Australia’s south-west is home to the richest flora diversity on the continent, but it is also one of the world’s ‘biodiversity hotspots’, where high concentrations of native species are experiencing ‘exceptional loss of habitat’. With particular focus on eucalypts, ecologist Viki Cramer outlines the detrimental effect of Western Australia’s timber industry from 1850s to 1920s when millions of acres of jarrah forest were cut down, followed by further felling due to bauxite mining. She describes the environmental effect of land clearing to create the state’s wheatbelt.
The author’s knowledge and love of native gums is palpable, as she interacts with experts and conservationists, exploring pockets of diverse woodland and forest. Cramer highlights the devastating frequency of bush fires in recent years and the inability of many species of eucalypt to regenerate, before the next inferno hits. This book is heart-wrenching to read about such loss of native habitat.
But there is hope with projects such as Gondwana Link, a project that is working to reconnect over 1000 kilometres of natural landscape from the Margaret River to Kalgoorlie and the Great Western Woodlands. Aboriginal ranger and conservation programs are creating a way forward for the custodianship of Country. Cramer’s final words are about having a love for our homes, and a responsibility to care for them, but ‘not just for the landscapes that sustain us spiritually and emotionally, but also those that sustain us materially’ – that provide our food, timber and minerals for our day-to-day lives.
The Memory of Trees is a must read.
Reviewed by Rosamund Burton
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORViki Cramer is a writer and ecologist who lives on Whadjuk Noongar Country in the south-west of Western Australia, home to some of the most extraordinary and diverse plant life on the planet.
She is a PhD-trained ecologist who spent the better part of two decades pondering the inner lives of plants and their relationships with each other and the soil they grow in. Viki has lived and worked in the mulga lands, brigalow belt, eucalypt woodlands and subtropical forests of Queensland, the monsoon vine forests of the Northern Territory, and the eucalypt forests and woodlands of Western Australia.
As a science writer, Viki has worked with Nature Research Partnership and Custom Media, Stem Matters, 10 Deserts Project, Bush Heritage Australia, CSIRO’s ECOS, the Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia and the Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub. Her science journalism has been published by Ensia and Scientific American. Her non-fiction story ‘No change coming’ was selected for inclusion in the 2016 Radio National Earshot documentary Hot Summer Land. In 2021, Viki was awarded a Dahl Fellowship from Eucalypt Australia. The Memory of Trees is her first book.
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