Provocateur…
Once upon a different place in time, the town of Triabunna lived and breathed an industry that clear-felled our native forests. The highways would thrum from before dawn till dusk with semi-trailers and B-doubles bringing their loads of huge specimens to be processed into woodchips and shipped to Japan and the island became split apart by those who supported the industry and those who wanted are more sustainable future. Aggression ran high in many towns across the state. In fact, the creation of the world’s first environmental political party began in Tasmania at this time and the Greens were born.
Japanese ships would arrive and pump their bilge into our bays and from them, we acquired unwanted marine pests like sea stars, weed and a voracious sea urchin. And yet the government paid no attention because the woodchips floated Tasmania.
But then a hole exploded in the market and places like Brazil began to market trees far more cheaply to the pulp industry and Tasmania’s market collapsed.