...the lost world

In 18 days, I will be here. The oldest and tallest temperate rainforest in the world atop the Errinundra Plateau, far East Gippsland.

I've been near here once, and it was the friggin Lost World I tell ya. I saw a fungus the size of a car. It was growing on a tree so big I couldn't work out where it began, but it seemed to end somewhere in the clouds.

Strange, primitive creatures inhabit this world. The elusive Long-footed Potoroo, Quolls, gliders. sooty owl and Jervis Bay tree frog. The government tells us that within the confines of the Errinundra National Park, we must tread lightly to protect this precious, pristine and remote wilderness.

But if you are VicForests, a state-owned enterprise, you can send bulldozers into the same ancient forests neigbouring the small park and turn large tracts of it into woodchips, sell it to Japan and then buy it in the form of expensive cardboard boxes. You can quite legally destroy the habitats of ICNN Redlist Endangered species, kill and displace rare and unique wildlife with heavy machinery, drop incendiary devices from helicopters to raze the stubble, and lay poison to kill the native animals that may venture into the moonscape to eat the monoculture regrowth. And not only will the goverment let you do this, they will subsidise you for it!

But remember, no camping outside the designated 4 tent campsite, take your rubbish home with you and don't brush your teeth within 20 metres of river and creeks. We don't want to trash this fragile environment, do we?.

Meanwhile we demand our impoverished neigbours stop logging their rainforests, and lay a large part of the solution for global climate change at their feet.


What's that all about then? I know we need wood but surely there are other ways to get cardboard boxes.