Never Give Up The Fight

I am visiting my dear friend, Hallie. She is in the final stages of cancer at only 35. She is sitting up in her hospital bed, staring out the window, I don’t know what she is thinking about. She seems lost in thought, the majestic Mount Wellington looms large in her line of sight. There is nothing more the doctors can do, I suspect she hasn’t got long to live. Her father interrupts her train of thought by laying out a newspaper in front of her. Forests to be Logged; they won’t be Protected, reads the headline. Hallie looks at the newspaper article with despair.

“We fought so hard to get those forests protected,” Hallie says. As she continues to read out loud. “The Premier of Tasmania scraped plans to create new national parks, and has instead opened 400,000 hectares to logging.” Hallie falls back into the pillow, defeat on her face.

When we were younger, Hallie and I were part of a protest group called Youth for Forests. We didn’t just want to protest, we wanted to go to extremes and truly force a change, to stop the destruction of native forests and to protect the wildlife.

“How was she tonight?” my wife Abbie asks me as we drive home in the car afterwards. The kids are asleep in the backseat.

“She was so weak, and very pale,” I reply.

Abbie squeezes my knee. “I hope her parents are still there with her.”

“Yeah, they are both there.”

As we drive home, I think about when I joined Youth for Forests in University and first met Hallie.

I first met her at my university’s library. I was wearing a Vote Greens t-shirt, and she saw me, and waved me over. After that we started chatting about the state of the natural environment. Anyway, so here I am, a month later, anti-logging banner under my arm and heading for Tasmania’s parliament house. I see there are already between 70 to 100 people, all holding placards, banners and chanting loudly, end native forest logging. I meet Hallie. Youth for Forests also have other members, camping-out in the logging areas, doing tree-sits and blockades of the logging operations.

“What a moron! I nearly got run off the road by an angry driver,” Hallie says as she arrives. “I’m pretty sure he had a car sticker that said death to all greenies.”

“Does that sort of thing happen often?” I ask to the general group.

“All the time, sometimes members of the public hurl verbal abuse at us,” Hallie replies.

“We’ve been physically assaulted. We don’t get help from the police,” Michael, another protester responds.

“Hey, that’s my parent’s car,” a blue Toyota Sedan pulls up in front of Hallie. The occupant rolls their window down.

“What are you doing? Not this nonsense, when are you getting an actual job?”

“I’m doing this, because its important.” The car rolls up their window and drives away.

“What was that about?” I ask Hallie.

“That was my mum, she thinks I’m wasting my life.”

“So, they don’t support what you do?”

“No, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

Suddenly there is a loud grumble of a truck’s diesel engine that is rounding the corner. Other trucks are behind it. Soon high-visibility clad men get out. We, the protesters, form a line facing the oncoming truck drivers. They’re closer now, where I can hear some of what they are saying. I feel a bit out of place as it’s my first protest action. The first truck driver comes over and gets nose to nose with Michael, he is tall and imposing.

“Pack up and get out of here,” the truck driver says. He pulls down a banner Michael’s holding. There are truck drivers behind heading for other protesters.

“Why are you doing this?” Another truck driver says to me.

“Well, do you like breathing? We need trees for that.”

He doesn’t want to hear any of this and he stomps me on the foot. I grab my foot and hold it in pain.

“Get off him, that’s assault,” Hallie yells.

Other truck drivers are trying to disperse the crowd behind us and we are standing our ground. They are imposing, but we are trying our best to not back down.

I hear sirens coming, someone has called the police. Meanwhile the stand off between logger and protester continues. There is swearing and pushing amongst the crowd. Police are swarming towards the crowd.

“You, you and you, you’re all arrested.” The police officer goes for my arms and pulls out handcuffs. Two others are also arrested. Cheers of encouragement go up from the protesters as it’s like being a martyr for the cause. I show no resistance as that is a tactic we had agreed on earlier. The truck drivers are cheering as well but for different reasons. They are glad that police are trying to move us on.

That was our first great success, it guaranteed us front page headlines across the country. With time, we amassed lots of support from the community, as well as interstate. Now, with this newly elected conservative government, here in Tasmania, I fear for the environment’s future. For the future of our group, Youth for Forests. We were united at the beginning, riding the high of our success. But that gave way to lawsuits, police investigations and infighting. We all couldn’t agree on what direction to take our organisation. Until our group had fragmented to such a degree it disbanded. A few of us, every so often had met up, to try and reform. Eventually we stopped trying.

Perhaps one day, if we can agree on tactics, we can actually form a strong opposition to this new logging regime.

A few weeks later, I’m sitting with my wife Abbie at a café and she looks up from a newspaper article.

“Oh look, they are trialing this new drug for cancer patients at Hobart Hospital. They’ve chosen 10 patients.”

“That’s interesting. I forgot, but on my last visit a few weeks ago, Hallie’s parents were talking about her maybe going on a new drug trial. But nothing was confirmed yet.”

Abbie nods, “Although, it does say that if their chemo has not worked, that there is no guarantee this new thing will cure them.”

“It’s worth a shot though, right?”

“Of course,” she replies.