Our group gathered together under the stars on our final night of a seven-night walking tour of part of the pristine wilderness in the northwest corner of Tasmania known by the original inhabitants as takayna in their language Palawa Kani.
At our final sharing circle after we had been smoked and welcomed to country by Victor, a custodian of the area of Preminghana with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Center, we were asked two questions by our Small Giants team; ‘how do you feel?’, and ‘what is your takeaway from our time here?’.
My answer to the group was that my feelings and my take away were one in the same. I would be taking away with me the feeling I had that night, the feeling of the didgeridoo vibrating bird calls onto the sand I sat on, and the feeling of holding a small sturdy hand sewn water carrying vessel made of the leathery black bull kelp from the nearby Tasman Sea of the Palawa Pakana people.
I would take away the memory of being under the flight path of a powerful wedgetail eagle, of sleeping below the canopy home of the recently discovered Masked Owl that has been found nesting in these majestic ancient trees still, bafflingly, under threat. I would remember navigating the mossy carpet that clings to the fallen myrtles, the shock of the emerald green of the wings of the Macleay’s Swallowtail butterfly and of taking a break in the rain under the protection a towering centuries old tree fern.
The most somber takeaway of the Tarkine Impact Safari has been learning that 86% of the takayna native rainforest and wildlife rich eucalypt forests is threatened by logging, and 95% is exposed to potential mineral explorations permits. This 450,000 hectare area that has 20 story ancient middens, 6,000 year old petroglyphs and tool making quarries, fossils of insects up to 30 million years old, as well as Australia’s largest temperate rainforest and is home to abundant natural beauty and ecosystems as well as the irreplaceable history and culture of the first nations people that for up to 60,000 years inhabited this place in harmony.
I have taken away with me the times I spent with the passionate people committed to furthering the efforts of Bob Brown and his foundation, in the fight to preserve takayna and to have her protected as a National Park and World Heritage Area. People that sit in place to block the destruction of the forest, unmoved by hardships and discomfort and corporate pressure, because they understand what is at risk of being lost forever, and because they haven’t hidden the truth of it from their hearts and their eyes.
But above all of this, it has been the unfathomable generosity of the Palawa Pakana people that we spent our days with along the journey, that impacted me the most. Because after all that has been taken from them and their ancestors, they still found a way to share with us the precious and unique part of their culture that could never be taken away — their connection with this country and how to be in it, to care for it, to learn from it and to love it back for the greater good of the whole.
Help save the Tarkine
Support Bob Brown Foundation in their effort to protect takayna’s rainforests by talking to your federal MP about what they are doing to save it and making a tax-deductible donation to the takayna/Tarkine campaign.
To see the Tarkine is to want to save it! Experience the ancient rainforests of the takayna on an Impact Safari with Small Giants Academy.
