This photo essay by renowned wilderness photographer Rob Blakers shows the beauty (and destruction) of Mount Mueller’s forests. These photos were taken in the logging coupe Tn44B, where the Observer Tree is located, and the forest surrounding it. All these images were taken within the 430,000 hectares that was promised protection by the Australian Government, that is ear-marked for future reserves, yet remains under threat from logging.
View to Mount Mueller
Sassafras
Abandoned celery-top pine logs
Fern gully, coupe tn44b
Rainforest
Massive eucalypt
Oldgrowth logging
Sassafras in rainforest
Oldgrowth sassafras
Oldgrowth logging
Sassafras glade
Twisted big Euc trunk, coupe tn44b
Discarded burls
Treeferns, coupe tn44b
Sassafras and ferns
Styx Valley forests
Guest Blog Bio: Rob Blakers
Rob Blakers has been photographing wilderness in Tasmania, the Australian mainland and the USA for over thirty years. His landscape photography and wilderness photography reflect the fragile beauty of wilderness as seen through the eyes and camera of one who knows it in a way that few people today ever will.
Much of Rob’s photography is from wild and natural places that remain unprotected, including the remote rainforest wilderness of the Tarkine and threatened oldgrowth forests of the Weld, Florentine and Styx valleys. It is hoped that public appreciation of such places will enhance the prospects of their secure reservation.
T h e O b s e r v e r T r e e 
Thanks Miranda, photographs by professionals like Rob Blakers and Alan Lesheim and ordinary people alike, contribute a powerful message to society in support of the values of wildness, wildlife and wilderness.
Tasmania’s inspirational campaign photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis forever continue to teach us their magic in the eternal living magic of the places they photographed.
This is absolutely spectacular. Thanks Rob!
Reblogged this on abirdinthebanksia.
This will be a great slide show for Saturdays Picnic in the Park – will catch people brains and hearts. So many who still think logging happens in forests where the trees are all the same age and only ‘waste’ is left behind. It’s a powerful visual talking point.
Thanks Rob
Fantastic Rob. i cry at how long these images keep coming, we have to walk further and further to find the untouched forest, and plought through thewastelands to get there. All power to you and miranda and the crew. Hope to see you over the next coupla weeks while i’m there.
The photos shown here demonstrate the absolute heartless and pig ignorant stupidity of those Lib/Lab party ministers who passed the earlier legislation that brought this GBE into being.
To think that the GBE of Forestry Tasmania was set into place by a number of former Tasmanian government ministers most of whom are still to be seen skulking about the place as if they had contributed largely to Tasmania.
Hello Miranda all,
You may like to know about this quote:
Wise use and careful maintenance of our Forests
‘Let us regard the forests as an
inheritance, given to us by
nature, not to be despoiled or
devastated, but to be wisely
used, reverently honoured and
carefully maintained. Let us
regard the forest as a gift,
entrusted to any of us only for
transient care, to be
surrendered to posterity as an
unimpaired property,
increased in riches and
augmented in blessings, to pass
as a sacred patrimony from
generation to generation.’
– BARON SIR FERDINAND VON MUELLER
Suggestions on the Maintenance,
Creation and Enrichment of Forests
1879
(Founder of the Herbarium in the Botanical Gardens Melbourne, Victoria
Stunning photos taken in a Stunning State of Australia, Tasmania. Thanks for opening our eyes to whats happening to some of the last remaining big tree old forests.
I think our politicians need to walk alone amongst these ancient forests just for an hour to fully appreciate what a truly magic environment they are in and once converted to plantation will never be the same.
Its a fact that rain forest cant function alongside plantations and like a cancer the ecosystem is eroded away after exposure to the outside elements. Wildlife loose their migratory corridors and are excluded anywhere near a plantation. Lets hope common sense prevails and the last remaining bit of ancient bush is protected for future generations.
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