Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I rise tonight with a heavy ongoing sadness to pay tribute to an established star in Tasmania’s literary lineup and a stellar, beautiful person in both the local primary school community and my own close circle of friends.
Karen Harrland is many things to many people: an author, teacher, mother, partner and dear friend to countless talented, down to earth and treasured people.
Karen drowned in the Franklin River on 2 November, five days into the trip of a lifetime with her partner Al and a group of friends. The dignity of risk is the willingness and ability to undertake activities inherent with hazards, but supported by skills and planning. Karen and Al’s trip down the Franklin was well prepared and, in the wake of the tragedy, police lauded the preparedness and experience of the group and the guides. Circumstance simply conspired for the river to take her and rescue to be delayed such that CPR could not sustain her until help arrived the next morning. Such is the cruelty of that circumstance.
The bitter loss is only tempered minutely by the knowledge that Karen was doing something she loved, with people she loved, in a place so spectacularly wild and beautiful it was almost meant to be, but how could it? With a legacy larger than most double her age and with so much more to give, the loss of Karen leaves a chasm in the lives of all who knew her. No more so than in Al and her children, Asher, Clay and Xavier.
After coming off the river following the exhilaration, immersion, trauma, then tragedy, Al wrote in his first message to his community, I quote:
Karen and I focused on teaching our children to be resilient, to change and today was an incredible testament to that.
How impressive that resilience has been. Supported by this community, Al has wrapped his arms around his family and doggedly defended the space they need to grieve and survive. Al is the strongest and most capable man that I know and so they will survive and, in time, thrive.
Karen grew up in the Adelaide Hills and came to Tasmania to see our wilds and the adventures they provide. She soon met Al and they began to settle, buying a block of land on the southern slopes of Kunanyi and beginning to establish a life and community together.
Interrupted by sojourns to outback Australia to manage remote conservation properties, Karen and Al systematically built a family, careers and a spectacular home at Neika. Unexpectedly falling pregnant with Asher in remote outback Queensland, the experience of pregnancy and young motherhood in the Simpson Desert sands prompted Karen’s first book Spinifex Baby, a personal reflection on the challenges that came, not with the 45°C heat and the incessant flies, but with the deepest fears that resided within themselves.
Spinifex Baby won the 2014 Finch Memorial Prize open to unpublished non-fiction memoirs. A prolific writer, Karen maintained a blog, capturing heartfelt moments in everyday life and the extraordinary things she did with people seemingly every day. The success of Spinfex Baby helped promote her second published work in 2022, Daughter of the Plateau, a fictional tale of young girl, Manna, growing up on the harsh Tasmanian central plateau with no mother and a cold distant father. Writing of the significance of nature, the book was described as a love letter to Tasmania’s immense landscapes and powerful coasts. Nature anchored Karen on so many levels.
As a teacher, she created confidence and connections through program‑based pedagogy in the garden, in the classroom and through story circles. Inspired by oral traditions used by Indigenous and other people of the world over, bonding with their students and empowering them to embrace language and learning came easier in the outdoors, in a circle and with a generous offer to engage on their own terms.
Former Margate Primary principal, Kate Slater, summed up Karen’s centrality and success, and I quote:
Karen was the golden thread that connected us. From her heart to others, to nature and then to herself. She was our teacher, mentor and coach.
Karen was loved as a central axis around whom so many good things moved, with grace, value, love and success. So, Karen was well celebrated. Three weekends ago, hundreds gathered on the beach at her home in Coningham to honour and remember all that Karen meant and made. Based around themes including outdoors, nature, poetry, lanterns, music, colour and community, the celebration was a special and apt farewell for someone who touched and will forever sit within the hearts of so many.
My love and strength is with Al and the kids for their journey to come. Vale, Karen. Thank you for the gifts that will keep giving and the presence and positivity you brought to this world.
