(The dramatic story of Australia’s extraordinary rainforest people and country)
Penny Van Oosterzee
Allen & Unwin RRP $34.99
A greatly overused marketing quote on the inside cover of Cloudland says:
I challenge anyone who starts this book to put it down without first devouring it from cover to cover.
Unfortunately, that was certainly not my experience, as I will discuss.
The cover of the book explained that:
On their property on the Atherton Tablelands, Penny Van Oosterzee and her husband are regenerating rainforest from paddocks, reconnecting fragments into a living corridor that will run from the Daintree and beyond. Penny weaves this personal experience into a sweeping account of Australia’s rainforests. From their swampy birth millions of years ago to the present.
Concerned as I am about the destruction of our forests and having a strong interest in the issue of rewilding, I keenly anticipated reading the book. It was not what I expected from the marketing.
Penny Van Oosterzee is an Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and has been a Governor of World-Wide Fund Australia and she is a board member of the Federal Biodiversity Council. She is engaged in environmental consulting and has authored several other books. She is clearly learned in relation to environmental and evolutionary issues. Her PhD focused on climate-change policies and their relationship to land-use prioritisation, such as ecological restoration to increase forest-carbon storage and biodiversity. Well qualified she certainly is.
The book’s sub-title uses the word ‘dramatic’. That is certainly not the adjective that I would have chosen to describe this book. I often found it difficult to follow, what point was being made, or where it was heading, and it also jumped too readily from one topic to another.
Perhaps because of the marketing comments I expected this to be a book that was easily accessible to the average reader, but the use of many technical words and complex concepts makes it a challenge for those with no relevant expertise. It seemed to me to be much more textbook than dramatic story. It has 649 endnotes.
Most of the books first 76 pages are taken up with much detailed and complex information about evolution and various extinctions over the past 550 million years. One example of that detail is the following passage on pages 38 and 39:
Pelycosaurs gave rise to a new type of animal, the therapsids. Not quite a mammal, they had nevertheless developed characteristics that have been passed down to us today: a secondary palate that conveniently enabled breathing and chewing at the same time; nasal structures that allowed the intake of more oxygen; a posture that allowed for more flexibility. Therapsids begat the cynodonts: small, burrowing, furred animals that are recognisably mammalian. Clutches of fossilised juvenile cynodonts show them curled in an embrace with an adult, suggesting that-even at this early time-they probably exhibited parental care.
That information might be fascinating and comprehensible for a few experts or science students, but I was left wondering what it had to do with the regeneration of cleared rainforest in far North Queensland.
On page 14 the author begins to tell us about buying their Atherton Tablelands property called Thiaki in 2005 and how they commenced regeneration work. Just as I was getting interested in this issue, after just a few pages, the topic changed to an esoteric discussion about ancient plants known as bryophytes. It then jumps to the topic of sea animal evolution and then for half a page we are told about a tetrapod known as labyrinthodonts, which were apparently the dominant vertebrate animal from 350 to 210 million years ago. The discussion then turns to her husband having what was thought to be a heart attack, but which turned out to be a reaction to a tick bite. Then there is a detailed mention of the evolution of cycads and how the Aboriginal population of the area were able to eliminate the toxicity of their nuts.
Chapter five begins with information about the ‘clearing frenzy of the first 20 years of the twentieth century’ but again, just as I am becoming interested in that topic, the narrative jumps to the asteroid that smashed into the planet 66 million years ago causing enormous destruction. It is only in the later stages of the book that we are provided with more detail about how and why so much of the Atherton Tableland forest was destroyed by cedar getters and for farming. It is pointed out that forest destruction continued, with government approval, until quite recently.
What I did find interesting but sad was the way the European settlers perverted Darwin’s Origin of the Species to justify the wholesale dispossession of the Aboriginal population and the many massacres that took place. The author points out that no perpetrator of any massacre was ever punished by the legal system. It is explained that the violence eventually stopped but then only to be replaced with paternalism.
After much discussion about forest destruction, Aboriginal massacres, and dispossession and about Australia being a climate change laggard, in the last few pages of the book we are provided with a little more detail about the regeneration activities of the author and her husband on their property. I was certainly hoping for much more practical information and detail about such work and how it could be applied more broadly throughout Australia to regenerate cleared land.
Perhaps I am being too critical of this book. It does contain much useful material and one certainly cannot challenge the author’s scholarship. However, my personal view is that an opportunity was lost to share many important issues in a simpler and clearer way that the average reader could readily understand, or perhaps not have marketed the book as an ‘enchanting, addictive’ book.
This is a book that contains lots of detailed and well researched material, but it is not an easy read.
John Watts