The Swansea Adventure

A few weeks ago I volunteered to take a trip to Swansea for The Wilderness Society and promote a town meeting regarding the Inter Governmental Agreement. We had a stall at the market in the town hall, among hand made craft items, food and a campaign to save plovers run by a CSIRO colleague. Jeanette and Amy did most of the hard work while I was dancing around town letter-boxing. Amy took a spider out of the canteen area to save the children from this deadly beast and became a heroine.

The petrol stations do not like the wilderness society, at the Caltex I was simply turned away with a "We do not support the wildos", at the BP a longer conversation ensued:

Him:"Go away I don't like the greens" 

Me:"Why not?" 

Him:"You are sneaky, we have been logging for thousands of years" 

Me:"You haven't been here for thousands of years" 

Him:"What do you want us to do if we stop logging ? Sit by the roadside and weave wicker baskets ? " 

Me:"You will leave basket weaving to people like me in the 3rd world ?"

Him: "What are you on dole from the government ?" 

Me: "No I am a highly paid scientist" 

Him: "Go away!" 

Me: "You don't have to be green, your petrol station is" (Parthian shots are awesome).

On the other hand there are some great people in Swansea such as the owner of The Ugly Duck Out who are doing their best to balance the economics and environmental impact of their business. I guess some people do not realise that there is a thing called the triple bottom line and money is not the only thing in the system.

Carbon Accounting and Mine Sweeping in The Tarkine

Last week I had a super-long weekend thanks to the Hobart showday public holiday added to burning one day off my annual leave. Instead of enjoying the g-forces on offer at the show I went to the Tarkine with TWS to do some more community carbon accounting.

We stayed near Edith Creek , I obstinately refused to take a bed and occupied the drawing room floor. We covered 6 or so sites in a couple of days. The first day was mostly spent driving up and setting up camp. One of the most interesting sites was along a creek, the ground was full of burrows made by mini mud crayfish. 

We also the proposed site of the Shree open cut iron mine and  took some group photos.