24 ‘No Dams’

Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s.

Neil Young, After the Gold Rush

By the 1970s, the Hydro-Electric Commission (HEC) had become a fundamental part of the Tasmanian landscape. Over the span of the 20th Century, it had grown into a huge body employing thousands of Tasmanians. Working for the ‘Hydro’ was regarded as safe and reliable, and many Tasmanians saw it as the key to an assured future.

Many Tasmanians had known no other life outside the protective umbrella of the HEC. Others relied upon the HEC for their livelihood — civil works, suppliers and contractors, caterers and technical services all enjoyed the flow-on benefits of big HEC projects.

But in 1972, the HEC stepped over the line. Rejecting all pleas for feasible alternative schemes, it forged ahead, juggernaut-like, with a controversial plan to flood Lake Pedder. The HEC seemed oblivious to the growing storm of protest surrounding the project.

The original Lake Pedder was a unique square lake surrounded by spectacular mountain ranges. Set deep in the heart of the Southwest, the lake was renowned for its magnificent beach of pink quartzite sand and wind-scalloped ‘megaripples’. Lake Pedder was inundated to form part of the Huon–Serpentine impoundment.

The fact that the area was enclosed within the Lake Pedder National Park and declared a ‘State Reserve’ counted for nought. Even worse, in the final analysis, the lake was sacrificed for an insignificant amount of power output. ‘Power without purpose’ was how the conservationists summed up the aims of the HEC.

It was a situation without parallel in Australia. On the mainland, the highly successful Snowy Mountains Scheme had been completed on schedule and, its purpose served, the Authority which oversaw the construction work was dismantled. In Tasmania, the situation was the polar opposite. Over the years, the HEC had taken upon itself responsibility for much of the state’s economy, and had even influenced Tasmanian society.

The HEC had the power to change government policy. It believed firmly that its projects would revitalise the economy and lead the state out of the lean years of the past. The first rumblings of protest were viewed by the HEC as an unwelcome intrusion upon their plans by a minority of irresponsible extremists.

By the 1970s, a new generation of Tasmanians emerged from the dark, restricted days of the past. This was the generation that vigorously protested the morality of the Vietnam War and the controversial policy of conscription that fueled it. It was a generation armed with a new set of values, and it was ready to hold its leaders to account.

The HEC had seriously underestimated the groundswell of power within the ranks of the conservation movement. As Lake Pedder slipped slowly and silently beneath the dark waters of the new dam, its loss galvanised the conservation movement into action. Never again would hydro projects be allowed to proceed in Tasmania unless under the utmost public scrutiny.

The HEC failed to gauge, or was contemptuous of, the depth of public opinion that now manifested itself in the conservation movement. In the face of such protest, HEC plans for future projects did not waver in the least. Its dam projects in Tasmania were far-reaching, and the conservationists knew it. The HEC now turned its attention to the Franklin, the last significant un-dammed river in Tasmania. Publicly, the HEC downplayed its interest in any future scheme for the Franklin.

In theory at least, the HEC was still able to argue a strong case for continuing hydro development. By the late 1970s, Tasmania had the lowest per capita income and the highest unemployment rate in Australia. The HEC’s past and future plans for dams were all backed by successive Tasmanian Governments desperate to invigorate the state’s economy.

On 16 October 1979, the HEC announced it would build a dam on the lower Gordon River, below its junction with the Franklin. The events which followed over the next four turbulent years were unprecedented in Australia’s history, and remain unforgettable by anyone who lived through them. The destinies of both Tasmanian and Federal governments were directly influenced by the HEC’s scheme to flood the Franklin. This was no longer a state or even a national issue. It would soon capture the attention of the world.

The impact of the dams on the Frenchmans Cap region

Not since the days of its geological formation had Frenchmans Cap faced the possibility of such wide-ranging destruction. Much of the landscape of western Tasmania would change forever. As with Lake Pedder, the wilderness values of Frenchmans Cap and the Franklin River would be lost.

The resulting legacy would be an uninspiring landscape of sterile dam waters surrounded by an ugly infrastructure: quarries and powerlines, roads and vehicles, the flotsam of intrusive human activity. There would be other, less obvious, threats to the region. With all this new industry, the risk of bushfires would increase significantly. Introduced plants and animals would slowly find their way into an area of wilderness. No matter how carefully managed, all HEC, mining and forestry activities have a massive impact upon the environment.

The wild beauty of the Franklin River would be no more. Waters behind the proposed dam would fill the broad valley occupied by the Franklin, drowning the river under an impoundment of ‘dead’ water. At least four dams were planned by the HEC: the Lower Gordon Dam at Warners landing would flood the lower Franklin, while a second dam at Mount McCall would flood the middle Franklin. A third dam was planned to be built at the Irenabyss and a fourth at Lake Dixon. More dams were planned for the Jane, King and Davey Rivers. The Irenabyss dam would inundate part of the Lyell Highway.

The HEC plans had long been in place. An extensive program of track cutting and full geological reports had been completed. Gauging stations had been installed on major rivers for decades to monitor water flows. Planned dam site areas had been thoroughly investigated and mapped. In fact, investigations for schemes on the Gordon and Franklin rivers had begun in the late 1940s.

The HEC’s plans required a dam on the middle Franklin at Mount McCall to divert the river to the King catchment, and another dam further upstream at the Irenabyss to flood the Franklin and Collingwood valleys. Two dams were also planned for the Jane River.

In 1952, surveyors from the Lands and Survey Department and the HEC carried out survey work on the summit of Frenchmans Cap. A brass mushroom survey mark was cemented into the rock 15 m west of Sprent’s rock cairn. Coordinates were then calculated for both points and the cairn served as ‘an eccentric target’ for observations on to Frenchmans Cap. In 1959, HEC surveyors constructed a steel quadripod beacon on the summit of Frenchmans Cap. The trigpoint was necessary to carry out mapping work in preparation for the proposed power scheme.227

When the Franklin scheme was finally announced to the public in 1979, it had developed into a fully integrated scheme utilising the Gordon, Franklin and King Rivers. The HEC prefaced its public announcement by threatening that any opposition to the scheme would result in ‘severe employment cutbacks if it did not proceed’.228

The new dams would see a wealth of natural features disappear or be partly submerged. At least seven major rivers and their tributaries would fall victim. The meteorite-formed Darwin Crater in the Andrew River Valley would disappear, only 10 years after its discovery and before a detailed scientific investigation of the crater had been completed. Countless waterfalls, rapids, cascades and gorges of spectacular beauty would be needlessly sacrificed. The panoramic view in all directions from the summit of Frenchmans Cap would be dramatically transformed. From now on, human activity would dominate a former area of spectacular wilderness.

In the shadow of Frenchmans Cap, Canyon Creek (discovered and named by T. B. Moore) would be submerged. On the Franklin itself, the sublime beauty of the Great Ravine would in future lie hidden under 100 m of water. Five long river reaches would also disappear — Inception, Serenity, Transcendence, the Sanctum and Deliverance — each interspersed by a major rapid, the Churn, Coruscades, Thunderush and Cauldron. Irenabyss, the ‘Chasm of Peace’, would vanish from view under the broad waters of the new impoundment. Similarly, Livingston Cut, the thin rock slit through which Livingston Rivulet flows before tumbling into the Franklin, would become a memory, a feature in name only, a curiosity on old maps.

One of the most significant threatened features was Kuti Kina Cave, one of many largely unexplored caves discovered a few years earlier on the lower reaches of the Franklin River. In February 1981, archaeological discoveries at Kuti Kina Cave, inhabited by Tasmanian Aboriginal people 20,000 years ago, revealed a rich store of stone tools, animal bones and fireplaces, unique in Australia and of worldwide significance. These discoveries, already mentioned as an important reason for the region’s inclusion on the World Heritage Register, would be lost should the Franklin Dam scheme proceed. The loss of this cave would have amounted to an act of unthinkable cultural and environmental vandalism.