Charles Wooley: Saving our wild world should be beyond politics

Why our climate-challenged world would be a better place if our leaders would stop being lounge lizards and were prepared to get out amongst it

Former Liberal politician Bronwyn Bishop is the only Australian pollie Charles Wooley has ever met that he could call a true “conservative conservationist”.

ONE of my boys, aged 18, between college and (I hope) university, is taking a break, “a gap year”: the place where kids go on-hold between the apparent meaningless of a past education and the likely meaningless of future employment. Or unemployment.

They inherit a world where, even with a uni degree, an interesting career is hard to come by. A world where it would take up to 10 years of grafting and skimping to raise a deposit for the same house which I purchased in Mt Stuart for $15,000 during my first year of work.

With ecological disaster, plague and even nuclear war appearing imminent, it seems many of my son’s generation want to hop off the carousel even before the music stops. And you can hardly blame them. There doesn’t seem a lot to look forward to — and I fear that is the fault of my generation.

Somehow, we have managed to be asleep at the wheel of our gas-guzzling 4WDs, and not even the strident anger of Greta Thunberg has woken too many of us. Instead, the protestation of an uppity kid about the desecration of her planet has only provoked the same snarky hostility as have the opinions of a vast majority of grown-up climate scientists.

People who would rush to the doctor to get the latest flu vaccine only trust science when it suits, and ignorantly denigrate it when it doesn’t.

Why would my Gap Year Boy go on to do a science degree when science is pilloried and ridiculed?

Why would he go into what looks like the sunset industry of journalism when any mention of the huge issue, the biggest story on earth, the unfolding environmental crisis, is often so stupidly denounced as a “leftie rant”?

But if I might rant here for a moment: it annoys me that environmental concern should be so often seen as left-wing. Surely conservation should appeal to right-wingers, to conservatives whose natural instinct is to conserve?

Elected in 1901, the American Republican Theodore Roosevelt was as conservative as they come, but he was also a conservationist and a passionate journalist. He wrote about the need for national parks as a “patriotic” way of preserving America’s great natural legacy.

“We have fallen heir to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune,” he wrote.

Can you imagine any Australian Prime Minister saying that? Can you imagine any Prime Minister venturing into the wilds with a rifle and a fishing rod?

Well, there was Malcolm Fraser, but he’s much better remembered for his trousers than for his fishing waders.

In my lifetime, our leaders are, almost without exception, lounge lizards and urban wusses. They can’t skin a rabbit, nor can they fillet a trout. They are not at home in the wild world, which probably scares them. Certainly, they don’t enjoy nature, nor do they understand it.

Roosevelt loved shooting bears, which was in a small part his motivation for creating a system of national parks in which their numbers might increase. But should any of them ever wander out of the park, there was good ol’ Teddy, ready to turn them into bear skin rugs.

His was a visceral, rugged and muscular kind of conservationism. He got things done. He created five great national parks and 150 national forests. President Roosevelt patriotically loved his land in a way no Australian Prime Minister has ever loved ours.

Bronwyn Bishop on the Kokoda Track in 2002, where she talked the sun down the sky and marvelled at the magnificent wilderness with Charles Wooley. Picture: CARMELA ROCHE

The only Australian “conservative conservationist” I ever met, with pretensions to leadership, was the doughty Bronwyn Bishop. I met her years ago in New Guinea, at Isurava, way up the Kokoda Track. I had choppered there and was camping with my film crew when “Bronnie” walked in one afternoon. She had limped the last 20km, her feet badly blistered and bleeding.

I offered her a flight back to Moresby the next day, and I was immediately her best friend. We talked the sun down the sky and watched the magnificent Kokoda wilderness fade into darkness. Bronwyn worried that New Guinea might not have the fortitude to protect this wonderful place. I told her about Tasmania’s Florentine and Tarkine and suggested if we can’t get it right in a first world country like Australia, what chance for a place like PNG.

“Then we need to form an alliance of conservatives for conservation,” she told me. “It should be an act of simple patriotism to love your country, its landscapes and its biota. It should all come from the heart. It should be beyond the petty world of politics.”

Back then, early in the century, Bronwyn Bishop was touted as a possible heir to John Howard. I was heartened to think that here might be a leader in the mould of the great Teddy Roosevelt. Even if she didn’t shoot bears.

We were camped at the site of the battle of Isurava where, in August 1942, fewer than 3000 Australian troops, many of them young recruits, held back the Japanese invasion. The battle has been hailed as our first defensive military victory on Australian territory. In such a place it seemed appropriate to make a patriotic gesture.

So, before we helicoptered out, hoping Bronwyn really was on the threshold of political greatness, I proposed “The Isurava Agreement”.

Bishop would recruit conservative conservationists, I would recruit like-minded journalists, and together we would save the world. Sadly, Bronwyn developed a fatal attraction to helicopters which embroiled her in the travel-rort-scandal which ended her political career. I fear I might have had a small part in her undoing. But with the state of her feet the lady could never have walked home.

I’m sorry, Gap Year Boy, that two grown-ups were fated not to strike a blow for the world you would inherit. I still think conservatives for conservation is a good idea, but I’m afraid it might already be too late.

But there is still time for you to enjoy our Tasmanian wild world before it disappears completely. Forget Paris and Rome and go bush. I might even join you.

I’ve been thinking of taking a gap year.