White Beech: The Rainforest Years

by Germaine Greer

  Landcare’s logo is a pair of green hands cradling a shape that resembles the outline of Australia.

  ‘If I thought I’d have to get into bed with Rio Tinto and Alcoa I’d cut my throat. This is exactly what I mean. A set-up like Landcare gives ruthless corporations the chance to pass themselves off as benign. And a cheap chance at that. Volunteers cost a lot less than advertising agencies.’

  ‘If the Landcare deal wasn’t a bargain, the corporate sponsors wouldn’t go for it,’ Jane said.

  Before I was fully awake next morning I was aware of the endlessly reiterated chinking sound of bellbirds. As we breakfasted on toast and tea on the verandah, Jane pointed out, on the other side of a few acres of degraded pasture, a bedraggled stand of eucalypts.

  ‘See those dead branches topping out there? That’s dieback. Probably Bell Miner Associated Dieback, judging by the noise. Drink up your tea and we’ll go and see.’

  The homestead stood on a knoll, in a bend of the Towamba River which rises in the Great Dividing Range, plunges over the coastal scarp and dawdles to the sea. Its glimmering reach surrounded us on three sides. We could see shifting banks and beaches of fine pink sand, some supporting an evanescent population of Hop-bushes and Cherry Ballarts, interspersed with wonderful blond Stipas with fronds that swung about in the onshore breeze like hair in a shampoo advertisement.

  ‘The river must be still salt up here,’ said Jane. She pointed to glassworts and saltbush growing in an inlet.

  The land, all but a few acres, had long ago been cleared for sheep. We were walking through waist-high thickets of overgrown pasture grass, amid bursts of sweetbriar, bulrushes and thistles, where the odd sheep still mooched.

  ‘This really is the most terrible mess. What d’you reckon was here before they cleared it?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends,’ said Jane. ‘Down here in the river sand I reckon would have been some kind of saltmarsh, which must have been drained to provide pasture. As the ground rises you get different assemblages, different kinds of woodland. This is the driest and windiest part of the New South Wales coast. It’s in a rain shadow, because the sou’westerlies dump all their rain on the Dividing Range before they get here. I can see one familiar tree.’ She pointed to a eucalypt. ‘That’s Coast Grey Box, Eucalyptus bosistoana. I think that over there must be Silver-top Ash, Eucalyptus sieberi. Can you see how the mature leaves shine sort of silver? There’s at least one kind of stringybark and an ironbark, and I think those must be woollybutts, Eucalyptus longifolia. I’m guessing about the gums but this Black Wattle is a species I know really well.’ She pulled off a twiglet and handed it to me. ‘Acacia mearnsii. See how it’s got bipinnate leaves instead of phyllodes?’

  ‘Typical. I’ve no sooner learnt that wattles have phyllodes instead of leaves than you show me one that has leaves instead of phyllodes.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Jane had stopped by a knee-high set of rangy stems growing up from a basal rosette.

  For once I knew it. ‘That’s Sea Lavender. Limonium.’

  Jane was used to my knowing European things. ‘Exotic.’

  ‘I don’t think so. It looks different. I think it’s a native version.’ When we came to look it up it turned out to be Limonium australe, the native Sea Lavender.

  ‘Limonium’s a saltmarsh genus. That’d be a lark, wouldn’t it? Turning the run-down pasture back to saltmarsh?’

  ‘Maybe all you’d have to do would be to let the river inundate it regularly. That’d kill the pasture, and the introduced weeds, and then things like this would take over.’ She was pointing her boot at a clump of Sea Rushes. ‘That’s our native Sea Rush, which is pretty special, because it’s being pushed out of most marshland by the exotic Spiny Rush, Juncus acutus. You should end up with more of those fabulous Stipas as well. Austrostipa stipoides. That’s a Gahnia over there, Gahnia filum probably. The local paperbark would probably grow here too, at least where it wasn’t too salt. This is another ballart.’

  She was holding a branchlet of a needle-leaved bush that had upside-down fruit on it, with a blue-black kernel hanging below white semi-transparent flesh, and gesturing with her other hand to the cypress-like bushes around it. ‘Those are Cherry Ballarts, Exocarpos cupressiformis, with fruits like this but red. They grow on eucalyptus roots, but this is different. This is Exocarpos strictus. I’m surprised to find it growing here, I must say.’ We were standing on one of the sandbanks that formed the river beach.

  ‘Coastal saltmarsh is an endangered ecosystem. I should say a group of endangered communities, because saltmarshes are all different, but they tend to get lumped together in conservation-speak. Wherever they are, they’re in constant danger of being “reclaimed” and built over. And they’re really essential elements in the mosaic.’

  There was no need to explain. We both knew that saltmarsh is the habitat of a raft of species from the tiniest molluscs to the crustaceans and birds and fish that feed on them and on each other. They are the places where bats come to hunt insects, where baby fish find shelter from predators, and where migratory birds come to rest and refuel. For years Jane had been one of a group of dedicated workers trying to protect Hooded Plovers nesting on the back beach at Sorrento from the impact of humans and their dogs. If we were managing saltmarsh of our own Jane would have been able to create asylum for her plovers, and for Godwits and Sandpipers, not to mention the Black-winged Stilt and the White-fronted Chat.

  ‘Then again,’ Jane went on,’ you mightn’t have to do anything. If the sea level rises as they think it will, then this land will be regularly inundated anyway.’

  We had walked on to a tongue of higher land between the pasture and the river. Jane pounced on a fluffy spike growing out of a clump of grass and pulled the inflorescence apart with her nails. ‘Wallaby Grass! The hardest thing about reinstating native grasses is finding the seed. There’s none in commerce, as far as I know, and here it is.’ She waved the flower spike and the seed lifted off like smoke.

  Jane’s Wallaby Grass lawn is famous. Every year she collects the seed with a vacuum cleaner and sows a new area. I love Wallaby Grass because, even without macropods keeping it down, it never needs mowing. Lawn-mowing was the bane of my suburban childhood.

  ‘It would make headway only if you extirpated the exotic grasses. See this’ – she snapped off a tall frond, and pulled back a blade to show the ligule – ‘this is African Lovegrass, Eragrostis curvula. It’s virtually annihilated its less vigorous Australian cousin, E. leptostachya.’ As we walked she showed me Serrated Tussock (Nassella trichotoma), Pampas Grass, Chilean Needle Grass and Rat’s Tail grasses.

  ‘These are all scheduled as weeds because they degrade pasture. Half the native grasses are classed as weeds for the same reason. If you wanted to do serious conservation here, you’d have to deal with both exotic weed grasses and pasture grasses. And the exotics would be continually reseeding from the adjoining properties. Hopeless really.’

  At first I had quite liked the Bell Miners’ incessant tinkling, but as we drew nearer the stand of devastated gums it seemed to bounce off the morning sky and fall on our ears like lead shot.

  ‘God,’ said Jane, ‘the bloody Anvil Chorus.’

  The eucalypts were so defoliated that there was no way of identifying them for certain. Though the trees looked different from the Manna Gums that grow on the Mornington Peninsula, Jane thought they were probably the same species, Eucalyptus viminalis (and she was right). When we came under their ragged canopy, we could smell the Bell Miner colony. A sticky debris of leaves and twigs lay about our feet. The noise had become deafening.

  ‘Tell me about Bell Miners.’

  ‘Miners are related to honeyeaters; they’ve got the same sort of tongue, with a brush-tip, but they have a more complex social structure. They live in large groups, and mate promiscuously, and their young are fed indiscriminately by all adults, I think, certainly by other members of the colony besides their parents. They’re very aggressive in the defence of thei
r territory and drive off all other species that try to share their food source. It seems that males far outnumber females in the colony. Which figures.’

  ‘Do they live on nectar?’

  ‘No. That’s the problem. Bell Miners eat lerps.’

  ‘Lerps?’

  ‘Lerps are the sugary coats that the nymphs of sap-sucking psyllids build for themselves. Pardalotes and other insectivorous birds pull the nymph out from under the lerp and eat that. If Bell Miners move in to eat the lerps the other birds leave behind, they drive away the insectivores and prevent them from finishing the job. Some people think the Bell Miners actually farm the lerps to get their sugar fix.’

  ‘Surely they’ve always done that. Why has it become such a problem now?’

  ‘Nobody knows for sure. In 1999 Bell Miners were removed from an area of infestation; there was an immediate influx of insectivorous birds who brought the population of psyllids down, but after ten months the trees showed no sign of recovery. The scientists involved in the experiment concluded that the real cause of the trees’ death was probably the destruction of their vascular system by guess what?’

  I groaned. ‘Cinnamon Fungus.’

  This was so depressing a thought that we were both silent as we walked on down to the river, where the eternal clangour of the birds followed us, echoing off the water. When we sat down in the warm sand Jane told me more about Bell Miner Associated Dieback.

  ‘BMAD is a huge problem, and getting worse. It’s official now that in northern New South Wales more than 20,000 hectares of sclerophyll forest are affected by BMAD. And the problem extends right down the Great Dividing Range as far south as Melbourne. Our state bird, the Yellow-tufted Honeyeater, has been driven to extinction by the Bell Miner takeover of its habitat.’

  ‘Why is it spreading so fast?’

  ‘Probably because the trees are already under stress. When the trees die, the Bell Miners simply move on to another stand and start the process all over again. They’re gradually reducing the habitat available for other birds. Some conservationists think that the increase of drought stress as a consequence of global warming is weakening the trees, making them more susceptible to insect attack, and that the Bell Miners are merely opportunists. Others believe that “controlling” Bell Miners is the way to go. Others want to eliminate the psyllids. If it’s Cinnamon Fungus that’s really to blame for BMAD, it doesn’t matter much what they do or if they do nothing.’

  When Leon arrived that evening, we asked him what he was doing about his case of BMAD and he was doing exactly that, nothing. In his eyes nature could do no wrong, and everything out there was nature. There would be no killing or burning on his patch.

  ‘Leon, the Bell Miner population is out of control. There’s little enough natural vegetation left around here. You can’t afford to lose what old-growth forest you’ve got.’

  But the conversation had moved into a more diverting channel. The Cassandra in the corner went unheeded.

  The next day we were taken upriver to see the property that was for sale. As we moved out of the tidal reach the vegetation changed. The riverbank on both sides was now hidden by a thick fringe of willows. Jane, who expects me to know European species better than she, asked me which willows they were.

  ‘They look like Crack Willows,’ I said, ‘Salix fragilis, which is bad news because crack willows drop terminal twigs even in a slight wind, and they readily root downstream. In England Crack Willows are among my favourite trees; I’ve planted lots of them. These are a bit different. I think they must be hybrids.’

  As we were stepping out of our flat-bottomed boat, stooping to pass under the willows, I tripped and fell headlong into the mat of Vinca major that was all the streamside groundcover there was. Surefooted Jane was having trouble too, for no matter how high she stepped the interlacing strings of the Periwinkle trapped her boots.

  ‘This is a bugger of a weed,’ she said, ‘because it allows absolutely no competition. Worse, it will thrive in deep shade and sheds its fronds which get carried downstream.’

  ‘Just like the willows.’

  ‘Yep.’

  As it turned out our journey was pointless, for the owner of the property was interested in selling only if he could get an exorbitant price. He thought he might sell half of it, which would have meant that we had to share access and would live so close together that we could hear each other break wind. He was immensely proud of a huge oak tree that overshadowed his house.

  ‘What would you do with the property if it was yours?’ he asked me.

  I didn’t say that I would fell his monster oak. ‘I’d get rid of the cattle,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘You need the steers to keep down the grass.’

  I didn’t tell him that I would poison the grass, but drank up my tea, paid my respects and withdrew. Leon was disappointed. He wanted to know why I hadn’t stayed to bargain.

  ‘Because I didn’t want it. There’d be no way I could restore it, because every time the Towamba came in spate, I’d get all the riverine weeds back again.’

  ‘What weeds?’

  ‘Willows for one.’

  ‘What’s wrong with willows? Willows are lovely.’

  ‘What’s wrong with willows is what’s wrong with all weeds. They’re plants in the wrong place.’

  Jane raised her eyebrows, interested to see how much I had understood of all her careful teaching. I ploughed on.

  ‘The willow in Australia is not part of a plant community. It has no competitors and supports no suite of invertebrates or fungi or whatever. Its growth and reproduction are not limited by natural factors, so the willow can overwhelm all the niche plants growing in local ecosystems. Like lots of our worst tree weeds, it originally grew from cuttings imported by homesick settlers.’

  ‘They probably needed cricket bats,’ said Leon. ‘Without those willows we’d never have won the Ashes.’

  ‘Bat willow is a variety of Salix alba. It seems more likely to me that the early settlers thought they would need osiers, for baskets, and brought cuttings of S. fragilis. The worst willow in the Australian situation is S. nigra. It’s beyond belief that S. nigra was imported from America as late as 1962, as part of the effort to combat erosion.

  ‘The willows’ve been hybridising across the clones for a couple of hundred years. In their native habitats this kind of interbreeding would have been prevented by natural factors, geographic distance, different flowering times, and genetic incompatibility. In Australia bastard willows can breed with any other willow growing within a kilometre radius. And the hybrids can tolerate a vast range of cultural conditions. When they take over an area they obliterate biodiversity and flourish as a hugely prolific monoculture. Within a very few years of their introduction into Australia willows had spread through the south-eastern river systems, changing their patterns of flow.’

  ‘Can they be controlled?’ asked Leon.

  ‘Not easily. Any frond breaking off and falling into the river will root downstream. Fronds washed onto a bank will get a foothold in the mud. Seeds too are carried downstream, as well as on the wind. In huge quantities. Even if we ripped out or poisoned all the willows on the lower Towamba, within a year or two the willow population would be back close to maximum density. Eventually willows would immobilise the sandbanks and obstruct the course of floodwater when the river is in spate, increasing erosion.’

  ‘You made the willow problem seem insoluble,’ said Jane, as we undressed for bed.

  ‘I didn’t tell him the half of it. I didn’t talk about loss of habitat for native species, or what happens when billions of leaves are dumped in watercourses when willows deciduate, or about the loss of subterranean water in drought seasons. Anyhow, Leon wasn’t listening. He thinks it enough that he doesn’t turn the property into a golf course or a marina.’

  ‘I feel like going out there right now and setting fire to the Manna Gums with the Bell Miners in them,’ said Jane.

>   ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Jane and turned out the light.

  Leon even liked the Bell Miners. One thing he was sure about: no wild creatures would be shot or poisoned on his watch. No fox. Not even a rabbit. His property had been cleared more than a hundred years ago. It was more than he could do to unclear it now. So he ran a few sheep, brought friends down from Sydney for restful weekends and did a little fishing at the mouth of the shimmering Towamba, where oysters grew on the rocks. If the wedgetails took his newborn lambs he blessed them. When I clicked my teeth because the only wildflowers in the pasture were Yellow Sorrel and Capeweed from South Africa, he accused me of rabid nationalism.

  ‘I’m an exotic,’ he said, ‘Purebred from Bialystok. And you’re a hybrid from everywhere but here. You might as well say we’ve got no right to be here.’

  ‘I have said that.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Leon.

  The next day we went downstream in the tinny for a look at a parcel of land that Leon was willing to sell. This was unimproved old-growth forest, opposite Boydtown, one of the few sites on the south coast of New South Wales that Aboriginal people have been able to repossess. The site, overlooking the mouth of the Towamba, was bordered with rocks encrusted with delicious oysters that I would have been happy to live on, if only the walk up and down from the river’s edge had not been quite so steep. That steepness gave me a vantage point from which I would have been able to watch the whales that visit the bay in October–November. The forest was healthy, though not undisturbed. The only serious infestation I would need to get rid of was Pittosporum undulatum, an Australian native that is classified as a noxious weed in California, Hawaii, New Zealand, South Africa, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island, as well as in much of eastern Australia. It was outside its range in this dry grass forest understorey, where it had become dominant because of changes in the fire regime. Controlling it would have been a doddle. But there was another problem. Under pressure from the insurance industry, new regulations for fire damage limitation have been brought in all over Australia. The New South Wales government would have required me to undertake to clear the forest for a radius of fifty metres around any house I intended to build, before planning permission would be granted. I wanted a house surrounded by native vegetation; there was simply no way that I would buy a piece of forest only to destroy it. The case probably could have been argued, specially as I wanted to build a fireproof house, but there were other, equally weighty reasons for not going ahead.