Alone in the Wild: How 2,500 Civilians Saved this Wilderness

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]The battle for the Franklin River in Tasmania is on again. A group of 20 rafts with children, women, and men moved to the St. John.

[00:00:06]>> In the early 1980s, deep in Tasmania's untouched wilderness, thousands of ordinary people stood to protect one of the last wild rivers on Earth. Camping for months in the forest, blockading development. Over 1,200 people were arrested in this battle that divided the nation until eventually persistence paid off.

[00:00:34]Now we're heading into the very river.

[00:00:37]Woohoo! Boarded by pristine forest to see why this fight was so important.

[00:00:42]>> Welcome to the wild west coast of Tasmania. We are currently parked up next to a waterfall.

[00:00:48]>> Probably not even 100 meters from the boat.

[00:00:50]>> Pretty happy with this. We are slim and so ready.

[00:00:55]>> We're circumnavigating Australia. And along the way, we've learned what adventure is to us.

[00:01:01]>> When we set off, it was just like, h, let's go sail around Australia. But I think it's become more than that. Being in places like this is what it's become all about for us. We're just trying to seek out those little nooks and crannies that still exist on the planet where you can truly get back to nature and be in the wild. So, I guess for us it's all become about chasing the wild.

[00:01:19]>> And we've found just that. We've just arrived at the Gordon River, a 172 km long river in the Tasmanian wilderness world heritage listed area.

[00:01:31]It's the first of many stops for us here in Tazzy's Wild as we complete a lap of Australia while we complete our degrees online. shades.

[00:01:40]>> Wow.

[00:01:42]>> We've dreamt of immersing ourselves here for a long time. So, to finally be here, this is so sick.

[00:01:49]>> Yeah, you could say we're pretty stoked.

[00:01:51]>> This is awesome. This epic cruising in this little river.

[00:01:55]>> We've so far made our way seven nautical miles upstream before finding somewhere to drop anchor amongst it all. We knew we were sleeping surrounded by some of the most serene natural beauty you'll find. But still, opening our eyes this morning to this has us in total awe once again.

[00:02:21]I don't think that we've ever been in such still flat water and glassy water.

[00:02:28]There's not a single breath of wind right now.

[00:02:32]There's beautiful mist and fog in the mountains which is so beautiful. Yeah.

[00:02:38]Wow.

[00:02:40]This place is very special.

[00:02:45]Our goal today is to head as far as we possibly can up the river and we've woken up pretty early to get straight into it.

[00:02:54]Right. We are ready to get underway.

[00:02:57]Let's get into it. See what the rest of this river holds.

[00:03:11]Let's get into it. Less muddy than I expected. We're off to a good start. I'm still covered in mud, but like less mud than I expected.

[00:03:27]So today we're heading basically the rest of the way up the river, which is around 13 miles. There's only so far we can go before we then have to drop the tender and use the tender to go the rest of the way. We're aiming for Serjon Falls, which marks the end of the line for a keelboat. Luckily, from there, it's only a short distance to the Franklin River, which we'll have to do in the tender.

[00:03:50]So, we begin weaving through the snaking river. It's pretty slow going heading upstream as we push against rainfall flowing off the mountains that's now trying to make its way out to sea.

[00:04:02]We're lucky to do over 3 knots, but going slow under these circumstances is not a bad thing.

[00:04:10]It's all a part of the Gordon River nature therapy schedule because really a large part of the things there are to do here is exactly this. Cruising the river and just watching the trees go by and the glassy water ripple away from our hull because of all the tannon in the water.

[00:04:37]It's like black and the reflections in the low light in the morning here are just insane. It's like damn it.

[00:04:48]Because of all the tannon in the water, the water's like black and in this low light in the early morning, the reflections are just insane. It's like sailing down a mirror reflection of everything. It's like being in a kaleidoscope. It's pretty pretty impressive.

[00:05:03]Excuse me. Damn. Oh well, that's as close as I'm going to get that take.

[00:05:07]Every time I tried to do that, I kept seizing.

[00:05:11]>> The water's quite amazing. It's a dark teacolored water that's been stained by natural tannins leeching from decaying vegetation in the surrounding forest.

[00:05:21]The darkness of the water acts as a perfect mirror, creating high contrast reflections that if you're not behind the camera, you can be easily tricked with what way is meant to be the right way up.

[00:05:39]The tannon staining the water is also wasting no time staining the bow of the boat. This has only appeared upon us entering McQuary Harbor just a few days ago.

[00:05:50]By this point, Nama hasn't been out of the water for a refresh for quite some time. So, by the time we get to Hobart, she'll be well overdue and deserving of a scrub.

[00:06:05]I'm still very much expecting constantly to see the croc just going.

[00:06:11]That's shark music. The crocs have a similar song.

[00:06:17]That's because the last time we were cruising up a river in the wilderness, there were crocs.

[00:06:23]Although completely contrasting in so many ways, it's amazing how similar these two places do feel to each other.

[00:06:30]I guess it's just that sense of being immersed in nature with little other souls around.

[00:06:36]Oo, that's a big one. Look at that one.

[00:06:40]So, we can't shake the feeling that a log may be a croc. Wouldn't want to hit that.

[00:06:45]>> Yeah.

[00:06:46]>> Golly gosh.

[00:06:49]>> We're in awe of how the river changes with each turn.

[00:06:57]Just cruising past some really impressive cliffs at the moment. I feel like I keep mumbling up my words at the moment cuz it's so cold that it's hard to speak sometimes. You big numb lips.

[00:07:08]Anyway, the river is just slowly changing as we progress on through it.

[00:07:21]Coming onto a bend, we wait with anticipation to see what will be revealed as we come around the corner.

[00:07:27]Each stretch feels vastly different to the last. So, there's like an island in the middle of the river now. So, that means we're going to have to squeeze between the island and this beautiful hill right here. And it's going to get really narrow.

[00:08:10]Woohoo!

[00:08:12]We're getting close.

[00:08:17]>> We close in on the final miles. We can go upstream aboard Nikama and we spot the landing that we've read that you can potentially tie alongside if there are no other vessels scheduled, which would make a pretty awesome spot for the night if that's the case.

[00:08:49]Yeah. So, there's multiple landings throughout this river. I assume mostly for commercial boats, but this one here is free at the moment. And I don't think there's only one other commercial boat that could perhaps want it. And hopefully they're not here tonight. So yeah, we thought we'd pull up and um tie off. There's a waterfall also just here as well. So that's pretty exciting, too.

[00:09:11]So we turn to the board that will deny or allow our stay. So the next commercial vessel that's coming is leaving Straw on the 24th and it's the 20th today. So we are okay to stay here for the night. So not a bad place to park up for the night with the boat.

[00:09:30]Literally, there's a waterfall along this path. I don't know how far exactly, but let's go find out. Pretty cool.

[00:09:37]Let's go see this waterfall.

[00:09:40]>> So mossy.

[00:09:42]Pretty cool backyard today. Pretty happy with this.

[00:09:58]Sick.

[00:10:01]Yep. So, the waterfall is right there.

[00:10:04]Literally probably not even like 100 m from the boat. Pretty insane.

[00:10:10]It's pumpkin, too.

[00:10:23]>> Cool. Really cool.

[00:10:27]We're so blown out that just as soon as you step into the forest from these river banks, vibrant greens stick out like a glorious sore thumb. And contrasting with the tannon water, which you can really see here what I meant about how it appears to be teastained, and the white sand, which is actually fine quartz. These truly are Tazzy specials.

[00:10:49]And it couldn't get much closer to being on our back doorstep.

[00:10:56]So, that was the falls. I think we're going to go check out what's up there.

[00:11:02]We keep forgetting that we have to wear life jackets in the tender. It's a Tazzy rule. If there's someone, some government body watching this. We didn't mean to forget yesterday. We did have them in the tender and we'll make up for it today.

[00:11:24]like psycho slippery.

[00:11:26]>> Do you reckon we can do it or is it too slippery?

[00:11:29]>> No, I mean we can do it. It's very slippery.

[00:11:34]>> Even the trees are muddy just because everything's so moist. Should we just tie that off to the tender?

[00:11:39]>> Mhm.

[00:11:43]>> All right. What are we doing up here?

[00:11:45]>> Uh checking out the protests of the Franklin River Dam site.

[00:11:50]It looks cleared. Maybe this is where they first where the old bulldozer footage is of them starting to bulldoze.

[00:11:58]>> We've just pulled up to Warner's Landing, a pivotal and significant spot for the Gordon below Franklin Dam proposal and Australia's environmental history. This is the site of the Franklin blockade. It was quite late in the conflict between 1982 to 83 when tensions peaked as the dam had been approved and preliminary works were underway. A bulldozer was brought here to begin clearing trees for access to the project's site. But protesters initiated a non-violent blockade to stop the construction and they weren't going anywhere. For 3 to 4 months, over 2 and a half thousand protesters called this riverbank camp. Good thing we wore the gnies.

[00:12:41]>> Very swelty.

[00:12:43]>> This site is the first bit of cleared land we've seen here, and it's seemingly turned into a swamp.

[00:12:49]>> Oh my god, it's very swely.

[00:12:51]>> Well, sailing boots are not just good for sailing.

[00:12:56]>> Oh my god.

[00:12:59]>> Oh my god. Look at this mud.

[00:13:08]>> Yeah. Okay. So, they definitely would have driven an excavator through here or something. Hey, this definitely looks like they bulldozed through here 40 years ago or something.

[00:13:17]>> We're going to have to backpedal the story for you in just a little bit as we make our way to the Franklin River.

[00:13:22]We've just made it to the entrance of the Franklin, but for now, we've just found another little stream that's got us a bit preoccupied.

[00:13:33]So, still wearing the life jacket. So Simon's been watching some gold prospecting people on YouTube. That gold prospect in Tasmania. We don't have any of the gear for it, but we're like, man, imagine if we could find a nugget of gold.

[00:13:51]Gold is widespread across Tasmania, and it's still possible for just your average person with minimal equipment to find and recover small amounts to sometimes sizable nuggets. Yeah, apparently there's lots of gold in streams like this one just right next to us here.

[00:14:08]>> I found more spiderw webs with my face than we have gold nuggets. But >> some say that's a start to finding gold.

[00:14:15]>> Yeah, that's it. You start with the face spiders and you end with the nugget.

[00:14:20]>> The thing is, if we were to find gold here, we would not be able to take it.

[00:14:25]And while that is the case, it doesn't put a halt to Slim's curiosity and eagerness to potentially find any trace of gold in a small handful of river rocks.

[00:14:39]>> And you may be surprised to find that we did not manage to secure a nugget of gold.

[00:14:45]But something we have found on the ground, on the trees, the logs, the rocks, moss.

[00:14:54]Everything is just covered in moss here.

[00:14:57]And I love it. I love moss. There's something so like, what's the word? Mystical about it.

[00:15:09]>> It's nice.

[00:15:12]But we didn't even need to be here in the Gordon River for a minute to realize why this place was so heavily fought for all those years ago. We need no convincing why keeping it in its untouched state was so crucial. So moist rainforest.

[00:15:28]We're eager to explore more upstream, but the day is getting away from us. So we decide to leave those explorations for tomorrow.

[00:15:41]This is definitely up there with one of the most unique kind of stays we've had aboard Nikama. There's something pretty cool about pulling up alongside this landing and spending the night. Having it all to ourselves as well. It's up there with one of the most highlighty spots that we've stayed.

[00:16:02]It's >> nice having a little view of the river and the boat.

[00:16:07]Sometimes we pull out a bottle of bubbles. It's at times where we feel the need to like maybe celebrate where we have gotten ourselves to.

[00:16:15]>> Cheers, baby.

[00:16:16]>> Cheers, babe. Cheers, guys.

[00:16:17]>> Cheers, guys.

[00:16:19]>> Thank you for following along.

[00:16:20]>> Cheers, guys.

[00:16:24]We've been carrying this blue cheese around so long that it's gone up a level. It's kind of like blue green cheese now. Gets better with age, I think, doesn't it? Gets better with mold. I don't know. Definitely a bit suspect, but it's got the right flavor.

[00:17:01]Let's go see if the waterfall looks any different now.

[00:17:06]and we'll see a poss lime green on the white on the ground.

[00:17:51]Life jacket on.

[00:17:53]Ready. We are going to zoom up to the juncture of the Franklin and the Gordon Rivers. um in the tender, not the tama because I think it gets shallow and rocky.

[00:18:07]Oh, she's tough this morning.

[00:18:24]The Franklin is just another three nautical miles upstream.

[00:18:30]We've just made it to the entrance of the Franklin. It's super turbulent.

[00:18:34]Pretty insane. It's literally, I guess, just the flow off the mountains that's creating. Yeah. Like close to rapids.

[00:18:40]Look at this.

[00:18:45]I guess this is the water flow that the hydroelect electric commission or the HC had their eyes on for their next project.

[00:18:56]For decades, Tasmania has relied on hydro electricity, harnessing its rugged landscape and high rainfall to power the state. The HC had already damned major rivers. And in the 70s, attention turned here to the southwest, >> where the roaring 40s bring rain in generous quantities. Rain which through the irresistible meld of modern engineering skill and plain old-fashioned hard yaker can be channeled into producing clean electricity. The Franklin and Gordon rivers were seen as the next great power hub. Steep, powerful, and remote. A dam on the Gordon would back up into the Franklin, creating a reservoir capable of generating significant energy for the state. And the Gordon below Franklin Dam was soon proposed.

[00:19:42]>> Mountain water fills the dams and turns the turbines. But to damn this area would mean flooding entire valleys, river systems, and forests would disappear underwater, permanently impacting an area that had remained untouched for millennia.

[00:19:57]>> The battle for the Franklin River in Tasmania is on again. Today, conservationists moved back onto the dam construction site in an attempt to delay the work.

[00:20:06]>> What followed was one of the most defining environmental conflicts in Australian history. 55 blockaders gathered on the Strawn Waterfront for a journey to an area all say they are committed to saving from the HC scheme to flood the region >> after the flooding of Lake Peda in the 1970s. National outrage was sparked. So when more details of the Franklin proposal became public, opposition formed quickly in Tasmania. The issue split the state. Prodam supporters and anti-dam protesters labeled as greenies who argued that the line shouldn't be crossed.

[00:20:45]But the project did get approval, which brings us back to Warner's Landing.

[00:20:51]>> The decision is made. The Tasmanian government is committed to building the dam on the Gordon below Franklin.

[00:20:57]>> The front line, a group of 20 rafts with children, women, and men moved to the St. John Falls and Warner's Landing Works >> where thousands of protesters traveled to, set up camp and blockaded access routes for months. Over,200 people were arrested in one of the largest civil disobedience movements in Australian history. Images of the arrests, protest camps, and just ordinary people standing in front of machinery captured attention across the country. Public opinion began to shift and eventually the issue moved from Tasmania to federal government where it was then decided that the dam project would not go ahead.

[00:21:46]Instead, the rivers became a part of the Tasmanian World Heritage Area, preserved in its natural state, unscathed and beautiful. And boy, are we glad today for those protesters efforts.

[00:22:01]This is so cool.

[00:22:04]Found a little river to pull over and explore. Pretty happy about Slint. I'm going to go find a nugget of gold that's washed up onto the bank somewhere.

[00:22:27]Simon's up there somewhere trying to make us rich and find gold. This is pretty damn cool. Today it's super super brisk. My toes are numb again. I'm grateful for these sea roots and um yeah, it's just stunning.

[00:22:42]>> Have you found anything?

[00:22:51]>> So, we made it upstream. I reckon on our way back down, we're going to turn the engine off and we're going to raft down the river. Does that sound fun?

[00:23:00]>> Does sound fun.

[00:23:01]>> The Franklin really is like a rafting river. People actually hike to the top of it and then raft back downstream. 8 to 11 days of pack rafting through the Franklin is considered one of the world's best river journeys. Something that we'd one day love to do.

[00:23:17]>> Graceful.

[00:23:18]>> But today we're going to have to make do with our tender as our raft.

[00:23:23]>> This is so fun.

[00:23:29]We're about to take on the rapids that those who have just done the entire river would say, "Oh, look. The rapids are coming to an end."

[00:23:37]>> So, I get one rapid and then it's subscribe cuz I got to drive here. It is fair.

[00:23:43]Well, I find it minorly disappointing.

[00:23:46]It is fair. I'm going to go on the inside p.

[00:23:49]>> Here's our first challenge. There's a rock there, rock there, rock there. We need to not hit the rock. They're going to get sucked in.

[00:24:04]Yes.

[00:24:05]>> Yes.

[00:24:12]That was pretty quick.

[00:24:16]Oh, spinning out.

[00:24:19]>> All right, you've had your fun. That was the best rapid to go through.

[00:24:23]>> There's other good ones. Quick swap.

[00:24:25]>> Yeah, >> this is the good rapid.

[00:24:30]>> So, we're about to just meet up with the Gordon River again. This is where the first lot of rapids were. So, >> should be >> Wish me luck.

[00:24:41]>> This one's actually pretty gnarly.

[00:24:47]>> This is going to be fun.

[00:24:51]There we go.

[00:24:53]Wee.

[00:24:55]>> It's actually pretty fast.

[00:24:56]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:24:58]Wee. I mean, I don't know if that was really raving. Like, >> definitely something. It's >> definitely something. Well, there you go, folks. That's the Franklin River.

[00:25:09]Obviously, you can get up way upstream.

[00:25:12]We went up a little bit, found a cool waterfall, and um went rapiding, if you could call it that.

[00:25:21]We're going to head back out to the exit of the river, set ourselves up. I think we got to do a bit of work, but also in about 5 or 6 days time, there's a weather window to push down to the next wilderness location. So, we've got the next adventure ahead of us, heading further down the west coast of Tasmania to more rugged, remote, and wild destinations.

[00:25:45]We really hope you enjoyed seeing the Gordon as much as we did. If you do enjoy following along, you can help make the continuity of these videos possible by joining our Patreon page or even just subscribing if you haven't already.

[00:25:57]That's free and goes a long way. We hope to see you guys for the next one really soon. All righty. Bye.