Return to the river
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 12: Hot Air
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Heather Kirkpatrick
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I steered the raft with my paddle buried deeply by the stern and we sped down the final drop of Newland's Cascades on the Franklin River amid the din and spraying water caused by the helicopter's down draught as it perched on a rock nearby. It was 1988, five years after Australia's most famous environmental campaign, which prevented the flooding of the Franklin River in Tasmania's south-west.
The helicopter carried Bob Brown, then forty-three, the first elected Tasmanian Green MP. He was wearing a collared shirt and jacket; it was clear he was not staying long. Greeting our party warmly, he asked about our river experiences, telling us he had escaped briefly from his state parliament office to do a story for the ABC.
Seventeen years later, in 2005, he sits in the back of my five-person raft clad in a black neoprene wetsuit and brightly coloured spray jacket, buoyancy vest and helmet. He has not been on the river that changed his life since 1981.
A few days into the journey, Brown surprised me when he described his response when first invited to paddle the Franklin, as we sat on a huge rock above the Coruscades rapid in the Great Ravine. "When Paul Smith [a forester from Launceston in Tasmania's north] first asked me to come down the Franklin River with him in 1976, I thought about patching all those rafts and carting things around river obstacles and I wasn't keen. He had asked a stack of other people and none of them was silly enough to come ... So I agreed if he in return came for a walk in the Western Arthurs [in south-west Tasmania] ... And, of course, it turned out to be the best bargain I ever made."
Brown kept coming back. Between 1976 and 1981 he made seven descents of the fast-flowing and technically challenging river, which carves its way south-west from its headwaters in central Tasmania's Cheyne Range through numerous gorges before joining the Gordon River more than a hundred kilo-metres downstream near Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania's west coast.
In 1978, Brown committed himself full-time to the campaign when he became director of The Wilderness Society, forsaking his profession and income as a doctor. By then, saving the river had become his obsession.
I know how he feels about the river. I first paddled the Franklin in 1987 after graduating from an outdoor education course. I was excited and curious as I ventured down "the wild river" I had heard so much about. My senses were flooded by its beauty and pristine nature. I have kept coming back.
FINDING TIME FOR THIS JOURNEY HAS BEEN YEARS IN THE DREAMING. Brown's life as a senator and leader of the Australian Greens does not allow much time away. "It is never easy to find twelve days out of my routine. However, a federal election had been held in November. There was no immediate state election or parliamentary sitting ... everything fell in place."
It was a chance for his partner, Paul Thomas, to see the river for the first time. "We have been together for ten years and the Franklin has been a major episode in my life and he wanted to see it. The second thing was a very strong urge to go back to a place that I loved and had such a strong acquaintance with and owed so much to," says Brown.
Thomas is a tall, bearded and gently spoken man who runs a Tibetan rug shop in Hobart, manages a sheep farm in the Huon Valley south of Hobart and is an active member of the Greens. I appreciate his physical strength and competence, and have seated him in the front of my raft. He is excited, keen to experience the place that inspired Brown's vocation.
As director of The Wilderness Society during the campaign in the early 1980s, Brown watched the Franklin River debates from the gallery in the Tasmanian parliament with increasing frustration. He believed the parliament needed people more experienced in environmental and social-justice matters. In 1982, when the bulldozers rolled into the Franklin valley, Brown considered entering parliament.
On December 12, 1982, the first boatload of protesters left Strahan on Tasmania's west coast and headed for the dam site on the Gordon River. Brown was arrested four days later and imprisoned for more than two weeks at Risdon Prison. Over the next few months, 1,272 people were arrested and 447 imprisoned. During his prison stay, Brown finally decided he would run for parliament. He was elected the day after he came out.
On this journey down the Franklin, Brown is accompanied by his media adviser Ben Oquist, and Ben's fiancée Alex Gordon, Paul's sister Anne Foale, his brother-in-law Larry McCabe, and friend Mike Dempsey. Anna Feeley and I are the guides.
YESTERDAY THE RIVER ROSE TO THE PERFECT DEPARTURE LEVEL. There is enough water to cover the rocks but not too much to be running on adrenalin all day. It is as though the river is just turning it on for Bob.
At the junction of the Collingwood River with the Franklin, we stop for a morning snack on a peninsula of polished golden and brown quartzite rocks. The natural tannin in the button-grass plains above stains the water like weak tea in the shallows to almost black in the depths. Brown wanders to the edge of the shingle beach and takes a photograph. His mood is exuberant, his enthusiasm contagious.
"I can't believe it," he comments as though reading my thoughts. "That is the easiest trip down the Collingwood, because of the 0.85-metre run in the river. We always came when it was much lower and dragged across the rocks and always got tipped out at one of those rapids up there half a kilometre ... You're a much better director of currents and paddlers than we ever were," Brown says, laughing.
Travelling down the river in 2005 is different to those descents at the height of the campaign by 2,000 or more supporters. "Going from a rubber duckie to these big rafts is like going from puffing billy to an express train. It is so much easier, of course, because there are five paddles going instead of one."
In the 1970s and 1980s, Brown's single-person "duckie" was frequently punctured and had to be blown up by mouth. Pumps weren't even considered; nor were wetsuits or helmets. Cargo was a waterproof pack and a barrel of food. Double-bladed paddles, homemade from dowel and plywood, provided propulsion.
Anna and I untie our rafts as the crews return. I push off from the shingle beach and we float and paddle downstream. The leatherwood trees are in full bloom and their white petals swirl in the current. Mist hangs around the tops of the hills and a soft light overhead accentuates the textures in the forest. Cormorants skim down the water just ahead of us. The rafts slip between boulders on smooth green tongues of water and roller-coast down wave trains in between the calm pools.
We reach Descension Gorge. I know the water is up and it won't be easy to stop between the 400-metres-long rapid. Anna and I run our boats close together as backup for any rescues. It's a hoot. We punch through deep holes, filling up with water that quickly drains through the floor eyelets of our self-baling rafts.
"Forwards. Hold on," I call. We reach the final drop and ... ooh, that hole is bigger than I thought. Here we go. The boat is nice and straight. Should be right. We go deep and spring out into the welcoming calm of the Irenabyss.
"When you come into the Irenabyss it is like you've come in from a storm outside and slammed the door. Silent, peaceful and you're at home," Brown says as we sit eating our Moroccan-lamb dinner at camp that evening.
Brown named the gorge in 1978, from the Greek words meaning peace and bottomless chasm. Foam from natural plant oils forms delicate lacework patterns in the depths of the gorge below, swirling sensuously from side to side in the surface current.
"It is one of those places – and there are many of them on the Franklin – where you wish you could press a button and just give everybody five minutes sitting here on the white quartzite rocks looking back into that gorge," he says, as he gazes upstream.