"There are times when Margy Dockray feels total desolation, being overcome with grief. The majestic myrtle forests at Mt Arthur near her home at Karoola, Tasmania, are incredibly beautiful. They are ancient and brimming with diversity. Now they are being clear-felled and sold for woodchip. All timber which will not fit neatly onto a logging truck is burnt.
Margy is passionate about the rights of other creatures. As a member of Pilgrim Uniting Church in Launceston, she recognises that this environment is God's creation - beautifully and uniquely shaped. The forests have integrity. Humans do not have the right to devastate them irreparably.
Margy took me to Mt Arthur. Reverently we stepped into the lush forest. Magnificent gnarled myrtle trees, already hundreds of years old when the first European explorers came to van Diemen's land, shelter solid-trunked tree ferns with their long, feathery fronds. Sassafras tower overhead. Moss-covered logs on the forest floor slowly give up their life-giving nutrients. A little mound of moist soil surrounding a small hole in the humus-rich ground reveals the home of a rare Mt Arthur Freshwater Burrowing Crayfish, found only here.
A little further along the rough forestry track we rounded a corner. We were confronted by a bare hill-side, totally devoid of vegetation. Charred and smouldering logs were piled into heaps. Men were out laying baits of 1080 poison to kill the native animals. Soon glyphus-based defoliants will be sprayed from helicopters to ensure that, when the forest struggles to revive, it will not return.
Other hill-sides revealed the reason for this wanton destruction. Neat rows of fast-growing Eucalyptus nitens, not native to Tasmania, have been planted, to be harvested in ten to twenty years to provide woodchip and profit. After two or three crops, the land will be devoid of nutrients, leaving a lifeless desert.
I had read about this happening in Brazil and Indonesia. Naively I had assumed that Australians were too aware, too educated, too sensitive to the irreplacable wonders of our unique natural heritage to allow this to happen.
As I watched Bass Strait shimmering in the distance through the smoke haze, questions raced through my mind. "Why are we destroying this wonderful asset which, if carefully logged, could provided beautiful myrtle and other rainforest timbers for ever?" "Why do we consider the lives of the myriad creatures here as expendable?" "Why would we knowingly turn an incredibly beautiful and diverse rainforest, first into rows of plantation and then, when the soil is depleted, into a lifeless waste?" "Why would people knowingly place animal poisons and spray herbicides in Launceston's water catchment?" "Why was the rainforest being turned to smoke and ash when there is increasing concern about global warming?"
I came to understand something of why Margy Dockray, housewife and mother ofthree school-aged children, artist and theological student, was suddenly making and receiving phone calls at all hours, driving Federal and State politicians to Mt Arthur, helping to organise the Mt Arthur Environment Management Group, and speaking to any reporter who would listen.
Christians have rightly spoken and cared for the silent victims in society.
I flew home from Tasmania sharing something of Margy's grief, but also quietly thankful that the myrtles and pademelons and crayfish of Mt Arthur had someone who, out of deep Christian conviction, had someone to speak for them.
Rev. Dr Robert Bos, Coolamon College (560 words)
Rob Bos (Revd Dr) Principal Coolamon College Coolamon College is an innovative provider of distance education internationally. http://nat.uca.org.au/coolamon"
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