Down Under The Trees

These past seven days I have been exploring Tasmania. Tassie (as Australians call it) is the wild island off the southeast coast of the mainland. The reason for our field trip to Tassie lies in its importance to both the Australian and global environmental debate. The pristine alpine lakes and old growth forests have been the stage for environmental conflict for around one hundred years. 

The current conflict is mainly concerned with the logging of old growth forests that have been excluded from the large protected areas (roughly 50% of Tassie is federally protected wilderness). To give us some perspective on the issue, we were taken on a number of day hikes through these forests. If anyone reading this has not seen an old growth forest, I advise you to immediately put it on your bucket list. I had previously seen only one other old growth forest in British Colombia, and it didn’t hold a candle to the forests of Tassie. The key feature of an old growth forest is that is contains vegetation at all stages of growth from sapling to full maturity. This is no easy feat as trees such as the Huon pine take 2,000 years to reach full maturity. Other trees, like the Eucalyptus Regnum, the second tallest trees in the world, only take around 900 years to fully mature. 

These forests create unique habitats that support endemic species of flora and fauna. It really was something else to walk by these giant trees. They were massive in every sense of the word. I have no experience that is comparable to standing at the base of a tree that is around 270ft tall and is over twice as old as the nation of my birth. It certainly changes your view of time. Especially when you walk out of just such a special place into clear felled coupe, where nothing but the bleached bodies of rejected lumber lay scattered about. My apologies for the dramatic language, but it really is a stark change in landscape. To be fair, the issue of industry and conservation in Tassie is mixed and muddled one. It has also been an incredibly divisive one for the community, and one I have no place to take sides in. 

There are however inspirational stories of how people are addressing these issues with pretty remarkable actions. One such individual is Miranda Gibson who has been living in the top of the Observertree, a giant Eucalyptus in an area of contested forest, for the past 76 days or so. We got to stand under this tree and talk with Miranda through a mixed means of yelling and radios. I didn’t just see trees though, I also got a chance to see wombats, echidnas, and a platypus. The echidna and the platypus are both monotremes (those weird mammals that lay eggs).

My Time in Tasmania has been great, but has regrettably come to a close. Today I depart Hobart for Sydney, from big trees to a big city, it is certainly going to be a change in scenery. One welcome part of city life, however, is the access to camera repair shops. My old 35mm film camera seems to have a broken shutter release of sorts which is has me pretty bummed. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get it fixed while in Sydney so that I might be able to take some more quality photos. In the meantime my recently purchased point and shoot will have to do. That’ll have to do for your serving of Jambalyle for now, but come back soon as I am going to be getting more time conducive to keeping the world up to date on my travels.

Echidna looking for some grub

Me being weird in front of a very very large tree.

* More pictures to follow. It is hard to upload photos with our broadband sticks, and most of my good photos I took with my film camera (RIP February 2012).