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.