Mind you, that was March, 1806, well before present-day pettifogging wilderness rules.

The sailors who splashed ashore found no trace of savvy indigenous people seeking to disprove any suggestion of terra nullius by brandishing a Van Diemen's Land Wilderness World Heritage Area draft management plan barring tree removal and subsequent urban development.

Or furrow-browed forebears of Senator Christine Milne confusingly counter-claiming that any draft management plan would contravene a future World Heritage Convention.

You can imagine the impact as Paterson arrived at the Tamar River's head in anticipation of building a couple of huts and running a few head of livestock.

Those pioneers cut their way through thick forest from water's edge to where Brisbane Street is now formed before building the settlement's first simple dwelling, a block house, on the site of the Old Brisbane Arcade.

In a 21st century scenario, before the intrepid Paterson and his crew had been able to take in the Gorge and surrounding pristine bush and mountains, the vessel's on-board environmental standing committee would have convened a stakeholders' meeting.

Taking one look through a telescope at the marshland where Invermay now stands, the silt forming around their vessel at low tide and the surrounding pristine forests and mountains where only totally "in tune with nature" Aborigines had ever set foot, our committee spokesperson would have said something like: "Don't even think of pegging out a tent or putting a shovel in the ground here, me hearties, let alone chopping down any timber."

"And as for running livestock, can you imagine what that will do to the endangered flora and the habitat of endemic fauna?"

Paterson would then have had to address a shipboard consultative body, with appropriate documentation and expressions of interest that would have resolved (by a simple majority) to (a) move somewhere more sustainable (b) head back to NSW.

Contemporary nature lovers and pressure groups have certainly made up for the lapse of 150 years of our state's laissez faire development era. ("Psst, wanna build an aluminium refining plant in the beautiful Tamar Valley? Go right ahead, it's 1948").

And so, slightly more than 200 years after Paterson's plan, what modern-day morass have we here?

What future for the state government's plan to rezone huge tracts of wilderness for a mooted 37 projects, even if state Parks Minister Matthew Groom was as soothing as possible with his "some proposals ... involve low-level, very sensitive development. (Note that qualifying "very" in there).

What odds on tour pioneer Simon Currant's concept of facilitating entry to a coupe of huon pines, one considered the oldest on the planet, near Rosebery?

Any hope for Tasmanian architect Robert Morris-Nunn's inspirational idea of a floating eco-resort "just outside the World Heritage Area" in Recherche Bay?

Mind you, Nick McKim thinks this one's all right although you can bet there are plenty of a deeper green persuasion who think otherwise even as so-called eco-tourists slip into their abbreviated khaki trouserings and Ho Chi Minh sandals in anticipation.

As for Paterson, what would he make of attempting to establish Lonnie nowadays?

After meeting representatives of the nature lovers' brigade, he would yell: "Sod this for a game of sailors, put them complainers in a long boat and cut them adrift, we're going up the coast to found a new town, I shall call it Devonport."