Wooley implores Premier to make a pact to save Tasmanian devil
It will take a lot of inspiration, love and care, to save our most famous Tasmanian. But thanks to the best wildlife footage seen of this iconic carnivore, anything is possible, Charles Wooley says.
Opinion
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The $90,000 granted by former Arts Minister Elise Archer to support the making of the television documentary Living With Devils is the best money Screen Tasmania has ever spent.
Well, I reckon so.
Recently the ABC screened the film nationally to great critical acclaim. You can still see it on ABC iview along with Quoll Farm, an earlier Tasmanian wildlife documentary from the same filmmaker, Simon Plowright.
The government support for Living With Devils was minuscule compared with the $1.5m our government kicked in for the making of the awkward and disparaged ABC drama, Bay of Fires.
Generally, governments have problems picking winners when they hand out your money. But in the creative area you can usually bet they will have no problem picking and supporting a flop.
When a big production company comes to town, politicians and their advisers are often blinded by the stars. Fremantle Australia is a large and successful producer associated with a global brand. They didn’t really need your money to make (and misname) Bay of Fires.
In the expensive world of making television drama series, $1.5m is small change.
How salutary it is now to see what can be done with just a little money in the right hands.
Living With Devils filmmaker Simon Plowright has produced a beautiful work. I have never seen better wildlife footage of Tasmanian devils.
Then the images he captured were cleverly accompanied, and even uplifted, by the musical soundtrack from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
The point is that huge amounts of money are no guarantee of the product. In the world of the biggest movies, less than half of them are ever profitable.
Which makes it all the more delightful when a shoestring budget produces something really good.
What director Plowright’s example shows is that the magic ingredient is something that not even unlimited millions of dollars could ever buy.
Love.
As Simon tells it, the film was a personal project, not just a job.
“When I first came to Tasmania 40 years ago, there were devils everywhere on my father’s farm in the far North-West, and I was instantly captivated by them.”
Knowing devils so well, Simon saw an opening for a different kind of documentary.
“There’s been a lot of devil films made over the years, but I never felt that they actually captured what a devil really is,” he says.
“So, this was my opportunity to try and make a film the way I see devils.”
The tragedy of the Tasmanian devil is of course the cruel and fiercely contagious Devil Facial Tumour Disease, which has spread across most of the state. For some time now we have faced the grim inevitability that the devil might go extinct in the wild and become just a zoo animal.
That fear determined the filmmaker to spend a year immersed in the last healthy devil colony. As he put it: “To experience these last moments amongst the only intact population of Tasmanian devils left on earth. A unique experience which will no longer be possible. A last moment in the history of Tasmanian devils on our island.”
Those words were prophetic. While Plowright was filming among what he considered to be the last intact colony of disease-free devils, the worst happened.
DFTD revealed its obscene face in that final remote and protected corner of the North-West.
And the film starts to feel like a requiem.
Devils have been with many of us for our whole lives.
I grew up with them on the plateau where their screams and roars would disturb childhood sleep.
I saw them everywhere in my early trout fishing days.
If you left your waders outside the shack or the tent, during the night the devils would make off with them. Next day you might have to search the surrounding bush, but the waders were always found intact. Apparently, the devil had no taste for rubber or synthetics.
I still have no idea why they dragged them away.
But I never took it personally.
Most Tasmanians have stories of an encounter with the devil and are today well disposed towards them.
No-one wants to see them go extinct.
Let’s hope that Premier Jeremy Rockliff watches Living With Devils with his kids and gets enthusiastic about making one last-ditch bid to save these wonderful animals.
In a political landscape with so little policy difference between Liberal and Labor, both in lock-step on the big issues, here is a chance for Jeremy to embrace our most emblematic and popular wildlife. And to show the electorate something just a little different from the usual political hoopla.
C’mon Premier, cuddle a devil and promise to do everything you can to save it.
And to save it where it belongs. In the wild.
Premier, it looks like you are getting your footy team and maybe even that stadium.
But how can we name the new team after a critter so sadly on the way out?
There’s the real chance of political advantage doing some good here. And just like filmmaking, it will be more than just a matter of throwing money.
It will take a lot of inspiration as well as love and care, to save our most famous Tasmanian.
But think of the political legacy you might get to leave after your next term. Or even the term after that.
Anything’s possible.
All you have to do is make a pact with the devil.
Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist
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