by Tim Flannery
ABOUT THE BOOK
Tim Flannery is one of the world’s great thinkers, environmental scientists and writers. Sir David Attenborough once described him as being ‘in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone.’
This definitive collection of his work brings together thirty years of essays, speeches and occasional writing on palaeontology, mammology, environmental science and history, including the science of climate change and the challenges and opportunities we face in addressing this issue, so critical for all of us.
Life
CONTENTS
Introduction: Curiosity and Adventure
PART I
Diverse Experiences 1993–1999
The Case of the Missing Meat Eaters
Men of the Forest
The Extraordinary Watkin Tench
John Nicol, Mariner
Torricelli Mountains
The Discover of Dingiso
A Living Dingiso
PART II
Ground Zero 1999–2003
The Sandstone City
This Extraordinary Continent
Ground Zero
The Fatal Impact
America Under the Gun
The Day, the Land, and the People
Introduction to The Life and Adventures of William Buckley
The Passing of Birrarang
PART III
Life: A Brief Biography 2004–2007
Life: A Brief Biography
The Priest and the Hobbit
Captain Cook’s Kangaroo
The Mystery of Hopping
Land of Giants
Oolacunta!
The Great Aerial Ocean
Born in the Deep-Freeze
2050: The Great Stumpy Reef?
A Warning from the Golden Toad
Playing at Canute
PART IV
A Fresh Look at Earth 2010–2017
A Fresh Look at Earth
Man the Disrupter
Evolution’s Motive Force
What Lies on the Other Side?
Introduction to Among the Islands
Alcester, the Lonely Isle
Memories of Robert Hughes
They’re Taking Over
The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish, chapter three
Vale Martin
How You Consist of Trillions of Tiny Machines
Foreword to The Hidden Life of Trees
Extravagant, Aggressive Birds Down Under
The Power of Kelp
PART V
Our Twisted DNA 2018–2019
The Tree Whisperers
Neanderthals
Of Assemblages and Elephants
From the Horse to Roman Failure
Europe’s Bewolfing
Review of Down to Earth
Our Twisted DNA
Throwim Way Spices
Reconciliation, Kwaio Style
Endnotes
Introduction: Curiosity and Adventure
2019
THE SELECTED WRITINGS that comprise this volume result from thirty-five years of puzzling at the nature of life. My curiosity has led me to give up a tenured position as a curator in a museum and to take on seemingly inadvisable challenges. Some would call me foolhardy, while others might think me a risktaker. But it seems to me that I’m neither: rather my inextinguishable curiosity, coupled with a drive to take on big things—sometimes truly hard things—has seen me live a varied and exciting life.
Looking back I realise how fortunate I am to have been born in Australia in the mid-twentieth century. Fortunate not just for the political stability and prosperity, but because of the opportunities for adventure. I was born in Melbourne in 1956, in a city not yet 120 years old. Although I arrived twenty years too late to see the last thylacine, which died in Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart in 1936, I was early enough to discover Victoria’s astonishing dinosaur deposits, which had remained unexplored until I located them in the 1980s. That work was very rewarding. Imagine uncovering the bones of creatures that nobody even imagined existed. One of the dinosaurs, a relative of Tyrannosaurus, whose bones were found in the deposits, even bears my name: Timimus.
The European settlement of my part of the world is so recent that as late as the 1980s there were still frontiers in Australasia separating places where Western government prevailed from regions where tribal cultures laid down the law. I have been fortunate to cross those frontiers and to live with the people of the other side. I count their companionship as the greatest gift I ever received, for it revealed to me another way of living. In many ways it is a good way of living, allowing people to benefit from strong social bonds, children to grow up with a village full of ‘parents’, and all to be involved in the politics of village life.
Australasia has changed very fast over my lifetime. When I speak with young Melanesians about my experiences on the other side of the frontier, I can feel like Rip Van Winkle. They all own mobile phones, and tell me I speak ‘old man’s pidgin English’. Their eyes widen in astonishment as I describe what things were like for their grandparents’ generation.
Those people I lived with in the heart of the jungle, with little more than a stone or metal axe to forge a living, showed me the essence of humanity, for they took me into their clan and shared with me the most precious knowledge and resources. Living with them, under their guidance, I matured from adolescence to adulthood. It was an experience that shaped the rest of my life.
My early life in my own society, in contrast, offered few opportunities for mentorship and guidance. My father left our family when I was fourteen (he had his own problems), and I attended a Catholic boys’ school, which I rebelled against. Dr Tom Rich, the vertebrate palaeontologist at the Museum of Victoria, was the only mentor I had in youth, and to him I owe a huge debt in shaping my career as a scientist. But it was only when I went to Papua New Guinea that I found men who skilfully, often in ways I was unaware of, mentored me.
And those men helped me build my career. It was on their land that I collected species of mammals new to science, and it was the knowledge that they shared with me that allowed me to become an expert mammologist. I have tried to acknowledge their contributions, and to give back to the generations of Melanesians that have followed them, but my efforts always seems so small. When the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Michael Somare, awarded me a ‘silver kumul’ in recognition of my contributions to his country, I felt that it should be I who was giving something to him.
My interests and experiences are so different from those of many of the people I’ve worked with that I feel I’ve lived much of my working life as an outsider. Each job or experience I’ve taken on—whether it be director of a museum or advisor to a large company such as Siemens—has been entered into in the spirit of an anthropologist, one who is observing and trying to understand a different culture. And believe me, the ways of the public service and the industrial and political tribes of our own culture are very different from, and on occasion every bit as baffling as, the ways of any rainforest-dwelling people. Being on the outside can be lonely, but the lessons it taught me helped when I was thrown into the maelstrom of being Australian of the Year in 2007, when I had to interact with a huge cross-section of Australians, from the prime minister to schoolchildren. It also helped when I’ve struggled understanding the huge variety of perspectives encountered when I have worked internationally on climate change. One of the things being an outsider has taught me is to be a good listener.
I’ve had the privilege of travelling widely, both geographically and, courtesy of my palaeontological studies, imaginatively in time. And this has fueled my passion for the romance of continental-scale environmental histories. The Future Eaters (an account of Australasia), The Eternal Frontier (an ecological history of No
rth America) and Europe: The First 100 Million Years are huge projects that chart the fate of continents, species and peoples across the eons. They have hovered in the background of my mind through most of my professional life, and I have chipped away at them, as opportunities arose, for years, gathering materials and formulating questions, before ‘the moment’ arrives when I see the story and start work on the writing.
For me these works are grand construction projects: first comes a seeming eternity of preparation, in which all the resources required for the project are gathered. Then comes the heavy lifting required to get the basic frame into place. And finally the great pleasure of fitting out—of arranging all the details.
If writing continental-scale ecological histories has been the bedrock of my intellectual life, then my engagement with climate change has been a tidal wave that has at times swept me far from my comfort zone. From explaining climate science to the public to chairing the Copenhagen Climate Council (a business and social group aiding the Danish Government at the 2009 COP15 meeting) to being Australia’s Climate Commissioner and founder of the Australian Climate Council, my engagement with this critical issue has become increasingly political. And with political life comes great stress.
While I was Australia’s Climate Commissioner, the climate debate became so partisan that I needed security guards. The relentless critical focus on my life as well as my work by Australia’s right-wing media was designed to intimidate and silence me. My private life came under siege, and at times the pressure was almost unbearable. But I knew I couldn’t leave the frontline of the climate fight. Instead of retreating I found a refuge in my imagination, by creating a work of fiction that would carry me away from the stress. The Mystery of The Venus Island Fetish is a novel set in a fictionalised version of the Australian Museum in Sydney in the 1930s. The work, which seemed to exercise a part of my brain that had long been dormant, gave me huge pleasure.
I love delving into large amounts of data to reveal the essence of something, especially in writing obituaries and book reviews. Of course it is pure hubris to imagine that an entire life can be distilled down to a thousand words. But sometimes its essence can, just as the quintessential message of a book can.
One of the greatest joys of my life has been working with Bob Silvers, the founding editor of the New York Review of Books. He taught me all I know about reviewing. Whenever I’d visit New York I’d be sure to drop in on Bob. We’d often have lunch (frequently at Gabriel’s Bar and Restaurant on West 60th Street, which seemed to function as Bob’s second office), over which our talk would roam the full gamut of issues on our minds, from global politics to new discoveries in science.
For years Bob would send me commissions, and I’d write something up, which would be returned to me with the most extraordinarily useful edits. I’d inevitably reply, asking Bob to pass on my thanks to the editorial team. It was only after Bob died that I discovered that there was no editorial team. It was all Bob. I’m sure that he got a good laugh from my emails.
In July 2018 I participated in a reconciliation ceremony in a remote part of the Solomon Islands. The ten days it took to travel high into the mountains of Malaita and back were certainly among the most physically taxing of my life. The need for the reconciliation stemmed back to 1927, when Kwaio warriors killed a party of British tax collectors, and Australia sent HMAS Adelaide, carrying a militia, to punish the killers. The deaths continued for ninety-one years, and included Australians as well as Solomon Islanders. Participating in the ceremony involved being let into the heart of Kwaio culture, and the honour of representing the European side in ending a conflict that had taken dozens of lives was something I will never forget.
As the climate crisis has grown more dire, I’ve found myself contemplating a different form of action. In September 2018 I decided to stand in the federal election against Tony Abbott, Australia’s most environmentally destructive Prime Minister. His demolition of Australia’s carbon-pricing scheme has cost us dearly in terms of climate action, and while he was still in parliament he led the push against real action on climate change. I moved into his electorate of Warringah and began to prepare an election campaign. The process is bruising. The scrutiny is intense, and much has to be given up. I felt that it would be hard for me to live a fulfilling life working in the Australian Parliament, but that I’d pay the price if we could remove Abbott.
Then in January 2019, as I was putting on my metaphorical hard hat and trench coat to ‘go over the top’, mother of five and local barrister Zali Steggall introduced herself to our group and indicated that she was willing to run. It was clear that she could be an outstanding candidate. Confident that she had the better chance at success, I threw my efforts behind her.
Making television is about as different from writing a book as anything can be. Writing is a solitary pursuit. But film-making is a team sport. I love both, but the camaraderie that comes from making a television series with a small group is very special. The patience and goodwill of my co-presenter and crew when we were in a small boat lost up a river never cease to amaze me.
As the second decade of the twenty-first century comes to a close, the world is changing again. Presidents communicate via Twitter, and the number of people with an attention span long enough to read a book seems to be shrinking. I don’t do social media, not because I object to it, but simply because I lack the time. What I do continue to put my time into is seeing the big picture—and for me that means writing. It’s my way of exploring and making sense of the world.
PART I
Diverse Experiences
1993–1999
The Case of the Missing Meat Eaters: Why Are Australia’s Carnivores Such Cold-blooded Killers?
1993
DURING ICE AGES, when the sea level is low, Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and their smaller neighbours coalesce into a single great island. Dubbed Meganesia by scientists, this landmass covers an area of almost four million square miles and is a single geological entity, carried across the Southern Hemisphere by plate tectonics. Meganesian plants and animals thus share a common biological heritage, and even when the sea carves their great island homeland into discrete pieces, the flora and fauna retain their affinities. In addition to an abundance of marsupial mammals and a dearth of placental mammals, one of Meganesia’s most striking features is its extraordinary lack of large mammalian carnivores.
This unusual situation is perhaps best illustrated by going back some 60,000 years, before the arrival of humans in Australia. At that time, Meganesia was home to approximately sixty species of mammals that weighed more than nine kilograms. Of these, not more than three were meat eaters, and all are now extinct. Only two other warm-blooded carnivores weighed more than 4.5 kilograms, and they still survive: the Tasmanian devil and the spotted-tailed quoll. Each of these species fills, or filled, a somewhat different ecological niche.
The Tasmanian devil, a scavenger and bone-cruncher that takes whatever prey comes its way, is perhaps best described as a miniature marsupial hyena. Also a marsupial, the spotted-tailed quoll is weasel-like or civet-like in both appearance and in its stealthy behaviour. The now-extinct thylacine (which survived in Tasmania until 1936) was roughly the size and shape of a wolf and was Meganesia’s only dog-like marsupial carnivore.
The marsupial lion, also extinct, was one of the few carnivores to have arisen from herbivorous ancestors and had large, slicing premolars. Some nineteenth-century scientists speculated that this animal was a vegetarian that fed mainly on melons. But the discovery of a well-preserved fossil paw revealed that it was equipped with a big hooded claw, and the marsupial lion is now believed to have been an adept predator. Despite its common name, it was closer in size to a leopard than a lion and may have been the marsupial equivalent of the medium-sized cats on other continents. The marsupial giant rat-kangaroo weighed a hefty forty kilograms and stood over a metre tall but had teeth similar to those of much smaller insectivores. This beast lived throughout eastern Austr
alia—in woodland, grassy steppe-land and savannah—during the last ice age. Its ecology, however, is enigmatic. It may well have been an omnivore, eating plants, scavenging carcasses, and opportunistically preying on bird eggs and small vertebrates. If such an interpretation of its diet and habits is correct, this primitive kangaroo may have filled a niche similar to that of some small bears.
In the entire Australasian region, therefore, the broad carnivore niches were filled by just one mammal species each—dog-like, cat-like, civet-like, scavenging, and, possibly, bear-like animals. In contrast, even today the United States (the lower forty-eight states of which are roughly the size of Australia) is inhabited by three bear species, five kinds of dogs, six kinds of cats, six species of weasels and their relatives, as well as raccoons, ringtails and coatis. And the region’s abundance of carnivores pales when compared with its fauna during the Pleistocene, when dire wolves, various bears, jaguars, cheetahs, lions and sabretooths also roamed the continent. This diversity of mammalian carnivores is by no means exceptional; Europe, Asia, Africa and South America either did or still do support similarly diverse carnivore guilds. In all these regions, the broad cat and dog niches are subdivided according to size, prey type and habitat, allowing many species to coexist.
Biologists have long speculated on the cause of the imbalance in the Meganesian mammal fauna. One of the most important limitations known to affect carnivores is simply the size of the landmass they inhabit. Although Australia, which comprises the bulk of Meganesia, is indeed the smallest continent, it is still about three million square miles in area. Yet the Meganesian carnivore assemblage is not much richer than that of the island of Madagascar, which is only one-twentieth the size of Meganesia.
Another school of thought holds that marsupials, having relatively small brains, were unable to evolve into successful predators. A quick look at the fossil record of South America, however, disproves the hypothesis that a connection exists between brain size and predation skill. Many species of dog-like marsupials, in a variety of sizes, lived in South America during the Tertiary period, about 65 to two million years ago. A remarkable subfamily of carnivorous marsupials evolved into cat-like animals, resembling North American sabretooths, that were capable of killing the largest of prey. The group that includes the ancestors of the American opossum also produced large flesh eaters. While all of these beasts became extinct when placental carnivores arrived in South America over the past five million years, they thrived for many millions of years, preying mainly upon large placental herbivores.