A long-time resident of Tasmania, Geoff Parr was born in Earlwood, NSW, in 1933. A tertiary art teacher for 35 years, he is Professor Emeritus of Art and an Honorary Research Associate at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania. During the 1970's Parr was a member of the Lake Pedder Action Committee, the United Tasmania Group, and the Council of the Australian Conservation Foundation. In 1983 he was one of those arrested and charged, while protesting against the Lower Gordon Scheme.

I was at Lake Pedder in January 1972 when I heard the news that Olegas Truchanas had died in a canoeing accident on the upper reaches of the Gordon River. It was Olegas who had introduced me to the old Lake Pedder through one of his many audio-visual public presentations. Pedder so moved him that he called it ‘his lake’. He used the possessive ‘his’ in a protective sense. Yet within 18 months of his death, his lake was lost. That unique experience which so moved him was gone.

The Forest of Stumps is a conservation statement about past losses and about the struggle to save old growth forests. It is dedicated to those who have told of the incalculable value of still and remote places.

Geoff Parr 2002