Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  Bob Brown briefed the media team at length. He started by saying, ‘Marg, they’re not going to be targeting you and Norm. Robin Gray isn’t stupid. He knows that if they arrest Marg Hamilton and Norm Sanders, the subsequent publicity would be very good for us. Imagine, two MPs thrown into jail! Provided you keep your noses clean, you’ll both be left alone. This is very important. The whole blockade hinges on media participation, so getting reporters across the bay to the River Camp is paramount.’

  He turned to Geoff Law, Cathie Plowman and Pam Waud. ‘You three are going to cop the most flak, so be careful, but don’t be surprised if they come after you. What’s more, the media are going to be in a pretty foul mood after the trip to the River Camp if we get the rain they’re forecasting. As you know, it’s horrific. They’re going to be violently seasick and thoroughly miserable by the time they go across the harbour and upriver, so they won’t be keen to make daily trips. Nobody likes to throw up for several hours a day. In fact we may only get one go with each media contingent we send over. Your job is to see they get something meaty to chew on when they arrive and something even bigger when they get to the River Camp.

  ‘We’re going to call these media events DMEs – Daily Media Events. I want at least one major DME each day if possible. Pam, Cathie and Geoff will be on the front line but they’ll coordinate everything with you, Marg, whenever possible, to get the maximum effect. Marg, you will make sure the media are always present at the scene and sent home with the right message. This is public relations at a very high level; you’re the indefatigable smile, the “nothing is impossible” person. You can be sure they’ll research your society background, and the “admiral’s widow turns greenie” is a nice angle. “Charming, smiling, never ruffled admiral’s wife turned greenie” is an even better one.’

  He paused, then said, ‘Now, we can’t guarantee Pam, Cathie and Geoff won’t be arrested and so it may eventually come down to you, Marg. Every day we don’t get something on the national news that demonstrates the contrast between the peace-loving and caring protesters and the brutal, heavy-handed authorities is a step closer to failure. Remember the first rule in reportage – no picture, no story.

  ‘The essential thing for you all to remember is that the chief perpetrators are not the police, they’re Robin Gray, who sent in the police, and Russell Ashton, the Commissioner for the Hydro.’ Bob grinned. ‘Fortunately neither is ever short of an acrimonious comment and they can be guaranteed to keep their end up very nicely. The more they shout, rave and gesticulate, the better.’

  The media group obviously did their job well and every day there was at least one good piece in the leading papers, or on the TV and radio stations in the capital cities. I’d get the Brisbane papers twice a week but, of course, my personal news came via telephone. Weary, wet and miserable at having to stay out of trouble by not actively joining the protesters, Marg would call me reverse charges long distance from a private phone in the home of a local sympathiser in Queenstown, where each night in the rain she would drive, following the police paddy wagons that transported arrested protesters to the late sitting of the magistrate’s court. She’d wait until the magistrate offered them bail on condition they didn’t return to the dam site, they would duly refuse to comply and then they’d be carted off to Risdon Prison, a long ride in the dark, to arrive near Hobart often in the early hours of the morning.

  Even though my long-distance phone bill could have purchased one of the smaller Pacific Island nations, there were a few calls that are worth repeating. The first, of course, came a day or two before the start of the blockade when Marg was bubbling over with excitement. ‘Nick, Bob arrived with Professor Manning Clark in a plane chartered by Dick Smith!’

  ‘Electronic Dick,’ I laughed. ‘Perhaps not the subtlest slogan for a guy who sells electronic gear, but I’m told the geeks love it. He has it painted on all his vans.’

  But Marg wasn’t listening, too anxious to tell me her news. ‘They’ve been told on the grapevine to expect good news at 11 o’clock tonight.’

  ‘What, Robin Gray is going to capitulate? I’d have thought he would wait until the stroke of midnight.’

  ‘Have you been drinking, Nick?’ Marg asked, suddenly stern.

  ‘No. Just the usual Scotch after dinner.’

  ‘Of course he’s not going to capitulate!’ Her voice grew excited again. ‘But maybe, perhaps, possibly, something almost as good. Guess what? The World Heritage Committee is going to give the south-west wilderness area, including the two rivers, World Heritage status.’

  ‘But I thought that wasn’t a big deal, in terms of, you know, changing anything?’

  ‘It wasn’t, but now it could be! Fraser has been told by the High Court that he can stop the dams, but he doesn’t think it’s an election issue, so he’s doing nothing.’

  ‘No, of course not. He doesn’t want to tread on dear little Robin’s toes.’ Marg’s hatred for Robin Gray was becoming infectious.

  ‘Manning Clark says if Hawke can oust Hayden as leader, then Labor are a very good chance to defeat the Fraser government. If that happens, Hawke, who Clark says is a great mate of Neville Wran’s, has agreed – No Dams!’

  ‘A fair number of “if”s there, darling,’ I cautioned.

  ‘Yes, I know, but don’t you see, we have to make the damming of the Franklin a national election issue!’

  Marg, weary but excited, called again late on the 17th of December. ‘Nick, they’ve arrested Bob Brown!’ she shouted.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The riverbank at the camp for the police and hydro workers.’

  ‘Did you get the press there?’

  ‘Yes, both TV and newspapers.’

  ‘I’ll put the short-wave radio on to Radio Australia tonight,’ I said. ‘I guess it’s going to be in all the headlines tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ve just come from the court in Queenstown. By sheer luck there just happened to be a TV crew there with cameras. He was arrested on the riverbank by a young policeman visibly shaking in his boots. Bob put his hand on his shoulder and said calmly, “Don’t worry, mate, it’ll be okay.”

  ‘What happened in the court, I mean with the magistrate?’

  ‘Oh, the usual, there were about forty of our people appearing with him, mostly women. The usual offer and refusal of bail, then a three-week sentence passed, the only difference was that the magistrate threatened to throw the TV people and the press out of the courtroom and, of course, it means Bob and the others will be spending Christmas in Risdon Prison. Much clapping from locals jamming the courtroom when the magistrate pointed this out, quite unnecessarily.’

  ‘Silly move! Having them spend Christmas in jail won’t do any harm to your publicity.’

  ‘Nick, I feel so guilty.’

  ‘Guilty? Why?’

  ‘I’m sleeping in a dry sleeping bag with a roof over my head, while others are getting arrested. I’m supposed to keep my nose clean, but right now, Bob and my friends are sitting jammed into the back of a dark paddy wagon for a five-hour trip over the mountains to Risdon Prison. I should be with them. It’s only three days in and I’m tired of smiling and being unflappable and charming. Most of the media are great but some can be real pigs, and then there’s the bloody rain!’ Marg started to cry quietly.

  ‘C’mon, be a brave girl now, darling. Bob’s chosen the four of you in media relations because he knows you’ll come through for him, for the movement. Remember, with no incidents for the camera and no arrests there’s no news.’ I laughed deliberately. ‘Fat lot of good you’d be doing sitting on your bum in the dark in the back of a paddy wagon.’

  ‘Suppose,’ Marg choked. ‘Today a TV reporter said to me, “Look, lady, we’re not going out again in the rain to throw up on that bloody harbour. Why don’t you get off your arse and stage a demo somewhere dry? What you’re doing is all phoney bullshit for the cameras anyway. I’ve had my fuckin’ Christmas holidays cancelled because of this drop-kick place. It’s the le
ast you could do!” I had to smile sweetly and say, through gritted teeth, “Queenstown Magistrate’s Court tonight at eight o’clock. There are bound to be arrests.” Of course I didn’t know it would be Bob in court and when it was all over the little shit came up and said, “You’re good, lady, you ought to get a job in TV!”’

  On one of her calls Marg expressed some dismay at what she referred to as ‘ferals’. These were young protesters from the Nimbin and northern rivers area of New South Wales, where they’d excluded themselves from society and taken up living in loose-knit communes in the eucalypt forest where they grew their own food and marijuana. Marg was unimpressed. ‘They’ve come down to Tasmania to add their weight to the blockade, which is all very well, but they’re unwilling to accept the rules of peaceful protest,’ she lamented. ‘Nick, they live in the forest in small camps of their own close to the River Camp. Quite alarming really. They wear their hair in dreadlocks and walk around naked or with very little clothing and paint their faces and bodies and refer to themselves as Aboriginals.’

  ‘Have you talked to them, asked them to comply with the same rules as everyone else? Sounds like a bunch of lost kids showing off.’

  ‘If they are, it’s very disruptive. The police can’t catch them in the forests and of course they’re blaming us when the ferals jump onto bulldozers and risk their lives doing stupid things. Sooner or later one of them is going to be killed.’

  ‘Can’t you disassociate yourself from them?’ I asked.

  ‘Well yes, of course, in some ways, but they’re here to protest and we feel we have to try to contain them and support them by offering them food and medical help.’

  Later she sounded less supportive. ‘Several “ferals” have come into camp with gastroenteritis looking for a doctor. We’re terrified of an epidemic spreading through the River Camp,’ Marg said, adding, ‘They’re completely wild! Yesterday a bulldozer driver refused to stop and one of the ferals was very nearly injured – the bulldozer stopped inches from him. The driver got down and dragged him into the forest then reported the incident to the police. The police have been around again to say they’re our responsibility and when they come into camp we’re to hold them for arrest. Of course, we can’t do that.’

  ‘No, of course not. Pity, they’re spoiling it for the rest of you in the eyes of the media. You know how Joe Public loves to hate them “marra-jew-anna smokin’ hippies”,’ I observed.

  ‘In fact, the bad accident waiting to happen is likely to be caused by the police,’ Marg noted, then explained. ‘They use their launches to ram the rubber rafts, knocking us into the water and often enough under their launch. This has happened on several occasions and our people only escaped serious injury by diving away from the propellers!’

  Over the weeks of the blockade Marg’s nightly reports featured distinguished visitors and arrests: Claudio Alcorso, a prominent Tasmanian industrialist and his wife Lesley were arrested; Don Chipp, founder of the Australian Democrats, visited and made a speech and wasn’t arrested; Peter Cundall, who was to become a star for the ABC, refused to take a neutral stance and addressed a large group of protesters but wasn’t arrested.

  Finally, two days before Christmas, Norm Sanders resigned from state parliament in protest over the government’s actions in relation to the Franklin. Then, on New Year’s Day 1983, The Australian newspaper voted Bob Brown Australian of the Year. The local media took the news badly, pointing out that he was a criminal in prison. But worse was to come for the government, friendly local press and radio. With Norm Sanders’ resignation from parliament, Bob Brown was declared the new member for Denison in the state parliament, having been the runner-up to Norm Sanders in the last election.

  The rain continued deep into January but the winds of change were beginning to blow the storm clouds away, starting with a breeze and turning into a big gust. Finally the sun seemed to be coming up over the political horizon.

  The rain stopped at last, and on the 4th of February Malcolm Fraser announced a federal election. On the same day the Federal Labor caucus voted Bill Hayden out as leader and elected Bob Hawke, who hours after he’d been elected to the leadership declared that a Labor government would stop the dams.

  The day after Bob Hawke was elected to the Labor Party leadership, the Wilderness Society held what they termed the ‘Rally for Reason’ in Hobart, attended by twenty thousand people – at the time the largest environmental protest in Australia’s history. The cracks were beginning to show in parliament and for the first time the Hydro-Electric Commission realised that they were no longer in total control.

  Then, at precisely the right time, the biggest arrest of them all was made in a public relations coup that practically flipped Robin Gray’s government onto its back. Marg virtually screamed down the phone to Beautiful Bay: ‘Nick, today they arrested David Bellamy! It’s going to be front-page news all over the world! We’ve already got our election issue with Bob Hawke, but this is the clincher we needed! Bellamy’s BBC wildlife program is watched by millions – it’s huge here as well; practically every Australian will now know what’s happening.’

  ‘Congratulations! Who did you bribe in the police force? That was a very, very stupid thing for the cops to do,’ I shouted back happily.

  Marg burst into laughter. ‘You’ll never guess. Remember the police sergeant who was rude to me, Sergeant Danny Docker? He ordered Bellamy’s arrest!’

  ‘There is a God in heaven,’ I laughed. ‘But surely they’d release him immediately?’

  ‘No! They’ve carted him off to Risdon! Isn’t it marvellous? The magistrate even gave him a stern rebuke in front of camera,’ Marg chortled.

  When Bellamy was released, the world’s television cameras were focused on the gates of Risdon Prison. But, of course, by this time it was a public relations disaster of the highest magnitude and the Tasmanian Liberal government became the laughing stock of the nation, its members regarded around the globe as ignorant pariahs. Marg, as the member for the Greens, along with the new member Bob Brown and the Wilderness Society, was seen to have given the state Liberal government their comeuppance. Marg especially, as the maverick parliamentarian, was to learn that the notion that revenge is a dish best eaten cold is practically an oath taken upon entry into parliament. They were lying in wait for her to make a mistake.

  From that point it was all relatively smooth paddling for the environment movement. Bob Hawke was elected in a landslide on the 5th of March and his first words to the nation as prime minister were, ‘The dam will not be built.’

  Marg was over the moon, of course. ‘Nick, Robin Gray, recalcitrant as ever, allowed himself to be photographed in Queenstown wearing boxing gloves! He announced that work would continue on the dam and vowed that he intended fighting the government all the way to the High Court.’

  ‘Don’t count him out, darling. He will have taken the best advice.’

  ‘Nick, they couldn’t, could they?’

  ‘Win the case? Anything could happen. After all, the law is above politics.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it. I just couldn’t bear it. Imagine if the shit won his appeal!’

  But Gray was a flea fighting an elephant. Gareth Evans, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, arranged for RAAF F-111s to fly over the river and the dam construction site, photographing the destruction, in the process earning himself the nickname ‘Biggles’, which would dog him for the remainder of his political career. The photographs were released to the media, and Marg faxed a set to me, declaring, ‘Nick, Australians are furious, and a great many Tasmanians have confessed to me personally that they feel ashamed and humiliated by the havoc caused in their names. They’ve promised to vote Greens at the next election!’

  ‘I don’t think that’s going to make Gareth Evans very happy,’ I said.

  The High Court began sitting on the 31st of May 1983 and on the 1st of July, by the margin of a single vote – four to three – upheld the right of the Commonwealth to enforce its foreign affa
irs power and stop work on the dam to preserve forever the World Heritage area. When I heard the decision on the radio and shortly afterwards got the ecstatic call from Marg I was once again reminded how one person can make a difference. Had Doug Lowe, who was dumped as Tasmanian premier by his Labor colleagues, not initiated the request to the World Heritage Committee, the High Court would almost certainly have been forced to side with the Tasmanian Government. One man or woman, one action of conscience, and our national attitude to the environment changed forever. Of course, it was not just a single action, but a pivotal one amongst the many by people such as Bob Brown, David Bellamy, Peter Cundall, the late Don Chipp and Professor Manning Clark. There were many who laboured over the years for the trees and the rivers, among them Helen Gee, Geoff Law, Pam Waud, Cathie Plowman, Norm Sanders, Reg Morrison, Denny Hamill, Harry McDermott, and the countless men and women who went with and before them; Olegas Truchanas, who lost his life to the river; Brenda Hean and Max Price, who also lost their lives for the cause; Peter Sims, Jessie Luckman, Milo Dunphy, Louis Shoobridge and the many other unsung heroes who gave everything for the movement and often suffered the enmity and scorn of their families and friends. We owe them all a debt we can only repay by remaining vigilant, angry and vocal. Even today the old-growth forests of Tasmania are being plundered, sawn, minced and spat into ships’ holds to be sent to Japan to be turned into unnecessary miscellanea.

  The Tasmanian Government received $200 million from the federal government as compensation for halting the dam, and in an extraordinary gesture of spite and hubris spent it on small and unnecessary dams on several rivers not included in the World Heritage area. Some of the pro-dam workers at Warners Landing, near the site of the blockade, took out their frustrations on the Lea Tree: drenching the three-thousand-year-old Huon pine in diesel, they set it alight, burning it to the ground. On the blackened stump they left a painted sign: FUCK YOU GREEN CUNTS!