Fishing for Stars (70 page)

‘We’ve also invited David Bellamy to come over. We’re crossing our fingers he’ll agree,’ Marg went on.

‘Who’s David Bellamy?’ I asked.

‘God, Nick, you’re hopeless! Only one of the world’s best-known conservationists! He has a program on the BBC that’s watched all over the world by tens of millions of viewers.’

‘That’s good,’ I said, not knowing if it was. Outside pressure is fine, but actual interference from elsewhere sometimes alienates more than it helps.

‘We’re planning a blockade when the bulldozers start coming. Thankfully we have quite a lot of lead time. Our intelligence tells us the Hydro can’t really get underway until early 1983. Hopefully Bellamy will come. If he does there will be worldwide publicity. Nick, you’ll be happy to know it’s non-violent, but the time has come for direct confrontation. We’re planning several rallies in the lead-up and a lot more signatures.’

‘No doubt they’ll be as effective as the last lot were,’ I said, then immediately wished I hadn’t.

Marg sighed and sounded uncharacteristically discouraged. ‘Nick, we’re learning, watching what’s done overseas. It’s all about pressure. Bob Brown says it’s about never taking your foot off the pedal, never letting the opposition relax.’

‘I must say, they don’t appear over-agitated at the moment.’

‘No, I agree. But Malcolm Fraser and the Libs look as if they’re on the way out and if Labor gets in they’re our big chance. It’s not Gough Whitlam this time, and Bob Hawke, the union leader, looks like challenging Bill Hayden for the leadership, but both of them are on our side. And in the meantime we must be seen to be applying the pressure, making a noise, being noticed, doing things. David Bellamy, Yehudi Menuhin, world figures like that can’t be ignored.’

But it seemed they could. A poll showed sixty per cent of Tasmanians were against the Franklin River project. In an attempt to refute this statistic Tasmania held a deeply flawed referendum where it wasn’t possible to formally vote against the Hydro scheme, and yet almost forty-five per cent of voters voted informal and wrote ‘No Dams’ on their ballot papers, but this still didn’t make the slightest difference. In the history of state politics, Labor and Liberal have never been so totally united on a single issue while both deliberately ignoring the wishes of their constituents.

Two months after Marg was elected, on the 22nd of July 1982, the Hydro-Electric Commission began to build the roads into the Franklin. At 11 p.m. on the 14th of December, both the Franklin and Gordon rivers and the south-west wilderness area received World Heritage listing. It was also the first complete day of the blockade, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Despite all the outside pressure, which even included the Fraser Liberal government offering Robin Gray five hundred million dollars to stop the project, he instructed the bulldozers and the police to move in and passed a law through state parliament making protest at the construction site illegal. The eternal battle, Mother Nature versus human nature, was about to begin with the odds stacked hugely against the rivers, the lakes and the forests, where the whine of the chainsaw cutting a swath through the tall timber was drowning out the birdsong.

And on the domestic front, a wilderness would become the battleground for the real contest between the two women in my life. It would not be over me that they fought, but over trees – Princess Plunder and the Green Bitch, the two in direct opposition for the first time, the one tearing down the forests of Borneo, the other fighting to save the trees. Later of course it would be tuna fishing and whales, the extinction of species due to lack of habitat or river pollution, carbon emissions and the atmosphere. I often wondered what might happen if ever I disagreed with one or the other violently and issued her with an ultimatum, that is, either me or the particular pursuit I objected to. I had serious doubts that I’d survive the challenge.

I realised that the rule Anna had made in Japan – that I was not to speak to one about the other – was going to be a very important factor if I wished to have a peaceful as well as a sexually fulfilling life. If I accepted the negative barrage of words from each about the other without passing them on, then the triumvirate had a chance of surviving. Although I realised as time passed that each seemed to know what the other was doing most of the time and would sometimes come up with information that was news to me. Anna, I suspected, paid someone to keep an eye on Marg, though she never admitted it. Marg, as usual, went to the horse’s mouth. Her erstwhile boss in Naval Intelligence during the war, when she’d been stationed in Fremantle, was Lieutenant Commander Roger Rigby, who was now head of Australian Intelligence based in Canberra, his main responsibility being Shoal Bay near Darwin, the monitoring station responsible for close surveillance of Indonesia and its rulers.

Anna now had investments in all Australian states and territories, for instance, she owned significant real-estate interests in the Melbourne CBD and at least two major parking stations in the CBD of every Australian capital city. She also owned more than a dozen franchised fashion label boutiques in Hawaii and on the west coast of America, and a fifty per cent share of a high-fashion workshop in Paris.

Miss Sparkle, who had passed away in 1973, had left Anna a number of blue-chip investments in major Japanese companies and twenty-five pachinko bars in Tokyo, plus – surprise, surprise – a one-third share of the Jade House. These last two assets were overseen by
Fuchida-san
, who had forged a great friendship with Anna on her frequent visits to Japan. But by far her major capital investments and enormous profits were coming out of Indonesia where she was partnered by Budi, who by 1975 had achieved the rank of major general and been appointed head of the army’s legal department.

It was this Indonesian aspect of Anna’s life that Marg could monitor through her old mate, Roger Rigby. ‘Princess Plunder can’t make an indecent move without my knowing,’ she’d boast as she expanded on the subject of Anna on her week-long visits, just as Anna held forth about the Green Bitch on her visits. They were obsessed as well as fascinated by each other. The depth of knowledge each possessed of the affairs of the other constantly surprised me, and there was little doubt that it added extra spice as well as spite to their lives. The extent of their enmity and the lengths to which each would go to destroy the other was to be revealed in the future, but back then I was blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

‘Five of our blokes are killed and our prime minister is full of mealy-mouthed words of regret but taking bugger all action to discover the bastards who did the killing. Crossfire my arse!’

Nick, on the Balibo Five

ON THE 12TH OF
DECEMBER
, two days before the blockade was due to start, Marg had moved to Strahan in the somewhat battered but indestructible Toyota we’d used on our original trip to Lake Pedder. She’d fallen in love with the old heap, with its diesel engine that refused to die, so when I left for the mainland I bought it for her from the friend who’d owned it. Now she resolutely refused my offer to replace it. ‘Buy me a new battery instead, Nick. Sometimes the old bloke won’t get out of bed and start on a cold morning.’

Marg had sounded tired but elated when she phoned that evening. ‘Nick, we’ve arrived!’

‘Where are you staying?’ I asked.

‘In an old customs building that belongs to Parks and Wildlife. It’s vacant and close to the town centre, thank God. People are pouring into town from everywhere – a lot of mainlanders, young people – the first lot have already left for the campsite on the Gordon. I’m told they’re going to be sick as dogs crossing the harbour.’

‘Marg, you’re going to be okay, aren’t you? You won’t do anything silly?’

‘I’m not allowed to, Bob Brown’s instructions. The media comes first. I’ve got to keep my nose clean.’

‘Remind me to send him another cheque,’ I laughed. ‘Let the kids do the getting arrested bit. Tell me, what are the townspeople like?’

‘Haven’t really had time to find out. Although I was briefing a TV crew from Melbourne who’d come two days early to get background footage and interview the protesters who are already here. We were standing out of the rain under a fish-and-chip shop awning this afternoon and a woman came out wiping her hands on her apron, obviously the proprietor. “All yer do is film the greenies, the filthy greenies. Youse never even think about the people of Strahan!” she shouted at us.

‘So the TV reporter said, “Come on then, give us a comment, madam,” to which she replied, “I just bloody did!” The TV man pointed at his cameraman. “Here, directly to camera.”

‘The woman put her hands on her hips, unaware that the camera was still on. “If me husband was here he’d give yiz a comment orright – a boot up the whatsit! Lemme tell yiz, youse’d be walking real strange for the next few days, mate.”

‘“So, where is he, your husband?” the reporter asked.

‘She glanced down at her watch. “Probably down the pub trying ter buy more fish from the fishermen.” She gave an impatient sigh. “Look, I ain’t got time to stand around. There’s lotsa strangers in town gunna need feedin’ ternight.”’

Marg laughed. ‘It’s going to air tomorrow night. I’m not sure Bob is going to approve. I think he wants a bit of spit-flecked acrimony, not a good laugh on nationwide television.’

Marg had been assigned to help the team coordinating the media, the most essential aspect of the blockade, in fact, the primary reason for it. Maintaining the momentum for the nation’s radio, television, newspapers and magazines was critical. A blockade that isn’t national news is simply a waste of time and effort.

The activists had learned from their failures with Lake Pedder. They now knew better than to appeal to parliament and the local media, and had concluded that peaceful confrontation was their only hope of involving the mainland media. And they needed their involvement to galvanise national opinion, especially as the blockade was to start on the 14th of December, the day the World Heritage Committee would announce its decision on the application to list the south-west wilderness area. They were gambling on a positive outcome. The Federal Parliament would be in recess and there would be the usual paucity of news over the Christmas period. If all went well, the blockade could be front-page news.

On the evening of the 14th of December, Marg phoned again, sounding elated. ‘Nick, it went brilliantly today! Over fifty of our people have been arrested and we managed to get the media across the harbour in some abalone fishermen’s boats! Bob Brown flew over the river with Norm Sanders and radioed in to say that what took place upriver looked like a cross between a navy battle and a regatta. There were dozens of our little red and yellow rubber inflatables filled with protesters holding banners and waving flags, and police launches like sharks hunting for mackerel, trying to get to our inflatables, dodging between the media and the tourist cruise boats.’

‘What are they arresting you for? I mean, it’s a peaceful protest, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course, no resistance is offered. They arrest us for trespassing. It goes like this: “If you do not leave immediately I will arrest you for trespass.” We then say, “This is a national park and I am entitled to be here.” Then the cops say, “You are under arrest.” We signal our whereabouts for the media boats and then obligingly climb up onto the deck of the police launch chanting slogans.’

On the first day the police launches were up the Gordon near the dam site and made their arrests there, but the number of protesters arriving had taken them by surprise and police now began to arrive in Strahan and Queenstown in much greater numbers.

Marg’s voice on the phone began to sound increasingly concerned. ‘Nick, there are police everywhere you look. This is a town that usually has one policeman who spends most days with his feet up on his desk. Today a hundred and fifty moved into the district. There are police boats on the harbour and everyone’s looking grim-faced. I tried to talk to three young uniformed lads today who looked nervous enough to bolt. “This is a peaceful blockade, why are you here?” I asked them. “Dunno, lady,” one said. “Just told,” another mumbled. Then a sergeant came up. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I was just telling your men this is a peaceful protest, sergeant,” I said, giving them my most winning smile. “Then keep the peace and move on, lady,” he instructed.

‘Remembering Bob’s caution to keep my nose clean, I turned to go and he called, “You tell your mob if they want trouble we’ll be waiting.”

‘I couldn’t help myself. “Sounds as if you can’t wait, sergeant.”

‘“Move on, madam!” he said with a flick of the wrist.

‘I’m afraid I lost my patience. “My name is Marg Hamilton and I’m a member of parliament and I can’t say I like your manner, sergeant. What is your name, please?” I used my crisp admiral’s-widow voice and took a notebook and pen from my handbag.

‘“Docker, madam, Sergeant Danny Docker. Our orders are direct from the premier. Perhaps you’d like to take it up with him, madam?” Whatever else he was, Sergeant Docker wasn’t stupid or lost for a rebuttal and I guess he won that round handsomely,’ Marg admitted. ‘Besides, I shouldn’t have used that “do you know who you’re talking to” pathetic bullshit, Nick.’ Then she added, ‘And now it’s raining!’

As the blockade wore on, and the weather didn’t improve, I could hear the weariness in her voice. It was much the same routine – welcome the press, arrange transport across the harbour and up the Gordon to the protesters’ camp or see that they were present if anything was happening in town, attend the magistrate’s court in Queenstown each night, then, exhausted, call long distance to Beautiful Bay.

Marg was getting to know the townspeople and often expressed her sympathy for them. ‘Nick, it’s basically a working-class town, miners, lots of men who are pretty much unskilled. The Mount Lyell copper mine, the biggest employer around here, has closed down most of its operations because the price of copper has fallen through the floor. For the locals it’s a disaster. Strahan now has twice the unemployed of the rest of Tasmania.’

‘Hmm, not the best situation to find yourselves in. Are they making it difficult for you?’

‘Nothing we haven’t been told to expect and in some ways better than the anti-dam rabble we often had to put up with at rallies when we were protesting Lake Pedder. You know, the usual shouting out in the street, some of the young blokes, from Queenstown mostly, wanting to start fights. We dare not go into the pub. But the older townsfolk are not too bad. You get accustomed to being served silently in the shops, but then again, they realise we’re bringing income into the town.’

‘I must say I can see where they’re coming from. They’re depending on the Hydro work and you’re threatening it. How many jobs are involved?’

‘Four hundred and fifty at the dam site, and of course the Hydro also brings ancillary jobs to Strahan.’

‘Marg, for these people it probably seems that the ingredients for happiness have arrived in the nick of time: food on the table, shoes for the kids, a beer or two at the pub after work, a bet at the TAB and the ability to meet the monthly payment on the truck or the washing machine.’

Marg laughed. ‘Very eloquently put, Nick. Whose side are you on anyway?’

‘People have to live, Marg.’

‘Of course, and it’s not all one-sided in the town either. The local population is divided between those who believe it’s necessary to destroy some of the wilderness and the rivers to put food on the table and those who want it kept for the growing tourism trade. One of the pro-dam councillors put it rather neatly in this morning’s paper: “These jobs are here and now, guaranteed. Must we bet on keeping the wilderness for the potential welfare of strangers?”’

‘Oh, I hadn’t realised there was a tourism issue.’

‘Strahan is one of the gateways to the south-west wilderness. Last year it attracted sixty thousand tourists.’

‘That’s pretty impressive, but I don’t suppose tourism supplies too many jobs for people who earn their living by working from the neck down.’

‘Nick, that’s a bit harsh! But the truth is that at best the dam work is short term and when it’s built the town will be back in the doldrums, but tourism can only grow and make more jobs. Of course, the government claims the dam will attract the same number if not more recreational tourists and will become a sort of Tasmanian lakeland – yachts, motorboats, fishermen, weekenders. It’s a lot of hooey, of course, and besides, not what the wilderness is all about.’

‘But from the Hydro’s viewpoint they’ve chosen the perfect town as their entry point. They’ve relieved the unemployment situation and frustrated the protesters. The construction site is very difficult to get to and so it’s going to be relatively easy for the police to keep the wilderness activists in check and, moreover, dampen the enthusiasm of the media and discourage them from prolonging their visit.’

‘All too true,’ Marg said ruefully.

But as Marg’s nightly calls indicated, there was no dampening of the spirits of protesters, who kept arriving in the town from the mainland, surprising everyone by their sheer numbers, including TAA and Ansett who had to put on extra flights. Most of the protesters were young, but many were older middle-class people who were determined to add their voices to the protest and stoically put up with the appalling mud, the constant rain and the primitive conditions.

‘Nick, people keep surprising me. A more miserable experience would be difficult to find. Most of the time they’re soaked, cold and violently seasick with almost every harbour crossing. At night they sleep in muddy conditions in wet sleeping bags. If ever a protest called for courage, dedication and persistence it’s this one. Yet spirits are high and people are laughing.’

Bob Brown, as head of the Wilderness Society, was the logical spokesman for the activists, who were not all ‘greens’. There were hippies from Nimbin, housewives, teachers and pensioners, students from all over Australia making a stand during their uni vacation, and working professionals who gave up their Christmas holidays.

While the protesters could get to Strahan by road, the trip to the dam site from the town began with the notoriously rough crossing of Macquarie Harbour. Once they reached the other side they still had to travel by boat up the Gordon River to the proposed protest camp near the dam construction site.

It was here that local Strahan tour operator Reg Morrison stepped up and announced he’d donate the use of his boat, the
J. Lee M
, together with fuel and crew. ‘If you bring the people I’ll run ’em for ya. I’ll provide all the transport.’ He and his skipper Denny Hamill ferried most of the blockaders across the harbour and up the river to the protest site.

Marg often talked about Reg, whom she referred to as ‘the salt of the earth’; he had founded tourism on the Gordon River, taking tourists up the river after the war, and he had been on a one-man crusade to save the south-west wilderness for years. ‘Damming the Franklin and the Lower Gordon would be like cutting off my arms and legs,’ he’d once told her.

‘Nick, he’s everything good about being Australian, a man of conscience who stands to lose everything by siding with us. He’s rough-hewn, weather-beaten and softly spoken and he hasn’t had a lot of education – he’s one of those men who you wouldn’t notice in a group. Yet faced with something he believes in, he becomes an intractable and formidable foe. I just love him! The template for Reg Morrison was forged at Gallipoli and Pozieres and the killing fields of France.’

I laughed. ‘Well said, darling. Any man would be happy with those words as his epitaph. Nice to know you’ve made a friend in the town.’

Marg went on to say how Reg Morrison had known and worked the river since he was a boy of seven, following his father, who once ran a small pining gang, and made a simple living from the river.