Chris Arthur recalls the Franklin River campaign, 2008

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They were getting ready to build a road so what we did was we basically set up a blockade. And there was a lot of trepidation about the ones who were going to get arrested, like myself, who'd been around for quite a while in the environment movement. This was the crunch time. It was where the commitment really came to it. So basically we set up, we put a couple of tents on the road. We formed up a whole group of us all in lines and waited with some songs and some music. There were a couple of very good people who could play music, and we waited.

And then the police with the Hydro employees all turned up and the police have to actually physically touch you and say, you know, 'You are under arrest'. And those who were under arrest just went with the police, and we got on a bus and were transported to Risdon Prison, which is a maximum security prison in Hobart. It was quite a long, tiring process. We didn't get to the prison until 9, 9.30 at night and we were then processed and became part of the prison population on remand until we could actually formally be taken into the court.

And we got into court just before Christmas. It would have been somewhere around the 20th I think. And the magistrate and I had a fairly intense legal argument about whether I was on 'prescribed land' or whether I was on a 'reserved road' and whether I was on public land. And basically he remanded me then for 14 days and then I got remanded for another 14. And I spent Christmas and New Year in Risdon Prison, and that was not a thing I'd recommend to anybody, but it's part of the commitment to the cause. I'd been working on this cause for a few years at that stage. And there were four of us who spent the Christmas and New Year from 1982 to 1983 in Risdon Prison. And then on January the 4th 1983, I fronted to court with Bob Brown and the magistrate imposed bail conditions on us and told us that we weren't allowed to go back into the national park.

And now, 25 years on, the circle has turned. I've gone from a political activist. I'm now the Parks and Reserves Manager of the West Coast for the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, and I now manage the Franklin River and the Gordon River and Macquarie Harbour. And so, being from a political activist, I am now the environmental manager of that area that I had spent a significant period of time and a portion of my life incarcerated from 4 o'clock at night until 6 o'clock in the morning in the dark without any television, without anything.