As a Tasmanian campaigner who’s been a successful catalyst for change over many years, we thought we’d ask Rodney Croome for his perspective on our little project.

How would you define the heart and soul of Tasmania?

The fundamental characteristic of the Tasmanian experience is that whatever our island and its people are, we are also, and just as extremely, the exact opposite.

In the one vista we see sublime beauty and sickening ugliness. In the one historical or political episode we witness cowardice, atrocity, bravery and sacrifice. In the same family, grey, anxious conformity and eccentric creative brilliance lie side by side. In so many Tasmanian minds obstinate amnesia exists alongside centuries-long memory. From so many Tasmanian hearts emerge both deep prejudice and saintly generosity of spirit.

Our best poets and novelists are inspired by, and sometimes succeed in portraying, these contradictions. But I fear it is almost impossible for a symbol, a logo or a brand to do it.

The one exception to this is the Thylacine. Its extinction represents us at our worst. But honouring the Thylacine also represents the hope that we can change, and truly value the land and ourselves. That is why I consider it a more than appropriate symbol of Tasmania.

What value do you place on the Tasmanian Tiger as an iconic symbol for Tasmania?

The Thylacine may have been driven from our woodlands, but it has thrived in our collective imagination. The stories my grandparents told about their encounters with tigers still excite and astound me. This inheritance makes my pause whenever I walk passed the old film of the last captive Thylacine on continuous loop in the museum. It brings a wry smile to my face when I turn the page to a Cascade beer ad featuring a Thylacine lapping at a ferny Hobart Rivulet (where, in reality, there’s a mess of blackberries in front of my house in South Hobart). It brings a lump to my throat when I throw carrots to the pademelons in my backyard and they scamper, not from me, but from the Thylacines whose ecological footprint is still evident in their skittishness. So too, when I see a Thylacine emerging from or retreating into the grass at the top of a government document, I’m struck by the ironies and the ambiguities, and I groan, or I ponder, depending on the moment (and the document).

All this is evidence of the way the Thylacine has become a dream animal like a unicorn or a griffin. Like them it has become an idea, able to represent much more than a living breathing, animal such as a devil (as wonderful as these little creatures are). Tasmania, too, is best understood as a dream, where the unlikely is the norm and the impossible unremarkable. For this reason, I can think of no better animal to represent our strange island character than one that doesn’t exist.

To remove the Thylacine would be to retreat from the depths of despair and heights of hope that make up Tasmanian experience. It would be to retreat from an unfillable and aching absence its extinction has left, but also from a the rich lore and myth the Thylacine bequeathed. In short, it would be to retreat from the contradictions that make us who we are.

If you had a chance to replace the current Government logo with a different symbol, what would it be?

My loyalty to the Thylacine does not mean I want to retain the logo we have now. My preferred design would be a Thylacine that somehow floats about us all, as if judging and redeeming us. For there is no society that requires judgement and redemption more than ours, and there is no animal in a better position to do this than the Thylacine.

www.rodneycroome.id.au