Revisiting Gippsland splendour
Roger Smith
Roger Smith
My previous Treading Lightly column was about how, when I was a youngster, a malleefowl helped me understand the importance of protecting the bush, which later led me into the conservation movement. That, in turn, ultimately saw me open an ecotravel business. This is how that came about.
It was 6am on Saturday 7 May 1988, and, bleary-eyed, a handful of colleagues and I tumbled, elated and exhausted, down the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House onto Spring Street in Melbourne. First light was attempting to break through the early morning drizzle. And after a night of vitriolic debate, the Legislative Council had finally passed legislation opening the way for some of the most spectacular increases in national parks that Victoria, or indeed Australia, had ever seen.
In East Gippsland alone 1100sq.km was to be added to the national park estate. It included the 25,000ha “jewel in the crown” that was Errinundra Plateau, a place I think of as the “cradle of the eucalypts”. Its beauty and diversity had moved tens of thousands of Victorians to demand an end to intensive logging not only on the plateau but throughout East Gippsland, and after four gruelling years, the battle had been won.
Our small group stood on the footpath, tired grins on our faces, trying to take in the scale of what had just been achieved. One of us would later become a prime ministerial adviser, another a federal senator. I would start an ecotourism business.
Back then, our case for the protection of East Gippsland’s forests hinged on a fact and a belief. We proved logging was removing, at a minimum, 50 per cent more trees than could be replaced, a fact that many in the timber industry agreed with. Our belief, based on detailed research, was that ecotourism could be an alternative to logging. We wanted to offer the region something in return for what it had given up. From a cold start we knew tourism wouldn’t be easy, but the region is so rich in raw beauty and wildlife that we felt ecotourism could help replace jobs lost in logging.
Based on that belief, my partner, Janine Duffy, and I started a tourism business in 1993 that began running tours into the magical wilderness of far East Gippsland.
It was the very early days of what I now call Conservation Travel. And 31 years later I’m proud to say that we’re still operating purpose-driven wildlife tours in East Gippsland. We’ve shown that not only does ecotourism create jobs, but it helps people appreciate and understand biodiversity and natural ecosystems and we’re now spreading that message nationwide.
But we still proudly take people back to where it all began for us… to the “cradle of the eucalypts” in East Gippsland.
Read more from Roger’s Treading Lightly column.
