My mum was politically conservative. She and my dad were Liberal voters but I still remember the yellow triangular No Dams sticker on her car.

She was dead against bumper stickers but this one, and a Solar Not Nuclear one, were the only stickers that she would put on her car. At the Federal election in 1983, when Bob Hawke stood with a platform of stopping the damming of the Franklin and Gordon Rivers in Tasmania, my mum voted Labor for the first time in her life. It seems like a pivotal moment in Australian history where nonviolent protest, environmentalism and the preservation of heritage that goes beyond Victorian-era buildings came into the mainstream.

I walked into this documentary by Kasimir Burgess thinking that I knew what it was about. I had just seen The Lost City of Melbourne which was a warmhearted nostalgic look at the architecture of Melbourne and the realisation in the 70s that there was heritage that needed to be preserved. I thought this documentary would be somewhat the same, albeit about heritage that was as old as Time and with a more belated realisation of its value.

It is so much more though. Burgess frames the story of the saving of the river around the personal experience of Oliver Cassidy, the son of Mike Cassidy who was a Wilderness Society member and paddled the Franklin River at the height of the protest. We follow Oliver as he replicates his father’s journey and, in doing so, considers grief, generational change, colonisation, Indigenous culture, trans-ness, and nature as an essential element to sustainable survival.

The (thankfully still) wild river is at the core and we see the beauty and the hardship of Oliver’s journey set against footage of Mike and the upriver protest camp that drew the attention of the world in its attempts to stop the dam. An interview with Burgess by Cinema Australia recounts the real dangers of filming:

It felt very dangerous from day to day. On day two, one of our rafts got sucked into a rapid, or a nasty notch as it’s called. We lost a food barrel containing our breakfasts. We managed to retrieve the raft but as a result we were on rations for the rest of the shoot and hungry. That was a rude awakening and something that made me realise that we really needed to treat this river with respect and care. Sometimes the cinematographer Ben Bryan and I would be out in the middle of the river holding onto each other trying to get a shot. Occasionally ourselves and the camera were swept away and we’d just have to ride it out and get to shore as quick as possible.

Kasimir Burgess

It would be a remarkable film even with a perfunctory telling of the facts. In many ways we are looking at the birth of a broad consciousness of the ‘greenie’ movement in Australia and the hostility between capitalism and environmentalism that continues to this day. It was a moment when ‘people power’ made a difference to the outcome of a localised issue and also to the governance of the country. We see the passion and vision of a young Bob Brown (his story of his father supporting him echoing Oliver’s relationship with Mike), minor celebrities like David Bellamy and Dick Smith adding their considerable weight to the cause and the more than 1,000 people willing to be arrested.

Perhaps more importantly, we hear from Aboriginal Elders Auntie Patsy Cameron and Uncle Jim Everett and get the true perspective of heritage that goes beyond colonial buildings. Although it is not stated, the assumption that the natural bush and waterways are somehow empty and purposeless echoes the concept of Terra Nullius and ignores the cultural history and connection, sacred sites and graves and the value of a 3,000-year-old tree that would be wiped out for a dam.

Oliver shows us the essentially wholesome and grounding nature of nature, where he can be himself without judgement, where all stress and doubt is washed away with the constant flow of the river.

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Have you seen this film? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.