T he forestry workers took unusual care as they picked their way through the mossy undergrowth of a Tasmanian forest. They were carrying a small group of furries – humans in animal suits that can cost thousands of dollars – mindful of not letting any tails drag in the mud. Hired as production crew for the day, they were more used to hearing the drone of heavy logging machinery than the moans of animal lust. Once the furries were in place, the director closed the set so that they could film their group sex scene in private.
“They were just adorable. Even when they’re doing adult acts, it still just looks really cute and kind of innocuous,” artist Kirsha Kaechele says.
This fluffy tableau is one of 12 featured in OnlyFerns, Kaechele’s “artwork-cum-economic engine intended to protect Tasmania’s ancient forests”. Known by the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) as its first lady (she is married to the museum’s founder, David Walsh), Kaechele will be familiar to readers who followed her captivating 2024 discrimination case against the Mona’s Ladies Lounge .
OnlyFerns is similarly headline-friendly: an OnlyFans portal through which people pay to view forest-themed kink videos set in Tasmanian sawmills and forests (private ones, since OnlyFans doesn’t allow the filming of adult content in public places). The revenue is intended to compensate forest workers for not felling trees; instead, Kaechele says, they will be paid to create boardwalks and artwork in the logging coupes of old growth forests, in an attempt to save those sites from destruction .
Mona and Kaechele covered all production costs, including paying the creators and crew for the videos, and producing an accompanying documentary and book. Sawmills will be employed to manufacture the artwork, and paying the loggers is paramount too. “Ensuring that there are no hours lost is critical to the success of the project,” she says. “Most environmental campaigns have set up an us-them scenario, where workers are excluded from protection. That is not pragmatic, it ruffles feathers. And it is inelegant.”
Sustainable Timber Tasmania, formerly Forestry Tasmania, said in a statement that they are “having discussions with Mona about their ambitions in relation to forest management … but we are also mindful that we need to remain within our charter as a Government Business Enterprise.” They praised Kirsha’s project as “an amazing initiative that has brought stakeholders together and created time and space for an important conversation about forests and timber production.”
As for the revenue that will be raised, there’s no way of knowing in advance how many viewers the adult videos will attract. “The scale of what we build will depend on our success (and the generosity of my husband and other philanthropists who may or may not support it by subscribing),” Kaechele says.
And there have been questions raised by environmental groups about collaborating with the logging industry at all.
Kaechele has a knack for a playful bait and switch, with one recent example being Eat the Problem : a feast, cookbook and ABC TV series focused on turning maligned native species into spectacular dishes in the name of environmental sustainability. For OnlyFerns, she looked to the simple premise that sex sells.
Her use of the OnlyFans platform has echoes of the recent collaboration between UK adult entertainment creator Lily Phillip and the climate advocacy film group Yellow Dot Studios , to make erotic content about climate change. Along the same lines, many TikTok creators are using the #GRWM (“get ready with me”) format to discuss complex topics such as abortion rights while applying their makeup.
Around twenty OnlyFans content creators flew into Burnie for their shoots, accommodated by a town local to the sawmills. One creator, Kellie Panther, who has a forked tongue among other body modifications, recalls boarding the small plane and looking around at the other passengers as everyone offered a knowing, “Oh, hey.”
Role playing sawmill workers and dirty, dirty hippies is one way to explore the power dynamics in the long and bloody battle over Tasmania’s forests . In real life, Kaechele says, “both sides are so traumatised” – but she is straddling a line between them that has left some environmental groups unhappy.
OnlyFerns comes out of the Forest Congress, a body which Kaechele formed in 2023 to bring together conservationists, scientists, Palawa elders and representatives from the forestry industry. The work is ongoing – OnlyFerns is but one unfurling off-shoot – but the project has drawn criticism for not going far enough.
In July, upon its withdrawal from the congress, the Wilderness Society released a heated statement against collaborating with the logging industry, who they said had taken “zero steps … to correct their poor commercial and industrial practices”. The Bob Brown Foundation , which boycotted the Forest Congress from the start, called the project a “pro-logging plan”, adding that Kaechele’s agreement with loggers to protect “3 or 4%, labelled ‘old growth’ by the industry, leaves 96% of the forests to be clear-felled and incinerated along with their wildlife.
“Ending this tragedy is not performance art,” the statement continued. “It is a huge and serious challenge for Tasmania and Australia in an age of unprecedented environmental destruction.”
Announcing OnlyFerns on Instagram in April, Kaechele backed the philosophy behind her idea: “Many conservationists speak on the importance of transition, but they are yet to put forward a viable economic model.”
To the Guardian, she justifies the focus on old-growth forests. “We are selecting forests for which there is no doubt [on either side]. This is in the interest of building consensus, and of protecting the most precious irreplaceable and ancient ecosystems. Forests no one wants to see fall.
“Numerous sawmills hosted us, and these are the people who stand to lose,” she says. “If we protect old-growth forests, it’s their timber and their processing hours that’s at stake. So they’re incredibly generous to go on this journey, and I think it’s because I’ve been transparent the entire time. I said: ‘Here’s the deal. I want us to leave these old-growth forests standing. I want you to protect them. I want the villain to become the hero … but I don’t want it to impact you negatively. So how do we do this?’”
The artist’s outsider status is something she’s learned to leverage on her path of “radical diplomacy”. Her mother was an artist, her father a retired aerospace engineer turned Rolfing healer, who moved the family from Topanga Canyon in California to Guam in Micronesia when she was five, and the only white girl.
“I do tend to put myself into the middle of these spaces where I don’t belong, and then I’m so rewarded by making friends with the so-called enemy,” she says. “I like having my beliefs blown open.”
Panther, an OnlyFerns creator who lives in bushland on the outskirts of Melbourne, relished the chance to get involved, having worked as a stripper to fund her degree in environmental science. She was among many other creators walking the red carpet at last week’s opulent Melbourne premiere of a feature-length version of OnlyFerns: 18+, and invitation only.
In a vintage Twin Peaks styling, the scenes were stitched together with the through-line of Kaechele as the receptionist of a sex line at a sawmill, matching punters with their kinks. Panther plays a hippy activist being dragged through the mud by Rebel Roper, a shibari artist. Other characters include a “logger” in hi-vis being fellated among the ferns; and, in a nearby sawmill, a female dominatrix, who pegs an environmentalist amid the woodchips and heavy machinery.
In the cinema, the opening moments from each creator drew whoops of encouragement from the assembled crowd – but even the most seasoned stars fell silent during the more intense scenes. Every now and then a voice called out from the seats to break the tension: “Save the trees!”
