Australians

Australia is a weird country, and so are its people. Wynne is correct in stating that nature here is more interesting than the people, because little is more fascinating than the amazing flora and fauna down under. Also, Australian culture is closer to our own than Polynesian culture, for example, which tends to give the animals and plants center stage. However, the purpose of my travel is to learn about mankind, and I did not fail to make some remarkable observations about the people of the land down under. I shall also try to draw a conclusion or two regarding my quest for world peace from these observations.

Mostly everybody has some kind of stereotype of Australians—partly fueled by movies like ‘Crocodile Dundee’—as laid back and friendly people that say ‘hey mate’ all the time, that are a little rough around the edges, close to nature, and drink a lot. The last part is true, for sure. As for the rest, I might want to undertake a slightly more detailed analysis.

But I do not want to make one of the greatest mistakes often made when observing people. I am talking about over-generalization. We spent 95% of our time in Queensland, and therefore my analysis will not be of Australians, but of Queenslanders only. When in Victoria for a few days at the end of our stay, we found the people there to be much different. Good on them, I would say, using a common Aussie phrase, for my opinion on Queenslanders could hardly be worse. I shall explain.

Unfortunately and to my greatest dismay, I have to state that the most striking and prevalent feature I have recognized about Queenslanders is a deeply rooted racism, sometimes latent and sometimes obvious like a giant white-head pimple in the middle of the forehead. Naturally, I did not meet every single Queenslander, but the frequency and absolute predictability of this feature was shocking. Even though vast parts of the rest of Australia are very much like Queensland—low education levels, low population density—I desperately hope that racism is not as wide spread as in the north east. Perhaps Queensland is simply the Texas of Australia.

We did, first of all, find a lot of parallels between Australia and the USA. Both countries are fairly young, both countries were founded by white people on the land of indigenous tribes, both countries suppressed those people, and both countries keep those people in reservations now, seeking to make amends for the damage done without bending over too much or even—God the All-whitey forbid—costing them anything.

Australia, however, seems to be somewhat behind the US in its development. Until only about 40 years ago, the country was politically led and culturally guided by the unabashedly racist ‘White Australia Policy’, which strictly banned foreigners of other races than the Caucasian race from immigrating to the country. Apparently, Australians had forgotten that their population was already heterogeneous. The ‘White Australia Policy’ continued even after Aborigines had gained hard-earned citizen rights in 1967. Interestingly, it was the Vietnam War that brought an end to the policy itself, but its ideology is still perceptible all over Queensland.

We have found other forms of prejudice to be widespread as well. Though most Queenslanders will greet you with a platitudinous ‘How ya goin’, mate?’, often times you will not feel any warmth in the words. We frequently had the feeling that it might be my dread locks that caused such lack of friendliness, and even uncalled for and unprovoked hostility.

Let me give you an example. All over the country you will find Tourist Information Centers where volunteers, often retirees, help travelers seeking particular attractions, or just help them find their way. The elderly couple in the info center in Townsville was so unfriendly from the moment we walked in that it came close to a complete refusal to help. When we described a place we wanted to see, and tried to remember its name, instead of giving us more information about the place or how to get there, they would just say, ‘That’s not what it’s called.’ Not a particularly helpful comment. They even went so far as to make derogatory remarks about our hygiene when we told them we didn’t require showers at a camp area. How many backpackers in campervans do they meet that need daily showers?

The lady in the Tourist Information Center in Emerald was at least willing to help, though she showed no signs of friendliness or even politeness. We did, however, also encounter the diametric opposite. The two elderly ladies at the info center in Beaudesert were not only going above and beyond to help us—phoning camp areas to ask for rates and giving us their private cell phone numbers so that we could camp in their back yard in case nothing else worked out—but they also engaged us in a half an hour’s worth of conversation, inquiring with genuine curiosity and interest about my dread locks, and finally giving us a jar of homemade lemon butter because we were ‘such a lovely couple’. The lady in the center in Babinda was no less nice and happy to share stories about crocodiles and cassowaries with us.

The problem, however, is that friendly treatment should be the standard in a facility dedicated to service of visitors, who come in all shapes and sizes. I should not have to point out the rare friendly agents, but the occasional unfriendly one. Unfortunately, service in general is incredibly horrible in Queensland, and on that issue Queenslanders for once agree with me entirely. One could assume that Wynne and I are spoiled by the great service mentality in the USA, but in my homeland, Germany, no one is ever going to win a prize in customer satisfaction, either. However, there still is a wide and hugely perceptible gap between Germany and Australia.

In Brisbane, we had to take a bus to get to the rental place for our camper van. To make sure we got on the right bus, I asked the driver whether he was going to the stop we needed to get to. He told me he had never heard that street name. I told him the name of the main road our bus was supposed to go down, and asked if he was going down that road. He informed me that he was no GPS. I asked him if he was going to the neighborhood the rental place was in, and that much, at least, he could confirm. The problem was not solved yet, though, because he didn’t know how much to charge me, which apparently was my fault. I told him it was two zones and he went along with it. As hoped, the bus went down the main road that he wasn’t familiar with because he was no GPS (despite the fact that he goes down that road every day), and stopped at the stop I had inquired about at the very beginning. But the confusion was still all our fault, because in Queensland, it’s apparently not the bus driver’s responsibility to know his route, but the passenger’s. Especially when the passenger is obviously foreign and has dreadlocks.

When we dropped off a rental car in Mackay, we had to wait until the lady from Europcar had finished the sandwich that she was not willing to abandon for a single second, and were then helped while a significant amount of mayonnaise remained on her cleavage. Since Europcar does not provide a shuttle service, we inquired about the best way to get downtown. She said there was no bus service in that direction, so we asked about the walking distance to town. She assured us it was no more than two kilometers, easily walkable in 20 minutes. About twenty minutes later, a city bus overtook us as we trudged through the dusty heat out by the airport. After walking six kilometers and more than an hour, we arrived in town, sunburned and fatigued from the relentless 90° heat.

And finally, the mobile phone company Telstra screwed us out of about $25 worth of internet service. The thing that bugs me most about that is that I smelled the fraud and asked specifically about this situation at a Telstra shop. I was assured that I had nothing to worry about. Despite multiple complaints, it was not possible to get the stolen amount back. All I got through fatiguing email correspondence with customer ‘service’ was an admittance that I had indeed been screwed over and an apology for the inconvenience caused.

But even when I was the one providing a service I was never safe from the widespread prejudice and racism. When tending a bar, I was regularly insulted for my hair style and often called a hippie (which seems to be the worst possible enemy of mankind, according to Queenslandian doctrine). Once I was even given attitude for my ‘Yank accent’ and told that I should be proud of my German heritage. In other words, I am not supposed to learn English correctly in order to keep my national pride. What these people do not understand is that heritage, which depends only on where we happen to be born, is probably the very last thing in the world that someone can claim achievement for. Being proud of something not self-achieved seems not only laughably stupid but also to contradict the very definition of the word.

However, in most cases I was able to change people’s opinion about me by providing fast, efficient, and friendly service, which proves that their initial resentment was nothing but prejudice. The worst and most appalling thing I encountered while tending bar was a guy vigorously requesting I turn off the music, which happened to be playing Wham. He had a problem with the group because ‘George Michael takes it up the ass’. I was, for a second, tempted to suggest that he try said practice, which might help him lose his obvious fear of liking it, but then thought to myself that the mere fact that I’m in Queensland should not be an excuse for me to adapt the local service mentality.

I also feel very much disturbed by the fact that prejudice and racism are not only common amongst the general population. Recently, an overloaded boat with 250 Asian asylum seekers was thrashed into the rocky coast of Java, unable to maneuver due to the overload, the horror on the faces of the victims visible on HD video feeds. Almost every soul lost their life. Australian politicians blamed this on the country’s lax immigrant policies and called for stricter ones. The lack of offshore policing of immigrant boats would, so the argument went, encourage foreigners to come to Australia illegally. This encouragement was to be blamed for the incident. Though it is their right to control immigration into their country, this was not a particularly tactful response to a situation that called for condolences and showing sorrow.

Another politician—an elected official, not a right wing opposition extremist or anything—demanded that Asian immigrants take better actions to integrate, especially regarding the use of deodorant. Though she was forced to apologize, she’s still in office, making policy about cultural integration strategies for new immigrants. In this country a politician can seriously get away with claiming that all Asians stink!

Sadly, watching the news that day was not the first time that I had heard that terribly offensive claim. Another person in Australia had told me, after assuring me that she was no racist, that Chinese people all smell bad. Do people not realize that by assuring others that they are no racists they pretty much mark themselves as such? A non-racist would never feel the need even to mention it. This assurance, however, invariably precedes a racist statement and thereby proves itself untrue.

The people I heard call a help hotline and utter worries that they will just get a ‘bloody Pakistani’ on the line probably do not realize their lack of tolerance, either. They should maybe have preceded their statement with an assurance of racial impartiality, too.

When we went to hang out with our neighbors for an afternoon drink on Christmas day, it did not take long before jokes about Murrays (Aboriginals) were told and received with great joy.

Now, let me point out again that these are only case studies without any over-generalization. I have met an almost negligible fraction of the population of Queensland, and I predominantly encountered people with a rather low level of education, most of whom I assumed did not have a college degree. (If they did, that would make the things they said all the more disappointing). But the regularity with which one finds the opinions mentioned above is nevertheless shocking.

As stated earlier, I desperately hope that the rest of the country is less prejudiced. Unfortunately the news on TV that we watched almost daily did not give me a lot of reason for this hope. The ongoing debate about the Murray-Darling Basin, for example, reflects a related and no less discouraging mentality that I sense in this country. This basin is the most important water supply for east Australia, but farmers drain it for irrigation purposes to such a degree that in some months not a drop of water reaches the ocean. This, of course, has an incredible impact on the environment and even the climate. Experts warn that if measures are not taken right now, the entire system might vanish in the foreseeable future.

In that case farming would be rendered almost impossible in the entire region. Yet the claim remains: I’m a white farmer and I have a God-given right to use this water for whatever I want to use it for. After hundreds of years of bad agricultural practices have left virtually no fertile soils on the continent, farmers do not seem to have learned. They don’t seem to care a lot, anyways. A farmer we rode in the same car with tossed an empty plastic bag out of the window without even thinking twice about it. When we expressed our revulsion, he admitted never even having thought about impacts on the environment. This is, again, a farmer I am talking about.

Once more, this is a single case and might not be representative. Unfortunately, my overall impression of the people of Queensland suggests that it probably is.

We have also learned from some people here that Queenslanders do not give a flying flatulence about the rest of the world. This topic came up big when a significant number of Australian troops got killed in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan. All over we heard people ask ‘Why are we even there?’ And this is where we get to my insights on world peace.

Queenslanders see themselves as a peaceful people in a safe country. Of course, bar fights are a staple, but that should not be taken too seriously. On an international level, no one wants to get involved in any foreign wars. That could be called peaceful, I guess—if it were for the right reasons. It is, however, not due to a deeply rooted belief in pacifism, but to not caring. And I personally believe that world peace can almost by definition only be reached if we start to care for each other.

White Australia, for example, does not care about its indigenous people. Even though no real war, no open fighting, has happened in a few decades, I would say the two parties are far from being at peace. The world peace that I hope for is a state where oppression is replaced by equality.

These are the observations I have made about the people down under. You might have been surprised by my mix of examples, featuring racism, homophobia, prejudice, farming practices, and service mentality. I do believe that all five of them are closely related, concerning caring about fellow humans and the world we live in.

Obviously, I have a horribly bad opinion of Queenslanders and, of course, I have to ask myself if I am being unfair or maybe even hypocritical. Isn’t there racism all over the world? Don’t we find it in many of the southern states of the US as well as Europe? Don’t Italian and Spanish soccer fans insult players of their own team if the color of their skin is not white? Haven’t German secret services just discovered a radical right wing terror cell? Isn’t the Chief of Police of Dallas still in office after commenting on an unprovoked and excessively brutal assault on a homosexual by some of his officers with the words, ‘That faggot had it coming’?

First and most important, I have to say that the fact that racism is sadly widespread is not an excuse for it anywhere. It is to be condemned wherever it occurs. And second, I must say, I have never during my travels encountered so much and so frequent racism as in Queensland. I have visited some of the southern states of the US and most of Europe, two places with regular racist allegations. Even amongst Polynesians, a people that I hailed so much for their genuine friendliness and hospitality, their tolerance and spirit of equality, we found some weird hatred towards the tribes of rivaling islands, an old inherited hatred that I would love to see revised and abandoned. But I have never in my life seen hatred, racism, and prejudice displayed as blatantly, openly, and frankly as in Queensland.

Whenever I encounter deeply rooted hatred that exists for mere superficial reasons—like the color of skin or sexual preferences—I have to wonder where it might originate. What makes people hate? I cannot come up with any other reason but fear, the fear of losing cultural and possibly even genetic values and attributes due to the introduction of new ones. And that makes racists not only insecure but also extremely arrogant. They claim that their values are superior without having knowledge of any others.

Statistically, it is highly unlikely that one people has the perfect set of values. Only through cultural interaction, fearless and open interaction at that, can we find that perfect set that might help us take a great step towards world peace. Tolerance and lack of bias are absolutely essential for that. I hope that both Queenslanders and other racists the world over will eventually realize that, no matter the color of their skin.

I am aware of the fact that there is no absolute good and evil; we must not see this world in black and white only. Tolerant people with no prejudice usually have their faults as well, and even racists will in most cases have one or two decent features about their character. No culture that I know of has so far found the perfect way, which makes interaction even the more important. Only by learning can we improve.

So much for the interpretation of my observations. Now, even though I was often times appalled by the racism and homophobia I encountered, I must still acknowledge that Queenslanders are almost as extreme as their country. Alongside the unprovoked hatred for people of different races, sexual preferences, or hair styles, I have also found sincere friendliness. The rare people that featured it were so incredibly nice that I want to end on a happy note to honor them.

Our friend Guido who lived in our neighborhood for the two months that we were stationary, is the perfect example of how wonderful a Queenslander can be. He is a miner, a laborer without advanced education. Yet he is interested in interaction, in cultural exchange, in learning, in arts, and is far from being prejudiced. On Christmas, before we even became friends, he gave us a card with a poem he had written himself to comfort us for being so far away from our families over the holidays. Guido and the ladies from the Tourist Information Center in Beaudesert are what I want to remember about Queenslanders.

Reflections from the Bush: Part 2

Halliday Bay, Queensland, Australia
0845 local time
Wynne Hedlesky

After our two-day trek along the bottom of Carnarvon Gorge, Kristian and I headed east. Our next stop on the way back to the ocean was Blackdown Tablelands National Park. This landscape was again different from the others we had seen, and, as usual, inspired new reflections about nature and human beings’ interaction with it. The delicate, arid ecosystem of Blackdown Tablelands got me thinking about what resources are necessary for living organisms to survive—and what happens when there aren’t enough.

As the name suggests, the park covers 47,950 hectares of mesa-like sandstone highlands in central Queensland. Like Carnarvon Gorge, these highlands were formed from the erosion of soft sandstone, creating dramatic gorges and leaving sandstone mountains that rise suddenly out of the flat, arid countryside. Elevation is another form of isolation. Just as the blue crayfish of Lamington exist only in remote valleys, several unique species have evolved in Blackdown, isolated on the cooler, slightly moister highlands.

            The eucalyptus woodlands of the Blackdown Tablelands were the home to Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years. Their art is still visible. Signs throughout the park described how they used various plants for food and medicine. Sacred to them was a stream that flows through the park, and, at Rainbow Falls, gracefully descends a gorge from sandstone ledge to sandstone ledge. Though it is no Mississippi River, this water was essential for their life.

            Later human inhabitants in the region were less successful at eking out their livelihood. Cattleman William Yaldwin arrived in 1869. Though he named the area after Blackdown House, his family home in England, these hills were not to be his permanent home. Hidden beneath the thick grasses he observed when he arrived was a soil so poor in essential nutrients that cattle grazed there developed rickets, a disease in which bones become weak, soft, and brittle, and had to be moved to other pastures after just a few months. Not even kangaroos, which are also herbivores, live in large numbers in those hills due to the extremely nutrient-poor soil.

            Infertile soil is one of the many problems that plague Australian agriculture. As I discussed in Part 1, the harsh, erratic climate is another. I was aware of some of these issues before I even arrived in Australia from reading Collapse, an informative and well-researched book by Jared Diamond on the relationship between the success or failure of various societies, and the way in which those societies use or misuse their natural resources. In one chapter, he uses modern Australia as an example of a society that wrestles with serious resource shortages. To some extent, these shortages predated the arrival of Europeans on the continent; they are a result of Australia’s geological and climatic history.

Australia’s poor soils are due to the fact that there have been none of the usual geological processes that refresh the nutrient content of soils in the continent’s recent geological history—little volcanic activity, little glacial activity, little crustal uplifting. But there has been plenty of time for nutrients to slowly erode out of the soil. Also contributing to Australia’s soil infertility is a massive problem with soil salinization, often exacerbated by human activities such as over-irrigation and land clearing, both of which allow water to seep further than normal into the ground, dissolving deep-lying salts and allowing them to leech into topsoil and groundwater supplies. But Australian agriculture could not exist without irrigation. Australia is the world’s driest continent. Rains are infrequent, and, just as significant for agriculture, unpredictable, being highly dependent upon the fluctuating El Niñno Southern Oscillation. 

Yet many organisms have adapted to survive in these unfavorable conditions. In fact, when the first Europeans arrived, thick grasslands, forests of enormous blue gum trees, dense rain forests, and rivers and oceans full of fish convinced them that this must be a fertile land indeed. Diamond says the first Australian settlers also happened to land in a relatively wet period, and so did not realize the full extent of the continent’s problems with drought. Europeans proceeded to harvest what Diamond calls Australia’s “standing crop” of organic resources, grazing, fishing, and chopping down trees as fast as they could. They planted crops, expecting the soils to yield the kind of harvests they were used to back home.

Little did they realize that most of Australia’s vital nutrients were locked in these standing crops themselves. Once they were harvested and removed, there was very little left for the next generation. Regrowth was slow, and, in some cases, impossible. Many of Australia’s fisheries have collapsed; the blue gum, once Australia’s most valuable tree, is now grown more profitably overseas. Diamond even compares the “wheat belt” of southwestern Australia, one of the country’s most productive agricultural areas, to a “gigantic flowerpot.” Agriculture there is now impossible without the constant application of fertilizers to the nutrient-drained soil.

Diamond compares this activity of over-exploiting organic resources to mining. Once a mineral is removed from the ground, it never returns. Australians were extracting, and in many cases continue to extract, organic resources from Australia at such a rate that these resources become, practically speaking, non-renewable.

Added to this over-exploitation were several policies that, to someone aware of the delicacy of Australia’s environment, seem tailor-made to exacerbate already existing problems. For a long time, Australia had a policy of mandatory land clearance. Farmers and settlers stripped the land of the native vegetation adapted to the arid climate, leading to desertification and loss of topsoil. There were also minimum—not maximum—stocking requirements for sheep and cattle. Ranchers had to stock animals at levels that lead to vegetation loss and soil erosion, or risk losing their government land leases. These measures were aimed at rapidly increasing Australia’s agricultural productivity, but, in the long run, have had quite the opposite effect.

Settlers also introduced many foreign species of plants and animals that ended up being extremely destructive to Australian ecosystems. Many of the most costly introductions were actually deliberate, such as rabbits, foxes, cane toads, and prickly pear. Now Australians spend billions of dollars a year trying to rid the continent of these pests.

Of course, the country suffers from chronic water shortages. Man-made irrigation systems were hailed as the salvation of many arid, inland towns. But so much water is removed from the largest Australian river system, the Murray-Darling, that, in some years, there is no water left to flow into the sea. On the news I have often seen coverage of the heated debate between farmers, who naturally feel they have a right to the water necessary to irrigate their crops, and conservationists who are desperately pushing for limitations on up-stream water usage for the sake of the health of river ecosystems—and hoping it’s not already too late.

This is a rough overview of what I have learned of Australia’s daunting environmental problems, from Diamond’s book and from several months of being in the country—absorbing information provided by the national park system, watching the news, talking to Australians, and even spending some time on a commercial fruit plantation. As I walked through Blackdown Tablelands National Park, and saw echoes of the different people that lived there—the ruins of cattle ranchers’ camps, and evidence of an Aboriginal presence in sandstone caves—I wondered how one group managed to thrive in this arid, infertile land, while the other couldn’t; how one group seemed to understand how to manage Australia’s resources delicately, while the other stubbornly clung (and still clings) to the expectation that they could can extract what they wanted, as quickly as and in whatever quantities they liked, and the land would yield profit indefinitely.

In an area with limited resources of nutrients and water, it seems obvious that this cannot work. As I sat by Rainbow Falls, I began thinking about this issue in terms of a net quantity of the “stuff of life” within an ecosystem—a certain limited amount of water, a certain limited amount of nutrients. As I rather more poetically than scientifically described my new insight while sitting by the falls, “one could say that these plants hold the future of life in this region. They are they nourishment for future generations. Likewise, they are more than mere descendents, but rather a direct continuation of the life that came before. The same life-stuff that made up those earlier generations now constitutes the current population.

“Life supports life. It is all one continuous process, without beginning or end. The life process of each individual organism is part of this larger happening in which all organisms nourish each other, into the past and the future. As long as organisms are born and die within this happening and are not prevented from being part of the cycle, from nourishing future generations, life can continue for a very long time even in a place where time and erosion have left the soil itself devoid of nutrients.”

It turns out that my poetical musings actually share some of the same vocabulary as the scientific terminology for these processes. Ecologists actually talk about “nutrient cycling” within ecosystems. There are natural processes that put nutrients into an ecosystem, and natural processes that remove them, such as the geological activities I mentioned earlier. The harvesting of organic material (plant or animal) is one such process. Harvesting prevents nutrients from cycling, and, along with other processes that remove nutrients from an ecosystem, can contribute to a net loss of nutrients. 

But to answer the question I posed earlier: What had the Aborigines, who made their home on one of the world’s driest, most infertile continents for forty thousand years, done differently from the European settlers? Not being an ecologist or an anthropologist, I didn’t have much in the way of tools to help me answer that question. It does seem like the Aborigines managed to harvest organic material from their environment for their sustenance without tipping the balance toward a net loss of nutrients.  Perhaps their ability to do this has something to do with two vastly different attitudes toward the natural world and the sources of their sustenance. In short, the European settlers considered themselves to exist outside of the “cycle of life” I described above, while the Aborigines must have found a way, over thousands of years, to live sustainably within that cycle.

The early Australian settlers, as well as many people in the world today, saw nature as something they merely use, not as something they are also a part of. They saw in the world around them a wealth of natural resources that they could take as they please, not just for their own personal sustenance, but in order to export them to other places and amass wealth. By doing this, they broke the cycle of life; they prevented organisms from nourishing later generations.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, three-quarters of Australia’s population of about thirty million lives in urban areas. Much of their food and other organic products come from Australia’s agricultural land. This results in a flow of nutrients out of the areas of production and into the cities. If all of these city dwellers were appropriately distributed over Australia’s productive land, would the land be able to support them? Probably not. Yet there are elements in the Australian government who are pushing hard for policies that would encourage further population growth, believing for some reason that, without twenty million more people, they won’t have the influence or economic clout to be a player on the world political stage.

We must not forget how much of Australia’s agricultural products—livestock, timber, food—are exported overseas, adding to the net loss of nutrients in Australia’s agricultural land. Simplified (and perhaps oversimplified) in this way, it seems clear that Australia’s infertile soil and delicate ecosystems cannot provide the nourishment required to sustain such a large population of organisms that are not themselves part of that ecosystem, that are not part of that regional cycle of life. Hence the constant necessity of man-made fertilizers, and the plight of Australia’s fresh water supply.

Yet this attitude that man is separate from nature, that we have a right to exploit it however we choose even while living in cities and distancing ourselves from it for our own convenience, is shared by countless millions of Westerners (I use this word more for the convenience of choosing a term than because I think it is a truly accurate appellation). In fact, this attitude is so common, that it comes as a surprise to many people that there could be any other type of relationship with the natural world. We’ve done such a good job at distancing ourselves from it that many people feel uncomfortable in nature—it’s full of bugs, dirt, germs; there’s nowhere to sit, no entertainment, nothing to buy. Even though I love being in natural settings, I would be lying if I said I’m not susceptible to similar feelings from time to time. When I’m soaking wet, smelly, my feet are covered in blisters and my ankles are covered in leaches, I occasionally long for the sterility of a dry, air-conditioned hotel room and food that comes pre-prepared in a neat little box.

But I experiment in suppressing these feelings of disgust. I am, at least intellectually, aware that peoples like the Australian Aborigines had a different attitude toward the natural world, and I try to understand what that would be like. Unfortunately, I fear this is basically impossible. How can I know what it would have been like to see myself as completely integrated into the natural processes taking place around me, rather than as a visitor from outside? How would it have felt to travel not just to places I thought were pretty, and not when I have the money and time off work, but when certain plants were producing fruit, or in order to follow the animals I ate for food? How would it have felt to have the ability to scan the eucalyptus woodlands of Blackdown Tablelands in search of food the way I scan the price tags at the supermarket? What would it have been like if Rainbow Falls was not just a pleasant place to sit and write in my journal, but as indispensable for my life as money is today?

However difficult it may be to bridge the gap between these different perspectives, I think that at least diminishing that distance will be necessary if human beings want to continue to survive on this planet. The Aborigines survived in the harsh environment of Australia for forty thousand years, while Westerners have managed to significantly reduce the continent’s resources in just a few hundred. What did the Aborigines do right? They lived as part of the place that provided their sustenance, in smaller populations, and they did not overexploit nature’s resources. That’s not to say they had no effect on the natural world at all. They commonly used bushfires as a way of coaxing the woodlands into producing the types of plant foods they preferred. Although I know little of their history, I can only assume that at some point their practices had a detrimental effect on certain species. However, over the course of their long inhabitance in Australia, they developed a way of living in balance within their ecosystems.

The first step for Western society to find such a balance is to actually admit we live within an ecosystem. We must realize this not just on an intellectual level; this perspective must not be limited merely to ecologists. Everyone—miners, doctors, farmers, bankers, the guy who works at McDonalds—must realize he does not exist outside the natural world, but within it. He must realize that, though our society has trained us to think that food comes from grocery stores and water comes from the tap, the sources of our sustenance really lie in the icky, buggy, dirty, germy nature we’ve learned to fear, and desire merely to control and exploit. Perhaps an awareness of the necessity of “getting back to nature” will compel him to find a way to get over its dirtiness and lack of refinement; or perhaps, just going outside and seeing how nice it is will make him think twice about tossing that chip bag out the car window.

 The first step to saving the world might just be to go have a picnic in the park.

Reflections from the Bush: Part 1

21 December, 2011
0811 Local Time
Halliday Bay, Queensland, Australia
Wynne Hedlesky

My experience on the islands of French Polynesia and New Caledonia was so eye-opening and affected me in such profound ways, I naturally figured that it would be difficult to top. I have been pleasantly surprised by Australia. Luckily, this is not a competition, and I need not directly compare the experiences, or the countries, or the peoples, since they have affected me in such different ways. 

            I sum up the differences between my experience in Polynesia and my experience here in Australia in a useful, if a bit oversimplified, way: In French Polynesia and New Caledonia, it was all about the people; here in Australia, it’s been all about nature. That isn’t to say that Polynesia was lacking in natural beauty, or that I haven’t enjoyed spending time with Australians. But in French Polynesia, Kristian and I were struggling with a language and culture more foreign than anything we had so far encountered. Here, what stand out are the diverse, exotic, and incredibly delicate ecosystems that exist in Australia, and, in many cases, nowhere else on earth. I am deeply indebted to Australia’s national park system. Through reflecting on the information I read in the brochures and informative signs throughout a dozen national parks, and by seeing the wonders that are preserved in them, my attitude toward the natural world has profoundly changed.

            Rather than post one extremely long description of the insights the Australian bush inspired, I have decided to write a little series, with each piece describing a different natural marvel, or a new development in my thinking, as Kristian and I explored different parks on our Queensland campervan adventure, spanning everything from riotous green rainforests, to dramatic coastlines, to arid eucalyptus woodlands.

            Part 1: Lamington National Park and Carnarvon Gorge National Park

            Let’s go north…No, south… Kristian and I picked up our camper van in Brisbane with not much of a plan, except that we had three weeks to get to Cairns, about 1,600 kilometers to the north. After driving north for an afternoon, we decided we’d made a mistake by heading away from Lamington National Park, an alleged must-see about 100 kilometers south of Brisbane. We turned around and headed for Binna Burra, one of two main access points for the 16,000 hectare park.

            We spent two days exploring the parks rainforests and eucalyptus woodlands, going on two moderately strenuous day-long hikes and camping (perhaps not exactly legally) in a parking lot high on the fog-shrouded crater rim of a gigantic ancient volcano. It was our first exposure to Australian wilderness, and our senses were overwhelmed. Everything was new and fascinating. Some of the plants, animals, and environments we saw there became more familiar as we traveled in other parts of Australia, and others are unique to that park.

            For those who love observing nature, this first encounter with the plants and animals of a completely new continent is like being a kid tossed into the proverbial candy store. Kristian and I marveled at the green-tangled rainforest riotous with the calls of unfamiliar birds, the wallabies darting through the undergrowth, and the indecipherable moth-trails on the scribbly gums. We watched huge, sky-bluecrayfish, endemic to the wet valleys of that particular region, as they scooted along the beds of pristine mountain streams. We gaped at the old growth trees whose trunks half a dozen outstretched adult human wingspans could hardly encompass. We even caught our first glimpse of one of Australia’s many poisonous snakes, a red-bellied black snake.

            Our wonder and curiosity was not only about particular plants and animals, but about certain novelties of Australian climate and ecosystems on a larger scale. On the first day, in the very same hike, we passed from under deafeningly green-tangled rainforest canopies to dry, crisp-smelling eucalyptus woodland. At the time, the starkness of this contrast surprised me, but later I realized that the juxtaposition of these two types of forest is quite typical in many parts of Australia.

Australia is a land of climatic extremes. On the roadside, signs informing the driver that the bushfire risk today is “very high” are often seen a few meters from signs warning the driver that this area is a floodway, and that, in the case of a flash flood, the depth of the water can be seen by looking at the giant, upright meter stick planted firmly in the arid ground for that purpose. Many of these depth measuring sticks go up to two meters. Droughts, floods, cyclones, bushfires, violent thunder storms—name an extreme meteorological event, and Australia has it. Frequently.

The climate in Australia varies drastically not just over time, but geographically as well. Within a few square kilometers there may be many microclimates, each one with its own distinctive plant and animal communities. On the dry, upwind side of a ridge, arid eucalyptus forest may dominate, with evidence of frequent bushfires in the form of scorched bark on the lower three or four meters of many trees. Up and over the other side of the ridge, in a valley protected from wind and sun, is a damp tangle of lawyer cane, palm, and other moisture-loving plants.

In the second park we visited, Carnarvon Gorge National Park, we saw such a striking example of the role of microclimates that it brought tears to my eyes. Carnarvon Gorge is located in an arid region of Queensland called the “sandstone belt.” Ancient creeks have eroded through several distinct layers of rock—volcanic basalt, and several types of sandstone up to 200 million years old—to expose the dramatic white cliffs of the 200 meter deep gorge. The geology of the place is fascinating, and of great importance for life forms in the region, both ancient and modern.

The porous sandstone in this area acts like a giant sponge, absorbing and storing much of the rainwater that falls in this arid region. As described in an informational pamphlet on the geology of the gorge provided by the national park, “This formation is one of the chief water bearing sandstones for the great Artesian Basin (Australia’s largest body of underground water)…some of Australia’s major river systems have their headwaters here.” Of great importance to the plants, animals, and human beings that live in and around the gorge, Carnarvon Creek, also feeds by “countless springs throughout the gorge system,” provides a year-round water source.

This fact has made the gorge a refuge for life in an otherwise arid countryside. The ten kilometer hike along Carnarvon Creek is ideally designed to showcase the interaction between geology and living organisms, plant, animal, and human. Hiking through the gorge is like visiting a gigantic outdoor museum. Every couple kilometers, there is a short side trail which leads to a sort of natural exhibit—a “moss garden,” where delicate liverworts and mosses cover sandstone slowly oozing moisture; “the amphitheatre,” an enormous cylindrical pit fifteen meters across and sixty meters deep that was formed by the erosion of a column of soft sandstone over millions of years, and is accessible only through a narrow fissure in the sandstone cliff; an overhanging cliff wall covered in the ochre hand prints of the human residents of the gorge hundreds of years ago. Every “exhibit” had me scraping my jaw off the ground. But one more than all the others.

Ward’s Canyon, one of the many small side gorges whose creeks flow into Carnarvon Creek, was once the occasional shelter of a pair of possum-hunting Australian brothers whose name it now bears. For thousands of years before that, its protective overhanging walls and source of permanent water attracted aboriginal people, whose presence is still evident in grooves on the canyon’s boulders used for grinding plant material. Long before that, and, miraculously, even in the present day, Ward’s Canyon was home to the majestic Angiopteris evecta, or king fern.

Millions of years ago, much of Australia was covered in rainforest. As the climate changed and the continent became hotter and drier and fires became more frequent, other species of plants and animals gradually came to dominate the continent, some of them even evolved to take advantage of the bushfires. Rainforest ecosystems now exist only in patches on the east coast of the continent, such as Lamington National Park. But a faint echo of these vast, wet forests remains even in Carnarvon Gorge.

As we entered Ward’s Canyon, the dry, crisp smell of eucalyptus was overcome by the cool smell of water and vegetation. A tiny, crystal stream bubbled along between a steep, orange cliff on the left, and a sheltering overhang of the same orange sandstone on the right. As we continued, the floor of the canyon became narrower and narrower, and greener and greener, and there, at the very back, was something you don’t expect to see in central Queensland—giant, water-loving king ferns, with fronds five meters long stretching almost all the way across the canyon floor.

Thanks to the porous, sponge-like sandstone of Carnarvon Gorge and the protection from the sun provided by this tiny side canyon, this community of a dozen or so king ferns has survived in an unbroken lineage for millions of years, making spores, slowly growing and maturing, spreading their massive fronds over their tiny kingdom. All around them, Australia has become semi-desert, but they continue on, indifferent to the fact that their nearest kin are now several hundred kilometers away in the coastal rainforests.  

Standing in Ward’s Canyon, I was baffled thinking about what twists of climatic and geological fortune permitted this beautiful anomaly, and moved by the simultaneous power and delicacy of the life in front of me. In the millions of years of their residence there, how many close calls they must have had, how many prolonged droughts, how many potentially destructive human and animal visitors, how many fires must have raged just over their heads on the arid tablelands. Yet, serenely and majestically as befits their name, they continued to carry out their duty, which is the natural activity of all life—to create more life. The miraculous continuity of this process is now a path that we can take back millions of years in order to get a glimpse of a vastly different Australia.

I felt fortunate that I was able to see them, to admire them. How much longer will they be able to persist? How much longer will the sandstone’s trapped moisture be enough to keep up a favorable climate in that tiny gorge? This was not the last time that the diversity and seemingly improbable tenacity of life on this fickle continent would leave me at a loss for words. It soon occurred to me that, in a country such as this, with violent, destructive forces such as flood, drought, fire, and storms ever-present, life clings to the land creatively, tenaciously, but delicately—and human beings must become aware of how easily we can upset that delicate relationship.