Wallabies Love Tasmanian Opium, So Do The Deer And Sheep

By Darryl Mason

Across Australia today, many thousands of illegal and legal opiate admirers and junkies will read this story and mutter "lucky wallabies" :

Wallabies are breaking into Tasmania's poppy fields and getting high.

The strange occurrence that was revealed in a State Government Budget Estimates hearing, has also solved what some growers say has spurred a campfire legend about mysterious crop circles that appear in northern Tasmania's poppy paddocks.

In true X-Files-style, Attorney-General Lara Giddings said the drugged out wallabies had been found hopping around in circles squashing the poppies, creating the formations – and hence solving the mystery.

Don't be distracted by this talk of crop circles. They've got a serious smack wallaby problem on their hands, and word of the free supply of very magic flowers is spreading amongst other animal communities :

Tasmanian Alkaloids field operations manager Rick Rockliff said wildlife and livestock that ate the poppies were known to "act weird" including deer in the state's highlands and sheep.

"...as growers we try our best to try and stop this sort of consumption particularly by livestock due to concerns about the contamination of the meat.

Wait a second, there might be a decent new market ready to open up for opium-marinated lamb. Somebody call the Agriculture Minister.

"....there has been a steady increase in the number of wild animals and that is where we are having difficulty keeping them off our land."

Uh Oh. They have got a serious problem.

How do you protect thousands of acres of opium crops from wave after wave of wallaby, sheep and deer, driven mad by nerve-stripping opium withdrawals, purely fixated on the irresistible pods they know they must immediately consume. How do you stop that?

They're going to need bigger fences.

Tasmanians should be aware of crazed cold turkeying fauna leaping through the bedroom window and heading for the jewelry collection.

UPDATE : The AdelaideNow site has to win some sort of award for giving this internationally popular story this brilliant headline :

Welcome To Tasmania : The Locals Are Dying To Eat You

There's a movie kicking around that is using the natural beauty of Australia to promote itself, and thereby promoting Australian as a tourist destination, and tourism officials are right behind it.

This movie, however, is not about some English bint with a ridiculous accent and that weird side story about stressed out Manhattan media execs swimming in NT rock pools, this movie is about cannibals, and it's set in Tasmania. This is Dying Breed :



Can you use a true story about a convict era cannibalism spree to promote Tasmania as a tourist destination? Sure. Why not :

Tasmanians hope a new Australian horror film about cannibals will attract more tourists and movie makers to the Apple Isle.

The film, Dying Breed, portrays a remote Tasmanian community as flesh-eating savages.

But Tasmania Tourism Council chief executive Daniel Hanna said the movie, mostly filmed near the Pieman River, western Tasmania, should help lift the state's profile.

"Any film that shows some of the key parts .. like the rugged wilderness, is going to be a good thing and will hopefully spark some interest," Mr Hanna said today.

"Obviously as long as visitors don't expect there really to be cannibals in Tasmania."

Be careful Mr Hanna, the people in the forest don't like outsiders making jokes about them, even if you are a distant relative.

Tasmania's (locally) legendary Alexander 'Pieman' Pearce is an Australian convict era story of remarkable, brutal survival that you don't hear much about. There's a reason for that :

The Pieman River gained its name from the notorious convict Alexander 'The Pieman' Pearce who was responsible for one of the few recorded instances of cannibalism in Australia. In a bizarre footnote to the history of the region Pearce and seven other convicts attempted to cross the island to Hobart where they hoped they could catch a merchant ship and escape to some ill-defined freedom.

They lost their way and in the ensuing weeks all of the escapees disappeared except for Pearce. When he was recaptured unproven accusations of cannibalism were made against him. The following year Pearce escaped again accompanied by another convict, Thomas Cox. Once again Pearce found himself without food and, to solve the problem, he killed and ate Cox. When he was finally recaptured Pearce admitted to eating Cox and confessed to cannibalism during his first escape. He was subsequently executed in Hobart.

He didn't turn them into pies, but he was a pie maker by trade, so quite familiar with the chopping up and making use of all that offal.

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The young directors of the new era of Australian Horror movies have a great attitude to the true value of the movies they make, which is probably why they've been so successful. Dying Breed director, Jody Dwyer :

"There is a move to be more commercially aware by a new wave of filmmakers that is actually getting tired with the cliches of drug ridden suburbia or flat red heat haze outback movies, we've seen a lot of them," Dwyer said.

"You are going to still make those the Rowan Woods films, – the Little Fish films because they're beautiful films but they won't do well internationally they will be respected but not do well economically.

"A lot of films are being funded that nobody wants to see and it's a shame because people want to support the industry but if something doesn't excite me I won't spend my 15 bucks."

Exactly.




I'm still waiting for the reverse Wolf Creek type movie, where two good-hearted, but innocent rural Australian teenagers come into the Big City for a concert, ignoring the warnings from friends about "how crazy" those city people are, and then and wind up being seduced by expensively dressed Sydney residents who hold them hostage in an Eastern Suburbs mansion, dope them with drugs and booze and then attack and torture them, promising the whole time that they "can really help them break into international modelling." The kids escape, of course, but when they run to the next house, they only find more country kids like them being drugged and assaulted. And the next house, and the next house.

Tasmanian Author Promises Biggest "Civil Disobedience Campaign" In Decades For Anti-Pulp Mill Protests

The new Tasmanian pulp mill scored the approval of both Labor and Liberal, and saw conservationist Peter Garrett forced to toe the party line, and lose a rainforest worth of credibility while he was at it. We won't know until after the weekend just how much of an impact the controversial pulp mill's approval will have on the election, or in particular on the electoral choices of the voters of Wentworth, the seat of pro-pulp mill environment minister Malcolm Turnbull.

But activists against the mill are promising that it will never be built.

Here are some excerpts from a fiery speech given by author Richard Flanagan to a crowd of anti-pup mill protesters in Tasmania a few days ago.

While providing some solid background on the history of the massive corruption linking the Gunns woodchipping corporation and the Tasmanian state Labor government, Flanagan promises to join protesters in a civil disobedience campaign he declares will be the biggest since the successful protests stopping the damming of the Franklin River in the early 1980s, and claims the controversial pulp mill will never get the chance to destroy a forest or pollute the environment :

And if, in the end we have all other avenues denied us, if we are left with no other alternative, if it takes standing on the road to the pulp mill site and placing our bodies between their machines and our home, we will stand there, in peace and with pride, united against hate and greed, joined in our love for our island. And if we are arrested and thrown in jail, then we will go to jail in our tens, we will go to jail in our hundreds, we will go to jail in our thousands, and Paul Lennon will have to build seven new prisons to house all the people who will come and who will keep on coming before they even attempt to pour the foundations of one new pulp mill.

Now is the time for turning, now is the season for our change, now must come that moment when we no longer are cowed, when we cease to be silent, when we speak the truth to power and say no to this pulp mill and yes to a future in which we are governed in the spirit in which we live: with goodness, with the interests of others in our heart and not the leash of greed tearing at our throat. Now is that hour, now is our future. The journey is long, the road is dark and frightening, but together we can reach our destination: the Tasmania of which we all dream, where all are welcome and all prosper, made not of lies but truth, built not of rich men's hate but our love for our island and for each other. Our love. Our island. Let's take it back. Let's start marching.

Richard Flanagan brought the issue of the new Tasmanian pulp mill, and the long history of foul corruption linking Gunns and Labor and Liberal governments, to national attention in this shock-inducing article from The Monthly magazine. It is a story that every Australian should read.

Flanagan is the author of the novel, 'The Unknown Terrorist', which has become an international hit and has now been optioned for a movie by Steven Spielberg's company Dreamworks.

'The Unknown Terrorist' is so despised by Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, who haven't made clear that they've actually read the book they've dismissed as trash, that I had to read it myself. If they hated it so much, there was likely much on interest to be found in those pages. I'm halfway through, and it's a fast, interesting read, which successfully predicted the terror-related non-events of this year, where 'unknown terrorists' were rounded up, publicly prosecuted and then released.

Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt appear to be on a dedicated mission to trash Richard Flanagan as often as they can, but not so often as to raise suspicion to their motives.

Perhaps Bolt is annoyed at Flanagan's best-seller status, while his own book's sales stalled. Perhaps Blair is jealous that Flanagan has actually written books in the first place.

Naturally, Bolt and Blair seem to have absolutely no problem with what Gunns is doing to Tasmania's environment, and the further damage to come from the pulp mill, all against the will of the majority of Tasmanians. Flanagan remains their target of choice, even though there is a state Labor government involved that should be mocked and derided at every opportunity.

Flanagan's promised "civil disobedience" campaign will supply both Bolt and Blair with plenty of material to continue their mockery of those who choose to not sit idly by while a behemoth like Gunns mows down whatever, or whoever, gets in their way.

Expect the Tasmanian pulp mill issue to leap back into the headlines in the first few months of 2008.

By then, the pro-Gunns sate Labor government will probably be feeling cocky enough to try and stop the anti-mill protests and blockades using powers under the anti-terror laws. The powers that already allow for the prosecution of protesters who "interfere" with the smooth running of corporations, like Gunns.

The fear of Islamic terrorism was the bulldozer that rammed through the anti-terror laws, but the laws, and the definitions of what actually constitutes terrorist actions or terror support, are open enough to allow for the prosecution of pro-environment related protesters should a corporate entity like Gunns wish to do so. The bet is that they most certainly will.

If Richard Flanagan goes through with his plans for massive "civil disobedience", he may find himself in a very similar position to a key character in 'The Unknown Terrorist'. Except in his case, it will be his pro-environment actions that may see him fighting 'anti-terror' related charges in the courts.

Flanagan, however, appears ready and willing to fight that battle.