 MV Discoverer explores the tranquil reaches of Tasmania's Gordon River |
It’s 1982 and the idyllic little seaside village of Strahan in South Western Tasmania is the front line in a vigorous campaign to blockade the construction of the Franklin River dam. This ‘peaceful protest’ is turning decidedly hostile.
Led by an unknown, parochial, but intensely vocal rural GP, Dr Bob Brown, the campaign to preserve the pristine and ancient wilderness of the Gordon and Franklin Rivers is in full swing. The bitter taste of defeat is still in the mouths of the activists after the loss of beautiful Lake Pedder to the greedy ‘Hydro’. They are determined not to lose the Franklin.
 The waves of this campaign spread out, more a tsunami than a ripple, to the mainland and beyond. Australia’s State and Federal Governments, Unions, conservationists, private contractors, loggers and the families of tiny Strahan are drawn into this unseemly melee. Tens of thousands of protesters across the nation march to the beat of “No Dams”. Thousands more, including professors, celebrities and socialites chain themselves to fences and trees, lie in the mud in front of bulldozers and are carted off by the hundred to Hobart’s notorious Risden Prison.
Fast forward to 2005 and Strahan is once again the quaint picturesque hamlet. Delicate little sailboats sit motionless on mirror-still Macquarie Harbour as if in a Streeton or Roberts landscape. Gone are the pickets, placards, noisy hecklers and riot police – replaced by landscaped foreshore parkland, tour buses, stores, cafés and a beautifully preserved hotel. Instead of manacled blockaders, the brand-new MV Discovery is moored blissfully alongside, purring almost imperceptibly below the waterline in anticipation of our arrival.
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