Charles Wooley: Hooray for holy wood in Tassie’s wild Tarkine

The chance to highlight the natural beauty of Tasmania’s wilderness in a new special investigative TV show was too good an opportunity to miss, writes Charles Wooley

Charles Wooley filming a new show for Channel 7, called 7NEWS Spotlight which will air on Sunday night at 8.30pm, which features an exclusive, special investigation into the Tasmanian wilderness in the Tarkine.

It must have looked like a charmed life; a long television career up the front of the plane and often in the best hotels. Even if there were no hotels, I was camped in the Himalayas, the Ugandan jungle or the beautiful beaches of remote Pacific Islands.

It would take this whole column to tell you all the places I have been and the people I have met.

It would only annoy you, and I am certainly not boasting.

After so many years of this column you know me well enough to know I am appropriately modest and in fact have much to be modest about.

This week, after a three-year interregnum, I have stepped back into the television fray, this time crossing Media Street to work with the Channel 7 Network.

The still waters of the Pieman River, in the pristine Tarkine wilderness region, in the state’s far North West. Picture: Arron Hage

They made an offer I couldn’t refuse – to introduce Australians to half a million hectares of ancient rainforest, riverine wilderness, mountains and endless beaches on the West Coast of Tasmania. How could I knock that back? It’s a marvellous place and not so far from home.

If, like me, you are cursed to love our island’s wild landscapes, you are always in danger of having your heart broken. And so it is with that enchanted area north of the Pieman River, now known as the Tarkine.

My mainland film crew were delighted and then shocked in equal measure to discover that less than

10 per cent of that Tasmanian wonderland is protected from logging and mining.

They’d never seen the likes of the giant trees and the deep mysterious rivers enfolded by brooding cloud-shrouded mountains. Not just delighted, but as the cameraman told me, “The place just knocked me out.”

While Tasmanians fight over the future of an industrial wasteland on the Hobart waterfront, we might be creating another one in what could be the most beautiful place I have seen on the planet.

Mainlanders know nothing about the Tarkine, while too many Tasmanians have never been there, and some have never even heard of it.

I will say no more. Watch the story on Spotlight on 7 Tasmania at 8.30pm this Sunday. Let me know what you think.

Charles Wooley travels down the Pieman in the Tarkine, while filming new Channel 7 show, 7NEWS Spotlight which will air on Sunday night at 8.30pm, which features a special investigation into the Tasmanian wilderness.

When I was a kid, I never wanted the poisoned chalice of journalism. Why set yourself up to be hated for telling people things they don’t really want to know, when you could be loved for diverting them into wonderful fantasies?

I wanted to be an actor.

Especially, many decades ago, after I won the under-five prize for best actor at the Deloraine Drama Festival.

I played an old Chinese gentleman called So So. He had sons named Ping, Pong and Pang.

In retrospect by today’s standards the production mightn’t have been PC (certainly not the yellow face), but in mitigation I was only 14.

I didn’t write nor did I choose the play.

It was simply another time.

On such a small success was great ambition built.

I was bound for Hollywood or London’s West End.

I went on to play in many school productions.

I think my Hamlet in Launceston might still be talked about after I fumbled and dropped the skull in the important graveyard scene. Still, I got a laugh.

So, I broadened my repertoire. At University I joined the Old Nick Company and wrote and performed in the Uni Revue.

Hollywood never rang.

But back then we didn’t have mobile phones.

Charles Wooley during a 60 minutes’ interview with prominent Australian businesswoman Janet Holmes A Court, in May 1997.

I went on to act in local ABC radio productions for schools.

I still remember a play about Louis Pasteur and my dramatic line (delivered in my best French accent) “Ron, Ron. Mad dog! Ron. Ron for your laves.”

On such slender evidence of theatrical talent, the ABC gave me a freelance gig interviewing audiences as they came out of Hobart theatres.

“Good evening and did you enjoy the play?”

(In my best BBC accent, which was how the ABC then preferred it.)

“Madam, was the film to your liking?”

And from there it was an easy downhill run into radio journalism and then television.

Strangely enough, as I go back to my old television ways, I have just now seen an invitation to pursue my first ambition.

There has been a “casting call” from Tas Casting, the state’s leading casting consultancy, for “actors and non-actors” aged between 60 and 80 years to apply for roles in a feature film.

The role might be made for me. It calls for actors who can “perform a clear Scottish accent” to audition for “an exciting feature film opportunity, filming in Tasmania this year”.

I gather I would be in the haunting role of an old Scotsman between the ages of 60 and 80 years of age. I would be playing a ghost, a long dead member of the McGavin family who are being “mysteriously visited by deceased family members for an unexpected reason”.

I think I might fit the most important part of the job description: “We require Scottish accents only.”

Charles Wooley covering the Scottish referendum in 2014, sporting the family tartan (MacGregor).

I grew up with a couple of haggis-bashers and I could always take them off perfectly, though as I remember never to their amusement.

I have lived for a time in Scotland and have visited frequently.

What accent would you prefer: Glasgow (no one would understand it), Edinburgh (clear and quait naice) or a fierce Highlander (I’m a member of the MacGregor clan)?

Here’s the clincher. While filming in Indonesia at a time when Australians were very unpopular, my crew was bailed up in the street by police and asked, “Are you guys from Australia?”

Quick as the toss of a caber I replied, “Och no. We’re from Scottish television.”

And got away with it.

“Very good then gentlemen. Carry on and enjoy your time in our country.”

Do I really need to audition?

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist.