10. Manjimup Day2

Manjimup  Day 2

After breakfast at the Timber Park Café, I re-visit the timber museum. A large proportion of the exhibits are intent on showing the timber industry in a heroic light, celebrating the development of more and more efficient technology to fell the forest giants. There is only a passing nod to the 65 000 year old indigenous culture it displaced or the opposition from conservationists.

I still feel the tragedy how we could fell magnificent trees, many hundreds of years old to be woodchipped and sent to Japan, to be converted to paper that largely ends up in our bins. This is the same Japan that is about 70% covered in forests. Their forests are not indiscriminately felled. Their culture holds trees sacred.I know the arguments for woodchopping but they do not hold water. there had to be an alternative

After persistent, and sometimes huge protests this practice was stopped but we still have not managed to protect these forests from power and profit and I have to stop myself despairing for the future of these unique ecosystems that are disappearing bit by stealthy bit.

I left the timber museum and drove to Pemberton to the Gloucester National Park looking for an old-growth forest to explore. To my disappointment it is still recovering from a control burn. However, the towering ancient trees command reverence from their gigantic moss-covered roots to the canopies reaching for the blue eternity of the sky.  Bracken fern and Zamias sprout fresh and green but Harderbergia and Clematis hang, grey as grief in the charred understory. Oil on the blackened eucalyptus leaves that carpet the earth shines silver with dew. There was very little sign of fungi spore bodies. I saw more in Sampson Park near Fremantle last week. It may be too early for them down here.

My path meets the Bibbulmun Track which I follow over a small lichen-spotted bridge, up hills and into valleys. Here, there has been no burning. In the stillness, I imagine I hear a murmur of insects, or is it the oxygenated breath of the trees replenishing the silence?