Rainforest rehabilitation

When I was twenty-one I went to Australia on a ‘working holiday’ visa. From the moment I stepped off the plane I was bowled over by the landscape. I had never seen anything so big, so wild and so ancient. It was like looking into the night sky. It put my life into perspective and made me happy.

After I’d been there nearly a year my parents arrived in Sydney. My father was on a business trip (one I hadn’t heard about until a few weeks before). If their intention was to get me back, they succeeded. My conscience got the better of me. The country no longer felt quite so free. I left my job on an island near the Great Barrier Reef, took the long train journey south to see them and a few weeks later returned to England.

Ever since then, Oz has been a symbol to me of somewhere where things were more right than they are here, where nature stood a chance, a sort of Garden of Eden. I knew I couldn’t return. Having worked there, I didn’t want to be a tourist. I knew the country wouldn’t necessarily have the same effect on me: I’ve changed, it has probably changed. I didn’t want to spoil my memories. Even so, just knowing that Oz existed gave me hope.

That is, until I read Germaine Greer’s latest book, White Beech. In it she documents, in typical passionate and iconoclastic style, her attempts to turn a patch of land near the Queensland/New South Wales border back to pristine semi-tropical rainforest.* Along the way she reveals the devastation caused to Australia's native flora and fauna by imported species, as well as by farming, logging, mining, housing etc etc. The way she describes it, the continent sounds a complete mess – even worse than here.

The book without its jacket - a picture of the rainforest

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I felt so low. My last refuge had gone. The planet was doomed. I was doomed. I wanted to turn over more of our garden to a natural state, but I knew Frog wasn’t keen. He has a mower, a strimmer and a chainsaw to use. Yesterday evening I followed him around squealing as he dobbed poison on ‘weeds’ between the paving stones.

Then about 5am, I had a thought. I’m not GG. I’m not capable of doing what she does. Nor do I have to save the planet all by myself. All I have to do is what I can.

At first Germaine wasn’t going to buy the plot because she thought it was too damaged but then, on a later visit:

Out from the clumps of Native Raspberry at the forest edge stepped a bird, a sort-of crow in fancy dress . . . He walked up to within a few feet of me, fixed me with his round yellow eye and began to move his black rump rhythmically back and forth. There was no doubt about it. He was dancing.

She walks back.

As I came in sight of the house, a man was leaning on the verandah rail.
    I said, ‘Hi.’ What I thought was, ‘Sorry, mate, I’m gunna buy your house.’
. . . The heraldic bird had thrown down the gauntlet.

‘There you see,’ said Frog, when I described the passage to him. ‘Even the smallest things can have an effect.’

Even this blog, maybe.


* This project is called the Cave Creek Rainforest Rehabilitation Scheme.