Flooded Forest and Desert Creek: Ecology and History of the River Red Gum

FLOODED FOREST

AND

DESERT CREEK

Ecology and History of

the River Red Gum

MATTHEW J COLLOFF

© CSIRO 2014

All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO Publishing for all permission requests.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Colloff, Matthew, 1958-author.

Flooded forest and desert creek : ecology and history of the river red gum / Matthew J Colloff.

9780643109193 (hardback)

9780643109209 (epdf)

9780643109216 (epub)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Eucalyptus camaldulensis – Australia.

Eucalyptus camaldulensis – Ecology – Australia.

Forest conservation – Australia.

Forests and forestry – Australia.

333.750994

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Front cover: Waterhole reflections © Mike Gillam

Title page: Trees as islands © Mike Gillam

Back cover: Dancing trees © Mike Gillam

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Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

PART 1 The unfolding forest

1 Floodplain and river

Ancient floodplains

Climate and landscape change and the first people

Forests and woodlands

2 Names and relationships

Natural variation

The seven subspecies

Evolution and biogeography

3 Life history

Reproduction and establishment

Water and growth

4 Ecosystem functions

Trees and water: productive refugia in a dry landscape

The river red gum as an ecosystem engineer

Nature’s supermarket and boarding house

Facilitation and self-organisation

PART 2 Forces of change

5 Fire

Fire and history

Fire in the desert

Trees, reeds and hunting

Charcoal in sediments

Fire and forest management

Management with fire as a testable hypothesis

6 Grazing

Historical impacts

Post-settlement impacts

Grazing and conservation

7 Timber harvesting

The timber rush

Harvesting and regeneration

Uncovering the forests of the past

8 Floods, droughts and river regulation

Drought and flood

Nature and progress

Dams, locks and weirs

Damming the Todd

Changes to channels and flows

Ecological change

Forest health

The future of environmental flows

PART 3 From exploitation to conservation and multiple values

9 River red gum consciousness

Aboriginal stories and symbolism

Landscape art

The Weekly

Giant trees

Landscape literature

Images and impressions

10 Conservation and multiple values

Recreation and tourism

Cultural landscapes and heritage

People and conservation

The river red gum inquiries

After the inquiries

Old growth and new growth

Urban red gum

11 The future of the river red gum

Endnotes

References

Index

Foreword

The river red gum is an iconic tree, immediately recognisable to most Australians as a defining feature of our unique river and arid landscapes. Its majesty has been captured by artists; it is central to the deep spiritual connection of Indigenous peoples to landscape, and to our connection to the bush, experienced largely today through recreation and tourism but not always that way.

Living in a dry continent, Australians have always treasured their rivers but the way they have valued rivers has changed over time. The values and uses of river red gums reflect that history. In the early stages of European settlement river red gum forests were prized for grazing and were an important source of timber for railways that opened up the continent to settlement. Today their importance for the conservation of river ecosystems and for recreation is at least as important. A central thesis of this book is that the river red gum is at the heart of the modern tension between economic, social and environmental values of our rivers and landscapes. The book charts the changing and maturing values of the species as a reflection of broader societal values.

The book examines the ecology of the river red gum, describing not only how the species fits into river and arid landscape ecology but how that ecology relates to the values we have for river red gum forests and woodlands. Most importantly, the book shows how a genuinely ecological approach can help manage river red gums to conserve them for future generations and to resolve the tensions between different users. It integrates ecological understanding, from Matt’s experience as a research ecologist, and explores his personal experiences of red gum forests, the broader social consciousness of the species, and the role river red gums have played in the history of Australia.

While the book might appear to be about a single species of tree it is much more than that. It is about the history of the Australian landscape and our relationship with it. It is about how we perceive river and arid landscapes, and how to use knowledge of river ecosystems to conserve them to allow a full range of future uses of river landscapes. The book covers all this in a highly accessible way that will engage anyone with an interest in the ‘bush’. It is at the forefront of taking a holistic approach to Australian landscapes and our connection with them.

Dr Ian Prosser

Science Director

CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country National Research Flagship

Acknowledgements

Many people supported me in the writing of this book. Keith Ward, Jane Roberts and Ian Lunt patiently answered many queries and have been constant sources of encouragement and inspiration. I am grateful to them as well as to Barrie Dexter, Brian Gilligan and Mark Peacock for reading and commenting on various chapters.

I thank all my colleagues who were involved in the NSW Natural Resources Commission River Red Gum Regional Forest Assessment, especially John Williams, Brian Gilligan, Peter Kanowski, Bryce Wilde, Alex McMillan, Di Bentley, Todd Maher, Felicity Calvert and Karen Acason. From the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service I thank Mark Peacock, Patricia Wilkinson, Paul Childs and Rick Webster.

At Alice Springs I am particularly grateful to Steve Morton and Faye Alexander for their outstanding kindness and hospitality, and to Deb Clarke and Charlie Carter, Mike Gillam, Bill Low and the staff of CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences Alice Springs Laboratory including Vanessa Chewings, Ashley Sparrow, Josie Douglas, Gary Bastin, Fiona Walsh, Chris Pavey and Margaret Friedel for sharing information on river red gums in Central Australia and for making me feel welcome.

The following people helped by giving willingly of their time in sharing their stories or providing information, checking and correcting facts, accompanying me during fieldwork or stimulating me to think, either during conversation or through their written work: Jason Alexandra, Neville Atkinson, Darren Baldwin, Rod Bird, Sharon Bowen, Leon Bren, Susan Cuddy, Saul Cunningham, Shaun Cunningham, Tanya Doody, Jacqui England, Charles Fahey, Samuel Furphy, Eric Hines, Megan Humphries and Hugh Malfroy, Robert Ingpen, Alison Killen, Ted Lefroy, Mark Lonsdale, Brendan Lepschi, John Magee, Hugh McGregor, Steve Morton, Ian Overton, Colin Pardoe, Carmel Pollino, Kim Pullen, Gavin Rees, Julian Reid, Neil Saintilan, Neil Sims, Mark Stafford Smith, Leroy Stewart and Todd Wallace. Many more, too numerous to mention – colleagues in CSIRO and elsewhere, friends and sometimes complete strangers – expressed enthusiasm and encouragement for this project. I thank them all.

This book was written while I was on long service leave from my research with CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country National Research Flagship and CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences. I thank Bill Young, Ian Prosser and Mark Lonsdale for providing me with the opportunity to work on the ecology of floodplains and for their support and encouragement over the years. I am very grateful to Ian Prosser for writing the foreword.

Many people generously provided photographs, in particular Mike Gillam, Keith Ward, Jane Roberts, Ian Overton, Gavin Rees, Darren Baldwin, Hugh McGregor, Kim Pullen and Margaret Friedel. I thank Serkan Alasya, Australian National Herbarium, for photographing the type specimen of Eucalyptus camaldulensis; Sandra Pullman for the images of the Separation Tree; Henry Smith of Alice Springs for the image of Carbon copy and information about his creation of the sculpture; Paulo Lay, Department of Sustainability and Environment, for his photo of Horseshoe Lagoon; Brian Walters, Australian Native Plants Society, for the extraordinary river red gum from Greenough; Caroline Rook of Leonard Joel auctioneers for Rex Battarbee’s River gum; David Kilner of Adelaide for the Herbig Tree; Steve Wilson, Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority, for the superb parrot; Ivan Robertson for the regent parrot; Rod Bird, Hamilton Field Naturalists Club, for images of river red gums in south-western Victoria; Paul Caine, Glen Eira Environment Group Inc., for the red gum sleepers near Sandown Park railway station; Deb Bogenhuber, Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre, Mildura, for Margooya Lagoon; Carl Kuddell and Jennifer Lyons-Reid, Tallstoreez Productionz Pty Ltd and Change Media, for providing images from the documentary film Moogy’s Yuki and Geoff Pryor for his cartoon, ‘Save this tree’. Nick Nicholson (National Gallery of Australia), Tracey Dall (Art Gallery of South Australia), Jennie Moloney (National Gallery of Victoria), Glen Menzies (Viscopy), Andrew Tatnell (Department of Environment) and Sally Garrett on behalf of the Cazneaux family provided generous and cheerful assistance with permissions to reproduce images of works of art. For access to photographs in library collections and for permissions to reproduce them, I thank Kevin Leamon (State Library of New South Wales), Lucy Nuttall (National Library of Australia), Anthony Duffield (State Library of South Australia), Toula Marra (Museum Victoria) and Mike Thomas (State Library of Victoria).

I could not have written this book without access to many hard-to-find documents and publications. I am especially grateful for the outstanding assistance and many kindnesses I received from the staff of CSIRO Black Mountain Library, the State Library of New South Wales and the National Library of Australia. The NLA catalogue and Trove search service provided unfailing sources of information and are among our unsung National Treasures.

At CSIRO Publishing I thank John Manger for his enthusiasm when I first pitched to him the idea for this book and Tracey Millen for her kindness and efficiency in seeing it through the publication process.

Finally I thank my partner, Alison Killen, my sons Ewan and Angus Colloff and my stepsons Kim Dent and Sam Killen for their support and encouragement.

Preface

My first serious awareness of the river red gum was at Barmah Forest. I went there as a research scientist to study the ecology of floodplains along the River Murray. My guide was Keith Ward, environmental water manager at Goulburn-Broken Catchment Management Authority, whose deep knowledge and experience of the ecology and hydrology of Barmah Forest has accumulated over more than 25 years. My initial response was a mixture of reverence and deep curiosity. How had this forest come to be here? Why was its structure and distribution of trees so variable, even though it contained predominantly only one species of tree? How old was it? Why did its understorey vegetation exist as a mosaic of such distinctive plant communities in different places? How did it function as an ecosystem? How had it been altered by human occupation and use? How and why was it changing as a consequence of how river flows and flood regimes had changed? I remember we spoke relatively little on that first trip, instead falling into a natural pattern of observing, comparing and contrasting the patterns we saw at each site we visited. River red gum forest, like no other ecosystem I have worked in, inspires silence, mindfulness and introspective observation.

At the time of that first visit, the Victorian Government was considering designating Barmah Forest a national park, along with other areas of river red gum forest and woodland on the Victorian Murray and its tributaries, and an inquiry by the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council was under way. I attended a rowdy public meeting at Moama and had my first experience of the heated politics of river red gums and how the forest stood for quite different things to quite different people. Each group had its particular story, compatible with how its members valued and used the forest.

Some years later I was invited by the New South Wales Natural Resources Commission to become a member of the technical review panel for the River Red Gums Regional Forest Assessment. During the process I attended public meetings at timber towns in the Murray Riverina. Again, contrasting stories of the forests were voiced, sometimes expressed as definitive perspectives on history, ecology and use; often presented as arguments for or against particular approaches regarding future management and tenure. These accounts can be found in the public submissions to the inquiry. Two dominant viewpoints were apparent. The first was that grazing and timber harvesting had done considerable damage to native plants and animals and that the forest needed to be conserved by ceasing those activities and providing more water for the environment in order to protect biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. The countering narrative was that the forest, in its contemporary configuration, was the product of more than a century of management for timber production and that it would need to be actively managed into the future if it were to persist. A variant on this theme was that most of the forest had not existed prior to European settlement, and that it was largely a product of grazing that allowed river red gum seedlings to germinate in the short-cropped grass of the squatters’ runs. By disputing the age of the forests and their origin, this story allows its protagonists to call into question the value of conserving them.

The reaction of communities to the Victorian and New South Wales inquiries was a response to the prospect of change, both real and perceived, and a view that change represented threat rather than opportunity. The threat was to the way things had been and should continue to be. Change meant constraints on personal freedom, a way of life, and the prospect that the nature and extent of people’s interactions with the forest and the river would be determined by governments and their agencies. The fear was of being told how to be and what to do. In the clamour of uncertainty about the future, stories of how things are and have come to pass provide meaning and order. Reassuring ourselves with our narratives is a natural human response to provide context and meaning to things that are difficult to understand and come to terms with.

How we use environmental narratives depends on our perspective. Some regard a particular account as the definitive explanation, grounded in truth and absolute. Others consider all environmental narratives as equally valid and applicable, whether they be based on creation myth or empirical science. Both perspectives have their dangers. With the former approach, there is little or no place for alternate views and therefore any prospect of meaningful dialogue is remote. One story must prevail at the expense of all others, no matter what their merits. In natural resource management, this usually means one interest group wins the debate and takes control of the resource. With the other approach, the risk is that because all stories are considered to have equal merit they are all equally ‘true’. Both approaches inhibit the refining of environmental narratives in the light of new evidence and understanding. Ultimately they stifle new knowledge by discounting our natural need to be curious about our environment.

At a tempestuous public meeting at Deniliquin during the New South Wales river red gums inquiry, a Wamba Wamba elder, with considerable courage and dignity, congratulated the Natural Resources Commissioner John Williams on the recommendation to make Werai State Forest an Indigenous Protected Area, a goal the Yamba Yamba people had striven towards for 30 years. He was immediately and angrily shouted down by the opposing majority. Insults were traded. The police were called. The threat of violence flared before things eventually calmed down and the meeting resumed. I have thought about that man often, and about why the perspective of his people and their story represented such a threat to others present. I do not know the full answer to this complex question, but I do know his clear intent was to stand up and be counted. And by doing so he was deliberately ensuring he was not excluded, where many sought to exclude him through imposing their story, their view.

The argument in favour of environmental narratives that are science-based is not that they allow us to reach some objective truth. Most ecosystems have histories that contain too many uncertainties for us to be able to confidently resolve causal associations between pattern and process. There will always be doubt about how things were and came to be. The best formulation and testing of scientific hypotheses cannot eliminate uncertainty about the consequences of past conditions and events. Rather, science-based narratives have appeal because science builds on itself. There is a pervading requirement for new insights, the questioning of received wisdom and new ways of looking at things in order for scientific knowledge to progress. The practice of science is, or should be, iconoclastic, which is why it is often opposed by those who prefer simple, single, enduring explanations for natural phenomena. Ecosystems are complex entities, not structured and controlled by single factors. This means that linear, cause-and-effect approaches have limitations in attempting to figure out how ecosystems work.

It is one of the ironies of natural resource management science that empirically collected data is often seized upon and used to support the story of a particular interest group, regardless of the story the data tells. Any countervailing evidence is likely to be dismissed. But this book is not about comparative environmental narratives. It deals with what is known (at least in part), rather than what cannot be known, regarding the nature, history and ecology of river red gum forests and woodlands. In so doing, it covers a lot of the common ground between different viewpoints. The basic facts about the biology and ecology of the river red gum and its ecosystems are not in dispute, and this body of knowledge, collated and synthesised, is what this book is about. Scientists are no different from anyone else in seeking to tell their stories.

This book is not intended to be an environmental history. Rather, it is mainly about historical ecology, though the boundary between the two genres is often blurred. A simple difference that not all may agree with but works for me, is that environmental history focuses primarily on the influence of landscapes on people and their responses to it, whereas historical ecology addresses how people have affected the environment and how their actions have changed the character and function of ecosystems. In general, environmental history tends to be more coarse-grained, dealing with big events and broad trajectories of change whereas historical ecology perhaps is more concerned with interactions that drive variations and exceptions to prevailing patterns. The common ground is the two-way interaction between people and landscape: how people perceive and value their environment and how that consciousness affects the way that they treat it and interact with it, and how the environment responds. As I have learned, the writing of historical ecology about a particular place is made considerably easier whenever good environmental historians have gone before. They provide the structure, the benchmark of ‘what happened next’, that sparks ideas and inspires unfolding inquiry.

This book is my attempt to consider the effects of historical events on the ecology of river red gum forests and woodlands of Australia. These events came in overlapping waves and their different impacts on the forests interacted in ways that are quite poorly understood. They follow a basic structural chronology, common to most floodplain forests within the Murray-Darling Basin. First, there were changes caused by the cessation of particular land management practices following the pastoral invasion, the displacement of Aboriginal people and the depopulation of the landscape. At the same time, grazing by sheep and cattle, accompanied by the accidental and deliberate introduction of exotic weeds, had a massive impact on vegetation communities. Squatters were followed by selectors who cleared trees on their blocks for cropping and grazing. Next came timber harvesters and sawmillers, inland navigation and paddle steamers and the development of the port towns. Then came changes to the flow and flood regimes of the rivers following the construction of weirs and dams, and the development and exploitation of water resources for irrigated agriculture. Finally, in recent years land tenure has changed again to one of conservation and management within national parks and reserves. The decline of Aboriginal land management and burning practices, settlement by Europeans, pastoralism or agriculture, land clearance, timber getting, weed introduction and an eventual shift in emphasis to conservation and management have had impacts on natural ecosystems throughout most of Australia. The timing, details and effects of these events varies from region to region but the general pattern is consistent, driven by changing social, economic, moral and political perspectives. Some of the threats and changes to river red gum forests and woodlands have been replicated outside the Murray-Darling Basin, with different emphasis, intensity and impact, but with a similar general pattern of human responses: from sustainable management to exploitation and then back to conservation, as collective human values have shifted and evolved.

Historical sources relating to these phases of change in different regions are patchy and variable. The geographical rule of thumb seems to be the further one goes north or west, the harder it is to find historical information on threats and changes to river red gum forests and woodlands, commensurate with the increasingly diffuse distribution of Eucalyptus camaldulensis beyond the major river systems of south-eastern Australia. For that region, there are good environmental histories of the Barmah Forest by Charles Fahey, of the Millewa Forest by Peter Donovan and of Gunbower Island by Dianne McGowan. Local histories such as Gillian Hibbins’ History of Nathalia Shire and Barmah Chronicles provided valuable additional background and detail.

I have deliberately excluded information on use of river red gum as a plantation tree overseas. Such a treatment is beyond the scope of this book and has been widely covered elsewhere. This story is a quintessentially Australian one. In an attempt to achieve a broader coverage of river red gums beyond the Murray-Darling Basin, I visited Alice Springs in May 2012. On this trip I gained a valuable introduction to contrasting perspectives on how river red gums respond to patterns of water availability and what the woodlands mean to people within a desert environment. But it was only an introduction. There is much to be learned about the ecology of river red gums along creeks and rivers that carry no surface water most of the time and are characterised by rare, high-energy, destructive flood events, and where water exists as reservoirs below the surface in beds of coarse sediment. Where I have drawn upon traditional knowledge pertaining to river red gums, I have restricted it to published information that is generally available. This information represents only a fraction of what is known but it serves to illustrate the value and importance of this tree to the life and culture of the Aboriginal people of Central Australia.

By necessity rather than design, much of this book is biased towards the better studied and better documented river red gum forests on the River Murray, particularly the forests of the Barmah and the Millewa group. Where information exists on river red gums elsewhere, I have included it; particularly from Central Australia, south-western Victoria and the south-east of South Australia. Perhaps this book may stimulate others to tell the story of the river red gums in their region.

M.J.C.

Canberra, October, 2013

Introduction

Beyond all arguments is the land itself

drying out and cracking at the end of summer

like a vast badly-made ceramic, uneven and powdery,

losing its topsoil and its insect-bodied grass seeds

To the wind’s dusty perfumes, that sense of the land,

then soaking up soil-darkening rains and filling out

with the force of renewal at the savoured winter break.

Philip Hodgins, The Land Itself (1995)

Those of us who are not Aboriginal Australians are new to this land. Even if we can claim descent from those who arrived with the First Fleet, our tenure is only some eight generations – a mere two centuries – precious little time to develop a deep and enduring collective consciousness of our environment. We are not yet part of Country, but are gradually becoming more aware of its nature and our responsibilities to it.

Many Australians perceive the bush as daunting and alien, outside their daily experience, a dangerous and unforgiving place. Their comfort zone for interaction with nature is much more likely to be ocean shore than arid outback. To others the bush is their home, their heart and their strength, spiritually and physically. Between these two extremes lie other perspectives of how we define our relationship with the rest of the natural world. Is the environment to be seen as a warehouse of resources for our exploitation or something to be conserved, locked up and left alone? Do we seek to understand how it works and how to manage it in order to achieve control and dominion? Or can we learn from the land about who we are and how we should be within it?

The prevailing historical and cultural attitude to the Australian environment since European invasion and settlement has been one of economic exploitation, ostensibly for the benefit of a new and developing society, though initially to the advantage of the few and the powerful. It is understandable that a view of the bush as a place to be feared or exploited would foster an attitude towards economy and society as independent of environment. This view prevails, even though within the contemporary paradigm of global sustainability it has become blindingly obvious that economy is nested within society, within environment.

In this book I argue that the river red gum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, has played a central role in the tension between economy, society and environment – perhaps more so than any other Australian plant or animal. This tree has been the subject of repeated government inquiries into its conservation, use and management. It underpins the structural and functional elements of some of our most important floodplain and wetland ecosystems. It has the most widespread natural distribution of any Eucalyptus species, from Geraldton to Grafton, from the Yorke Peninsula to the Cape York Peninsula. Only Tasmania, the Nullarbor Plain and the south-west of Western Australia lack natural stands of river red gums. It is found from near sea level in parts of South Australia and Victoria to an elevation of 1435 m around Mount Woodroffe in the Musgrave Ranges of South Australia.¹ The tree varies from 30–40 m forest giants on the floodplains of the Murray and the Darling, to less than 10 m in arid Central Australia. River channels and their flows are stabilised, modified and maintained by river red gums along their banks.

River red gum forests are the ancestral lands of Aboriginal people, the cultural and spiritual homes of riverland tribes along the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, the Murray and its tributaries. The plants and animals of the forests and woodlands are their totems, their law and culture. The River Torrens, its lower reaches flowing through what is now Adelaide, was called Karrawirra Pari by the Kaurna people: River of the Red Gum Forest. The Wailwan people of the Macquarie Marshes, the Wiradjuri people of the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan and the Kamilaroi people of the Namoi and Gwydir carved distinctive, intricate patterns into the heartwood of river red gum trunks.² These dendroglyphs, at burial sites and tribal boundaries, are markers of cultural identity. The river red gum forests of Barmah-Millewa were the subject of a controversial court judgement to deny a native title claim made by the Yorta Yorta Nation, a decision that has left lasting anguish and resentment.³ For the desert Aboriginal people of Central Australia, the fringe of river red gums lining waterholes and dry creek beds have very special significance, not just as markers of water but as trees that provide a remarkable diversity of resources, from the practical necessities of shade, food, shelter and firewood, to bark toys, ornaments made from seed capsules and opercula and the use of the leaves in games and ‘love magic’.⁴

The river red gum timber industry gave impetus to the development of towns along the River Murray including Cobram, Echuca-Moama, Cohuna, Barham-Koondrook and Swan Hill. Before railways and paved roads, these towns were serviced and linked by paddle steamers, their boilers fuelled by red gum firewood, as were those of pumps providing water to the irrigation settlements along the Murray. The hard, dark red timber was highly durable – resistant to water and attack by termites – and in demand for construction purposes. The city of Melbourne, its houses, wharves, jetties and piers, is built on the river red gum stump. Many thousands of kilometres of railway in Australia and India were laid on red gum sleepers, as well as jarrah from Western Australia and grey ironbark from coastal New South Wales. Even part of the Northern Territory railway linking Adelaide with Darwin was laid on river red gum sleepers, cut along Trephina Creek near Alice Springs for a brief period during the 1950s.⁵ The value of river red gum pulp, timber, firewood and charcoal has made it our most famous silvicultural export, introduced to more countries than almost any other plantation tree.⁶ River red gum forests provide recreation and natural amenity and are popular places for camping, boating and fishing. Even when standing as a ghost forest of drowned, weathered stags in a storage dam we still value them, as evidenced by the exclusive new waterfront housing development, enticingly named Silver Woods, on the banks of Lake Mulwala, upstream of Yarrawonga Weir on the Victorian Murray.

People were born beneath river red gums; the dappled shade of the leaves was the first thing infant eyes saw upon entering the world.⁷ Marriage vows are exchanged beneath the same canopies; the trees bearing witness to love, hope and commitment. And the forests and woodlands become our last resting places. Before European settlement, hollow trunks served as ossuaries. The remains of pioneers lie in small, half-forgotten cemeteries in the forests of Barmah and Gunbower close to much older burial sites, such as those at Kow Swamp and Coobol Creek.⁸ The ashes of our loved ones are scattered beneath grand old trees.

Truly, the river red gum deserves the status of national icon even if such a plaudit, for flora or fauna at least, is no guarantee of respect, understanding or protection. Despite its status in the national consciousness, relatively few Australians would be able to identify a river red gum with certainty and differentiate it from its close relatives. But, more importantly, we recognise the trees within the landscape, know of them and often care deeply about them. The tree is familiar. Yet we know remarkably little about the fundamentals of this tree: how long it lives, how deep its roots go when fully grown, what proportion of its seedlings survive to adulthood, the extent of the diversity of animals, plants and fungi associated with it and the nature of those associations. We have no real idea about the comparative biology of its seven subspecies distributed across Australia, the differences in their adaptations to drought, flood and salinity, or even why each subspecies is distributed where it is.

This book is not just about the ecology of the tree, it is also about the broader landscape in which it lives and the cultural setting it has helped shape. It is divided into three parts, written as a cycle of narrative. In the first part, I detail the landscape and waterscape environment of river red gums, going back more than 130 000 years to cover how ancient fluctuations in climate have influenced the development and change of inland floodplains and their vegetation. The physical template on which river red gum evolved has a far longer history than this, extending at least five million years into the past, to when the tree first diverged from its ancestors in wet sclerophyll forests of northern Australia. But the details of its evolution are vague compared with the end result: the distribution of seven distinctive regional subspecies across the diverse and spectacular arid and semi-arid landscapes of inland Australia. It is only very recently that these subspecies have been fully characterised and their distributions begun to be mapped. Despite these endeavours, there is still a huge gap in our knowledge about the variations in the basic biology of these subspecies. I cover what is known of the life history, growth, development and water use of the most well-known, Eucalyptus camaldulensis subspecies camaldulensis, including its role as an ‘ecosystem engineer’, an essential shaping and structuring element of lowland floodplain forest and woodland ecosystems.

The second part is about the factors that have driven change in river red gum forests and woodlands. This covers the use of their resources and management by Aboriginal Australians. The Aborigines were displaced from their lands and waters by white squatters and their herds of sheep, cattle and horses that occupied vast pastoral leases. The effects of grazing gave way to the impact of land clearing and timber harvesting as the squatters were in turn displaced by selectors and timber-getters. Then followed river regulation: the alteration of the natural flow and flood regimes of the rivers of inland south-eastern Australia in an attempt to ensure greater water security, stimulate economic development and reduce the impacts of flooding on the rural towns and communities that had sprung up along the rivers. I have attempted to tell the story of the forces of change in chronological order of their first occurrence, but this does not work entirely satisfactorily. How the forests are influenced by the flood regime and have been changed by river regulation is important to understanding the other drivers of change. Regardless, I have placed this section later at the risk of reducing context and providing scale in relation to the other influences.

The final part is about how we have begun to move from a culture of wholesale exploitation of river red gum forests and woodlands and their resources to a culture of multiple sustainable uses and their conservation and management for the long term. The development of sustainability and how we interact with the river red gum forests encompasses a powerful concept articulated in the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, known as ‘wise use’, meaning sustainable use for the benefit of people in ways that maintain the ecological character and functions of wetland ecosystems.⁹ I trace this shift in our regard, and its influence on management and use, through the development of a collective environmental consciousness, first articulated and disseminated through the depiction of river red gums and inland floodplains in art and literature, starting in the 19th century. I argue that the development of what I call ‘river red gum consciousness’ represented a gradual but fundamental shift towards current conservation and management, albeit with a long lag phase. Finally I cover the future of river red gum forests and woodlands under scenarios of a drier climate and reduced water availability, completing the narrative cycle by reflecting on ancient changes in climate and vegetation, as well as exploring the interaction between people and the trees in those parts of inland Australia that underwent such shifts long ago. Partly this is to provide a clue to what those of us in wetter parts of the country might expect, but it is also to emphasise the hopeful and enduring nature of our relationship with these trees in the face of ceaseless environmental change.

Each phase of the narrative cycle of river red gum forests outlined in this book is linked by change, adaptation, persistence and the interaction between people and the environment. These include the pre-human evolution and development of the forests, their role as template of Aboriginal landscape and culture, their exploitation by squatters, settlers and timber-­getters, their conservation and sustainable use, and their past, present and future in a changing climate. These phases are echoed from within another narrative: the development of a human consciousness of landscape, articulated by Brian Elliot in The Landscape of Australian Poetry:

The first need in a new country or colony must obviously be in one way or another to comprehend the physical environment . . . At first the urge is merely topographic, to answer the question: what does the place look like? The next is detailed and ecological: how does life arrange itself there? What plants, what animals, what activity, how does man fit in? The next may be moral: how does such a place influence people? And how, in their turn, do the people make their marks upon the place? Next come subtler enquiries: what spiritual and emotional qualities do such a people develop in such an environment? In what ways do the forces of nature impinge upon the imagination? How do aesthetic evaluations grow? How may poetry come to life in such a place as Australia?¹⁰

Elliot’s ‘word model’ was expanded and developed by Robert Ingpen in Imprints of Generations as a framework to chronicle the development of a conservation ethic in Australia.¹¹ I consider this model to be a valuable way of tying together a narrative of people and nature: the effect of the environment on people and the development of their culture and how, in turn, their beliefs and actions influence the environment.

The river red gum, this glorious and extraordinary tree, is of far wider importance than just to environmental biologists and natural resource managers concerned with its adaptations to extremes of drought and flood. It connects across time, place and people, land and water, desert and forest. It is the common subject of interest between commerce and conservation, resident of bush and city, logger and conservationist, Aboriginal Australian, European settler and