Category Archives: Brisbane forest land

EUCALYPTS: GUM TREES ARE FIRE TRASH

Posted on by
Reply

EUCALYPTS: GUM TREES ARE THE WEEDS THAT SPRING UP WHEN THE NATURAL VEGETATION IS ERADICATED BY FIRE.

Let us finally reject any romance attached to the eucalypts and related species in Australia. We now know that the reason why the endemic gum trees have replaced the natural forest in Australia:  FIRE. FIRE. FIRE.

The old bush stories of the 1800′s, dreamily pondering the never-ending scrub, while the billy boiled with a gum-leaf for flavour, and the grey-green leaves drooped sparsely from the straggly, shapeless, fire-ravaged trees, those stories never saw the cause of such desolation, and took a perverse rose-tinted nostalgia in what was assumed to be a natural habitat.

Not so.  That endless bush was, and is, a most unnatural condition. An artificial, impoverished environment brought about by thousands of generations of incendiarists, out for a cheap feed. Burning, burning, burning.

There are stories that the first settlers of this country, fifty, sixty thousand years ago, brought their agricultural heritage with them, and planted the crops of their native island homelands, and established static communities. Many tribes, from many lands; different languages and physiognomies. They brought their homeland habits with them, as the Europeans did just yesterday.

They discovered, who knows when, that their settlements became unviable, the climate unreliable, their farming inapplicable to this insecure continent. Who knows how long the giant aboriginal herbivores (and carnivores) survived the invading humans; obviously they were exterminated at some early stage, as were the moas and other large creatures of New Zealand. The New Zealand history is well documented, and similar events must have taken place in Australia thousands of years prior.

Perhaps, as in New Zealand, the early settlers neglected their homeland heritage, and lived for generations on the dopey megafauna, the huge creatures that had no fear of man, having never experienced such a rapacious creature. Easily approached and speared, or trapped and speared, or even then, so long ago, burned and speared.

Perhaps, as in New Zealand, many of the plants and domestic creatures brought to Australia from home villages across the oceans, were neglected and thus lost to future generations, because of the seemingly endless larder stocked with food-on-the-hoof. Apparently tame creatures waiting for slaughter.

Even in such an enormous continent as Australia, 50,000 years is plenty of time for invading humans to exterminate all the megafauna, all the small fearless birds and animals, leaving only those more difficult to catch, kill, or burn. Those creatures with a long training to avoid attack by flight or caution. The creatures, some of them, that survive today. Exterminate, too, vast territories of original vegetation, leaving just the eucalypts: gum trees, the fire trash.

We will never know just how huge was the diversity of fauna and flora in Australia, before the arrival of humans. Except for the northern rain-forest and isolated remnants elsewhere, the continent is utterly impoverished, and we have yet to come to terms with that reality.

HUMANITY IS AN EXTERMINATING CREATURE, AND RIGHT NOW, AS 2020 TICKS OVER, WE ARE STILL BURNING, BURNING, BURNING OUR ENVIRONMENT, BOTH BY DESIGN AND ACCIDENT.

EUCALYPTS: GUM TREES, ARE FIRE TRASH. We have created this endemic vegetation through our incendiary habit, and now the habit has become a necessity for the protection of our communities and farming. Burn the bush has become a mantra. We cannot live with the bush. We CAN live with the rain-forest, but our fire-habit now endangers the remnant rain- and vine-forest throughout the country.

Examine the characteristics of the eucalypt. As a large group of varied species, they have their stark beauty, and where there is adequate moisture, a sculptural, towering presence. Like many plants we call weeds, though, under certain conditions, (that is, fire), they have the ability to not only take-over the landscape, but to strip the soil of nutrients and humus, and open it up to erosion and ultimate desertification; a desert of sparse, exposed monoculture.

A eucalypt desert is self-perpetuating. It renders the environment unsuitable for other tree-types. Its mode of growth takes advantage of sparse rainfall; rapid germination from fire-resistant seed after rain, and results in dense masses of saplings, reaching skyward at great speed whilst moisture lasts. Then, as the soil dries, closing-down and sealing-off, to await the next rain. Most saplings die before then. The remainder, thinly-spaced, hang on, and hang on; growing, then waiting. The minimum survival activity. There is no shade beneath a gum tree.  As the trees mature, in their shapeless, stunted way, they yearly drop sheaths of sterile bark, twigs, branches and boughs, to litter the lifeless gravel beneath; the fire-load that creates no mulch and eradicates all opposition: the dangerous tinder we must burn for our safety. And so we promote and continue the cycle of desertification of the environment.

The fire-risk to the rural areas of Australia was created thousands of years ago, by fire, and now we must exacerbate the situation by burning the dangerous  fuel-load, the eucalypts, the gum trees, the fire trash.  Is it ever possible to reverse this cycle?

YES……….

TO REVERSE THE CYCLE, PLANT RAIN-FOREST, AND PROTECT IT.

Protect it as we try to protect our houses and crops. Eradicate the gum trees, the fire trash, from our urban peripheries, one step at a time, acre by acre, with buffer-zones of grass-land between, and plant fire-resistant shade-trees initially next to the settlements. Even grass-land enriches the soil with mulch. Who would object to swapping the gums for giant figs?

As a demonstration of ignorance of the recent past, some thirty years ago certain rural housing settlements were encouraged to plant (instead of the natural local rain-forest) eucalypt species on their acre-lots. The tiny wisps of tube-culture were offered free; the offer was taken-up by most households, and close-planted, usually on the periphery of what had been cleared farm-land lots.

THE WRONG TREES, IN THE WRONG PLACE, IN THE WRONG ENVIRONMENT.

Those innocently-planted gum trees, the fire trash, are now a gigantic menace, an enormous risk to the householders and the community. Ineradicable because of the staggering cost of removal, yet a constant danger. No-one can afford to eliminate even one of these huge weeds, and many houses are surrounded by dozens of them, at the instigation of a misguided government program. And this was relatively recent.

Even now, eucalypts are being planted where rain-forest species belong. This must stop, and the process reversed. I know of small remnants of original forest that have never been cleared; a few acres here and there, in various localities. To see them is to understand how they survive today with no particular protection or maintenance. Firstly, there is no undergrowth that can burn. There is open space under the canopy, in deep shadow. Secondly, fire-weeds such as lantana and gum seedlings are shaded out. Thirdly, the ground is covered in deep, moist mulch, unlike the sterile gravel of eucalypt tracts. This mulch is protected by, and protects the very forest that created it. No passing incendiarist could set fire to these remnants.

Now if those remnants were un-bounded, their seedlings would spread out from the protection of the parent forest and eventually overpower the scrub. THIS IS THE VEGETATION WE NEED TO ESTABLISH AROUND OUR COMMUNITIES. At a suitable distance, of course. No-one wants to live under giant shade trees, and if you disagree, try the experience; the mould, the blocked gutters, the gloom, the rusting vehicles and stained washing! Ah, but as a playground, and a protection, and a rain-maker……….

Back to the message. Gum trees are fire trash. Eradicate them from our environment a bit at a time. Remember; one mature gum tree can seed ten hectares of grassland, and the saplings reach five metres in five years, and burn, and burn and burn. But will not die. Everything else will die, including the grass, the land, the soil, and the native creatures. See how quickly farmland reverts to sterile scrub; all the pioneering effort wasted, obliterated. If farmland is to be reverted to forest, it must be rainforest, not eucalypt.

Lets re-establish our heritage forest species, eradicate the fire weeds, and reverse the process of impoverishment of our environment, starting now, right in our neighbourhood.

Local councils: help us , nurseries: grow us the trees……..THE TREES WE NEED.

Mount Coot-tha Tracks

Posted on by
Reply

THE BUSH AT BRISBANE’S DOORSTEP

Over forty years ago I started exploring Mt. Coot-tha; it’s forest, creeks and tracks.

It was and is a neglected area, ravaged by constant burn-offs and the consequent erosion, however, on my weekly visits I was sure to see wallabies and the occasional kangaroo, and massive lace monitors rending the eucalypt bark in their attempts to hide from my curiosity.

The place has changed little from my early visits, but the old barbed-wire fences that once criss-crossed the hills have now disappeared, and the mysterious concrete slabs, pads for long-forgotten buildings, are mostly obliterated by loose gravel and moss.  Old gold workings also have mostly been smoothed-out by the years, and the permanent car-bodies sink lower each season as the steel turns to oxide, exposing the cast-iron and non-ferrous parts.

There are still small sanctuaries of rain-forest in the gullies and along the bigger creek-beds; rain-forest that would once have covered the entire hill were it not for the fire-crazed habits of human populations, continuing to this day.  Fire seldom reaches these deep pockets of vegetation, as it always travels uphill.  Even spindly hoop pines survive in places.

Near the old chip factory, which was busy producing not chips but crisps during my early visits, on the other side of the road by the car park, is a dell of turf surrounded by silky oaks, with a big bauhinnia and a few exotics: once a garden of some forgotten homestead perhaps.  It is from here that it was and is my custom to walk and run a circuit of some five to ten kilometers, depending on enthusiasm.  The accompanying dog has been gone for twenty years, but I’m now lucky to have my dear friend to discuss with and complain as we shake off the city roar and fume and climb up the little track through the trees watching the horizon get lower and Moreton Bay stretching out behind us.  Soon the haze of traffic pollution hugging the city is below us and the air is clean, oxygenated, with nose-pleasing eucayptus, wattyl, greasy-grass, funghi, jequirity vine, and dozens of unseen plants.  Until……..

Until walkers appear ahead, on the track, their presence often preceded by artificial industrial smells mis-called de-odorants, bad perfumes, hair-sprays, after-shave: all so unsuited and alien to the fresh forest.  On a still day it may take a hundred metres before their stinkl dissipates, but then a new  alien presence reveals its offensive mark: the small track, just the width of one or two pairs of legs, widens out to three, four, five metres, the trees and saplings removed, the ground excavated, torn, shaped and rolled, a new and un-necessary highway coils through the scrub, its smoothness waiting for the first tropical downpour to wash the surface into gullies and gutters.

Old footpaths are now deliberately blocked with rocks, tree-litter and plastic notices warning ‘Track Closed’.  Fine outlooks are no longer available to new visitors, but regular hikers keep the way visible, stepping round the deposited rubbish and moving blockages.

Ten years or so ago, one tiny track I regularly used, along with many others, was the playground of a 1.2M Bobcat.  The track was widened to two metres and advertised with cute wooden signs on posts.  A couple of years later a change of heart ‘closed’ the track, for ‘revegetation’, though it wasn’t the walkers that had caused the erosion.  The signs rotted away and the regulars ignored the ‘closure’, until another regime suddenly decided to put an even bigger machine in to wipe out any revegetation that had actually taken place. Old hikers see all the contradictions and laugh.

The prettiest place on the rounds, which was a favourite resting-stop after galloping through the bush like an idiot, was the nearly-always running creek and waterfall.  There clear pools and wide rocks invited the walker to strip off shoes and sweaty socks and bathe red feet in the cool water.  If the waterfall was active I’d float nude in the pool at the bottom, a most luxurious pleasure in the height of the Brisbane summer.  I used to drink from the creek: crystal and icy, with a faint smokey taste.  The water flowed from the watershed at the kiosk road, unpolluted by any human activity, until that is, they built a public toilet at the source, with a septic overflow.  Fear of e. coli stopped my thirst-quenching, but I still chanced a swim after storms flushed the pool.  But not any more.

That paradise has gone. Where once was picnic on the water-smoothed rocks of millions of seasonal storms, where the creek cascaded into the pool below, overhung by islanded calystomens, where sweaty walkers bathed feet in water that flowed between rounded boulders in a stream-bed carved from the solid rock, where there was often a family or two, with children scrambling in the water and down by the pool, now, now, is an industrial fibre-glass gantry overshadowing all with steps and landings, fences and balustrades and warning signs, springing from massive concrete footings in the creek itself.  Not a delicate Japanese bridge upstream of the cascade, leaving the feature un-spoilt and the access free, but a factory fire-escape straddling the once-beautiful waterfall. Even the waterfall itself is now fenced with warnings and danger-signs. Brilliant.  Perhaps the entire hill should be out of bounds as a danger threatening the life of anyone that ventures there.

There are projects on which money could be spent on Mt. Coot-Tha, but the garden-gnome syndrome is always uppermost in planners’ minds: litter an untouched space with toys and foibles unrelated to their surrounds.  Someone with true vision stops the traffic, builds a pleasant mall with shady trees; the gnomers move in with junk to pack every space, never improving, just cluttering.  The hill is one such garden which will not be left alone; every year sees one more eyesore, someone’s pet scheme, and yet still the car bodies remain, the eroded areas worsen, lantana proliferates, the preventable fires kill the saplings and further scar the ravaged, stunted trees where once stood giants. An old shipping-container wrapped with plastic barrier-fencing was dumped on one lovely picnic area; others were also left on the tracks where they stayed for years, and have just been removed.

Lantana, which normally is unsuited to the poor dry soils of the hill, is getting a hold in many places, and no attempt has ever been made to eradicate it, despite the constant tinkering with tracks and chainsawing and fatuous raking around: the real work never gets done.  When it first appeared twenty years ago a couple of blokes could have kept it down: I doubt, now that it is common, that those policing the park even notice that it exists.

Some sensible works have been welcome; the barbeque fireplaces, a shelter or two, tapwater standpipes, the regular mowing of open ground, an occasional toilet.  But all toilets must be dry-composting systems, not septic, and Round-up as an alternative to weeding has killed a fine bottle-tree and is not wild-life safe.  New picnic places being built bristle with faults: lack of  parking, accessability, situated on the busy traffic road, with no individual barbeques: all concrete, steel, car fumes.

The massive bulldozing of forest tracks is continuing, though.  For whose benefit?  Burn-offs are still threatened, just when the previous few years’ good rain has grown an excellent crop of fine saplings now of 100mm diameter and unspoilt by fire: these new trees could be the future magnificent forest replacing the poor stunted trees of 100 deliberately-lit  destructions. The hill is easily managed for dousing accidental fire, being minutes from the city and airport.  Fifty years fire-free would see rain-forest climbing out of its sheltered enclaves, fine tall eucalypts, ground mulch cover preserving soil and moisture, and possibly the return of marsupials, if machinery is kept out.

Leave well alone.  But we know that’s too much to ask of the gnomers.

Mt. Coot-Tha forest park is a place where like-minded people visit to exercise, rehearse for bigger adventures in Nepal, walk the dog, or simply have a break in high, clear air amongst the gums and wattyls, away from traffic, industry, and the constant earthmoving of the city. Every person queried on council activities up there has been upset by the invasive crass interference of our small, wild area.