Getting to know Australia

A telling piece of dialogue from the film, "The Man from Snowy River":

Jessica: One minute it’s like paradise, the next it’s trying to kill you.

Jim: …if it was easy to get to know it, it’d be no challenge. You’ve got to treat the mountains like a high-spirited horse, never take them for granted.

That is Australia! What better place to describe its character than in one of its great classic films. This is indeed a fierce continent. Everything that is indigenous – plants, animals and people – is incredibly tough, having accomplished the difficult task of making a living here. Geologically, Australia is one of the earth’s oldest continents. I don’t mean that it’s been here longer, I mean that there is no recent volcanic activity here. So Australia has had millions and millions more years of erosion without having new soil replaced, compared to other continents. Everything about Australia’s life forms are influenced by this fact.¹ The oldest river on the planet runs through the center of Australia. The deepest top-soil anywhere on the continent is only a foot thick. Australia’s soils are nutrient-poor; its oceans along the continental shelf are aquatic deserts, because so few nutrients wash down to its rivermouths. That’s why we have such crystal clear, blue, beautiful oceans, some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It’s also why Australia’s rainforests, western plains, and coral reefs are so rich in biodiversity. It’s one of the paradoxes of ecology, that tough circumstances are one factor that can lead to biodiversity. I guess the harder it is to make a living in an ecosystem, the more different ways of making a living DNA will have to take on to be successful in replicating itself. The other pervasive selection pressure in Australia is long and severe drought cycles. Parts of Australia can go for years without ever seeing significant rain, and geology shows that it has been like this for a long time. In fact, Australia’s climate has been more stable over millions of years compared to other continents, because as the planet has cooled since the warm, lush days of the dinosaurs, when even Antarctica had no ice, Australia has been drifting northward, keeping its average temperatures relatively constant over the past 60-odd million years. This means that some very ancient forms of life have survived here.

Once DNA figures out a way of making a living in tough ecosystems like Australia’s, man, are those good designs! All the indigenous plants and animals are resource-efficient, able to thrive on fewer nutrients than their counterparts living cushy lives on other continents. Everything is designed to conserve energy. That’s why many of Australia’s animals are nocturnal – thermoregulation takes less energy at night here. That’s why the brains of marsupials have shrunk over the course of evolution here – brain tissue uses a lot of energy. That’s why Australian snakes are so extremely venomous – the quicker you can drop your prey, the less energy it takes to chase it down. Forests are incredible in Australia. It takes a lot of resources to grow a tree. Being a tree in Australia is an accomplishment. Being a tree in North America? They have it so easy. If Australian trees could talk to American trees, and if Australian trees were obnoxious and macho, they would say, "Man, you guys are wimps. You sit there in your nutrient-rich ecosystem, on all that deep top-soil, and you call that being a tree? You don’t even know what it takes to be a real tree. I’d like to see you try to grow in Australian soil." Trees here are powerful. If Australian snakes could talk to rattlesnakes and copperheads and water moccasins, they would say, "You call that venom? Ha! That’s just a light aperitif. We’ll show you venom. Step outside." To which the American snakes would reply, "Um, we don’t have legs."

OK, leaving aside the barroom brawl between Australian life forms toughened by adversity and North American life forms softened by easy living, this is what makes connecting to the land here a challenge. At first glance, I don’t find Australian forests as beautiful as North American or European forests. They’re not as lush, not as deep a green, they’re more dry and spare. But there is power and resilience there, and a different kind of beauty. Pale eucalyptus trunks lit up by the fierce Australian sun, etched against the blue sky like bleached bones, reaching up with their leaves, pulling up with their roots, drawing together sun and soil to keep the cycle of life going. That is power. Aborigines, the traditional owners of the land, have learned to live here over the past 60,000 years. An urbanite lost in the outback sees a harsh, unforgiving landscape with no food and no water, and will probably die in a few days. Outback Aboriginals see a landscape rich in food and medicine, and keep the knowledge of where to find water alive in song and story. That is power.

I respect Australia, and I am developing a fondness for the land. Will I ever love it, and feel connected to it, as I do to the land in North America? It’s a challenge.

¹ A lot of the information here is from Tim Flannery’s book, The Future Eaters, the first part of which details the role of nutrient-poor soil and drought on Australia’s natural history.