The Memory of Trees

Viki Cramer

Description

Most Australians see their world through eucalypts. From towering forests to straggly woodlands, in city parks, by the coast and in the bush, these are the trees that inhabit our familiar landscapes and national psyche. Yet the resilience of our eucalypt ecosystems is being tested by logging and land clearing, disease and drought, fire and climate change. In many places they are a faded remnant of those known by past generations. How important is the memory of these trees?
In search of answers, Viki Cramer takes us on a journey through the richest botanical corner of the continent, exploring forests of rugged jarrah and majestic karri, woodlands of enduring salmon gum and burnished-bark gimlet. Spending time with the people caring for these precious places, she interrogates the decisions of the past, takes a measure of the present and glimpses hope for the landscapes of tomorrow.
The Memory of Trees will make you look anew at the trees and environments that sustain us and show the many ways that, together, we can ensure their future.

Sujets

• Rainforests
• Habitats
• Forests
• Ecosystems
• Sciences et techniques
• Australia Occidental
• Cressida Campbell
• Western Australia
• Australie-Occidentale
• Nature

Informations

• Publié par: Thames & Hudson Australia Pty Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781760762377
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Most Australians see their world through eucalypts. From towering forests to straggly woodlands, in city parks, by the coast and in the bush, these are the trees that inhabit our familiar landscapes and national psyche. Yet the resilience of our eucalypt ecosystems is being tested by logging and land clearing, disease and drought, fire and climate change. In many places they are a faded remnant of those known by past generations. How important is the memory of these trees?
In search of answers, Viki Cramer takes us on a journey through the richest botanical corner of the continent, exploring forests of rugged jarrah and majestic karri, woodlands of enduring salmon gum and burnished-bark gimlet. Spending time with the people caring for these precious places, Cramer interrogates the decisions of the past, takes a measure of the present and glimpses hope for the landscapes of tomorrow.
The Memory of Trees will make you look anew at the trees and environments that sustain us and shows the many ways that, together, we can ensure their future.
-
Viki Cramer is a writer and ecologist who lives on Noongar Country in the south-west of Western Australia. In 2021 she was awarded a Dahl Fellowship from Eucalypt Australia.
This brilliant ecological history of south-west Western Australia is a testament to the area s beauty and diversity, as well as a calling to account of the sustained failures in stewardship since white colonisation. The Memory of Trees celebrates the local while speaking to the global: the power of trees and community, and the urgent need to take responsibility for the landscapes that sustain us.
-Inga Simpson

For Margaret and Luis, my roots and branches.
Note on the spelling of Noongar and Ngadju words
Noongar (the people of the south-west of Western Australia) are made up of fourteen dialectal groups, with each group connected to a particular geographic area and its associated ecosystems. These groups are Amangu, Yued/Yuat, Whadjuk/Wajuk, Binjareb/Pinjarup, Wardandi, Balardong/Ballardong, Nyakinyaki, Wilman, Ganeang, Bibulmun/Piblemen, Mineng, Goreng, Wudjari and Njunga. The Noongar Language Centre states that there may have been between three and fifteen Noongar dialects at the time of European colonisation. Many words are similar between the dialects but may be pronounced slightly differently. Noongar language also contains vowel and consonant sounds not found in English. This diversity and difference are reflected in many Noongar words having alternative spellings when transcribed into the Latin alphabet. For example, Noongar may also be spelt Nyungar, Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah or Yunga. For consistency throughout the text, I have used the spelling of Noongar words as given on the Kaartdijin Noongar - Noongar Knowledge website of the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council ( noongarculture.org.au ).
Ngadju is a language of the southern Goldfields region of Western Australia, with speakers centred around Norseman and east to Balladonia. The Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre ( wangka.com.au ) states that the Ngadju language is severely endangered. Spelling of Ngadju words in the text have been taken from Ngadju Kala: Ngadju Fire Knowledge and Contemporary Fire Management in the Great Western Woodlands , published by CSIRO in 2013.
Contents
Map of south-west Western Australia
Chapter 1 The catena
Chapter 2 Surviving in one place
Chapter 3 The illimitable forest
Chapter 4 Of virgins and veterans
Chapter 5 The target and the tension
Chapter 6 Islands of yesterday
Chapter 7 The last great woodland
Chapter 8 Whatever happened to salinity?
Chapter 9 Healing land, healing people
Chapter 10 A different kind of love
Common and scientific names of plant species referred to in the text
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
When we destroy trees, we destroy ourselves.
Jakelin Troy
Map of south-west Western Australia
CHAPTER ONE
The catena
The sun has sunk low to the horizon but the temperature remains defiant. The dog can wait no longer so we leave the house and cross the road to the park to begin our circumnavigations. The air is heavy and still, pressing hot against my cheek like the breath of an unwelcome confidante, resisting my legs as I wade through it. We meander on and off the concrete path. The dog follows his nose and I follow the canopy line of the trees, seeking out their cool shade.
I have walked among these trees for so many years now that their life stories are intertwined with my own. There s the towering tuart, ( Eucalyptus gomphocephala ) blown apart by lightning on the day I fell off the ladder while trying to clear the gutter amid the downpour of a summer storm, while my then-toddler son screamed in fear and fury through the screen door. I was not injured and, though decapitated, the tuart made an astonishing recovery. We thought it was done for. There s the slender banksia ( Banksia attenuata ), with open branches held at amenable angles, the first tree I lifted my son up into to climb. I fear every summer will be its last, as its scant leaves fade dull brown and brittle, but each mid-winter it regains its colour. Just beyond, there s the small and shapely tuart by the rust-coloured rock where we stood with the wedding celebrant as our friends semicircled us, champagne or beer in hand. The flower buds of a tuart are shaped like an ice-cream cone bearing a single, perfectly domed scoop. There was once a grand old grass tree here too, tall and skirted with a heavy petticoat of dead leaves. Its crown has since toppled and been carted away by the local council. On the low corner near our house is a grove of marri ( Corymbia calophylla) , bloodwoods with tessellated bark. They always make me think of witches, with the distinctive curve of their gnarled branches held out from their trunk like the raised arms and arthritic hands and fingers of a crone conjuring over a crystal ball. They stand in a coven of animated conversation, the ground beneath them knobbly with a carpet of their fallen fruit, so chunky in size they are known locally as honky nuts .This summer the marri flowered with such abundance that their pale blossoms outshone the lights of any Christmas tree. Later, flocks of Carnaby s black cockatoos will descend to chomp and crunch the marri fruits before daintily plucking out the seeds with their searching tongues. I swear I have seen them grasp the topped nuts in their claws and lift them like a chalice to their beaks, drinking down a stream of seeds.
There are a few hulking dark pines in the corner near the car park and, on the corner opposite, an eclectic arboretum of eucalypts from other places planted in a long-armed right-angle. Some I can easily identify from books and websites. The red ironbark ( Eucalyptus sideroxylon ) and yellow gum ( Eucalyptus leucoxylon ) from south-eastern Australia are common street trees in my neighbourhood. When they flower, their canopies become a foliage diamant , studded with coral-pink blossoms. There s a warted yate ( Eucalyptus megacornuta ) from the far south of Western Australia, its long flower buds reminiscent of a cockatoo s rough tongue and its flowers of a yellow anemone. There are trees I feel are river red gums ( Eucalyptus camaldulensis ), familiar to me from the banks of the slow-flowing rivers of inland Queensland, and a species I once studied, but so widespread across the continent and varied that seven subspecies have been described. I collect leaves, flower buds and fruits from the ground and use an online identification key just to be sure. I snap off small branches bearing glossy olive-green leaves from a short tree with a Y-shaped trunk, and use the key to reveal long-flowered marlock ( Eucalyptus macrandra ).There are the ramrod trunks, mottled with smooth dusk-pink bark, of what I think to be lemon-scented gums ( Corymbia citriodora ), native to tropical and temperate eastern Australia. Or they could be spotted gums ( Corymbia maculata ). Their lower branches are too high, and so I search day after day for a sprig of fresh leaves fallen to the ground. I crush a pliant young leaf between my fingers and it releases a rush of the scent of citrus - citriodora . And then there are the other trees I pass as I do other dog-walkers: I acknowledge them with a smile, but do not know their name.
A small grove of olive trees drops fruit the colour of a deep bruise onto the concrete path. Before it became surrounded by the brick and tile of late 1960s suburbia, this square of land was once part of a smallholding, one of many carved out of a 400-hectare bullock paddock. Before that it was coastal forest, and most of the trees here - tuart, jarrah, marri, banksia, sheoak, peppermint and balga (grass tree) - are from this place. I leave the path where it curves before the line of olive trees, and walk behind a patch of bush fenced and replanted by the local council. Here, hidden away in the loneliest corner of the park, is a tuart made up of three great trunks and one lesser one, rough with grey bark. They are arranged like the toes on a foot of one of the juvenile magpies I often see lying prone in play with a sibling. I walk this way just to greet it. I have no story for this tree. I like to take a moment to appreciate its old age and quiet dignity. In the past this tree might have been revered for the power of its presence, but now people park their cars under it or drive past without turning their heads, urgent to get home. Some days my head is full of words and I only give it a passing nod. Some days I have a feeling that, if I sat with it a while, it might have a story to share with me.
I live on Whadjuk boodja - Whadjuk land - which stretches along the Swan Coastal Plain from Yanchep in the north to Derbal Nara (Cockburn Sound) in the south, east across the Darling Scarp and west into the Indian Ocean around Wadjemup (Rottnest Island). You might know this land as the Perth metr