your clothing company? Absolutely fuck-all. I reckon I'm done with this. -[man 2] You're just trying
to lock the place up.
-Yeah. [man] We're making a film aboute and we want to understand
what both points of view are. We talked to a bunch of Greenie,
and we're interested in the oth. What is the other side, mate?
What is your opinion on the oth? Are you one of those blokes whos
to run through the forest? -[man] Uh --
-Yeah. [man] I think that forests are,h
-- I think there is something
special about untouched forests. Have you ever had to live in a l
community and have no job? [man] No, I haven't. All right, we're done here. It's really important
that we don't view the whole protection
of the Tarkine or protection of
any special place as a war, 'cause wars have winners
and wars have losers, and that's not
the situation we want here. We want a situation
where everyone wins. Taking steps forward
wherever we can to find that sustainable
middle ground, to help them get
into other industries and live happier lives,
you know, as part of the process
of protecting this area, is something that
can't be ignored. You know, it's not just
about the Tarkine, it's not just about
the northwest wilderness, it's about the people
that have lived there
for generations as well. It's got to be
a big group effort. If you wrap me in it and say,
"You're a takayna, too, now," I'll look after it
'cause I'm here. [Nicole] A lot of the time,
people wanting to save
this place are locals. And indeed, Aboriginal people, if anyone has a right to say
what happens to these forests, it should be those who have had
the longest connection and intimate knowledge
of the land. [Sharnie] On this island,
there's a real kind
of appreciation for the last 200 years and the value of the heritage
of the last 200 years, when there's over 60,000 years'
worth of human occupation. Without access to places
like the Tarkine, and without protecting
the resources and the heritage that's
within that landscape, that also inhibits our ability
to continue culture. It's almost like we've
been stopped again. The relationship between
Aboriginal people and Europeans was never good and it just
got worse and worse. Across Tasmania,
there was mass killings, you know, where people felt
that Tasmanian Aboriginal people
were less than animals, so to go out on a hunting
expedition to shoot
Aboriginal people was no different than
going hunting possums, you know, or hunting kangaroos. Up here on the northwest coast,
they actually had a bounty on Aboriginal people's
bones and heads. They didn't see us as human. So most Tasmanian
Aboriginal people today are direct descendants
of those families and those people that actually
survived that process
of near genocide. Every week, you can be asked,
"What percentage Aboriginal
are you?" All of me is Aboriginal, and my Aboriginal,
my cultural identity is not derived by the color
of my skin or the way I look. That is derived from
the environment and the family
and the community that I've grown up in and the connection that we have
with our culture and our land. But as a young
Tasmanian Aboriginal person, without the ability to express
that or understand that, that can cause
an identity crisis, which can be devastating
in the long run. We try to counter
that kind of cultural crisis with our young'uns by making
sure they're really strong
on culture and that they are given
lots of knowledge
and understanding of who their families are
and how they're connected
to countries. All the stuff on this country
is not written in history books. The energy's not,
the spiritual connection's not. You won't find it in any books.
That's why you've got to go
and sit on country. Sit around the fire.
Walk in these sacred places. These are very culturally
spiritual places, yeah? We still feel the energy,
the energy's still alive. I used to be very angry about
what happened to my people
in this country. It was nearly genocide. Nowadays, I don't get so angry. There's no sense in being angry
because you're only putting out bad energy and bad spirit,
so you know, it's about
the good spirit and good energy. That's why I became an educator. Teach people,
teach my community, teach other people, everybody right across
the board, because these sacred sites
are here for everybody in the long run,
but they're our sacred sites, and we're the ones that
are gonna have to protect them. [rhythmical tapping] [man] Today is a celebration, a time when we are now assuming
the rightful place as custodians of this area
known as King's Run. This is about acknowledging
a journey of our old people. They occupied the Tarkine, hunting and gathering
their cultural foods and celebrating their part
of this rugged coastline. Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we manage. And we will move forward as
the united group that we are. All done! [cheering and applause] [birds calling] [Bob] Well, we're human beings.
We come from a wild planet. To go back into wildness
is to find ourselves. There's no scientist
can reproduce it. There's no great composer
that can match it. There's no great writer
that can describe it. The experience of being
in the wilds is an extraordinary,
unique part of finding out who we are. [Nicole] I want people
to connect to nature again, to see these places as
having intrinsic value
of their own worth, just by being here,
not because of some
economic dollar value. And then to realize
just the tenuous hold
these places have. This forest that
we're sitting in now won't be here
by the end of summer. Took me a long time
to get my bearings, but I have found the tree that we filmed
with me in front of it. It's this one here. You can still see
some of the mosses on it. Not sure if I'm doing
a very good job
of videoing this nightmare. [Bob] We're born
onto this planet, and we go back into it. I'm getting towards
the end of my life, and seeing young people
like Nicole is wonderful. In the spirit of Nicole
is the saving of the Tarkine. [Nicole] It becomes
a moral responsibility. I really don't believe
we're given things -- physical things,
attributes, skills, talents -- I don't believe
we're given these things
just to serve our own ego. Running is something
that's part of me, and I might not have it forever. But I've got to use that
to the best of my ability
to serve, I believe, what gave it to me
in the first place.
