Red Road

Upper Florentine, Tasmania, logging coupe FO44A, 2006-7

Colour pigment prints on cotton rag paper 150 cm x 50cm

Between 2003-2013 I explored the doomed ancient forests of the Styx Valley and Upper Florentine. I photographed with medium format film cameras in black and white and colour, and digitally from 2012. 

In 2003 the destruction of Tasmania’s ancient remnant rainforests became a national issue as logging operations were stepped up and opposition to the brutal manner of the logging, the amount of waste and the cheap sale of this ancient rainforest timbers for wood pulp.

This part of the forest in The Upper Florentine does not exist now. Trees marked with red paint signaled their imminent destruction as they stood in the path of a planned road to be made deep into this forest, so that the logged tall trees could be easily accessed and removed. The road into FO44A, off the Gordon River Road, was the location of a large protest camp and a tree-sit among other actions. The road was partly completed when a halt was finally called to logging here. The area became a boggy, muddy, weedy, trashed wasteland.