LAKE OBERON
COX BIGHT
MT. ANNE/LOT'S WIFE/CUSHION PLANTS
"When you go out there you don't get away from it all
...you come home to yourself"
"The pursuit of wilderness and photography are uneasy companions...
We go to the wilds to reaffirm our place in the natural scheme of things...
...to be rejuvenated by contact with elemental forces...
...and to be reminded that the civilized baggage
with which we complicate our lives...
...is perhaps not so important to our happiness
as the advertising man would claim."
 |
| OLEGAS TRUCHANAS |
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| CHRIS BELL |
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| WILD ISLAND GALLERY, SALAMANCA, HOBART |
"We go to the wilds to reaffirm our place in the natural scheme of things, to be rejuvenated by contact with elemental forces and to be reminded that the civilized baggage with which we complicate our lives is perhaps not so important to our happiness as the advertising man would claim."
PETER DOMBROVSKIS
"Although Truchanas and Dombrovskis inspired many subsequent adventurers, conservationists and photographers, there has emerged no 'new Dombrovskis' with the required combination of technical skill, spiritual engagement and aesthetic sensibility to confront Australian voters with the reality of ongoing threats to Tasmanian forests and rivers. It is a significant point, for as Bob Brown explained, 'it was not so much that Truchanas and Dombrovskis recorded national parks, as that national parks followed where they recorded.' "
http://www.robblakers.com/
http://www.peterdombrovskis.com/
JULIAN KNYSH
'BATTLE FOR THE TARKINE' DOCUMENTARY
http://www.throughthetreesandtheforest.com.au/
NOTE FROM JEFF:
I have been visiting and exploring Tasmania since 2001 and have come to know, love, and be adopted by who I truly know as 'the spirit of Tasmania', my favourite region of Australia and where I have spent more time than anywhere else in the Land of Aus.
Ever since 2001 I have been a great admirer of Peter Dombrovskis' work, not only his nature photography but his ecological and environmental activism. I learned the story of his relationship with Olegas Truchanas, himself a wilderness adventurer, photographer, and environmental activist, who inspired Peter to do the same.
In 2008 my former partner Liesbet and I were inspired to make contact with Peter's widow Liz. She invited us to her home on the back side of kunanyi (Mt. Wellington). We gave her a painted rock in honour of our love of Peter's work and also her own major endeavour, West Wind Press, which had made Peter's photographs available to an ever-growing public in the form of the nicest prints, post-cards and calendars of nature that, to this day, are unsurpassed.
I remember asking Liz if she thought that Peter would have switched to or added digital cameras to his range of gear. She reckoned that he probably would have, especially as all his friends had made that transition (although some of them continue to use large-format film cameras).
[NOTE: Several years ago Liz gave me permission to post these images of Peter's photography]
Peter Dombrovskis and Olegas Truchanas are my two biggest 'heroes' of Australia, among the white man. My REAL heroes are of course the indigenous people, the 'First Nations Australians' and the dream-time ancestors; this is another but not unrelated story.
The reason I value their lives and work so much is that I very much share their love of the beauty and power of nature, their motivation to get out and immerse themselves in the wilderness and do their best to capture images of this power and beauty, and, perhaps most significantly, to use their photos to try to inspire the people, of Tasmania, of Australia, of the world, to get active in stopping the increasingly blatant war on nature being conducted by human military-industrial civilization.
They waged an educational campaign in an effort to stop the damming of the amazing alpine Lake Pedder. Unbelievably, the dam went ahead, but their efforts gave birth to the environmental movement in Tasmania and Australia as a whole, and the damming of the Franklin River was aborted.
Truchanas died in 1972 and Dombrovskis in 1996, both alone in the wilds of southwest Tasmania doing what they loved most. Dombrovskis carried Truchanas' torch and created his own publishing company. His work continues to inspire people around the world.
I have been involved in ecological and environmental activities in Tasmania for over 13 years now, and to be honest I think that both Truchanas and Dombrovskis would be absolutely shattered to see what has transpired since they were here.
Hydro-Tasmania or HEC was the first state-sponsored assault on Tasmania's wilderness areas. The battle with the logging industry has been on-going, with MAJOR sectors of Tasmania's unique Gondwanaland-remnant temperate zone old-growth rain forests already decimated by Gunns and other corporate monstrosities.
Only a few months ago a major conflict was arising, just as I arrived in Hobart. The Hodgman (Tasmanian premier) and Abbot (Australian prime minister) administrations had moved to undo the World Heritage classification of approximately 76,000 hectares of old-growth forest primarily in the Florentine Valley.
A vast public out-rage and recommendations by the World Heritage committee managed to stop this, but only a few weeks ago ANOTHER even worse spectre has reared its head, a plan for 'selected species logging...in ALL REGIONAL RESERVES in Tasmania.' This includes over a million hectares of forest.
MY INTERVIEW WITH VICA BAYLEY OF THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY
https://soundcloud.com/jeff-platycerus/on-the-brink-radio-66-vica
PLUS, the mining industry is exploding in Tasmania, especially in the very remote northwest wilderness area called the Tarkine. Several new open cut mines have been given the go-ahead. This is a story I will covering in greater detail soon.
I want to congratulate and thank Rob Blakers for his on-going and awesome contributions on behalf of 'the spirit of Tasmania', on his new gallery, AND for putting me in touch with Sydney-based film-maker Julian Knysh who is working on what promises to be an Earth-shaking documentary film 'Battle for the Tarkine' which concerns the conflict between those who are striving to protect Tasmania's florae, faunae and landscapes and the increasingly virulent and active 'anti-green' movement coming out the northwest of Tassie right now.
Rob Blakers and Chris Bell were both mates of Peter Dombrovskis, and I would say that they are by far the closest thing we have to a 'Peter Dombrovskis of today'!
Julian's project, however, has the potential to bring together everything that Truchanas and Dombrovskis were about, historically, photographically, and environmentally, but in a leading-edge modern-day scenario that is unfolding as I write this.
I recently met with Julian at Glebe Books in Sydney and filmed an interview with him that will be broadcast on my 'On the Brink' radio show in the next week or two.
Please consider supporting this extremely important project and check out his web-site and his Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/battleforthetarkine
I LOVE TASMANIA! I was recently blessed to spend over five months there, reconnecting with many wonderful friends, visiting some really amazing remote wilderness places, and catching up on the leading edge of what is happening in terms of the human warfare on Mother Gondwanaland.
It's not a pretty picture, but there is hope...AND WE NEED YOUR HELP.
'KNOWLEDGE IS POWER' so arm yourself with state-of-the-art information, ACT NOW TO PRESERVE THE BEAUTY AND POWER OF NATURE.
JEFF PHILLIPS
GREAT BARRIER ISLAND
NEW ZEALAND
13 OCTOBER 2014
'WILDNESS' Excellent ABC doco about Truchanas and Dombrovskis
http://www.abc.net.au/aplacetothink/?#watch/mh_2000/wildness/watchVideo
"Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis were perhaps Australia's greatest wilderness photographers. Their work became synonymous with campaigns to protect Tasmania's natural heritage. They shared many things, including a bond that was more like that of father and son. Both came from Baltic Europe and migrated to Tasmania, where their passion for nature became a crusade to save an environment under threat. Both died in the wilderness, doing what they loved, and left a legacy in extraordinary images. Their philosophy was simple and remarkably effective - if people could see the beauty of Australia's wild places then they might be moved to save them."
NOTE: This is a FANTASTIC doco and I strongly suggest that you obtain a copy and watch the entire film
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/18/1061059758112.html
"Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis were perhaps Australia's greatest wilderness photographers. Their work became synonymous with campaigns to protect Tasmania's natural heritage. They shared many things, including a bond that was more like that of father and son. Both came from Baltic Europe and migrated to Tasmania, where their passion for nature became a crusade to save an environment under threat. Both died in the wilderness, doing what they loved, and left a legacy in extraordinary images. Their philosophy was simple and remarkably effective - if people could see the beauty of Australia's wild places then they might be moved to save them."
NOTE: This is a FANTASTIC doco and I strongly suggest that you obtain a copy and watch the entire film
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/18/1061059758112.html
Scott Millwood was conscious of the great landscape photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis for most of his life before making his film Wildness. With this one-hour documentary, which recently won the audience award for best documentary at the Sydney Film Festival, Millwood has exposed the epic story of two of Tasmania's major conservation heroes - a story hardly known outside Tasmania until now. The convergence of the two men's lives is almost incredible: both migrated from the ravaged Baltic states after the war, an experience that left their senses open to the pristine, peaceful beauty of their new country; one was a father figure to the other; both became such original and accomplished photographers that their images were used not only to inspire the establishment of a conservation movement in Tasmania and on the mainland but as a weapon in its cause.
Both experienced a sense of terrible failure. The worst was the damming of Lake Pedder - "my Pedder", as Truchanas called the serene high lake with the white shore of which he took hundreds of photographs and which he fought so hard to save.
Both died alone in the wilderness of south-west Tasmania, to which they had devoted their lives. When Truchanas drowned at 49 in 1972 it was Dombrovskis who found him. Then in 1996, when he was only 51, Dombrovskis died of a heart attack on a photographic expedition. Together they left eight children and two stepchildren.
"It is a story that I have known all my life," says Millwood, who was born in Launceston 29 years ago, the year after Lake Pedder was "drowned" and Truchanas died on the Gordon River. "When I researched both their lives in more depth there was such symmetry in them. At times it felt like one life lived twice. The story is so unique and so specific to a place."
https://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2011/mar11/the-eye-of-the-beholder.pdf
http://www.examiner.com.au/story/1365590/exhibition-a-tribute-to-states-wild-side/
http://www.examiner.com.au/story/1365590/exhibition-a-tribute-to-states-wild-side/
http://www.iphf.org/hall-of-fame/peter-dombrovskis/
'An extraordinary aspect about his work was that many of his photographs aided in the campaign that saved the Franklin river in Tasmania from being dammed. Some of Dombrovskis' photographs have also been instrumental in the conservation of various other Tasmanian wild places.
"The pursuit of wilderness and photography are uneasy companions. We go to the wilds to reaffirm our place in the natural scheme of things, to be rejuvenated by contact with elemental forces and to be reminded that the civilized baggage with which we complicate our lives is perhaps not so important to our happiness as the advertising man would claim. Therefore, when my rucksack is already straining at the seems with the essentials of food, shelter and clothing, it seems folly to add a metal box crammed with optical, mechanical and electrical gadgetry."
http://www.peterdombrovskis.com/
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/truchanas-olegas-11882
'An extraordinary aspect about his work was that many of his photographs aided in the campaign that saved the Franklin river in Tasmania from being dammed. Some of Dombrovskis' photographs have also been instrumental in the conservation of various other Tasmanian wild places.
"The pursuit of wilderness and photography are uneasy companions. We go to the wilds to reaffirm our place in the natural scheme of things, to be rejuvenated by contact with elemental forces and to be reminded that the civilized baggage with which we complicate our lives is perhaps not so important to our happiness as the advertising man would claim. Therefore, when my rucksack is already straining at the seems with the essentials of food, shelter and clothing, it seems folly to add a metal box crammed with optical, mechanical and electrical gadgetry."
http://www.peterdombrovskis.com/
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/truchanas-olegas-11882
Deeply attracted to Tasmania's wilderness areas, Truchanas undertook many solitary excursions, on foot and by canoe, into the island's south-west. Black and white and, later, colour photography became the medium through which he expressed his considerable artistic talents; he won prizes in overseas and Australian competitions. In 1952, climbing alone and without support, he reached the summit of Federation Peak. Twice, in December 1954 and February 1958, he travelled down the Serpentine and Gordon rivers from Lake Pedder to Macquarie Harbour in a self-designed kayak, a feat never before accomplished. On 21 January 1956 at Chalmers Church, Launceston, he married with Presbyterian forms Melva Janet Stocks, a clerical typist.
In October 1963 the Tasmanian government decided that the State's south-west was to be opened up to hydro-electric development. The fears of conservationists were realized in 1965 when the premier Eric Reece announced that there would be 'some modification of Lake Pedder National Park', and that the water level of the lake would be raised. Truchanas, placing himself in a difficult position with his employer, gave a series of audio-visual lectures in the Hobart Town Hall and elsewhere in Tasmania, aimed at publicizing the environmental losses that would follow the flooding of the lake. The project went ahead despite the protests. In February 1967 Truchanas's collection of photographs was burnt in the Hobart bushfires that destroyed his home; he immediately set about replacing the lost pictures.
The campaign to save Lake Pedder provided the model for the Franklin campaign, waged between 1976 and1983 as the Tasmanian government was pressured into vacillation between various schemes to dam first the Franklin River, then the Gordon above Olga (involving the inundation of 'The Splits'), then the Gordon below Franklin. The Tasmanian Wilderness Society was formed in 1976, at a meeting at the home of general practitioner Bob Brown. As moves to dam the Franklin gathered momentum, he abandoned his practice and became the Society's full-time voluntary director. Bob Brown realised that in the fight for the Franklin 'there was no better way to get the river to speak for itself than through the lens of Peter Dombrovskis'. When legislation was passed allowing construction to begin on the Franklin dam in 1982,Brown staged a nationwide tour that saw large NO DAM rallies in capital cities. Volunteers hastened to mount blockades in
Tasmania and public figures such as prehistorian DJ Mulvaney laboured to raise public consciousness of the profound cultural, historical and ecological significance of the area at stake - countering Tasmanian Premier Robin Gray's assessment of the Franklin as nothing but a brown ditch, 'leech-ridden' and 'unattractive to the majority'. Dombrovskis's photograph Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, South West Tasmania(1979), selected by Brown from the photographer's large collection, became the lead image of the NO DAMS campaign and one of the most-reproduced of all Australian photographs. Printed in colour above the question 'Would you vote for a party that would destroy this?' it comprised one of this country's most effective ever political advertisements. Further, in large part due to Dombrovskis's remarkable eye for detail - its composition, as Peter Timms has explained, is 'exceptional in its fidelity to European artistic and cultural precedent' - it took root in the collective European-Australian psyche to become, Timms and others believe, a kind of 'religious icon for a new, secular society'. In 1983, the High Court ruled that the Commonwealth Government had the power to prevent the dam from being built.
'When you go out there you don't get away from it all ... you come home to yourself,' Dombrovskis said. He died of heart failure while photographing alone in the Western Arthur Range in southwest Tasmania. Shortly before, he had tried to describe the need he felt, after photographing an object of beauty, 'to make some acknowledgement, a sign of gratitude, perhaps a touch or some act of private communion that would probably appear silly or affected were there someone else to see me.' He wrote that 'my most productive days are when I move through the landscape with an attitude of acceptance.'
To his many admirers, the images he made are imbued with the photographer's respect for the natural world. Although Truchanas and Dombrovskis inspired many subsequent adventurers, conservationists and photographers, there has emerged no 'new Dombrovskis' with the required combination of technical skill, spiritual engagement and aesthetic sensibility to confront Australian voters with the reality of ongoing threats to Tasmanian forests and rivers. It is a significant point, for as Bob Brown explained, 'it was not so much that Truchanas and Dombrovskis recorded national parks, as that national parks followed where they recorded.'
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