It’s early morning, still dark. The cogs of my mind aren’t yet fully engaged when familiar sounds start seeping in. There’s the whisper of wind in the willows, the melodic song of blackbirds, the busy chirp of sparrows and the metallic whistle of starlings. Sheep and frogs add a bleating backing track, while the gentle rush of water in the nearby river provides a literal undercurrent to the whole bucolic soundscape.
I’m surely dreaming of Britain? No. As my consciousness surfaces, I remember I’m at Ratho Farm, near Bothwell in Tasmania’s Central Highlands. Of course the sonic similarity to Britain is no accident. The farm was established in the 1820s by Scottish settler, Alexander Reid. That was a time in which many European plants and animals were introduced all around Australia. While some were for agriculture, many were for comfort: the Europeans wanting this new land to look, feel and sound like “home”.
It’s a story that’s further illustrated by two of John Glover’s 19th century landscape paintings. The first is My Harvest Home, Van Diemen’s Land, which Glover painted in 1835. It’s a late afternoon scene, and in a large, golden-hued field, workers stack hay into bullock-hauled wagons. The scene could be in Glover’s native England, but for the background hills. These are very much Tasmanian bush, a mix of dry, open eucalypt woodland and more thickly forested slopes.
But it’s the second work, Glover’s 1838 painting Ratho Farm, that is literally closest to home, or at least to our short-term home at Ratho. It was Alexander Reid of Ratho Farm who invited John Glover to capture the property on canvas just a few years after the homestead had been built. The painting’s seeming focus is a large eucalypt on the bend of a stream, the River Clyde. In the distance, across the muted gold river flats, is Ratho Farm homestead. Even at a distance, its distinctive grand columns are clear to see. So too are several outbuildings. Much of the horizon features open eucalypt woodland, a faithful detail typical of the meticulous Glover.
. . .
On closer inspection, the story of pastoral Britain meeting the bush of Tasmania gets more complex. Back to the present day. As we stand on the verandah beneath the same classic white columns that Glover recorded, Ratho’s owner Greg Ramsay points with some affection towards the wooded hills that still stalk much of the horizon. He then pats one of the columns, and tells us they’re actually made of timber. Massive eucalypt trunks from the region were felled, rough-milled, then painted white to mimic marble.
For me it’s an ah-ha moment, a symbol of something deeper about how we relate to the bush. It has me wondering whether mere practicality, like this use of trees, eventually turns to grudging affection for the bush. To put it another way, might the Tasmanian bush, which marches across the margins of our view, eventually walk into the hearts of we who were brought up with other ideals of nature? It’s the start of a two-way conversation I have at Ratho about belonging and the bush. It’s two-way because I’m aware that it’s not just about my thoughts. The bush isn’t mute in this conversation, even if it has often been the wallfower, sitting in the background, speaking softly.
The first Europeans generally noticed the large or the spectacular; the old or the rare. That has continued to this day. For most people, the type of bushland around Bothwell – the open eucalypt woodland – lacks the cachet of rainforest or tall forests. Few will speak in hushed and reverent tones on walking into a sparse woodland of cabbage gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora).
With a common name like that, Eucalyptus pauciflora was never going to be the pin-up of the urban conservation set. Nor, when anyone walks into a grassy woodland dominated by this species, are they likely to marvel at its cathedral-like wonder. But that’s not to say that only its mother would love it, nor that its presence in the Central Highlands of Tasmania isn’t both important and significant.
Truth to tell, when I walk into one of these woodlands, a feature of the hills above the cropping lands near Bothwell, a certain calm does come over me.
Certainly the cabbage gums have character, as though they could tell a tale or two of life in the highlands. As I walk deeper into the woodland, I start to realise there’s more to it than the trees. I’m almost having to wade through the understorey, which is both profuse and diverse. And it has its own quiet charm, although (again) the names of some of its species won’t inspire awe.
Take for instance Lomandra longifolia, most commonly called sagg. That name falls gracelessly from the tongue, and alternatives like “spiky-headed mat-rush” are not much better. And yet this thickly matted rush plays an important cultural and ecological role in Tasmania. Aboriginal Tasmanians have used them widely for their seeds (good for starch when ground), their straps (good for weaving) and the base of their stems (good for chewing when dehydrated). Sagg also benefits many other species, providing shelter and food for the likes of butterflies, beetles, birds and bandicoots.
This is not the place to detail woodland ecology, but that fragment might demonstrate how important it is to get our eye in – to realise the complexity of eucalypt woodland. It’s something we’ve done to a much greater extent for classic rainforests, broadleaf forests or coniferous forests. It’s especially important because these drier rural parts of Tasmania, which have undergone relatively slow rates of change, are now staring down major challenges. Even leaving aside the huge pressures brought by climate change, there’s something else that’s literally marching across these landscapes. That game-changer is centre pivot irrigation, and it has begun to profoundly alter rural Tasmania.
Greg Ramsay talks about these changes as we stand on Ratho’s verandah. He sweeps his arm in the direction of the rounded hills above the town, telling me that they’ve largely remained wooded since Alexander Reid’s day. But now, on quite a few properties here, and in fact all over Tasmania, land which was marginal for cropping – especially the wooded hills – is being cleared for irrigation. Centre pivot irrigators, a much less labour-intensive process of irrigating, require a clear run, with no trees or bushes in their path.
As this style of irrigation helps to make Tasmania’s goal of being a national food bowl plausible, and the income of farmers more secure, eucalypt woodlands, and all they contain, are collateral damage.
. . .
About 20 years ago I visited Scotland, and while there I looked into my highland ancestry. Although I found no links to relatives still living there, and felt no sense that this was where I belonged, I did have a brief but profound conversation in Grantown-on-Spey, the centre of Grant clan territory. While chatting with an elderly gentleman, I asked him if he was from Grantown. His reply, “Och no, I belong to Wick,” took me by surprise. He wasn’t just saying he came from the town of Wick, some 200km away, although that was true. He was also stating where he belonged – the place that owned him.
At the time I remember thinking that whatever deep sense of belonging (white) Australians may have, they would not express it in that way. For instance, 20 years ago I would not have said, “I belong to Tasmania.” But now, here in Bothwell, as I look at yet another way in which we’re imposing ourselves on the landscape, I can’t help wondering: is it time work out how we can show that we belong where we live?
Peter Grant lives in the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington with his wife. He worked with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service for 24 years as manager of interpretation and education. His passion for the natural world led him to write Habitat Garden (ABC Books) and found the Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. More of his writing can be seen at naturescribe.com.
Peter Grant stayed at Ratho Farm as a writer-in-residence.
