Monthly Archives: December 2019

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.

QUEENSLAND DROUGHT, BRISBANE DOWNPOUR!

Posted on by
Reply

QUEENSLAND in Drought, Brisbane in flood! Now if that isn’t ironic!

I spoke to a mate in Brisbane yesterday; his suburb is soaked, he’s squelching about in his tiny back yard, which at least produces a few bananas.

Most back yards in the new suburbs are non-existent; gutters touch neighbour’s gutters, concrete in between. No garden, as such, and certainly no veggie-patch.

All that glorious rain, wasted on sterile suburbs, run-off into drains, into the ocean: wasted.

City folk can’t believe there’s a Queensland drought. How can they? Their suburb is flooded! Of all places for the rain to fall, on millions of acres of concrete and bitumen…….bloody typical. My drinking-water is nearly gone, and their car is a sodden write-off. My car can never rust, the way things are going.

Strange that supposedly good areas for rainfall, the high hilly areas that force the clouds to drop their burden, seem to be neglected now by rain. But in Brisbane, of all places……all that rain, and none in the dams, because there are none. What I could do with that run-off! Don’t they know there’s a Queensland drought?

My friend said the storm was exciting and marvellous, but complained about all the mess. What I’d give for a bit of his mess; the cracks in the ground here are cavernous, they’d take all his run-off and more, and still leave a foot of dust.

So the city folk are blase about this dying country……………..

                           ……………….they’ll get the message, and soon. Queensland drought?

Queensland drought: THE SHAME OF FIRE.

Posted on by
Reply

Queensland drought; bush-fire: the eradication of a country’s fauna and flora.

It’s a conundrum, a contradiction, an oxymoron; a green drought, back-burning  for safety, firing to prevent fire, etc.. We have to live with fire in the bush, it seems; there’s no avoiding it. The human fascination with fire. The fire-bugs amongst firemen. The deliberately-lit bush, by both children and adults. Burning by the aboriginal tribes for food:easy pickings, saves much hunting-effort.

Fire has been ravaging Australia for 60,000 years. Changing all environments for the worse, from coast to coast. Impoverishing biodiversity. We may never know the number of plant and animal species lost to fire since humans first colonised this country. Who knows what was the extent of dense tropical forests and rich grasslands before ‘man’ first committed his depredations? The sparse fossil evidence is of huge creatures filling every niche from plains to jungle; creatures which could never survive today on our desiccated landscape.

A landscape created entirely by fire-stick. We humans cannot resist a good fire. Stand with your back to the wind, drop an ember from the carefully-tended fire-pot; watch the destruction, listen to the roar and crackle of the flames, the millions of tons of vegetation consumed with absolutely no effort. Later, when the ground is free of embers, collect the singed and gasping creatures, sufficient for the whole tribe to further roast.

Only a certain amount of burned, crippled food can be eaten. The rest goes to waste. The fire rages on. There’s no one to stop it, only a natural barrier, a dry creek, a rocky bluff. Eventually it will die out, after it has destroyed a vast area, as it has done time and time again over the millennia since the invasion of humans.

Fire has destroyed this continent, and the destruction continues. The lifeless soil of the desert, bereft of all humus and all nutrients is the result of fire. A dense forest can be reduced to a bare plain of sterile ground in a very short time, by constant burning. Eventually nothing will grow there, nothing that can be burned.

Nurture a fragment of rain forest, surviving in a cleft hillside, a hill naked except for sparse eucalypt and wattle. Cancel all fire from that hill. Do nothing else. Nothing will happen, perhaps for years, then rain will come. The hill will bloom, the scrub will become leafy for a while. But seedlings from the tiny rain forest nursery will take root amongst the fire-raddled scrub, and grow up green and strong in the field of grey. Deep-rooted, shady, mulch-creating species that will eventually overpower  the fire-trees and cover the entire hill. The process would take only 200, 300 years.

In certain types of country, for example around the Bunya Mountains, the original dense forest species are hard to eradicate. Cleared hillsides sprout the native species very quickly, before the fire-trees have a chance to take hold. A cleared area will return to its original diversity within 100 years, given ‘neglect’. Assume neglect implies re-afforestation. Perhaps because the Bunyas generate vast numbers of wind-blown seeds, any cleared area quickly regenerates.

But look; now the Bunyas are burning, and all because of Man. Sure, lightning is sometimes to blame, but we humans are the root cause of loss of habitat. Second in importance to protecting housing and infrastructure, is the saving of the diverse forest. Bugger the gum-weeds, protect the Buyas, Mt Glorious and Nebo jungle, Springbrook, Tambourine. Although most of the animal species have been eradicated centuries ago, the seed-bank of those areas is vital. And that is just in the Brisbane environs.

We cannot afford to lose those areas through fire. Fire which etches away at the peripheries of the Great Remnants year by year.

The koala hangs on by a thread. How it has survived so far is a mystery. Such a creature has only one advantage: it can eat gum-leaves. It has adapted to survive solely on eucalypts. That advantage has kept it going since humans interfered with its habitat but at what cost? Every human-lit fire killed all the koalas within the burned area, which would within a year or so be re-colonised by the un-burned  neighbours. There are now few koalas left to re-populate; fire and de-forestation will finally exterminate the few survivors.

At a time when Australia had no humans, say 50, 60,000 years ago, the koala may well have been a different creature. Its present diet of gum-leaves is due to the burning of the original forest habitat. The lack of nutrients now available has caused the koala brain to shrink within its skull, and the little creature to become a fragile shadow of its former robust physiognomy.

Endless artificial, human-induced fire, has reduced the iconic koala to its present sad state; both its body and its environment impoverished. Perhaps, before the arrival of the fire-stick, the little sleepy-eyed, slow-moving creature was a robust, intelligent and active marsupial, with a brain more than twice the size, and a strong and vigorous body. A similar creature to the ground-dwelling wombat, which has retained its body-mass and intelligence, along with its diet.

Not just koalas. The magnificent remnants of the vast Australian jungle harbour much diversity. Should fire destroy those areas finally, after so many thousands of years, we have only ourselves to blame. being cavalier with our flames, and neglect of our duty to protect.

As with virtually all the ailments affecting this planet, humans are to blame, and overpopulation the accelerant . Even the tiny and diverse groups of tribespeople arriving by boat 50,000 years ago had a devastating effect on the fauna and flora of the place we now call Australia. And perhaps even the weather. This Queensland drought had its seed sown all that time ago, with the loss of the giant herbivores and endless, endless burning of the environment.

The Queensland and New South Wales drought, and the droughts that have affected the entire country for millennia, are going to oust us in the long run, unless we can put a stop to this maniacal burning.

Rain forest alone is the final barrier to burning of the bush. We must protect and enlarge that forest at all cost. We must spend this dwindling coal-bonanza on fleets of water-bombing aircraft stationed and ready at all major centres, to protect us AND the environment we rely on. An endless Queensland drought, such as we may at present be experiencing, will soon make it impossible for us to continue surviving. We can’t head to the hills; only to the far north and south………

                                ………………..Tassie here I come!

Queensland drought: THE VIABILITY OF AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITIES DEPENDENT ON RAINFALL

Posted on by
Reply

CAN OUR COMMUNITIES SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE?  First published September 2019.

SURE, ARTIFICIAL, EXTERNALLY-FUNDED COMMUNITIES CAN SURVIVE in hostile environments; in Nevada, Dubai, Antarctica, for example, but what of our towns in Australia, when suddenly deprived of water?

Within three months of the start of this Queensland drought, water is being tankered-in to many townships.

The ramification of this current weather-stasis has not yet dawned on the Australian people. In particular, it has not impinged on the combined conscience of politicians. In general, it does not occupy space in newspapers, radio, television, or the internet. Yet.

Trucking water to a town! What? No alarm-bells ringing? No future foreseen?

Of course it had to be done: absolutely necessary, but the situation is more serious, the problem far greater than the immediate requirements of a township.

Extrapolate, extrapolate. Suppose this Queensland drought does NOT break. There is science to support open-endedness to this current climate period. There is no prediction of drought-breaking rain at any specific future. Right now, all media and policy should be focused on the possibility that water-supply is no longer guaranteed for the majority of settlements in Australia.

Not all centres of population are affected. The far North and South are at present beyond this Prolonged Weather Stasis pattern, and perhaps will receive higher-than-average rainfall. It is inevitable that these areas will suffer a major surge in growth due to the evacuation of waterless communities elsewhere. Curiously, the Northern Territory is losing population right now, perhaps because of the soaring temperatures of climate change, but its rainfall is so far guaranteed.

Bearing in mind the above, consider the ramification aspect.

Immediately, those towns shipping-in water will have reduced real-estate values. Likewise with fire-affected rural areas. The longer the drought, the worse the outlook. Jobs, infrastructure and population will disappear along with dam-levels Townships will become deserted within a surprisingly short time. It has happened before; there are ghost-towns in Australia, and some as a result of drought. 

Disaster is already near for dairy farmers, and this is no fear-mongering, it is happening right now. Small-crops, nurseries and orchards are in immediate danger, and bores are running dry. What on Earth will replace bore-water?

Folk being what they are, hope will have the majority hanging-on in the dogged expectation of better times. And it would certainly take courage to assess the situation critically and calmly, and conclude that a quick exit would be wise and beneficial.

We have experienced terrible hope-destroying drought in Australia before; read Henry Lawson for the awful tragedy affecting selectors. But this drought and its cause may be a situation never-before experienced by Europeans, and may even be the reason the Aboriginal population became peripatetic, forsaking farm practice.

The frustratingly-variable rainfall we all experience in Australia, and are resigned to, may be on the cusp of change for the worse: a sudden and permanent decrease. It is possible that the country has been through many similar episodes, and that the cause is continent-wide and on-going burning by humans, for 50,000 years. (See blog: ‘Will it ever rain again in Qld?)

The drying episodes are self-accelerating. After each prolonged drought, that is, a drought of longer than six months or much more, the desiccation of soil-moisture reaches a depth such that even deep-rooted species fail, never to return. We are perhaps experiencing such a hiatus. We must include ourselves, as a deep-rooted species. There is a limit to our hanging-on. At present there are no agencies stating that the drought WILL break: it will rain again, but that’s not the same thing. Will the ground-water ever be replaced, the bores run as before?

As with other recent blogs on this vital and current theme, I hope to hell I’m wrong. It would be the most marvellous relief to be proved to be a fear-mongering idiot, as a vast weather system rolls across the entire continent carrying steady, solid rain for week after week. No good praying, no good wishing, no good putting down more bores. If the rain does come, plant trees, trees, trees. And NOT eucalypts. They are  weeds, not trees.

Post Script, 12th December 2019: What a difference a few months makes to awareness of the severity of the situation. All news is now full of the drought. ABC news/weather yesterday mentioned ‘no break in the current pattern until April 2020. This is an increase by two months of the previous estimate. This putative date takes us past the period of our ‘normal’ summer rains and into what used to be the ‘dry’ winter.

The winter/summer rain patterns have broken down during the past decades; coastal Qld. and NSW no longer seem to experience the xmas thunderstorm deluges, nor the dry months of winter, although this concept is very much of the author’s memory. Nevertheless, should the dams and the soil continue desiccating, what then?

Seriously, no rain for a further five months, and an open-ended forecast, is a reason for drastic action by governments AND individuals. Think, think: what will YOU do?

Queensland drought: THE GRAB-BAG climate in Australia

Posted on by
Reply

THE GRAB-BAG: symptom of the Queensland drought.

I SAILED ABOUT THE PLACE FOR TEN YEARS, in a lovely old ketch-rigged double-ender. Not in an adventurous way, mostly down the coast and back, seldom out of sight of land.

For fear of disaster, an ever-present trepidation affecting all wise sailors, I carried a grab-bag. A bag containing essentials necessary when abandoning ship and taking to the inflatable. Top of the list was the EPIRB. I won’t list the other contents, but you can imagine great thought went into the selection, and the immediate accessibility and portability of The Bag.

Those days are over for me, and a modern grab-bag now contains fantastic technology.

Well, I thought those days were over, but now, on hitherto safe dry land, the fear of disaster returns, and the grab-bag is ready again.

Now, today, the contents of the grab-bag are stacked near the back door, and they won’t fit into a bag, but must nevertheless be loaded into the car in a few minutes, ready to abandon ship.

The ship, in this case the house, could disappear in a roar of fifty-metre flame within minutes of any warning, though hopefully within hours. But you never know. Who will wake you in the dead of night?

The exit must be fast. No time for decision-making; choice must have been decided and packed in advance. What to take? Too late, too late, too late; just go, go go.

Who would have thought, this time last year, that such a situation could come about? What previous weather-pattern in our short European history could have set an example, a warning of possibility? There have been awful, prolonged Queensland drought in the past, but this looks different. This may be pattern-breaking; a drought that continues, continues.

In our subconcious, we wait for Christmas thunderstorms; every afternoon without fail. Without fail……..

Then the January rains, when the whole world is hot, and damp, and mouldy, the creeks are high and roofs leaking.

But this Christmas and January may be different. January, February and March may go past with only the occasional local wetting. Then on into the year, a year of no hope, hopeless. Our hope-gland run dry through over-use. Then what?

Already after just over three months since a warning from the BOM, (not broadcast, but simply stated) the possibilities are being examined by everyone. Some political parties are of course still in denial even now. The country is not yet on a war-footing, but soon……could this be the worst Queensland drought on record?

The prospect is ruinous. Turn off the rain, what survives?