The Tasmanian News published a series of articles by the Reverend Henry Dresser Atkinson using the nom-de-plume Woodpecker under the title "Talks with a naturalist".
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On April 5, 1909 the subject was Launceston's Cataract Gorge.
In an imaginary conversation with a young lad, Woodpecker presents his ideas on the development of the Gorge in the 1800s.
He had enjoyed a "very pleasant" ramble into the Gorge by a rough track but admitted there were some things that he did not like about it for they spoiled its natural beauty.
One thing was "that hideous, dripping water race, which supplies power to a mill. They tell me there are 'vested interests,' but no Government should permit such things in a beauty spot."
Woodpecker did not want to offend, but he believed that the Launceston City and Suburbs Improvement Association had "done much to altogether spoil the place."
The young lad stated ''I am sure the association have gone to a great deal of trouble. They have made beautiful walks, bridged over gullies, placed seats, and built arbours for visitors to rest in. Then they have planted all kinds of shrubs and flowers to beautify the place, they have a pavilion at the end, smooth lawns, a pigeon-house, and all kinds of things. What are you grumbling about?"
Woodpecker replied that "it is possible to destroy the natural beauty of a place by injudicious interference with it. What I object to is the painful orderliness of everything. It is too much of a promenade.
"Then consider the jumbling together of all kinds of exotic trees and flowering plants ... waifs and strays from all corners of the world, and, as a crowning iniquity, ivy! The idea of planting that crawling, aggressive thing amongst those beautiful natural obelisks of rock!"
Woodpecker would have made "the Gorge a nursery and a sanctuary for Tasmanian plants only."
He continued "Perhaps many of our native trees might have been thus preserved from extermination, which they are now in danger of, through the wholesale destruction of forests which is going on."
"I would, if possible, have turned the 'First Basin' into a home for black swans, ducks, coots, and other Tasmanian water-fowl ... your boasted Cataract Gorge would then have been a thousand times more interesting than it is."
Woodpecker believed that the Association had acted with good intentions; "the number of people who visit the place is proof of its popularity."
But he would rather recognise the existence of those "things of native worth and beauty" in the Gorge.
