SE FORESTS: a natural history

by John Blay

 John Blay is writing a natural history of the South East Forests of Australia, a region taking in the rough triangle between Bermagui, Mt Kosciuszko and Mallacoota, two thirds of which are public lands, mostly National Park and State Forest. The book will consider how the landscape has come to be the way it is today.

 1. Concept

It will be a first person account that considers the grand passions roused as numerous groups fought tooth and nail for the SE Forests from the 1970s to the 90s. The physical details including flora, fauna, geology, climate and such will also be taken into account. The history and prehistory inform everything. First consideration will be the countryside itself: what is it? What grows there? Why? How have people used it over time? Also, the largely unwritten story of its ‘progress’ to the present will be told. For the past 50 years, the age of the chainsaw and bulldozer, this is to be found on ground, in departmental reports, through the oral history and in newspapers.

 The form will be that of a natural history, as seen through the eyes of a wandering naturalist. There will always be the narrator’s voice saying I went here, then I saw that, perhaps this connects to something else or has special meaning: the shepherd’s view of countryside. It is the poet’s voice bringing things together, singing them up: as much Theocritus’ Idylls as Virgil’s Eclogues, through de Crevecouer’s Letters from an American Farmer, John McPhee’s Coming into the Country  or Eric Roll’s A Million Wild Acres. But as an approach it will possibly have greater affinity with Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, or Thoreau’s journey to Ktaadn and Mattheison’s The Snow Leopard (perhaps even with a touch of Bill Bryson’s Walk in the Woods).

We will hear other voices from this and past times: farmers, Aborigines, loggers, foresters, scientists, surveyors, conservationists and such, all woven into the fabric and completing the picture.

 In my opinion, nothing quite like it could have been written in Australia before this, and most likely never will again. Nevertheless, it should fit into the space between three remarkable, towering works on the region that I believe brought to light broader truths: Keith Hancock’s Discovering Monaro: a study of man’s impact on his environment (1972), Alec Costin’s A Study of the Ecosystems of the Monaro Region (1954) and Mark McKenna’s Looking for Blackfellas Point: an Australian history of place (2002).

 The book will be a journey through places I feel deeply connected to, amongst people I respect for their differences, and towards a better understanding of all that it is to stand in a part of Australia. It will be the culmination of thirty or forty years work and a follow on from my more necessarily limited books, Back Country (1987) and Part of the Scenery (1984).

 3. Approach/ Methodology

The most arduous parts of the research have already been undertaken, which is to say that most of a very considerable tract of rugged country has already been walked and noted. Some parts will have to be revisited and cross-referenced to old maps, surveyor’s reports, old journals, newspaper reports, scientific reports and oral history. The basic questions are: what is it like now? What was it like then? What was it like before? Why have the changes taken place? And essentially, how can we tell the true story of the land?

 More field researches will be necessary, especially to tie up loose ends regarding new species and distribution of Aboriginal food plants. If there are bush fires in the region, rapid follow up to more easily find Aboriginal sites and pathway information will be invaluable.

 The narrative will question its methodologies. It will be told in the first person, intercut with oral history and researches, employing footnotes and index.

 But first and foremost it will tell a story. The researches will have to complete that story.

 4. Significance of the project

The political processes that brought to an end the bitter forest wars of SE NSW deserve examination. They can help tell us who Australians are, what we value and where we’ve come from.

 But furthermore, until Australians see in their countryside the story of its prehistory and Aboriginal landscapes there is little hope of social justice or reconciliation ever happening. It seems more and more likely, especially in light of imminent climate change, that we can learn from Aboriginal landscape management and attitudes to Country. Are the approaches we have taken to date necessarily the way we should keep going? If we can inform the people about the land in ways they understand, I suspect it will help them deal better with cultural and land issues.

 The weight this project carries has been recognised at the most senior Governmental levels, by the relevant departments, by local land managers and on a literary level with continuations of funding and cooperation. This is even more important in relation to Aboriginal communities of the region who recognise its educational values and potential for raising esteem.