TREE OF LIFE: a testament to endurance

While scientists, ecologists and their cohorts measure the inventory or losses to the natural order it’s writers, artists and activists who provide us with the vision of wonder and humility that may help us reach a rapprochement to co-exist with a world we have wilfully subjugated to the point of imminent collapse.

As the great environmentalist David Attenborough pointed out: ‘We depend upon the natural world for every mouthful of food we eat and every lungful of air we breathe.’

As the tragic loss of species and habitat continues to mount, books have begun to appear telling us of ways in which the natural world communicates. In Richard Powers’ Overstory, and Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, we are told of the complex underground web of fungal threads known as mycorrhiza that allow trees to feed each other, create immune systems, store resources, act as families protecting young and old as well as sending warning signals to others. A case in point being a giraffe about to browse on an African acacia prompting the tree to release a chemical scent into the air warning other trees to activate their defence strategy by synthesising toxic chemicals to deter the browser.

In his introduction to The Hidden Life of Trees, Tim Flannery pointed out: ‘The most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in the forest care for each other, sometimes going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive.’

As we take stock of the great losses that occurred in the 2019-2020 bushfires, it’s sobering to look back at some of the irreparable acts of environmental vandalism that have reshaped the national landscape. For instance, it has been estimated that 15 billion trees have been cleared from the Murray-Darling Basin to make way for agri-business, a grossly unsustainable enterprise that decimated the lives and culture of First Nations people throughout the region. The few great River Red gums, Eucalyptus camaldulensis that were spared remain as a testament to what was one of the greatest diverse inland river systems and waterways on the planet.

In the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, another catastrophe took place. The unique region was created by the Wollumbin Volcano located around Mt Warning (Wollumbin) to the west of Murwillumbah. The rich red soil deposits that characterised the place sustained the largest sub-tropical lowland rainforest in eastern Australia – Gondwana. All that changed with European settlement, and by 1880, less than 1% of The Big Scrub remained from an estimated 900 square kilometres that centred on the Bundjalung nation.

With no comprehension of this vast natural system, the colonial administrators made it mandatory for 6