A guy I know is the head honcho at a large chemical processing facility in Tasmania. A more practical person you have never met. Chemicals and minerals are his day job. He works in a place where signs on the gates with big red letters tell you that you will turn into dust if you look at a 44 gallon drum the wrong way. 

For many years this person has driven into his work place and walked past these signs to his office, which looks out over the signs. So, surely, subliminally, his brain is conditioned to avoid danger whenever possible. Just mention the west coast of Tasmania, however, and his eyes head off into the distance. He is transported on board a yacht somewhere off King Island, looking at the ocean and mentally flipping a coin in his head. “There is a point when you are sailing towards the west coast of Tasmania, around Kind Island, where you go on, or you don’t. If you go, there is no turning back. There is something about the west coast. It has a different energy.” 

These sentences come back to me the instant I drive over the hill into Marrawah. I get it.
A wedge-tailed eagle glides a couple of metres above my car, casting a huge moving shadow over my view, as I make my way up a driveway carved into the side of a hill overlooking Greens Point beach, Cape Grim and Argentina (granted it is quite a squint to make out the last one). The eagle has flown from one tree to another and perched himself on a branch looking back at me with amusement. “Another of those hairless creatures that can’t fly yet.” 

He turns his head and looks at a view that has been carved over millennia.

About 180 million years ago (just yesterday if you are around a campfire reading this and considering that planet Earth is 4.5 billion odd years old), something clicked and the giant continent of Gondwana started to split apart. We are so easily distracted by the ones and zeros that are beckoning our attention and requiring our instant action that it is easy to forget that things have been happening beyond our comprehension for a lot longer than Instagram. There was a moment where a couple of seeds dropped from a tree and fell onto the ground — one seed fell onto the side that is South America and the other Tasmania. That tree, the leatherwood, still grows in both places. The ground split, one land mass became great soccer players and the other great fast bowlers, but the leatherwood still grows in both places.

Bull kelp (or Durvillaea) grows on the west coast of Tasmania (including King Island) and also in Chile  –  cousins across 15,000 kilometres of ocean. Somewhere on remote coastal Chile, someone is looking to east contemplating the distance of the ocean, and chances are that just in front of them there is a forest of kelp growing from the rocks on the ocean floor, the same type of kelp that grows on our coast. Maybe this person knows their facts and is thinking about the splitting of Gondwana and wondering about that game those faraway people play, dressed in white to hit a red ball around an oval field.

. . .

I used to have a Wollemi pine in a pot in my back courtyard. We bought it when our youngest was born. It lasted 13 years before it succumbed to the challenges of not living in its natural environment (ie, in the ground). As I watched this amazing tree grow from a seedling to three metres tall, I was fascinated by the evolutionary traits. In particular, secreted a sap that covered the ends of the branches during winter to protect it from the cold. I was often tempted to break off some of the sap and eat it with the notion that a species of tree that has survived so long must have healing properties. Of course, a tree that has lived that long also would have defensive qualities and it was this thought that stopped me each time in case the result was instant death as opposed to immortality. 

My point is that there is an instinct that kicks in where we upright apes have a desire to discover what anything external to our personal atom vessels can do for us. Be it rocks to display for mating purposes, animals to control for food or plants to burn for sensory exploration, we always manage to look past the beauty of what is in front of us and come up with, “I wonder if that would be good for … ”

Kelp is a tough thing. It has to be. If you can survive millions of years on the rugged Tasmanian west coast on land then you are doing well. To evolve to survive just off the coast in water where the wind and the currents have pushed energy more than 15,000 kilometres just to smash you every second of every day means you go to another level of tough in my book. 

Bull kelp can grow up to 65cm a day and reach lengths up more than 25 metres. It is attached to a rock on the ocean floor by its roots, but when the seas get too rough, or abalone, crayfish and sea urchins nibble the strength away, it will break off and wash up on the beaches and rocky outcrops of the coastline. There are forests of bull kelp all around our coast, but the west coast is pretty much always rough so there is an abundance washed up onto shore on any given day. 

On some beaches the kelp is thick, lying untouched for years before decomposing into the ground and being washed back out to the ocean. The decomposing kelp is a haven for crabs, lice and fleas and creates a microenvironment food source for birds. It also stinks. 

“I wonder what that would be good for,” said a homo sapien some 40,000 years ago. As it turns out, lots of things.

. . .

There are a few folk who make our west coast their home. It is isolated. There isn’t a traffic light to be seen. Today, however, we are connected as a – even residents of the space station can live stream video renditions of Space Oddity to anyone who cares to watch. 

I am staying with Ian and Gina, who moved from Melbourne suburbia to Mawbanna in style some years ago. The house is perched on the same hill that is guarded by the wedge-tailed eagle I spoke of earlier. The house has views of the coastline that forces your attention. It is difficult to maintain eye contact during a conversation as your eyes follow that of the eagle over the ocean, fully expecting a whale to breach at any moment. It is a special place. 

Ian is committed to the science and development of bull kelp and can be found tucked away in an impressive, book-lined office on his computer, or on the phone in discussion with people from all over the planet. 

Kelp is “steroids for plants”, he says. 

There is a lot of science around the use of kelp as a fertiliser with impressive words such as “phenolic compounds” and “cytokinuns”, but the owner of an art gallery in Stanley put it best:  “You bury the kelp in the winter, plant your tomatoes in the spring and pick the results in the summer.” Bulk kelp chips and concentrate is exported over the world for use in organic agriculture. 

The cattle from some of the farms on the west coast wander down to eat the kelp on the beach. The story goes that cows naturally burp from the digestion of grass which is one of the main contributors to global warming. I have been shown science that suggests cattle that eat kelp belch less and as a result maintain energy and in turn produce a better grade of meat – and reduce the issue of global warming. 

Imagine if the answer to global warming was simply to feed cattle kelp.

 . . .

Ian took me to a couple of the bays in which the licenses have been granted for the harvesting of bull kelp off the beach. Only about 50 per cent of the washed up bull kelp is harvested off the coast . Open up one more beach and the business could double in size. 

The harvesting is not easy work. At one location the access to the harvesting site is only at low tide with jagged sharp rocks battered by the roaring 40s. Trailers with winches are used to drag the kelp up from the rocky beach. The full load is then taken to a processing site where it is hung to dry until it is ready to be chipped and bagged or emulsified in order to sell as a liquid. From there it goes to local farms, intrastate or interstate and, more and more, overseas. 

With the planet becoming more aware of the need to be less reckless with what is contained in our little bubble floating just the right distance from our nearest star, it is good to know that there is a small part of the upright ape population willing to put muscle and brains into something that seems to be sustainable. 

Brett Charlton spends his days navigating international shipping requirements for some of Tasmania’s biggest importers and exporters, as well as holding several local and national board roles. He is a regular contributor of thought piece articles in state, national international trade media. To balance the commercial and corporate world, he turns his hand to his guitar firstly and from time to time will write about adventures that have nothing to do with ships or trade, what he thinks of as his zen places. 

Recommended article: Restoring the giants of the sea by Katherine Johnson.