Wooley: How can a company deny access to my fave fishing spot?

Tasmania is increasingly owned and controlled by remote corporations in what could be termed ‘New Colonialism’, laments Charles Wooley

Columnist Charles Wooley and son Dave were disappointed when they were recently turned away from fishing at Lake St Clair, near Pumphouse Point, pictured. This is a spot they’d previously had access to and have fished all their lives. Picture: Supplied

At this time of the year, I retreat to the high country, to the place of my early childhood as a ‘hydro kid’.

Tasmania’s Central Plateau has never lost its mystery nor its charm. From Hobart it is a long, slow uphill drive following the Derwent past pleasant rolling farmland and eventually rising through thick forest which then unfolds into upland grass and heath.

The view up top hasn’t changed since I was a kid.

But there is a much more dramatic vista when approached from the gentle flatlands of the Northern Midlands where the Western Tiers abruptly soar a sheer 1400m from the lowlands.

Your ears will pop as you negotiate the vertiginous, zigzag narrow highway, eventually to arrive at Arthurs Lake, a place the old timers always called ‘the blue lake’.

The Tiers are the formidable ramparts guarding what should rightly be regarded as an Australian national treasure and which Tasmanian trout fishermen know as ‘the land of a thousand lakes’.

As a kid I made that trip many times from Launceston whenever my parents would escape the remote Tarraleah bush for the bright lights of the northern capital.

Less romantically I remember terrible motion sickness on that winding ascent and being ejected from the car to throw up by the roadside.

Later I drove my own kids up there and I was just as impatient with their complaints from the back seat as my parents had been.

Charles Wooley’s son Dave, who has enjoyed the pursuit of fly fishing since he was old enough to pick up a rod. Picture: Jim Wooley

This summer I have been joined on the plateau by my son Dave, who is back from running a bar on beautiful Lake Garda in the mountains of northern Italy.

He has been fly fishing since he was about four years old and consequently is much better at it than his old man. And much keener.

One of his favourite spots is where the Derwent rises out of the serenely beautiful Lake St Clair. Things have changed and what was once part of a National Park is now an up-market tourist resort and off limits to Tasmanians unless they pay to stay there.

The initial developer was sensitive to the traditions of Tasmanian anglers and provided a car park outside the gated area and a path to the fishing grounds.

But in late 2022, the ownership of the resort changed hands and this week the signposted angler’s path led instead to the exclusive hotel carpark where my son David was confronted by a security guard who demanded: “What are you doing here?”

Dave, who is not readily intimidated, replied: “I’m fishing. What are you doing here?”

An aerial view of Pumphouse Point, on Lake St Clair, in Tasmania. Picture: Supplied

He was told: “Well you cannot be here. This is a privately owned crown land lease and only guests are allowed to be here.”

The security guy ordering us off what I always thought was in a sense ‘our land’ was clearly from overseas and like the old colonists must have travelled thousands of kilometres to be there.

I don’t blame the fellow, but I am disappointed that the new owners of the popular high-end business are apparently unprepared to provide the necessary public access to traditional recreational fishing. Especially when the lease provided to the Sydney-based NRMA, the new owners of the Pumphouse Point resort, expressly defines “the right of members of the public to have unrestricted pedestrian access”.

The tourism complex occupies part of the Lake St Clair National Park where I always had the naive idea that all Tasmanians were, if not the original owners, at least the present owners.

Not so, apparently.

Dave and I had just experienced what I call ‘New Colonialism’. We are now in an era where increasingly our state is owned and controlled by remote corporations.

Decisions which in one way or another affect all Tasmanians are made by people in boardrooms so distant they know nothing about us, our traditions and our way of life. Nor do they care.

Our three farmed-salmon producers are owned by multinational companies as far afield as Brazil, Canada, Japan and New Zealand.

Do we really believe that the foreigners running these companies care any more about you and me and our environment than authorities in London 300 years ago cared about the displacement of the First Australians?

I was amazed a year ago, filming at Rosebery on our wild West Coast, to see the flag of China flying over MMG’s mine where the Chinese government-owned company is extracting strategic metals while proposing to build a potentially toxic tailings dam in Tasmania’s Tarkine rainforest.

Shocked but not surprised. It’s just another sign of these new Colonial times.

Senator Jacqui Lambie when she spoke at the Stop the Stadium rally on parliament lawns Hobart in 2023. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

THIS WEEK Jacqui Lambie attacked the AFL for forcing the unpopular Macquarie Point stadium on a too compliant state government.

“No other state in this country has ever had demands on them like the AFL has put on Tasmania,” she said. “Go tell your AFL mates to back it off.”

But generally, there is no point blaming any of those profit seekers. They are merely following their natural impulses. No longer do I even blame our pusillanimous government. I blame us. We elect politicians who are so easily outplayed by the highly paid and better resourced spin doctors in the employ of powerful outside interests.

A change of government is not the answer. What we need is a change of politicians.

So, it was interesting to see that Peter George, one of the best journalists Tasmania has ever produced, and an anti-salmon-farm campaigner, is running as an independent for the federal seat of Franklin.

Peter George who is an independent candidate for Franklin in the upcoming federal election. Picture: Lara van Raay

He mightn’t succeed but he is an honest and decent man and one of the bravest foreign correspondents I have known. He will certainly steal votes from Labor.

Albo famously has a tin ear and may have made yet another political mistake when he recently displayed his preference on the West Coast for salmon over skate.

He was probably informed by state Labor who has shown surprisingly little ambition to grab power or to differentiate themselves from Liberal policies.

But living by the coast (as do many Tasmanians) I think the PM misunderstands the enthusiasm for our oceans.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his visit to the Tassal salmon pens in Strahan, last month. Picture: POOL / NewsWire

The Maugean skate one way or another will not decide any election in Tasmania, for the simple reason that in this state a species in danger of going extinct is hardly news nor a political shock.

But our people value their traditional ways and the all too apparent degradation of our coastal waterways angers them in much the way my boy Dave and I were upset this week by being denied access to a spot we have fished all our lives.

In the 2021 Census a remarkable 30,186 people in Tasmania identified as Indigenous.

That’s a lot of votes and in this age of ‘New Colonialism’ I wonder if those people would vote for a fairer deal for all Tasmanians, were it on offer.

Or would they just instructively quote to us from that great colonialist Winston Churchill?

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist