Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers

Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park lies some 117 kilometres west of Hobart and takes its name from the two river systems that run through it, the Franklin and the Gordon. It is a territory of deep gorges cut into limestone and quartzite, dense temperate rainforest, waterfalls and rapids, and rafting the Franklin is reckoned one of the most demanding and remote river journeys in the world.

The park holds a central place in the history of Australian environmentalism. In the early 1980s Tasmania's Hydro Electric Commission planned to dam the Gordon below its confluence with the Franklin, which would have flooded kilometres of rainforest, limestone caves, gorges and Aboriginal sites. On 14 December 1982 the Franklin blockade began: fifty-three people were arrested on the banks of both rivers trying to stop the works, and the protest ran on for months with more than a thousand arrests.

On the very night the blockade began came the news that UNESCO had inscribed south-west Tasmania on the World Heritage List. The conflict ended in the High Court of Australia, which in 1983 found for the federal government and confirmed its power to protect heritage against the states, a legal precedent that opened the way to protecting other natural areas in the country. The dam was never built and the episode is regarded as foundational for the Australian conservation movement.