Tasmanian Wilderness
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How it came to be
South-west Tasmania is a land of steep, glacier-carved mountains and temperate rainforest. Tasmanian Aboriginal people have lived here for about 40,000 years, and during the last ice age they were the southernmost people in the world. Limestone caves hold bone, stone tools and red ochre hand stencils, and Wargata Mina is the first site anywhere where mammal blood was found mixed with ochre.
In 1978 a plan was announced to dam the Gordon River below its junction with the Franklin. From 1981 archaeologists found traces of human life about 15,000 years old in caves that the dam would flood, and opposition spread across the country. On 14 December 1982, the day the UNESCO committee in Paris was due to list the area, a blockade of the dam site began, and in all 1,217 people were arrested.
On 5 March 1983 Bob Hawke's Labor Party, pledged to stop the dam, won the federal election. On 1 July the High Court upheld the federal government's powers by four votes to three, and the dam was never built. The World Heritage area was enlarged in 1989 and 2013 and now covers more than 1.58 million hectares, almost a quarter of the island.
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