Run for Takayna - Patagonia

After a huge Federal Court win for the Bob Brown Foundation in July, I met up with Melbourne Store employee Jackson Freeman, who volunteered with 6 other staff for the Foundations’ annual Takayna Trail Run in Tasmania.

‘This doesn’t just happen at the goodwill of our politicians, it’s forced on them by people that care deeply about these places,’ says Jackson Freeman, in between classes for his Environmental Science degree.

It’s late afternoon, in a high-rise garden overlooking RMIT’s city campus. Two days earlier, in Tasmania’s Takayna rainforests, protestors had watched as mining company MMG removed their machinery from a proposed waste dump site after a 20-month long blockade.

Jackson was one of 6 Patagonia volunteers who had travelled down to the Tarkine in February to support the Takayna Trail Run. The event raised over $100 000 for the Bob Brown Foundation’s many operations and court cases, including the Federal Court case that overturned an MMG proposed heavy metals tailings dump.

‘So, the next step now after winning the fight against MMG, is to get the Tarkine nominated for World Heritage Status by the Federal Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek, which the Tarkine does fill out a lot of criteria for,’ says Jackson, as he scrolls through his phone, searching for shots he’d taken in Tasmania.

‘Where I was stationed for the aid station for the runners, it was a century year old mining town that had since collapsed…It was this section of metal deposit rock and a clear boundary from where the town’s operation was and the forest line.’

He pulls up a sepia hue-stained image titled Magnet Silver Mine, Magnet, Tasmania. It shows about a dozen houses and a mine sitting on one side of a valley, opposite which is a clear-felled hill. He swipes across to some burnt building foundations in a gravelly gully, ‘those are the buildings now’.

‘So…yeah, just a lot of degraded land, really.’

Jackson’s role at the station was to hand out food and hydration tablets to runners and help with any minor injuries. Elle and Paul were running the Patagonia stall back at the Waratah Men’s Shed, and Lucy was set-up at another aid station further down the trail.

‘I was there by myself, but I saw other people from Patagonia, Jordan Belot was running the 22 kilometre with Ryan, also Dan from Sydney Repair Hub was running the race,’ Jackson says.

He remarks at the contrast between his aid station and the forest that bordered it; ‘once you got into the forest, suddenly the shrubbery disappeared because there was way less light coming in because of the age of the trees, so you had a lot of moss and lichen, and a lot of moss and lichen covering the trunks of the trees as well which was really nice to see’.

The natural elements of the Tarkine are not easily overlooked, even in the areas touched by human development. The space is a tapestry of ecosystems, each holding its own cluster of distinct plant and animal species. The area provides unique habitat for over 60 rare, threatened, and endangered flora and fauna, and is Australia’s largest remaining tract of temperate rainforest.

Yet, 20% of the Tarkine is still open to logging and only 5% of it is protected from mining.

Historic mine sites, like the one Jackson had found himself in, litter the landscape. The number of terminated sites currently stands at approximately 600 after 150 years of uninterrupted mining.

The razing of ancient rainforests for chipboard is no less palatable.

‘The reason why this is a problem is because in the native logging industry less than 1% actually makes it into hardwood, the rest is turned into mulch, and it’s heavily subsidised by the government. So, it’s not a profitable industry, it’s something that we’re artificially propping up because of corporate contracts or ties to companies that profit off of this,’ Jackson says.

Here is where the battlelines are drawn: What is the value of the Tarkine as a natural space? And, who decides on that value?

‘The land is always viewed in a context of how this can benefit our society, and how we can use this land. It’s a very self-centred attitude toward management, and I think that as the primary dominant species on the planet we have a responsibility to also care for the land as well, which is not an attitude that is shared by our decision makers. Not now and not in the history of our society.’

To Jackson, this perspective ‘highlights the role that protesters play in the conservation of our lands.’

On a dirt road that cuts a long swathe through the forest canopy, three wet logs had been stacked up against one another in a tripod formation. From the structure’s tip, lengths of brightly coloured rope stretched upwards into the overstory, looping over branches and down, drawn on the weight of tree-sitters.

‘It was just a ploy for time. The contraption was tied into the safety lines of the people up in the trees, so you couldn’t move the barrier without safely getting the people down.’

Jackson adds that because police can do no harm to peaceful protesters, they’re obligated to work with blockaders to deconstruct the barricade.

He recalls a local telling him that ‘sometimes on the police raids, the police would actually thank protesters for their service’.

The road that Jackson and the crew were making their way down led to a site that was being surveyed as a potential mining catchment. The area required clear-felling before it could be used as a run-off site. A little further up the road, the surrounding forest opened up.

“It was, I guess just a piece of desolate land, of just logs everywhere. You couldn’t even see the soil in most of the parts of that clear-fell. It was just full of detritus and logs, not even any underbrush was sticking out,’ Jackson says, ‘It was just this surreal landscape of just dead tree matter.’

In and around the clear-fell was a streetscape of sorts, makeshift living spaces for forest defenders: vans, tents, canvas panelled shelters, a communal kitchen for the food that was donated and dropped off.

By occupying the space and equipment within the threatened area, the camp was a major disruption to legally and ethically questionable logging practices.

‘What was really surreal about it was, that you’re in this section of decaying landscape, but when you went up to the forest, as soon as you got past the first tree, it was all old growth forest,’ Jackson says. ‘It was all this beautiful lush biodiverse area, and it was a clearcut from where that clear-fell was. If you had walked a metre into the forest, you’d forget the clear-fell was even there, you wouldn’t be able to see it anymore.’

Walking to his last class of the day, Jackson laughs, ‘see, I’m not actually that into running’.

He pauses, ‘I just think it was really lovely seeing all of the happy faces coming through on that race. It’s really nice being surrounded by good people who care about things other than what’s in their world, and I think that was shared by everyone around me.’

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