Land care: Singing country

By MIKE GILLAM Another fire was raging in the river and concerned groups of locals gathered on the Wills Terrace causeway to watch in horror and hurt as several trees were engulfed in flames.

I was taking photographs to record this latest outrage when the screech of a galah demanded my attention.

At the fire’s core a large hollow belched sparks and smoke but undaunted the protesting bird flew straight into the flames.

Shocked, I held my breath and forgot about the camera.

The suicidal cockatoo vanished into thick smoke and miraculously emerged a few seconds later, still screeching.

The galah’s distress was acute and questions flooded my brain.

Did the tree hollow contain eggs or was it occupied by hatchlings unable to fly, calling in vain for their parents?

Was the galah’s outrage and distress a requiem for the hollow where she and her partner had raised their young over many seasons?

Arriving in Alice Springs 50 years earlier, I found a place where the natural order still reigned in all its ebullience and infinite responses to climate, always fascinating, sometimes rejuvenating and on occasion capricious.

For those open to Centralia’s environmental pulse this dream has turned into a nightmare, aided by negligent politicians, defeatist bureaucrats and too many citizens content to wring their hands and channel "hope".

When faced with a catastrophe of buffel grass dimensions, hope alone is of course a very small investment in doing nothing and expecting some-one else to step up and provide the commitment, energy and fight.

Occasionally, I too indulge in searching for slender signs of hope in the buffel story: Perhaps the emergence of another inspiring leader of consequence, an ecologist, a pastoralist, a nurse or grandmother.

As the buffel disaster escalated the efforts of several Landcare women gained my attention.

In the Todd River, Sue Morrish was a sunrise phenomenon as she removed buffel encircling old growth red gums.

While labour intensive, targeting this highly combustible fuel load is an obvious and valuable endeavour.

What price can we place on trees, our sacred monuments and familiar landmarks that have endured centuries of challenge and growth?

I was intrigued and surprised however at the broader efforts of Sue and others, stoically spraying and upending buffel grass across Spencer Hill valley, a landscape surrounded by buffel.

Surely a mammoth and never-ending task of questionable strategic value with the certainty of fresh incursions of buffel seed infinitum?

Locally useful perhaps but could this example be realistically scaled up to restore habitat and create native seed banks across Centralia while we wait for action on biological control?

Perhaps I was missing the point, already made by hundreds of small landowners in Alice Springs who have diligently cleared out buffel on private land.

Follow up maintenance of buffel free landscapes are less arduous and many rural landowners revel in the benefits of wildlife at their doorstep and massively improved fire protection.

In the public domain of Spencer Valley, future maintenance could be achieved if all who seek solace from this special place contribute by keeping to established tracks and removing buffel on their visits.

The buffel grass debate see-saws, bureaucrats hide, politicians twist and turn in their efforts to delay.

In essence this is a contest between vested interests and industry lobbyists who champion the pasture values of a highly invasive and uncontained alien weed and a vast community network trying to save biodiversity from annihilation.

Chair of Alice Springs Landcare for the past 12 years, Suni Dhanji (above), reflected on recent events as the pendulum appears to have swung ever so slightly in favour of science and nature conservation after decades of political inertia.

“Declaration of 3 Cenchrus species as class B weeds and the listing of buffel grass as a weed in a class, yet to be determined is cause for some hope.

It makes it possible to formulate and implement strategies at a landscape scale. "Buffel grass was promoted as a solution to the dust storms generated by the drought years of the 1960's on the back of 80 years of intensive grazing by cattle, horses, donkeys, goats, and rabbits.

La Nina events in the mid 1970s, 2000 to 2001, 2010 and 2011, and 2021 to 2024 now present us with a ‘solution’ that is completely out of control. "Declaration in the NT is welcome ... but we do need to act and it needs to be in a way that truly values the environment, culture, and future of the arid lands in the places buffel is already affecting and the places it hasn't reached yet.” I will follow the trajectory of legislative and scientific progress in this mind numbing debate in a future essay.

“Singing Country” however focuses on the local actions and emotional investment of an inspirational few who will not yield to this terrible destroyer of inland Australia.

As a community we are constantly compromised and misled by the limitations of long term human memory.

At Spencer Valley, in the protective shadow of Tjoritja, two local women, Rosalie Breen (84), and Sue Morrish (56) have reminded us of the splendour we once celebrated in the native landscapes of Alice Springs.

Further east in the Kurrajong Drive area Valmai McDonald (78), Henry Smith (78) and Sue Grant (68) have extended the love and elsewhere others of the Landcare community have contributed also.

The grey plague, a monoculture of buffel grass, was beaten back by these Landcare stalwarts over a 15 year period.

With patient removal of smothering tussocks, the true potential of country was finally awakened with follow up rain.

Erupting in diversity and colour, Spencer Valley and the Kurrajong hinterland were reborn in an exuberant display of the native seed bank’s resilience.

The psychological response was joyful as residents from every demographic of the town paid homage to this "new/old" reality, returning often with families and friends.

While taking photographs for this essay I encountered many late afternoon bicycle riders and walkers, not quite a conga line but a mixture of locals catching up with work colleagues, east-side families of course, Arrernte notables and mixed groups in colourful saris and turbans.

All were smiling, most paused often to film the flowers, some were confused, unsure if they were witnessing some kind of natural phenomenon and most had no idea who was actually responsible for this "miracle’".

As one who cleared buffel decades ago from our town block, I too was re-energised by Landcare’s bold act of generosity and love, one that has fused the past, present and future into a moment of environmental activism and defiance.

Seeing such a dramatic response I finally understood the value of the bush regenerators’ toil and the depths of anguish that has burdened so many people in our community.

Beyond the riotous colour and beauty of the vegetated landscape, the increases of insects and birds at these sites are magical, a reminder that the adjacent buffel grass terrain was so bereft.

How do we measure the corrosive impacts of nature loss upon human wellbeing, of dwindling bird song, the flaming agony and slow death of Eucalypt giants that we must witness and endure?

Familiar landscapes that once provided comfort and wonder, ultimately vanquished by the staggering indifference of those in authority and their industry supporters?

Disillusionment with our elected leaders, those who blatantly serve corporations on environmental issues that matter, is one of the overarching factors that drives a flight or fight response in our remote population.

People are realising they can no longer rely on Governments to protect the natural environment they once believed was sacrosanct and protected.

To fight is a cathartic decision channelling despair into anger and action.

Conversely when we run to "better" places we must invariably confront the same nightmare scenarios of Government failures and nature loss, over and over again.

Personally, I oscillate between those primal responses of fight or flight.

I choose to dedicate energy within my home community attacking buffel but I also replenish my spirit by leaving town regularly to inhale buffel free landscapes, ever receding and further away.

Unfortunately my bush trips also invite exposure to future cycles of love and loss.

Pushing aside defeatism, it’s impossible for me to accept that my favourite surviving woodlands of northern South Australia and the far west will ultimately succumb to the buffel apocalypse.

What are our leaders waiting for?

Alice Springs Landcare volunteers have called up, my Arrernte friends and neighbours would say they’ve been “singing country”, revealing a dormant native seed bank that will provide much more than hope for decades to come.

Replacing buffel grass with myriad delicate grasses and herbs, they have spared swathes of mulga and ironwood from a reductionist future shaped by devastating wildfires.

Their painstaking efforts and diligence have released an understorey of native grasses, billy buttons, blue bells and a shrub cover of blue bush, ruby saltbush and other fire resistant native plants.

If the do-nothing status quo had run its course, much of this native seed bank buried in the leaf litter and topsoil would have been progressively destroyed by hotter and hotter fires and the relentless revival of more competitive buffel.

Fundamentally, the actions of my favourite bush regenerators around the country have made me appreciate the size of the environmental hole in our hearts, and the integrity that persists in everyday people.

The efforts of Landcare volunteers at Kurrajong Drive were tested by fires on August 14 and October 13, 2024.

For a couple of hours Sue and Henry stopped small fire fronts in the hills and were able to use a walking track as an effective break, walking backwards and forwards putting it out whenever it threatened to jump across. "That first fire was deliberately lit and started where the bush meets Kurrajong Drive.

I’ve lived here and walked in those hills for 25 years and I know those trees.

Where we removed buffel from around the base of mature trees they mostly didn’t burn but so much else was severely burnt. "Contrary to popular belief a great many plants won’t recover from the fire but some will regenerate.

In the aftermath of the second, particularly ferocious fire, several other Landcare volunteers arrived to help put out smouldering trees, just when our spirits were at a low ebb.” I brush past iconic familiars on the short walk to Rosalie’s front door, the weeping form of plum bush, favourite food of bower birds and the spectacular green pea flowers of Crotalaria cunninghamii, a focus for honey-eaters and so many insects.

While I wait for my friend I’m thinking about the last time our paths crossed in Spencer Valley.

Instantly recognisable with her well-travelled backpack, Rosalie was stooped in admiration before an aggregation of spider webs sparkling in the early morning dew.

That was 2023 and the healing of Spencer Valley was well underway before the spring wildflower show a year later.

The door opened and Rosalie’s eyes smiled a greeting: “At Spencer Valley I started by removing the cactus in the hills and that was a daunting enough task.

I thought the buffel grass was just impossible until Ken Johnson set up a trailer with a spray unit on both sides. "When I saw the results I realised something could be done and that got me fired up.

As the valley recovers, I love the surprise of finding new species of plants.

I’ve watched mothers taking photos of their kids amongst the flowers so I didn’t have to ask if people appreciated our efforts, it was obvious.

"Landcare has been a good social opportunity for me, meeting up with Arrernte custodians at the coolabah swamp, Doris Stuart and Elaine Peckham, who are special friends.” Rosalie smiled apologetically, “I’m less physically active now.” Ethical ecologist Aldo Leopold believed that humans are “plain members and citizens” of the land community.

He once observed: "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” A US Forest Ranger instrumental in declaring the Gila National Forest wilderness, Leopold moved to a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin in 1924.

He famously restored a dilapidated farmstead located in an area known for its sandy soils, to a flourishing forest that became the subject of a groundbreaking book. A Sand County Almanac (1949), presented a new “land ethic” for humans to live harmoniously in nature.

His book was published posthumously as Leopold died of a heart attack on April 21, 1948 while fighting a wildfire on a neighbouring property.

Many Centralians will recognise the poignancy of this scenario, a fitting end for landscape restorers and a risk for society at large in the buffel era.

Thankfully Leopold did not burn to death and his heart attack alternative is surely better than dying with barely a whimper in your sleep.

Across the planet public concern for the environment has expanded since Aldo’s time but the threats have multiplied exponentially.

Fortunately, Alice Springs Landcare is populated by a proactive and supportive membership.

Sue Grant concludes: “As members of Landcare, we are not alone in our woundedness around the scourge of buffel, we are in fact deeply connected to one another through our mutual love of country.

“ Valmai adds: “there are so many more doing similar work who could also be acknowledged.

We are inspired by each other, we learn from, encourage and help each other”.

All photos by MIKE GILLAM. For more information visit https://alicespringslandcare.com/Note: while the writer is a member of Landcare, the opinions expressed in this essay are his own.