EUCALYPTUS TREES.
With this post I’m going to share an extract from my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine. The wilderness regions of the Granite Belt are comprised of large rock outcrops and an abundance of eucalyptus forest, but it was not always like this.
Granite rocks
When the explorers rode their horses through this country they had to avoid the rocks, but they did not encounter the dense eucalyptus forests that now cover the hills. One of my Grandfathers, Hugh Mulcahy, was born in Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt in 1876 and he was able to tell his children of remembering this country as open forest. What did he mean by open forest? Forest in which the trees grew sufficiently far apart to allow riders to pass between them, where grass grew and cattle grazed.
Aged eucalyptus trees
These two aged trees on our farm at the rear of Das Helwig Haus B&B show the spacing of open forest country. But look, they are surrounded by sapling eucalyptus trees. What changed the country?
EXTRACT
After a devastating bushfire tore through the Granite Belt, three young WWOOF members from Germany were helping me clear debris when I explained why this change occurred in the century after my Grandfather was born.
Vanessa tells me that yesterday they had seen a young fox. I lead them to a rock outcrop where we all sit on boulders while we discuss feral animals and other man made Australian problems. The topic ranges through foxes and cats, the prickly pear and cactoblastis moth, the cane beetle and cane toad, until I ask, ‘Do you think of the European honey bee as a feral insect?’
‘The honey bee?’ Vanessa sounds incredulous.
‘Yes. A hundred years ago, this was open forest country. My Grandfather was born in Stanthorpe and he could remember this country as open country, but not my father.’
‘Are you saying the bee changed the nature of the country?’ Sabine asks.
‘Yes. The little Australian native bee wasn’t capable of pollinating all the blossom on these trees,’ I point to a mature tree still smouldering at the base, ‘so there wasn’t a lot of fertile seed. Regular Aboriginal burning of the country killed off young seedlings, and encouraged the grass to grow.’
‘They did that so the patches of green grass attracted kangaroos and wallabies, didn’t they?’ Dirk volunteers.
‘Yes. It made hunting easier for the men. Then came the white man, who only cleared the good agricultural land, and introduced the bees for honey.’
They are listening intently. Better to enjoy a lecture, than pick up sticks and we are all content to sit in the sun.
‘The European bee competed with birds and native bees for hollow limbs to store their honey.’
‘Do you ever rob the hives for honey?’ Sabine asks.
‘Too much work.’ I continue, ‘This much bigger bee was capable of pollinating all the blossom of the eucalyptus trees so there was an abundance of fertile seed. Without regular burning of the hillsides, the seedlings soon grew to saplings and they too began to flower. Now, wherever you look around this country the hills are heavily forested with young trees.’ I wave my arms in a circle to encompass the valley.
Granite Belt hills
‘But surely that is not a bad thing,’ Dirk says. ‘We need trees to combat the greenhouse effect.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t like it for a number of reasons. The soil can’t sustain these thickets of trees. They will never reach the grand size of the original parent tree, and as we have just seen, they constitute an immense fire hazard.’
‘What else?’ Sabine asks.
‘The bees are changing the domination of species throughout Australia, encouraging especially the eucalyptus to flourish,’ I shake my head in disgust. ‘Some National Parks were specifically set up because of native plants that require the deep pollination of the little Australian native bee. The nature of these parks will change, unless the European bee is eradicated, or the eucalyptus are treated like a weed and poisoned.’
‘Will that happen?’ Sabine asks.
‘No. The European bee is too widespread all over Australia, and the crops and fruit trees introduced into Australia by the settlers require their pollination services. We wouldn’t have a plum crop without bees to cross pollinate our trees. Nor will the city people ever allow the eucalyptus trees to be thinned. Like Dirk said, they think country people should be planting more trees because of the greenhouse gasses, not bulldozing them down.
Das Helwig Haus B&B owned by Eberhard and Fay Helwig is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.
This is a region noted for Australian wildflowers, four wilderness National Parks and sixty wineries. In 1997 Eberhard and Fay established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies, a European wildflower.
To obtain Fay’s book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine email Fay on helwig@halenet.com.au
Internationally it is available on the Amazon.com website. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ACXQ0M/sr=8-1/qid=1244294755/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1244294755&sr=8-1&seller=
http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary
http://books.google.co.uk/
Book cover
Technorati Tags: Australian, australian wildflowers, book, Das Helwig Haus B&B, eucalyptus, Glen Aplin, granite belt, red flanders poppy, remembrance field, Wildflowers wilderness and wine, WWOOF
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