Lake Pedder and Lake Rhona: Some Thoughts

[whynotwalk]

I never visited Lake Pedder. But when I first visited Lake Rhona, some tried to talk up the comparison. I'm reflecting on that in my latest blog post

Go to http://auntyscuttle.blogspot.com/2011/04/returning-to-rhona-3.html

Lake Rhona from the north

cheers

Peter

[stepbystep]

Nice Peter,
It's hard to comprehend what we have lost with Pedder, what a destination it must have been. I went to Rhona twice last year and it truly is a gem!
Will you be in Melaleuca at Easter? Getting pretty excited about the shoot!
Cheers, Dan

[ILUVSWTAS]

Beautiful photo Peter.

Pedder cannot be compared too, im too young to ever have had the chance to see it unfortunately, but the pictures suggest the beach was just an amazing thing, and soo big!! Rhona is a gem but Pedder to me is one of our greatest losses in Tasmanias history

[whynotwalk]

Thanks for the comments Dan & Mark. I sometimes ponder what would happen if they did pull the plug, and restored Pedder. Divers have been down there, and report only limited amounts of silt over the beach sand. But the surrounds are devegetated and dead. It would take a fair while to drain, re-vegetate and re-grow, and it'd need to be protected from visitors for many years. I suspect it would be decades before it was truly restored.

It's not the same, but there's a bit of the "clone the thylacine and bring it back from extinction" happening here. Maybe we're denying that we made a monumental error when "we" dammed the lake (and hunted the thylacine to extinction). Maybe extinction is forever ... or am I being too pessimistic??

Just some further thoughts,

cheers

Peter

PS Dan - I'd love to be at Melaleuca, but not sure if it will work out. I'll certainly let you know if it does. Happy filming!

[ILUVSWTAS]

Yes I believe one fellow from Utas dived down there recently and filmed images of the beach and you could still see the tyre marks from the last planes to have been there.
As you say though Peter the vegetation and the like would take many many years to recover, it would look even worse than it does now, Lake Gordon especially has a very sad feel to it with all the dead trees around the shoreline.

Also you say it would need to be protected from visitors... imagine that.. Pedder returns but no-one is allowed to go have a look.. yeh right. People would be flocking there in the thousands!

[north-north-west]

I'd be 'happy' to be kept away, just to know it was back and slowly returning to what it had been.

It'd take a few hundred years for the forest to recover, but.