Wooley: Forestry travesty and ‘dreadful’ TV show are good ways to turn tourists off Tassie

A picture of a fallen giant and a terrible TV series are both classic examples of how not to market Tasmania, writes Charles Wooley

Charles Wooley in a forested section of the Styx Valley says these mighty trees should be on every visitor’s bucket list, not felled where they once stood, nor horizontal on the back of a log truck. Picture: Frank MacGregor

Sometimes a photograph changes the course of history and the old journalistic saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” comes true.

A photo taken on June 8, 1972, outside of the Vietnamese village of Trang Bang showed children fleeing an indiscriminate American napalm attack. The picture shocked the world and was captioned “The Terror of War”.

But it was better known as “Napalm Girl” after the badly burned, terrified and naked nine-year-old in the centre of the frame.

Trang Bang was just another of the Vietnamese hamlets the Americans had to “destroy in order to save” from the greater evil of communism.

As Australia remembered last week, we were also there in that pointless war against a country that has since become our 10th largest export destination. Communism apparently isn’t “evil” anymore, so long as it is profitable.

I don’t for a moment blame any of our servicemen, 15,000 of whom were conscripts. I still blame Menzies, Holt, Fraser, McMahon et al. You can bet none of them ever had a sleepless night over the horrors of the Vietnam War.

The image of the so-called “Napalm Girl” was the beginning of the end. Neither the American nor the Australian public could stomach that level of barbarity waged against innocent civilians.

Even before Saigon ultimately fell to the North Vietnamese army, we quietly stole away, and for 50 years have more or less pretended that the war never happened.

But the image of that napalmed little girl remains seared into the nation’s memory.

A giant native Eucalyptus on the back of a log truck, leaving the Florentine Valley. Picture: Supplied by the Bob Brown Foundation

And this week while the northern hemisphere burned, out of the Tasmanian old-growth forests in the Florentine Valley came what might become another history-changing photograph. If the Orwellian-titled Sustainable Timber Tasmania has a public relations team, they should get rid of them. How could they let this image loose?

The picture is of a mighty eucalypt large enough to fill the entire back of a logging truck. “A one-tree truckload,” I remember the disgraced late Gunns Ltd boss John Gay gleefully calling them back in the ’90s.

They don’t happen so much anymore because John cleared up much of our tree problem before he in turn was taken to the great mill.

These days, a tree of such girth and height is supposedly protected. I can’t help being sceptical about anything that comes from such a cynically renamed state-owned forestry outfit. Does the name-change conceal a belated sense of wrongdoing, or do they simply think we are idiots?

Or both?

“On occasion, it may be necessary for Sustainable Timber Tasmania to remove a large tree where it presents an access or a safety risk,” a spokeswoman told us.

Charles Wooley and Bob Clifford admiring one of the giants in the Tall Tree Reserve in the Styx Valley. Wooley says these mighty trees should be on every visitor’s bucket list, not horizontal on the back of a log truck. Picture: Robert Heazlewood

Unfortunately for her the jig is up. This picture is all over the nation, and expect to see it in the international press.

These mighty trees, the height of 30-storey buildings and sometimes 500 years old, should be on every visitor’s bucket list, not horizontal on the back of a log truck.

When other states of Australia are getting out of old-growth logging, what this picture represents, apart from our government’s out-of-step environmental vandalism, is the very worst kind of publicity for Tasmania.

THE STATE GOVERNMENT has contributed $1.5m to one of the worst ABC dramas I have ever seen. To be fair I have only managed two and a half episodes of the confusingly titled Bay of Fires. It would be picky perhaps to draw attention to the fact that the title places a well-known North-East Coast tourist attraction on the West Coast. But if that was the only problem, I wouldn’t even mention the show.

I might even overlook the awkward acting and characterisation, the dreadful plot, discordant script and unconvincing dialogue.

Two weeks in I didn’t care what happened to the main characters and neither did anyone else. I checked the ratings and found that we weren’t getting much bang for our bucks. In primetime one Sunday night the comedy/drama (I believe it’s meant to be funny) rated less bums on seats than the ABC’s political show Insiders, which is on at 9am on Sunday mornings (and is often genuinely funny).

Marta Dusseldorp in new TV series Bay of Fires which was set on the West Coast in the fictitious town of Mystery Bay (aka Misery Bay), does not paint Tasmania in a very good light, according to Charles Wooley. Picture: ABC TV

A couple of weeks later, 86,000 Sydneysiders were watching and in Melbourne 88,000 had tuned in, which was 2000 less than the Insiders got that day.

Free-to-air ratings apparently don’t matter these days at the ABC, where it is said that Bay of Fires is doing fine on other viewing platforms.

Certainly, Ita hasn’t felt compelled to talk it up, nor has she given up the show as a reason for leaving the national broadcaster.

The view of the ABC from across the street at Seven, Nine and Ten is that it is a featherbedded workplace where the taxpayer stumps up a billion dollars a year and everyone gets paid regardless and keeps their job.

But in the tough world of commercial television there’s little doubt that Bay of Fires would be fired.

What really aggrieved me about the dreadful Bay of Fires is that it was just an old-style piss-take of Tasmania. Remember when mainlanders made jokes about “two heads” and “where’s your scar”? The locals in “Misery Bay” are slow-talking humourless bumpkins, as depressing as the landscape and portrayed, oddly enough, with accents that seemed to me to be a mixture of Kiwi and back-blocks England.

But then, if you spend your whole life in inner Sydney at the ABC’s Ultimo fortress, how would you ever know anything about the rest of Australia? Least of all, how the ordinary people talk.

“Excruciating to watch” was one of the kinder comments I saw from professional critics.

And a filmmaking mate of mine told me, “It’s the worst production I have ever seen made here.”

Marta Dusseldorp in mini series Bay of Fires. Picture: ABC TV

I hasten to add I’m not a critic. Nor am I looking for a state grant. I’m just a Tasmanian whose government foolishly chucked $1.5m into an embarrassing, unentertaining disaster that will not attract one visitor to the state.

So, if you don’t like tourists, you should love this show.

Still, I reckon the tourism industry at the real Bay of Fires should contemplate legal action.

Meanwhile, my spies tell me that Tasmanian Arts Minister Elise Archer and her department were so charmed by the star power of Bay of Fires’ lead actor Marta Dusseldorp that they reached deep into your pocket.

I’m sure it’s too late to get the money back, but it has been reported that the ABC is planning a second series.

Elise, don’t do it!

At least not until you force yourself to watch the full eight excruciating episodes of the first series.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist.