Where mining meets rainforest: the battle for Tasmania’s Tarkine

Campaigners say plans for a new tailings dam threatens wilderness that should be declared a heritage area

Four days before the Morrison government was due to decide the future of a mining development in the takayna/Tarkine, 77-year-old Frits Harmsen planted a camping chair in front of trucks on an unsealed road snaking through Australia's largest temperate rainforest.

Harmsen, a former French horn player with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, was part of a small band of Bob Brown-endorsed protesters who on Friday began a 19th day attempting to block work by MMG, a majority Chinese-owned minerals company, in Tasmania's remote north-west.