A beautiful calm morning on the river this morning. Warm, under cloudy skies I paddled into the forests of the book I am writing. While I was down south, I met a man called Ted. Ted works with the environment in the north of the state, but he has 100 acres of land in the south-west that he intends to restore to its original state using different methods including weed control. It was on Ted’s land that I saw several very large trees with a thick white trunks and far-reaching branches. Ted told me they were karri trees.
How could that be? All the karri trees I had known had smooth white trunks that reach to the sky before sprouting branches.
‘These are very old ones that have escaped the forester’s axe. Perhaps they had a burl or were not straight enough.’ He pointed to a burl. ‘The foresters would not have wanted a tree with a growth like that.’
So, the growth saved the tree, I thought to myself, immediately spying a metaphor to use in my story. ‘But why is it not tall and straight like the rest of the karri trees?’
‘That tells how ancient it is,’ replied Ted and I hear a sadness exhaled with his breath. ‘Before white settlement, the indigenous people managed the land, farming some of it to grow yams and grains. They planted between the trees using frequent cool burns to help them. The bush was a place that animals and people could move through, and the karri trees could spread their branches. It was only after white settlement when whole forests were felled and fire set to the debris that the regrowth came back so thick and impenetrable that when the karri trees germinated with abundance from the ash, they had to push themselves towards the sky to catch the light.’
I am fascinated. I feel so ignorant, and again am reminded that Indigenous history has all but been erased. I need to know more and wonder if some of what I am learning will find its way into my new book.
