To Protect Sacred…A new short film.

An opportunity to join Graham Furness and Rebecca Kissling (forest guardians), Charles Wooley (60 Minutes Journalist), Amanda Ducker (Hobart Mercury Associate Editor), Dr Helene Thomas (Audio Producer) in the Styx Valley, Tasmania came up. The Styx is just down the road from Maydena and Mt Field National Park.

Alarmingly, Tasmania’s pristine, ancient forests are still being clear-felled and burnt. This problem adds fuel to the climate-change fire and should be one of the biggest Australian news stories of our time. The fury of climate change will make Covid 19 look like a playful pup. Wild places like these forests play so many important roles like being our lungs, climate stabilisers, sacred churches, habitat, biodiversity and hold treasure that scientists have discovered and are yet to discover. They also make us feel so damn good. You cannot experience what we saw and still think that clear-felling and burning these stunning, important sacred places is reasonable under any circumstances. My heart is broken, smashed into fragments.

It wasn’t an assignment, there was no plan or obligation. I took a couple of bits of equipment with me just in case, and was moved into action. The resulting film is a blessing from the goodness of the day and the yellow-tailed black-cockatoos that flew above us and the scorched earth upon which we walked.

It would be laughable for Australians to criticize Brazil’s Amazon deforestation policy whilst this is still happening here today. You can see the film here.