%cgTasmania: Preserving the Natural Environment%c* and other State of Tasmania, Australia Local Custom Tips

Tasmania's wealth of endemic plants and trees, unusual wildlife - along with the island's natural beauty, are unique to the world! Some 20% of the island is protected by the UNESCO World Heritage classification. This wouldn't have been so with out a good deal of help from the state's environmental activists' community. It was here where the world's first politically active Green Party was founded by, now Senator, Bob Brown and colleges in the early 1970s. In the most recent election poll the Tasmanian Greens were given over 22% of the vote.

Another custom sadly in Tasmania has been the commercial clear felling of old growth forests, mainly for pulp. The Labour Government admitts that it will entirely fase this practice out by 2010, however there may not be any old growth forests existing outside the UNESCO protected area by then. The sad aspect with recent forest cultivation here has been the introduction on a mass scale of one main fast growing species of modified tree. The culivation cycle of these hardwoods is too fast for any development of some biodiversity. Infact these plantations are classified as an industrial zone. The use of chemical sprays and culivation on once productive dairy farming land has complicated things concerning environmental harmony even further. However Tasmania is a progressive place to be when it concerns Green politics, although there is still an up hill battle to go.

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Some time in the 1940s or 50s a local council maintenance worker from the town of Oatlands started a good thing. Tired of merely trimming the undergrowth and bushes at the roadside of the Midlands Highway he decided to fashion some into his own creations. Topiary, the art of cutting and clipping trees or shrubs, was however nothing new to Tasmania, but the very placement of this artforms in such a public place as the roadside was indeed. In the 1980s the new highway went through and in places even took a different course leaving some of the late creators hedges lost forever, almost! Some of his works were recovered and or moved to more prominent sites to be once again seen by the passing motorist. Between Ross and Oatlands they are to be seen, especially in the vacinity of Antil Ponds. A Koala remarkable like a Jeff Koones, a Garry Larsonesque Moose and a tired Little Thomas the Tank Engine, showing a puff of neglect. One of my favorites is the camp looking Emu in Gay Street Oatlands. Who said driving from point "A" to "B" is dull, look out for these little roadside oddities before they take root into faded history!

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Tasmania has much of Australia's Georgian era architectural heritage.

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