澳洲广播电台第四集：地为我用(页 1) - 澳洲留学移民 - 澳大利亚广播电台 -
2006-8-7 02:28
城市童话
澳洲广播电台第四集：地为我用
水土流失、水质下降迫使澳大利亚人对广泛采用的欧式农耕习惯提出了质疑，使他们不得不尽力寻找最有效地保护环境的新思路。
[color=Red]详细内容请看二,三,四楼[/color]
水土流失、水质下降迫使澳大利亚人对广泛采用的欧式农耕习惯提出了质疑，使他们不得不尽力寻找最有效地保护环境的新思路。
[color=Red]详细内容请看二,三,四楼[/color]
2006-8-7 02:31
城市童话
中文详细内容
[quote]
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
大家好，我是主持人苏·斯拉梅，这里是澳洲广播电台的系列节目——“今日澳洲”。
在这次“地为我用”节目中，让我们来关注一下澳大利亚当前所面临的土地管理和土地保护方面的问题。
在短短的两个世纪中，为沿袭欧式农耕习惯，大片丛林地区被垦殖，结果造成水质严重恶化和土壤产出能力大幅度下降。
[b]杰克·汤普森：[/b]
一七八八年以来，澳大利亚被砍伐的树木已达两百亿棵，这一数目真是触目惊心。目前，我们每一天都会因为土壤盐碱化而失去一块足球场大小的土地。在我们下一代的一生中，三分之一的可耕地，也就是可用于生产粮食的土地，将因为土壤盐碱化这一痼疾而变得无法耕种。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
保护土地一直是澳大利亚著名演员杰克·汤普森密切关注的问题。杰克一直积极投身于“绿色澳大利亚”运动——他在新南威尔士州的私人农场里已经种植了约一万八千棵树木。
“澳大利亚土地保护组织”成立于十五年前，其宗旨在于推出有效治理耕地的新思路。该组织现称拥有四千个社团组织，涵盖了全国百分之四十的农业人口。
杰克作为“土地保护大使”，曾就澳大利亚耕地的现状向在堪培拉全国记者俱乐部敲响了警钟……
[b]杰克·汤普森：[/b]
这个警钟应该敲醒我们每一个人。在我马上要公布的信息中就包括了我国环境检测的结果。这就是联邦政府二零零一年环境状况报告。现在大家都知道，这个报告会以最乐观的态度来看待环境的现状。如果没出什么大事，政府就不会承认我们有任何问题。要是大家都说我们现在的处境危险，那我们可能真的有麻烦了……应该有人还记得一九八三年那场席卷墨尔本的沙尘暴吧。许多照片都记录下了当时罕见的场景。干旱的气候和长期以来对土地的不良管理造成维多利亚州耕地的土壤裸露在外，失去了防护。一旦遇上大风天气，土壤就被刮起卷走，使得墨尔本遭遇了那场罕见沙尘暴。仅此一场沙尘暴就使我们就损失了两百万吨土壤。重新改良这些土壤所需的费用高达好几百万澳元。把这个数字再翻一千倍，你就会对近年来我国土地状况有个大致的认识了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
这份联邦政府二零零一年环境状况报告是政府自一九九零年以来的第二个五年报告。
[b]杰克·汤普森：[/b]
一九九零年公布的‘土地保护十年规划’致力于在二零零零年前实现可持续性使用土地这一目标。现在二零零零年已经过去了。还记得当时环境部长是怎么说的吗？然而现在这个目标尚未实现，甚至仍然相距甚远。但是，保护土地运动是整个事业的开端，仍然是我们赖以改变现状的关键之所在。那些日复一日、孜孜不倦、任劳任怨地担当这项艰巨任务的男女老少，都非常了不起。正是他们及其来自商界和政界的支持者和顾问们，在努力改变着我们乡村的面貌。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
一九九八年，国际土地保护组织秘书处成立了，目的在于让大家交流和共享实现农业可持续性发展的经验。
国际土地保护组织秘书处的负责人之一玛丽·约翰逊，在与当地农民交谈时发现自己在农业耕作和土地保护方面的经验派上了大用场。
目前玛丽在菲律宾开展一些诸如农林业多种经营的项目。
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
在这个小组中，我的一项工作就是组织考察团赴澳学习土地保护的经验，考察澳大利亚的社区和政府是如何开展这项工作的，并与澳大利亚同行们讨论澳大利亚土地保护模式的具体实施过程和做法。这些讨论几乎涵盖了所有的问题，其中包括澳菲两国有关土地环保的最佳做法。菲律宾存在着河流流域管理方面的问题，这与我们的水库或者集水盆地管理问题差不多。他们要处理水资源匮乏、水土流失和滥伐森林等问题，与当前澳大利亚面临的问题十分相似。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
您作为一位女性，既是一位农场主，又是致力于农业发展和土地保护事业的顾问，人们是否对此感到惊讶呢？
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
对，他们非常惊讶。就我个人而言，多年以来我一直对这方面的问题有着浓厚的兴趣。到了菲律宾，看到那里高地耕种的农业体系，听到农民们谈起农产品销售、农业基础设施和市场影响力等方面的问题时，我深有感触。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
有些问题是世界各地农民共同面临的吧？
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
正是这样。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
我想澳大利亚国际发展署（Ausaid）确实会优先考虑资助与妇女和环境有关的项目。你认为是这样吗？
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
对，正是这样，这么做的确合情合理。我的意思是，比如在澳大利亚，女性占人口总数的百分之五十，让妇女参与环境保护的呼声很高。而且在我所考察过的那些村子里，妇女们的作用举足轻重。她们参加我们召开的会议，事实上，就有这样一个村子，村里的农民合作社影响很大，其发言人恰恰就是一位妇女。这些女同胞就像经纬线一样把她们的社区联合在一起，发挥着组织培养者的作用。这是整个社区福利事业中不可分割的一部分。在澳大利亚是这样，在其他国家也是如此。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
国际土地保护组织秘书处由一批精明干练的妇女组成，玛丽·约翰逊就是其中的一员。
苏·马里奥特是这个组织的负责人。她出生于农民家庭，后来又嫁给农民。在维多利亚州西区--澳大利亚优质羊毛产地之一--经营农场的经验，使他们更加确信重新确定土地管理模式的必要性。
苏•马里奥特夫妇在一个慈善基金会资助十五名当地农场主解决诸如盐碱化和水土流失等因素导致的土地减产问题时，开始加入到了土地保护运动中。
[b]苏·马里奥特：[/b]
我和丈夫约翰最早参加土地保护运动是在他参与‘波特农场计划’的时候。该项目从一九八五年持续到一九八八年，由伊恩·波特基金会资助，把西维多利亚的十五个农场当作试点，旨在向其他农场主示范，如果他们重新规划他们的农场，根据土地的承受能力经营，他们将会在农耕生涯中取得多么大的成就。这样，他们就会首先考虑环境因素，然后再引进新品种的牛羊。过去，特别是在降水量比较大的地区，农场边界都是沿着原来的勘测线来划定的。在墨尔本的勘测局，工作人员可能只是在地图上东西南北那么一划，根本不考虑具体的土质问题。也就是说，实际上标示一个农场边界的栅栏可能会穿过溪谷，接着又沿山坡而上。所以，如果在那个地方放牧，冬天牧群到处翻拱，夏天又会把山头绿色植被啃个精光。沙尘暴便会接踵而来了。但如果按照土地的承受能力来规划农场，就可以有效地管理牧群。这样一来，从生态的角度看，牲畜会更健康，土地也会更加“健康”。那么让我们来看看其中一个名叫“领航者庄园（Helm View）”的农场。这可能是在实施“波特农场计划”时期变化最大的农场之一。把原来的农场规划和它现在的模样一比，真是太不一样了。我们原计划将农场百分之十到十五的土地退牧还林，现在我们的目标已提高到百分之三十，真可谓是十五年的一个巨变。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
琳，设想我们现在就在主要的养羊基地——维多利亚西部地区腹地。在你来到这里并着手绿化建设之前，这片土地已经严重退化。能给我们描述一下在你引入土地保护原则之前这个农场是什么样的吗？
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
嗯，这个农场的退化现象特别严重，因为附近的树木在大萧条时期用环割树皮的方法弄死了。以前的农场主认为树木会和牧草争夺土地的养分，所以就以每棵树十分钱的价钱雇邻居把树皮环割一遍弄死了。我们来时这里只剩下五十棵红桉树还活着，排水渠附近的土地全部盐碱化，人和牲畜也没有多少遮挡酷日的荫凉。这里真不是一个理想的工作场所。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
通过琳•米尔恩一家的努力，他们的畜牧场“领航者庄园”成为土地保护运动中的典范。
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
在我们看来，退牧还林并不是一种损失。领航者庄园百分之十五的土地绿树成荫，现在差不多是百分之二十了。尽管这些土地不能放牧，却有助于提高土地的产出。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在这个澳大利亚优质绵羊、羊毛出产地，优质草场能放养多少只绵羊？倘若土质退化到绿化前那样，又能饲养多少只绵羊呢？是不是可以说是绿化提高了畜牧业的产量呢？
琳·米尔恩：这样，我举一个个别的例子吧。我们的农场里有一处严重盐碱化的区域，我们称之为“盆地”。由于那是一片贫瘠的低洼地，过去那里每英亩只能放养一只羊。后来我们引进了像美国高麦草之类植根深、耐盐蚀的牧草，然后又在围场四周种上了树木和防护林带“把守门户”。这样，我们把放牧量提高到了每英亩五到六只羊。现在，在那儿工作感觉好多了，环境好多了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
当然，和照片所记录的农场在“波特计划”实施前的样子相比，现在的农场看上去要葱郁得多。你能否给我们具体讲述一下你当时都面临什么样的挑战？
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
可以说你需要从头到脚重新思考经营方式。围场未必一定是方的，可以形状各异，大小不一，你甚至可以装上电子栅栏。当然，你需要种植大量的树。由于我们位于盆地集水区高处，两条主要的排水渠将水从农场的高处引下来，一直通到远处的邻居那里。我们需要把这些排水区域用栅栏隔开，沿渠种树。这样做的好处有二：第一，树木可以对水在流入水坝和集水区之前进行过滤；第二，他们可以遏止盐碱区的扩大，从而使附近的土壤更加肥沃。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
现在看看这个农场，又重新处于木麻黄树、桉树和本地植物的绿荫遮蔽之下。我注意到你在这里还采集了一些当地树种，用来继续绿化你的农场，看来这真是一项永无止境的工作。这是否能够让你想象出欧洲人定居之前的景象？
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
是的，在领航者庄园的一个地方，我们已经进行了植树改造，那儿曾是一个澳大利亚原住民的贝冢。我们的脑海里经常浮现这么一幅画面：在茂盛的木麻黄树、金合欢树和红桉树之间流淌着小溪，原住民们来到溪边捕鱼。在我们植树之前，这里的环境已经严重恶化。所以，为了表达我们的敬意，我们在这里种上了树木。现在这儿真是漂亮极了。在这里你会有一种时光倒流的感觉， 能够感受到它过去的模样。我是说，我们所做的只不过是植树造林，这些树种下去也不过才十五年。想想围场里那些五六百岁的红桉树，十五年时间真是太短了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
您现在收听的是澳洲广播电台 “今日澳洲”节目的系列栏目四——“地为我用”。
[b]迪安·斯图尔特：[/b]
在两万年前的冰河时期，只要你愿意，你可以从这里走到新几内亚。原住民就生活在这个地方。他们在这附近捕猎袋鼠，不过当时的袋鼠可是和这棵树蕨差不多高。你要是能够早起，向西望去，在地平线上你会看到大片的火山烟霭迷散在空中。西部地区最后几座火山直到五千年前才停止活动，正好是原住民在这里生活的时期。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
澳大利亚原住民部族深谙“珍惜土地”的道理，他们是这片土地的管理者，在澳大利亚北部、西部和中部地区更是如此。
迪安·斯图尔特曾南下与维多利亚州的土地保护团体合作，清除那些从国外引进的草木，因为在有些地方这些草木已经成为有害物种。不过，令迪安觉得可笑的是，在过去的五年里他一直在墨尔本皇家植物园开展“原住民文化遗产之旅”活动。而让墨尔本皇家植物园闻名遐迩的正是修剪整齐的英式草坪和域外舶来的奇花异草。
[b]迪安·斯图尔特：[/b]
那时我正在环境部下属的一个地方理事会工作，并和许多土地保护团体、社区团体以及其他友好团体开展合作。想想真的很有趣，因为那时我的工作正是拔掉、根除所有欧洲草木和蔓藤植物，取而代之种植土生土长的草皮、桉树和金合欢树。我想起前不久散步的时候，有人问了我一个与此有关的问题。可我仍然觉得，我只不过是以不同的方式做同一件事。因为我根除的是那些错误的观念和陈规旧俗，播下的是本土情结的种子，是精神的种子。所以，我觉得自己不仅仅是一名导游，更是一名文化解说员。我能带给大家的仅仅是今日犹在的一瞥掠影和一丝萦绕的余音，就像背景音乐里的回音一样。我想把过去九万年的历史浓缩到九十分钟里，也就是我所说的一瞥掠影。在教室里你也可以作到这一点。我也可以在教室里说一模一样的话，但是效果会截然不同。当你身临其境地感受到微风轻拂红桉树，看到枝头的乌鸦，啊，你会发现这片土地本身同其他一切所见所闻都使这次体验妙不可言。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在“澳大利亚雨林之行”项目之后，迪安立即开始操办他的“原住民文化遗产之旅”活动。为了这个项目，墨尔本皇家植物园专门辟出一小块土地种植澳大利亚本土的树木。
[b]迪安·斯图尔特：[/b]
我们现在走的这条小路被称作“雨林的边缘”， 也就是“澳大利亚雨林之行”的第一部分。我们将带您历经两、三千公里的路程，从塔斯马尼亚州一直到昆士兰州。好，那就从矗立在我们面前的这位“老公公”说起吧。实际上它不是很老，不过才八十岁。它来自昆士兰州，学名叫“昆氏南洋杉”。但生活在昆州的原住民们叫它“空楠树”(Koonung)。他们用钺（tomahawk）——一种石斧——划开树皮，让树胶或树脂从树里渗出来。运气好的话，我这儿可能还留着点，是的，就是这些。原住民把这些树胶收集起来，与火堆里的灰烬混合，或者再加点风干了的袋鼠粪便，这些东西搅和起来就是我们今天所说的“万能胶”了。在维多利亚州没有这种老树，但是这里的原住民部族——“古林族”（Kulin）也用类似的方法使用树胶，只不过他们用的是金合欢树流出的树胶。如果不和那些原料混在一起的话，金合欢树的树胶还可以吃。啊，好的。我们过去吧，到那些人那边去，这样我就不用大声嚷嚷了。不错啊，亲爱的。别担心，我时刻与您在一起。这就是一个很好的例子，两群不同的人聚集在一起。嗯，用手指把这个碾碎，转过来，闻闻，什么味道？嗯，有人知道这是什么味道吗？不知道啊？是薄荷吗？是的，它的俗名就是“薄荷灌木”。在原住民语言里叫“可兰德克树”（Corranderk Tree）。这可又是一种典型的多功能植物，用途很广。这些叶子，你甚至只需闻一闻，就能治疗咳嗽和感冒，治疗鼻窦炎、呼吸系统疾病和其他类似的疾病。还可以用来缓解肌肉疼痛，作用就跟万金油或者止痛油一样。游客中总有不少老年人，他们知道这些叶子可以治疗肌肉疼痛后就把叶子从树上剥下来，一片都没留下。这些树的树枝已经预先砍成约三英尺长棍子，干燥后制成“生火棍”。生火棍实际上就是把两根木棍放在一起摩擦。你要是从地上随便抓起两根木棍来搓，手上是不是会起水泡？所以不能那么做，而要把一根木棍放进凹槽里，然后像这样快速摩擦两根木棍，马上就生起火来了。早期的殖民地史料中还提到，这样钻木取火平均只需二十秒到三十秒的时间。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
当欧洲人在澳大利亚丛林中定居时，他们发现自己在火灾面前是如此的无能为力。然而澳大利亚原住民则十分了解丛林火灾的威胁，并利用火来清除土地上易燃的植物，以避免在干燥的天气里发生丛林火灾。
[b]汤姆·格里菲思：[/b]
原住民们利用火来清除森林的低矮草丛，这样他们便能更轻松地捕猎了。原住民认为大火之后的土地是干净整洁的，因此以一种十分积极的态度来看待丛林大火。因为大火不仅能够使土地空旷，而且大火后地里还会长出绿草，这些新长出来的绿草嫩芽会吸引野生动物来到这里，原住民们要捕获到各种飞禽走兽、袋鼠以及各种各样的有袋动物等等，就更加容易了。因为在大火过后的开阔丛林中捕猎要相对容易的多。由此可见，原住民们在用火方面是很有创造性的。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
和很多澳大利亚人一样，汤姆·格里菲思也是听着那些可怕的丛林火灾的故事长大的，而这些丛林大火是澳大利亚人所必须忍受的。
汤姆是位于堪培拉的澳大利亚国立大学的历史学家，他曾著书描述了墨尔本周边地区挺拔的桉树林中周期性发生的大火。
那些急于采伐木材的欧洲移民在森林深处建立起伐木营地，而当地的原住民却选择了居住在多草的森林边缘地区。
[b]汤姆·格里菲思：[/b]
原住民没有住在森林深处，他们确实就居住在森林的边缘地带。他们要住在森林深处的话，他们会烧掉一部分桉树林，但是大多数原住民都住在林子的边缘地带，用火烧掉居住地周边的草木，他们还会用火烧的方式开辟丛林小道，等等。原住民之所以不住在丛林中，一个很重要的原因就是，居住在澳大利亚东南部茂密的桉树林之中是极其危险的，尤其是在夏天，在干旱过后的季节里。那里不是居住地，绝对不适合永久居住。欧洲移民来到这里后，看到这些能够提供大量木材的参天大树，他们兴奋极了，迫不及待地要到森林里采伐木材。就这样，他们在森林深处建起了锯木厂，而这些锯木厂大多难逃被森林大火烧毁的厄运。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
您将这些火灾描述为毁灭性的灾难，这种提法引人深思。我想一九三九年发生在维多利亚州的那场森林大火就是一个最好的例子。能不能谈谈这场火灾给维多利亚这个南方州全州带来的影响？比如说给当地居民、生态、工业和整体经济带来了怎样的毁灭性打击，以及在土地管理，也就是我们和农场主们现在所讨论的土地保护方面，我们吸取了哪些教训？
[b]汤姆·格里菲思：[/b]
好的，一九三九年的“黑色星期五火灾”是连续几年干旱之后，由持续数周的炎热天气引发的。这次火灾中有七十一人丧生，六十九家锯木厂化为灰烬，一些小镇整个化为焦土。维多利亚州的过火面积达一百四十万公顷，这真是一场惊心动魄的大火，令所有经历过这场火灾的人永生难忘。大火深深烙在了他们的记忆中。奇怪的是，一百年来，早在一九三九年黑色星期五森林大火爆发之前，我们一直在这儿开采这片森林，砍伐树木，使用木材，抽取水源。但为什么直到一九三九年火灾将这片森林彻底摧毁之后，我们才开始关注这片森林的生态系统，并考虑要如何让这片森林重新生长出来？欧洲移民在经过了一百年多年后，才开始认真思考构成这片森林的主要树种——桉树的生长历史。因此在二十世纪四、五十年代，许多生态学家、植物学家以及科学家们开始研究桉树的生长史，他们逐渐意识到桉树需要这样的大火来重获新生，因为其它的桉属类树木能够在大火后长出新芽，而这种桉树只能够依赖种子再生。它需要大火爆开它的种子壳，并让种子暴露在阳光下，使其发芽，长出幼苗。因此，这种桉树需要大火使森林变得通透，这样才有利于树木的再生。但是，一九三九年的“黑色星期五火灾”促使我们去考虑一个问题，那就是要如何再造一个森林。而且我们还意识到了这样一个问题：在某种程度上，欧洲的移民使澳大利亚自然环境处于一种日益加剧的不稳定状态。这场火灾之后，联邦政府专门成立了一个皇家委员会来调查火灾的原因。这个皇家委员会的主席是伦纳德·斯特雷塔法官，他认为欧洲人来这里的时间还不够长，他们是无辜的，他们并不知道居住在这些丛林之中会招致怎样的灾难。从定居伊始，欧洲人就没有好好向原住民学习。时至今日，在很多情况下我们仍然没有吸取这个教训。目前，在澳大利亚内陆和北部很多地区都居住着原住民，他们仍然保留着各种传统的土地使用方法。虽然现在我们刚刚开始向他们学习这方面的经验，但也算是亡羊补牢，为时未晚。过去由于我们经验不足，蒙受了惨重的损失，但我们以后一定会有所改进。目前就有一些好兆头，比如在国家公园，尤其是澳大利亚北部的一些地区，就实施了更多的交叉管理或者综合管理模式，也就是在土地管理中将原住民的经验与欧洲人的科学知识结合起来，我觉得这是一个很好的发展方向。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
汤姆•格里菲思曾撰写了《桉树林——环境发展史》一书。
虽然澳大利亚人喜欢把丛林看作他们国家的核心，但大约百分之八十的澳大利亚人却居住在郊区。
欢迎收听我们的节目，我是苏·斯拉梅，在下一期的澳洲广播电台节目中，我将带您一起感受澳大利亚人的家园梦想——一个属于你自己的面积为四分之一英亩的小家园。
感谢墨尔本的莫纳什大学全国澳大利亚研究中心提供的学术建议，并感谢赖安·厄甘先生在技术制作中所做的工作。
[/quote]
[quote]
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
大家好，我是主持人苏·斯拉梅，这里是澳洲广播电台的系列节目——“今日澳洲”。
在这次“地为我用”节目中，让我们来关注一下澳大利亚当前所面临的土地管理和土地保护方面的问题。
在短短的两个世纪中，为沿袭欧式农耕习惯，大片丛林地区被垦殖，结果造成水质严重恶化和土壤产出能力大幅度下降。
[b]杰克·汤普森：[/b]
一七八八年以来，澳大利亚被砍伐的树木已达两百亿棵，这一数目真是触目惊心。目前，我们每一天都会因为土壤盐碱化而失去一块足球场大小的土地。在我们下一代的一生中，三分之一的可耕地，也就是可用于生产粮食的土地，将因为土壤盐碱化这一痼疾而变得无法耕种。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
保护土地一直是澳大利亚著名演员杰克·汤普森密切关注的问题。杰克一直积极投身于“绿色澳大利亚”运动——他在新南威尔士州的私人农场里已经种植了约一万八千棵树木。
“澳大利亚土地保护组织”成立于十五年前，其宗旨在于推出有效治理耕地的新思路。该组织现称拥有四千个社团组织，涵盖了全国百分之四十的农业人口。
杰克作为“土地保护大使”，曾就澳大利亚耕地的现状向在堪培拉全国记者俱乐部敲响了警钟……
[b]杰克·汤普森：[/b]
这个警钟应该敲醒我们每一个人。在我马上要公布的信息中就包括了我国环境检测的结果。这就是联邦政府二零零一年环境状况报告。现在大家都知道，这个报告会以最乐观的态度来看待环境的现状。如果没出什么大事，政府就不会承认我们有任何问题。要是大家都说我们现在的处境危险，那我们可能真的有麻烦了……应该有人还记得一九八三年那场席卷墨尔本的沙尘暴吧。许多照片都记录下了当时罕见的场景。干旱的气候和长期以来对土地的不良管理造成维多利亚州耕地的土壤裸露在外，失去了防护。一旦遇上大风天气，土壤就被刮起卷走，使得墨尔本遭遇了那场罕见沙尘暴。仅此一场沙尘暴就使我们就损失了两百万吨土壤。重新改良这些土壤所需的费用高达好几百万澳元。把这个数字再翻一千倍，你就会对近年来我国土地状况有个大致的认识了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
这份联邦政府二零零一年环境状况报告是政府自一九九零年以来的第二个五年报告。
[b]杰克·汤普森：[/b]
一九九零年公布的‘土地保护十年规划’致力于在二零零零年前实现可持续性使用土地这一目标。现在二零零零年已经过去了。还记得当时环境部长是怎么说的吗？然而现在这个目标尚未实现，甚至仍然相距甚远。但是，保护土地运动是整个事业的开端，仍然是我们赖以改变现状的关键之所在。那些日复一日、孜孜不倦、任劳任怨地担当这项艰巨任务的男女老少，都非常了不起。正是他们及其来自商界和政界的支持者和顾问们，在努力改变着我们乡村的面貌。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
一九九八年，国际土地保护组织秘书处成立了，目的在于让大家交流和共享实现农业可持续性发展的经验。
国际土地保护组织秘书处的负责人之一玛丽·约翰逊，在与当地农民交谈时发现自己在农业耕作和土地保护方面的经验派上了大用场。
目前玛丽在菲律宾开展一些诸如农林业多种经营的项目。
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
在这个小组中，我的一项工作就是组织考察团赴澳学习土地保护的经验，考察澳大利亚的社区和政府是如何开展这项工作的，并与澳大利亚同行们讨论澳大利亚土地保护模式的具体实施过程和做法。这些讨论几乎涵盖了所有的问题，其中包括澳菲两国有关土地环保的最佳做法。菲律宾存在着河流流域管理方面的问题，这与我们的水库或者集水盆地管理问题差不多。他们要处理水资源匮乏、水土流失和滥伐森林等问题，与当前澳大利亚面临的问题十分相似。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
您作为一位女性，既是一位农场主，又是致力于农业发展和土地保护事业的顾问，人们是否对此感到惊讶呢？
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
对，他们非常惊讶。就我个人而言，多年以来我一直对这方面的问题有着浓厚的兴趣。到了菲律宾，看到那里高地耕种的农业体系，听到农民们谈起农产品销售、农业基础设施和市场影响力等方面的问题时，我深有感触。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
有些问题是世界各地农民共同面临的吧？
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
正是这样。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
我想澳大利亚国际发展署（Ausaid）确实会优先考虑资助与妇女和环境有关的项目。你认为是这样吗？
[b]玛丽·约翰逊：[/b]
对，正是这样，这么做的确合情合理。我的意思是，比如在澳大利亚，女性占人口总数的百分之五十，让妇女参与环境保护的呼声很高。而且在我所考察过的那些村子里，妇女们的作用举足轻重。她们参加我们召开的会议，事实上，就有这样一个村子，村里的农民合作社影响很大，其发言人恰恰就是一位妇女。这些女同胞就像经纬线一样把她们的社区联合在一起，发挥着组织培养者的作用。这是整个社区福利事业中不可分割的一部分。在澳大利亚是这样，在其他国家也是如此。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
国际土地保护组织秘书处由一批精明干练的妇女组成，玛丽·约翰逊就是其中的一员。
苏·马里奥特是这个组织的负责人。她出生于农民家庭，后来又嫁给农民。在维多利亚州西区--澳大利亚优质羊毛产地之一--经营农场的经验，使他们更加确信重新确定土地管理模式的必要性。
苏•马里奥特夫妇在一个慈善基金会资助十五名当地农场主解决诸如盐碱化和水土流失等因素导致的土地减产问题时，开始加入到了土地保护运动中。
[b]苏·马里奥特：[/b]
我和丈夫约翰最早参加土地保护运动是在他参与‘波特农场计划’的时候。该项目从一九八五年持续到一九八八年，由伊恩·波特基金会资助，把西维多利亚的十五个农场当作试点，旨在向其他农场主示范，如果他们重新规划他们的农场，根据土地的承受能力经营，他们将会在农耕生涯中取得多么大的成就。这样，他们就会首先考虑环境因素，然后再引进新品种的牛羊。过去，特别是在降水量比较大的地区，农场边界都是沿着原来的勘测线来划定的。在墨尔本的勘测局，工作人员可能只是在地图上东西南北那么一划，根本不考虑具体的土质问题。也就是说，实际上标示一个农场边界的栅栏可能会穿过溪谷，接着又沿山坡而上。所以，如果在那个地方放牧，冬天牧群到处翻拱，夏天又会把山头绿色植被啃个精光。沙尘暴便会接踵而来了。但如果按照土地的承受能力来规划农场，就可以有效地管理牧群。这样一来，从生态的角度看，牲畜会更健康，土地也会更加“健康”。那么让我们来看看其中一个名叫“领航者庄园（Helm View）”的农场。这可能是在实施“波特农场计划”时期变化最大的农场之一。把原来的农场规划和它现在的模样一比，真是太不一样了。我们原计划将农场百分之十到十五的土地退牧还林，现在我们的目标已提高到百分之三十，真可谓是十五年的一个巨变。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
琳，设想我们现在就在主要的养羊基地——维多利亚西部地区腹地。在你来到这里并着手绿化建设之前，这片土地已经严重退化。能给我们描述一下在你引入土地保护原则之前这个农场是什么样的吗？
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
嗯，这个农场的退化现象特别严重，因为附近的树木在大萧条时期用环割树皮的方法弄死了。以前的农场主认为树木会和牧草争夺土地的养分，所以就以每棵树十分钱的价钱雇邻居把树皮环割一遍弄死了。我们来时这里只剩下五十棵红桉树还活着，排水渠附近的土地全部盐碱化，人和牲畜也没有多少遮挡酷日的荫凉。这里真不是一个理想的工作场所。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
通过琳•米尔恩一家的努力，他们的畜牧场“领航者庄园”成为土地保护运动中的典范。
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
在我们看来，退牧还林并不是一种损失。领航者庄园百分之十五的土地绿树成荫，现在差不多是百分之二十了。尽管这些土地不能放牧，却有助于提高土地的产出。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在这个澳大利亚优质绵羊、羊毛出产地，优质草场能放养多少只绵羊？倘若土质退化到绿化前那样，又能饲养多少只绵羊呢？是不是可以说是绿化提高了畜牧业的产量呢？
琳·米尔恩：这样，我举一个个别的例子吧。我们的农场里有一处严重盐碱化的区域，我们称之为“盆地”。由于那是一片贫瘠的低洼地，过去那里每英亩只能放养一只羊。后来我们引进了像美国高麦草之类植根深、耐盐蚀的牧草，然后又在围场四周种上了树木和防护林带“把守门户”。这样，我们把放牧量提高到了每英亩五到六只羊。现在，在那儿工作感觉好多了，环境好多了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
当然，和照片所记录的农场在“波特计划”实施前的样子相比，现在的农场看上去要葱郁得多。你能否给我们具体讲述一下你当时都面临什么样的挑战？
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
可以说你需要从头到脚重新思考经营方式。围场未必一定是方的，可以形状各异，大小不一，你甚至可以装上电子栅栏。当然，你需要种植大量的树。由于我们位于盆地集水区高处，两条主要的排水渠将水从农场的高处引下来，一直通到远处的邻居那里。我们需要把这些排水区域用栅栏隔开，沿渠种树。这样做的好处有二：第一，树木可以对水在流入水坝和集水区之前进行过滤；第二，他们可以遏止盐碱区的扩大，从而使附近的土壤更加肥沃。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
现在看看这个农场，又重新处于木麻黄树、桉树和本地植物的绿荫遮蔽之下。我注意到你在这里还采集了一些当地树种，用来继续绿化你的农场，看来这真是一项永无止境的工作。这是否能够让你想象出欧洲人定居之前的景象？
[b]琳·米尔恩：[/b]
是的，在领航者庄园的一个地方，我们已经进行了植树改造，那儿曾是一个澳大利亚原住民的贝冢。我们的脑海里经常浮现这么一幅画面：在茂盛的木麻黄树、金合欢树和红桉树之间流淌着小溪，原住民们来到溪边捕鱼。在我们植树之前，这里的环境已经严重恶化。所以，为了表达我们的敬意，我们在这里种上了树木。现在这儿真是漂亮极了。在这里你会有一种时光倒流的感觉， 能够感受到它过去的模样。我是说，我们所做的只不过是植树造林，这些树种下去也不过才十五年。想想围场里那些五六百岁的红桉树，十五年时间真是太短了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
您现在收听的是澳洲广播电台 “今日澳洲”节目的系列栏目四——“地为我用”。
[b]迪安·斯图尔特：[/b]
在两万年前的冰河时期，只要你愿意，你可以从这里走到新几内亚。原住民就生活在这个地方。他们在这附近捕猎袋鼠，不过当时的袋鼠可是和这棵树蕨差不多高。你要是能够早起，向西望去，在地平线上你会看到大片的火山烟霭迷散在空中。西部地区最后几座火山直到五千年前才停止活动，正好是原住民在这里生活的时期。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
澳大利亚原住民部族深谙“珍惜土地”的道理，他们是这片土地的管理者，在澳大利亚北部、西部和中部地区更是如此。
迪安·斯图尔特曾南下与维多利亚州的土地保护团体合作，清除那些从国外引进的草木，因为在有些地方这些草木已经成为有害物种。不过，令迪安觉得可笑的是，在过去的五年里他一直在墨尔本皇家植物园开展“原住民文化遗产之旅”活动。而让墨尔本皇家植物园闻名遐迩的正是修剪整齐的英式草坪和域外舶来的奇花异草。
[b]迪安·斯图尔特：[/b]
那时我正在环境部下属的一个地方理事会工作，并和许多土地保护团体、社区团体以及其他友好团体开展合作。想想真的很有趣，因为那时我的工作正是拔掉、根除所有欧洲草木和蔓藤植物，取而代之种植土生土长的草皮、桉树和金合欢树。我想起前不久散步的时候，有人问了我一个与此有关的问题。可我仍然觉得，我只不过是以不同的方式做同一件事。因为我根除的是那些错误的观念和陈规旧俗，播下的是本土情结的种子，是精神的种子。所以，我觉得自己不仅仅是一名导游，更是一名文化解说员。我能带给大家的仅仅是今日犹在的一瞥掠影和一丝萦绕的余音，就像背景音乐里的回音一样。我想把过去九万年的历史浓缩到九十分钟里，也就是我所说的一瞥掠影。在教室里你也可以作到这一点。我也可以在教室里说一模一样的话，但是效果会截然不同。当你身临其境地感受到微风轻拂红桉树，看到枝头的乌鸦，啊，你会发现这片土地本身同其他一切所见所闻都使这次体验妙不可言。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在“澳大利亚雨林之行”项目之后，迪安立即开始操办他的“原住民文化遗产之旅”活动。为了这个项目，墨尔本皇家植物园专门辟出一小块土地种植澳大利亚本土的树木。
[b]迪安·斯图尔特：[/b]
我们现在走的这条小路被称作“雨林的边缘”， 也就是“澳大利亚雨林之行”的第一部分。我们将带您历经两、三千公里的路程，从塔斯马尼亚州一直到昆士兰州。好，那就从矗立在我们面前的这位“老公公”说起吧。实际上它不是很老，不过才八十岁。它来自昆士兰州，学名叫“昆氏南洋杉”。但生活在昆州的原住民们叫它“空楠树”(Koonung)。他们用钺（tomahawk）——一种石斧——划开树皮，让树胶或树脂从树里渗出来。运气好的话，我这儿可能还留着点，是的，就是这些。原住民把这些树胶收集起来，与火堆里的灰烬混合，或者再加点风干了的袋鼠粪便，这些东西搅和起来就是我们今天所说的“万能胶”了。在维多利亚州没有这种老树，但是这里的原住民部族——“古林族”（Kulin）也用类似的方法使用树胶，只不过他们用的是金合欢树流出的树胶。如果不和那些原料混在一起的话，金合欢树的树胶还可以吃。啊，好的。我们过去吧，到那些人那边去，这样我就不用大声嚷嚷了。不错啊，亲爱的。别担心，我时刻与您在一起。这就是一个很好的例子，两群不同的人聚集在一起。嗯，用手指把这个碾碎，转过来，闻闻，什么味道？嗯，有人知道这是什么味道吗？不知道啊？是薄荷吗？是的，它的俗名就是“薄荷灌木”。在原住民语言里叫“可兰德克树”（Corranderk Tree）。这可又是一种典型的多功能植物，用途很广。这些叶子，你甚至只需闻一闻，就能治疗咳嗽和感冒，治疗鼻窦炎、呼吸系统疾病和其他类似的疾病。还可以用来缓解肌肉疼痛，作用就跟万金油或者止痛油一样。游客中总有不少老年人，他们知道这些叶子可以治疗肌肉疼痛后就把叶子从树上剥下来，一片都没留下。这些树的树枝已经预先砍成约三英尺长棍子，干燥后制成“生火棍”。生火棍实际上就是把两根木棍放在一起摩擦。你要是从地上随便抓起两根木棍来搓，手上是不是会起水泡？所以不能那么做，而要把一根木棍放进凹槽里，然后像这样快速摩擦两根木棍，马上就生起火来了。早期的殖民地史料中还提到，这样钻木取火平均只需二十秒到三十秒的时间。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
当欧洲人在澳大利亚丛林中定居时，他们发现自己在火灾面前是如此的无能为力。然而澳大利亚原住民则十分了解丛林火灾的威胁，并利用火来清除土地上易燃的植物，以避免在干燥的天气里发生丛林火灾。
[b]汤姆·格里菲思：[/b]
原住民们利用火来清除森林的低矮草丛，这样他们便能更轻松地捕猎了。原住民认为大火之后的土地是干净整洁的，因此以一种十分积极的态度来看待丛林大火。因为大火不仅能够使土地空旷，而且大火后地里还会长出绿草，这些新长出来的绿草嫩芽会吸引野生动物来到这里，原住民们要捕获到各种飞禽走兽、袋鼠以及各种各样的有袋动物等等，就更加容易了。因为在大火过后的开阔丛林中捕猎要相对容易的多。由此可见，原住民们在用火方面是很有创造性的。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
和很多澳大利亚人一样，汤姆·格里菲思也是听着那些可怕的丛林火灾的故事长大的，而这些丛林大火是澳大利亚人所必须忍受的。
汤姆是位于堪培拉的澳大利亚国立大学的历史学家，他曾著书描述了墨尔本周边地区挺拔的桉树林中周期性发生的大火。
那些急于采伐木材的欧洲移民在森林深处建立起伐木营地，而当地的原住民却选择了居住在多草的森林边缘地区。
[b]汤姆·格里菲思：[/b]
原住民没有住在森林深处，他们确实就居住在森林的边缘地带。他们要住在森林深处的话，他们会烧掉一部分桉树林，但是大多数原住民都住在林子的边缘地带，用火烧掉居住地周边的草木，他们还会用火烧的方式开辟丛林小道，等等。原住民之所以不住在丛林中，一个很重要的原因就是，居住在澳大利亚东南部茂密的桉树林之中是极其危险的，尤其是在夏天，在干旱过后的季节里。那里不是居住地，绝对不适合永久居住。欧洲移民来到这里后，看到这些能够提供大量木材的参天大树，他们兴奋极了，迫不及待地要到森林里采伐木材。就这样，他们在森林深处建起了锯木厂，而这些锯木厂大多难逃被森林大火烧毁的厄运。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
您将这些火灾描述为毁灭性的灾难，这种提法引人深思。我想一九三九年发生在维多利亚州的那场森林大火就是一个最好的例子。能不能谈谈这场火灾给维多利亚这个南方州全州带来的影响？比如说给当地居民、生态、工业和整体经济带来了怎样的毁灭性打击，以及在土地管理，也就是我们和农场主们现在所讨论的土地保护方面，我们吸取了哪些教训？
[b]汤姆·格里菲思：[/b]
好的，一九三九年的“黑色星期五火灾”是连续几年干旱之后，由持续数周的炎热天气引发的。这次火灾中有七十一人丧生，六十九家锯木厂化为灰烬，一些小镇整个化为焦土。维多利亚州的过火面积达一百四十万公顷，这真是一场惊心动魄的大火，令所有经历过这场火灾的人永生难忘。大火深深烙在了他们的记忆中。奇怪的是，一百年来，早在一九三九年黑色星期五森林大火爆发之前，我们一直在这儿开采这片森林，砍伐树木，使用木材，抽取水源。但为什么直到一九三九年火灾将这片森林彻底摧毁之后，我们才开始关注这片森林的生态系统，并考虑要如何让这片森林重新生长出来？欧洲移民在经过了一百年多年后，才开始认真思考构成这片森林的主要树种——桉树的生长历史。因此在二十世纪四、五十年代，许多生态学家、植物学家以及科学家们开始研究桉树的生长史，他们逐渐意识到桉树需要这样的大火来重获新生，因为其它的桉属类树木能够在大火后长出新芽，而这种桉树只能够依赖种子再生。它需要大火爆开它的种子壳，并让种子暴露在阳光下，使其发芽，长出幼苗。因此，这种桉树需要大火使森林变得通透，这样才有利于树木的再生。但是，一九三九年的“黑色星期五火灾”促使我们去考虑一个问题，那就是要如何再造一个森林。而且我们还意识到了这样一个问题：在某种程度上，欧洲的移民使澳大利亚自然环境处于一种日益加剧的不稳定状态。这场火灾之后，联邦政府专门成立了一个皇家委员会来调查火灾的原因。这个皇家委员会的主席是伦纳德·斯特雷塔法官，他认为欧洲人来这里的时间还不够长，他们是无辜的，他们并不知道居住在这些丛林之中会招致怎样的灾难。从定居伊始，欧洲人就没有好好向原住民学习。时至今日，在很多情况下我们仍然没有吸取这个教训。目前，在澳大利亚内陆和北部很多地区都居住着原住民，他们仍然保留着各种传统的土地使用方法。虽然现在我们刚刚开始向他们学习这方面的经验，但也算是亡羊补牢，为时未晚。过去由于我们经验不足，蒙受了惨重的损失，但我们以后一定会有所改进。目前就有一些好兆头，比如在国家公园，尤其是澳大利亚北部的一些地区，就实施了更多的交叉管理或者综合管理模式，也就是在土地管理中将原住民的经验与欧洲人的科学知识结合起来，我觉得这是一个很好的发展方向。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
汤姆•格里菲思曾撰写了《桉树林——环境发展史》一书。
虽然澳大利亚人喜欢把丛林看作他们国家的核心，但大约百分之八十的澳大利亚人却居住在郊区。
欢迎收听我们的节目，我是苏·斯拉梅，在下一期的澳洲广播电台节目中，我将带您一起感受澳大利亚人的家园梦想——一个属于你自己的面积为四分之一英亩的小家园。
感谢墨尔本的莫纳什大学全国澳大利亚研究中心提供的学术建议，并感谢赖安·厄甘先生在技术制作中所做的工作。
[/quote]
2006-8-7 02:32
城市童话
英文详细内容
[quote]
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Hello, Sue Slamen with you for Radio Australia's series - AUSTRALIA NOW …
In this program, TAMING THE LAND, we'll be looking at some land management and land care issues facing Australia.
A mere two centuries of taming the bush for the introduction of European farming practices has resulted in greatly reduced water quality and major losses of soil productivity.
[b]JACK THOMPSON:[/b] "It's pretty staggering to think that since 1788 we've cleared 20-billion trees from this country. Right now we're losing a piece of land the size of a football field every single day to salinity. In the lifetimes of our children that cancer, salinity, will come to the surface and it'll make a third of our productive land, a third of the land we are using to produce food, unusable."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Land care is a subject close to the heart of Jack Thompson - one of Australia's best-known actors, Jack has been doing his bit to 'green Australia' by planting some eighteen thousand trees on his farm in New South Wales.
The organisation, 'Landcare Australia' was started 15 years ago to come up with fresh ideas on how better to manage Australia's farmland. It now boasts 4,000 community groups and the involvement of 40 per cent of farmers.
Jack is a 'Landcare Ambassador' and he delivered a wake up and reminder call about the state of Australia's farmland to the National Press Club in Canberra…
[b]JACK THOMPSON:[/b] "I have a very serious wake up call for all of us. The test results for our environment are in, they're contained in the source of the information that I'm about to deliver you. The state of the environment, 2001, the federal government's report, now you all know that this report is going to put the best possible spin on it because they don't want to admit that we've got a problem if we haven't got one. When the general says we're in deep shit we probably are… Now some of you would remember the massive dust storm that enveloped Melbourne in 1983, there were fantastic photographs of it. The combination of drought and accumulated poor land management had left Victoria's farming soils exposed and vulnerable. When conditions became windy, soils were picked up and carried by the wind, Melbourne was covered by this incredible dust storm and two million tonnes of soil were lost in that single storm. And the cost of replacing the nutrients in that soil was many millions of dollars. You multiply that by about a thousand and you'll have some idea of what's been happening to the skin of this our national body."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The Federal Government's 2001 report card on the State of the Environment is the second of a series of 5-yearly reports conducted since 1990.
[b]JACK THOMPSON:[/b] "When the decade of Land Care was announced in 1990 it aimed to achieve sustainable land use by the year 2000. It's passed. Remember what the minister said? We haven't achieved it, we didn't even come close. But the land care movement which started the whole ball rolling is still the critical thing we're going to rely on to make the changes. The extraordinary men, women and children who each day or each week or month are rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work together with their supporters and their advisors in business and in government, they are the people who are right now literally changing the face of the countryside."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In 1998, a Secretariat for International Landcare was established to share ideas about sustainable agriculture.
Mary Johnson, one of its directors, has found her own farming and land care experience invaluable when talking with farmers in the region.
Mary's currently working in the Philippines on income generating projects like agro-forestry.
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] "Part of my work with this particular group is that there will be a study tour of the Australian Landcare model simply as a model of how communities and government have worked in Australia and talking with their counterparts in Australia on some of the processes and practices that the Australian Landcare model offer. And a whole gamut of topics, which cover best environmental land practice in Australia and the Philippines. The Philippines have issues to do with watershed management or that would equate with our catchment management, they have water issues, they also have issues of erosion and deforestation. And those are the similar sorts of things that we actually see here in Australia as well.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Now are people surprised when you turn up as a consultant that you're a farmer and a women involved in agricultural and Landcare development?
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] Yes they are, very much surprised, it's in my particular case it's something that's evolved over many years of deep seated interest. And having been over to the Philippines and looked at agricultural systems in upland farming I can empathise with the farmers when they discuss with me their problems of getting their product to market, and infrastructure problems, and then market force problems.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Some things are the same the world over for farmers huh?
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] Absolutely.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Now I understand that Australian aid projects funded by the Australian aid agency, Ausaid, do give priority to women and the environment in aid projects. Does that make a lot of sense to you?
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] Yes it does make a lot of sense, it makes a lot of common sense. I mean for example in Australia 50 per cent of the population are women, and it's a very strong argument to involve us, women. And certainly in the villages that I was involved with women played a very important role and they were attending the meetings that we had, in fact in one village the spokesperson for the farmers cooperative, which was a very strong cooperative, was indeed a woman. They become the thread that keeps communities together so there's that nurturing role that's also being played, which is integral to the welfare of communities both within Australia and outside Australia."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Mary Johnson is one of a dynamic team of women who make up the Secretariat for International Land Care.
Its Director, Sue Marriott will tell you that her father was a farmer and she married a farmer and that their experience of farming in Victoria's Western District, which is regarded as one of Australia's best wool growing areas, convinced them of the need to re-define land management.
They became involved in the Landcare movement when a philanthropic foundation assisted fifteen local farmers to address problems like salinity and soil erosion that was reducing the productivity of their farms.
[b]SUE MARRIOTT:[/b] "The early history of land care started for myself and for my husband John who was involved in the Potter Farmland Plan, which started in 1985 and ran till 1988, and that was a project that was funded through the Ian Potter Foundation and it ran over 15 farms in Western Victoria. And it was to show other farmers what could be achieved in their lifetime of farming if they looked at redefining their farms so that they could actually farm according to the land's capabilities. So they were looking at it from first of all the environmental point of view, and then overlaying it with the introduced sheep and cattle. In the old days farming, especially in the higher rainfall areas, they had fences along the old survey lines, so in a surveyor's office in Melbourne they would draw the lines on the map north, south, east, west, which didn't take into account how the land could perform. So in other words a fence could run through a really wet gully and up a hill, so if you put animals in there they would pug it up in the winter time and eat out the tops of the hills in the summer, so you could get dust storms. So if you started fencing it according to its capability you could actually manage the stock. And you would find that you had better health for your stock, better health for your land if you started looking at that from an ecological point of view. So we'll go out to one of the farms now, Helm View, which was one of the probably most extensively changed farms in the Potter era, and the original farm plans that were drawn up for there are quite different to what you see today. We were thinking 10 to 15 per cent of the farms out to trees is now looking at 30 per cent out to trees, so it's a huge change in fifteen years."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] "Well Lyn, here we are in the heart of the Western District, prime sheep producing country, but the land that we're standing on was seriously degraded until you came in and greened it. Could you describe what the farm was like before you started to introduce the land care principles here?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] Well we had a severely degraded farm because it had been ringbarked in the Depression years. Farm neighbours were paid ten pence a tree to ringbark those trees, because the previous farmers thought that the grass was competing with the trees. We had 50 living red gums on the farm, salt affected areas in the drainage lines and not much shelter for stock or for humans. And it wasn't a real nice place to work."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Lyn Milne and her family have made the sheep and cattle property, 'Helm View' a showpiece for the Landcare movement.
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] "We don't see it as land lost to production, we say Helm View has 15 per cent under trees and nearly 20 per cent now, but it's land unavailable for grazing but assisting production.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In this sheep producing, wool producing area, which is one of Australia's best, how many sheep would you graze on good pasture and given the degradation on this farm what was it like before the greening? Is there an argument to say that the greening made it more productive?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] Well just in one isolated case for instance we had a very saline area, which was called the basin, because it was a basin of unproductive land, and we were carrying one sheep to the acre on that land and when we put in deep rooted salt tolerant pastures like tall American wheat grass and we put a wicket keeper effect around that paddock with trees and shelter belts, we were able to lift the production to five to six sheep to the acre. And it's a better place to work too, much nicer.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Certainly very much greener than the photos you have here of the way the farm looked before you started to green it with the help of the Potter Foundation. Could you just describe for us, create a picture of what challenges you had to face?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] You need to actually tip your farm practices on its head so to speak and not think on the square, you think about paddocks being all different odd shapes and sizes and you can do that with electric fencing. Of course you need to plant a lot of trees, because we're high in the catchment there were two significant drainage outlets coming off from the top of the farm to outlying neighbours. And what we needed to do there was fence those drainage areas out and tree them up completely, so that a. they act as a filter for water going down into the dams and into the catchments, and b. that they make the land adjoining it more productive by not having the encroaching salt out further.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Now just looking at the property now that it is back under sheoaks and gums and native vegetation, and I notice you had seeds you've collected out here of the local trees to do more planting, it seems like a never ending job. Does that give you an idea of how it must have been before Europeans settled the area?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] Yes there is a site at Helm View which we have planted out and it's a Koori midden site, and we often imagined the Aborigines walking down to the creek and fishing there in amongst sheoaks and wattles and nice big red gums, and previous to us planting it out it was just severely degraded. So we've honoured that site and planted it out and it's just quite beautiful now. So you can get a feel for what it was like in the past, I mean we've only been planting, these have only been planted 15 years, and that's such a tiny timeframe when you've got 500 or 600 year old red gums out in the paddock."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] You're listening to AUSTRALIA NOW from Radio Australia, Program 4 - TAMING THE LAND.
[b]DEAN STEWART:[/b] "Only 20,000 years ago was the last Ice Age, you can actually walk from here to New Guinea if you wanted to. Aboriginal people were here; aboriginal people hunted kangaroos right around here but the kangaroos were the size of this tree fern. If you all got up in the early morning and looked along the western districts, on the horizon you'd see huge plumes of volcanic smoke going off into the air. The last volcanoes in the western districts only became extinct five-thousand years ago, well within the time of Aboriginal people."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The philosophy of 'Landcare' is well understood by Australia's Aboriginal community - who are major land managers especially in the North, West and Centre of Australia.
Dean Stewart has worked down South with Victorian land care groups to eradicate exotic introduced grasses and trees that in some places have become problem weeds. Dean sees real irony in the fact that for the past five years he's been conducting 'Koori Heritage Tours' in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, that are best known for their manicured English lawns and exotic introduced trees.
[b]DEAN STEWART:[/b] "I was actually with the Environment Department at one of the local councils and I worked with Landcare groups and community groups and friends groups, actually it's funny when I think about it now because what I was doing then was pulling out, weeding out all the European grasses and vines and trees and planting indigenous grasses and eucalypts and wattles, and I thought about it not that long ago actually when I was doing the walks and somebody asked a similar question in that, I still feel that I'm doing exactly the same thing but just in a different way. I'm weeding out all those misconceptions and those stereotypes and trying to just plant a seed of the indigenous connections, and plant a seed of spirit, so I don't really call myself a tour guide, I actually call myself a cultural interpreter. And all I can do for everybody is give them nothing more than a glimpse, nothing more than a bit of an echo today, like the echoes that we're hearing in the background as well. All I say is that I have got to try to put 90-thousand years into about 90 minutes for everybody, and so just glimpses today. You could do this in a lecture hall, I could say exactly the same words in a lecture hall and it wouldn't be anywhere near the same. And when you're out here with the wind blowing through the River Red Gums and wah, the black raven in the trees, it's the land as much as anything else that makes this experience what it is."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Dean's Koori Heritage trail follows 'the Australian Rainforest Walk' - where a small portion of the Gardens has been set aside for native Australian trees.
[b]DEAN STEWART:[/b] "The path that we're on is actually known as the rainforest border, for the first part of the walk we'll be going from, we'll be travelling a couple of thousand kilometres from Tasmania all the way through to Queensland. I'll just start off with this old grandfather just in front of us here, it's not very old, it's only about 80 years old, it's from Queensland, it's called the Hoop Pine and some of the Murris or the Queensland Aboriginal communities would call this the 'Koonung', they would notch the bark with their tomahawks, their stone axes and allow the gum or the resin to ooze out of this tree. And if I'm lucky I might have some here, yep, there we go, they'd collect this gum, this resin and then they'd mix it up with ashes from the fire, maybe even a bit of dried kangaroo poo, mix it all up together and you've got what you call today super glue. Now we don't have these old fellas down here in Victoria, but the Kulin, the Aboriginal communities use gum in a very similar way but off wattle trees. But the thing about the wattle gum is if you don't mix it up with all those ingredients you can actually eat it. Yeah, ok. Well we'll go over and join this mob so I'm not yelling out. Good On 'ya darling. No worries, anytime Auntie. Here's a good example of two clan groups coming together, right. Just rub it in your fingers and then turn around. Not sure what it smells like? Yeah, anybody got an idea what it might smell like? No? Mint? Yes the common name is the mint bush, the Aboriginal name for this, the local Aboriginal name is called the 'Corranderk' tree. And it's another really good example of a multifunctional plant, many different uses, the leaves and you might even smell it, they were used for coughs and colds and were good for clearing out the sinuses and respiratory illnesses and different things like that as well. They were also good for muscular aches and pains, a bit like a Tiger balm or a Dencorub as well, and I actually have a lot of senior citizen groups that come on the walk, which is why I've got no leaves left, they defoliate it as soon as they find out it's good for muscular aches and pains. And the branches were prefabricated into lengths of about say three foot and were dried out and were made into what you call fire drills, and basically all a fire drill is is rubbing two sticks together. So if you were just to grab any stick off the ground you'd be there with just blisters on your hands right? Then you put it in there and you'd go like this really quickly, and you'd get a fire going. And in the early colonial reports they mentioned fires being started on average within about 20 to 30 seconds by using one of these."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] When Europeans settled in the Australian bush they discovered just how vulnerable they were to fire. Australian Aborigines understood the threat of bush fires and used fire to keep the land clear of plant material that could fuel a bush fire in dry conditions.
[b]TOM GRIFFITHS:[/b] "Aboriginal people used fire to keep the forest open, the woodland open so that it was easier for hunting. They regarded a fired landscape as a cleaned up landscape, and they regarded fire very positively. So it would keep the landscape open, but it would also bring on a green pick, you know green grass, new shoots which would attract game and make it easier for them to hunt game, animals and so on, kangaroos, marsupials of various kinds they could more easily be hunters in a fired more open woodland landscape. So they used fire very creatively."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Like so many Australians, Tom Griffiths grew up with stories about the horrendous bush-fires that Australians have had to endure.
An historian at the Australian National University in Canberra, Tom's written a book about the fires that periodically break out in the tall Mountain Ash forests around Melbourne.
While European settlers eager to exploit the timber set up logging camps deep in the heart of the forests, local Aborigines chose to live on the grassy outskirts.
[b]TOM GRIFFITHS:[/b] "Aboriginal people didn't live in the heart of those forests. They did live around the edges of the forests and they would have burnt parts of the mountain ash forests, but largely they lived around the edge and they burnt the edges of them, they burnt pathways and so on. But they didn't live in the middle of them for one very good reason, and it is that the tall mountain ash forests of Southeastern Australia are incredibly dangerous to live in, in Summer, particularly after a dry season. They were no place to settle, have a permanent settlement. Europeans moved in, they were excited by the amount of timber that was available through these tall glorious cathedral like trees, and they wanted to get in there and utilise them as quickly as possible. And so saw milling was set up in the heart of the forests and that made them very vulnerable to fire.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] You've described them as holocaust fires. It's quite a shocking evocative term and I think the best example of that was in this state in 1939. What did the 1939 fires, and you might just describe the impact they had in a state the size of Victoria down south here, on both people and the trees and industry and the economy as a whole, the devastating effects they had, what lessons have we learnt from that in terms of land management and what we now and farmers talk about as land care?
[b]TOM GRIFFITHS:[/b] Well the Black Friday 1939 fire was several weeks of very hot weather after years of drought and 71 people died in those fires, 69 sawmill settlements were incinerated, some whole townships completely destroyed. One-point-four-million hectares of Victoria were burnt, it was a horrific fire and people who lived through it will never, ever forget it. It's absolutely seared onto their memories. And it's strangely for a 100 years before black Friday 1939 we'd been using those forests, cutting them down, using the timber, drawing on the water. But 1939 devastated the forests so completely that for the first time we began to think about their ecology, how would we grow them again? Where for the first time, it took a 100 years or more for European settlers to start to think about well what's the life story of the trees, the main trees that make up these forests, the Mountain Ash? And so in the 1940s and 50s ecologists, botanists, scientists began to study the life history of the ash, and they began to realise that it needed these sorts of massive fires to regenerate, because the ash type species are uniquely dependent upon their seed supply for regeneration. Other eucalypts can grow new shoots after fire, but ash depends upon its seed supply to be cracked open by that fire and upon light from the sun in order to nurture the younger saplings. So it needs a fire to open up the forest and regenerate. But Black Friday really prompted us to think about how we might grow a new forest, and it also made us aware that to some extent European settlement had tipped Australian nature into an escalating instability, and after the 1939 disaster there was a Royal Commission into the causes of the fires, and the judge, Judge Leonard Stretton, who ran the Royal Commission said of the European settlers, they had not lived long enough, they were innocent, they did not know the danger that they were courting by living in those forests. So Europeans failed to learn from Aboriginal people at that moment of settlement and we're still failing to learn in many cases. There are many parts of inland and northern Australia where Aboriginal people are still living on the land and maintaining various sorts of traditional forms of land use, and we're only now beginning to really learn from them there. So it's not too late, there's a great tragedy of loss in what we haven't done before, but we can still do better. And one of the promising signs is that in national parks and other areas of the North particularly there's a lot more cross management, co-management of areas where Aboriginal knowledge and European scientific knowledge about land are coming together, and I think that's really a very promising development."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Tom Griffiths, whose book is called FORESTS OF ASH - AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY.
And though Australians like to think the bush is the heart of the country, eighty per cent of Australians actually live in the suburbs.
So join me - Sue Slamen - next time when Radio Australia looks at the Australian Dream, a home of your own on a quarter acre block.
My thanks to the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne for academic advice and to Ryan Egan for technical production.
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[quote]
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Hello, Sue Slamen with you for Radio Australia's series - AUSTRALIA NOW …
In this program, TAMING THE LAND, we'll be looking at some land management and land care issues facing Australia.
A mere two centuries of taming the bush for the introduction of European farming practices has resulted in greatly reduced water quality and major losses of soil productivity.
[b]JACK THOMPSON:[/b] "It's pretty staggering to think that since 1788 we've cleared 20-billion trees from this country. Right now we're losing a piece of land the size of a football field every single day to salinity. In the lifetimes of our children that cancer, salinity, will come to the surface and it'll make a third of our productive land, a third of the land we are using to produce food, unusable."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Land care is a subject close to the heart of Jack Thompson - one of Australia's best-known actors, Jack has been doing his bit to 'green Australia' by planting some eighteen thousand trees on his farm in New South Wales.
The organisation, 'Landcare Australia' was started 15 years ago to come up with fresh ideas on how better to manage Australia's farmland. It now boasts 4,000 community groups and the involvement of 40 per cent of farmers.
Jack is a 'Landcare Ambassador' and he delivered a wake up and reminder call about the state of Australia's farmland to the National Press Club in Canberra…
[b]JACK THOMPSON:[/b] "I have a very serious wake up call for all of us. The test results for our environment are in, they're contained in the source of the information that I'm about to deliver you. The state of the environment, 2001, the federal government's report, now you all know that this report is going to put the best possible spin on it because they don't want to admit that we've got a problem if we haven't got one. When the general says we're in deep shit we probably are… Now some of you would remember the massive dust storm that enveloped Melbourne in 1983, there were fantastic photographs of it. The combination of drought and accumulated poor land management had left Victoria's farming soils exposed and vulnerable. When conditions became windy, soils were picked up and carried by the wind, Melbourne was covered by this incredible dust storm and two million tonnes of soil were lost in that single storm. And the cost of replacing the nutrients in that soil was many millions of dollars. You multiply that by about a thousand and you'll have some idea of what's been happening to the skin of this our national body."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The Federal Government's 2001 report card on the State of the Environment is the second of a series of 5-yearly reports conducted since 1990.
[b]JACK THOMPSON:[/b] "When the decade of Land Care was announced in 1990 it aimed to achieve sustainable land use by the year 2000. It's passed. Remember what the minister said? We haven't achieved it, we didn't even come close. But the land care movement which started the whole ball rolling is still the critical thing we're going to rely on to make the changes. The extraordinary men, women and children who each day or each week or month are rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work together with their supporters and their advisors in business and in government, they are the people who are right now literally changing the face of the countryside."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In 1998, a Secretariat for International Landcare was established to share ideas about sustainable agriculture.
Mary Johnson, one of its directors, has found her own farming and land care experience invaluable when talking with farmers in the region.
Mary's currently working in the Philippines on income generating projects like agro-forestry.
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] "Part of my work with this particular group is that there will be a study tour of the Australian Landcare model simply as a model of how communities and government have worked in Australia and talking with their counterparts in Australia on some of the processes and practices that the Australian Landcare model offer. And a whole gamut of topics, which cover best environmental land practice in Australia and the Philippines. The Philippines have issues to do with watershed management or that would equate with our catchment management, they have water issues, they also have issues of erosion and deforestation. And those are the similar sorts of things that we actually see here in Australia as well.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Now are people surprised when you turn up as a consultant that you're a farmer and a women involved in agricultural and Landcare development?
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] Yes they are, very much surprised, it's in my particular case it's something that's evolved over many years of deep seated interest. And having been over to the Philippines and looked at agricultural systems in upland farming I can empathise with the farmers when they discuss with me their problems of getting their product to market, and infrastructure problems, and then market force problems.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Some things are the same the world over for farmers huh?
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] Absolutely.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Now I understand that Australian aid projects funded by the Australian aid agency, Ausaid, do give priority to women and the environment in aid projects. Does that make a lot of sense to you?
[b]MARY JOHNSON:[/b] Yes it does make a lot of sense, it makes a lot of common sense. I mean for example in Australia 50 per cent of the population are women, and it's a very strong argument to involve us, women. And certainly in the villages that I was involved with women played a very important role and they were attending the meetings that we had, in fact in one village the spokesperson for the farmers cooperative, which was a very strong cooperative, was indeed a woman. They become the thread that keeps communities together so there's that nurturing role that's also being played, which is integral to the welfare of communities both within Australia and outside Australia."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Mary Johnson is one of a dynamic team of women who make up the Secretariat for International Land Care.
Its Director, Sue Marriott will tell you that her father was a farmer and she married a farmer and that their experience of farming in Victoria's Western District, which is regarded as one of Australia's best wool growing areas, convinced them of the need to re-define land management.
They became involved in the Landcare movement when a philanthropic foundation assisted fifteen local farmers to address problems like salinity and soil erosion that was reducing the productivity of their farms.
[b]SUE MARRIOTT:[/b] "The early history of land care started for myself and for my husband John who was involved in the Potter Farmland Plan, which started in 1985 and ran till 1988, and that was a project that was funded through the Ian Potter Foundation and it ran over 15 farms in Western Victoria. And it was to show other farmers what could be achieved in their lifetime of farming if they looked at redefining their farms so that they could actually farm according to the land's capabilities. So they were looking at it from first of all the environmental point of view, and then overlaying it with the introduced sheep and cattle. In the old days farming, especially in the higher rainfall areas, they had fences along the old survey lines, so in a surveyor's office in Melbourne they would draw the lines on the map north, south, east, west, which didn't take into account how the land could perform. So in other words a fence could run through a really wet gully and up a hill, so if you put animals in there they would pug it up in the winter time and eat out the tops of the hills in the summer, so you could get dust storms. So if you started fencing it according to its capability you could actually manage the stock. And you would find that you had better health for your stock, better health for your land if you started looking at that from an ecological point of view. So we'll go out to one of the farms now, Helm View, which was one of the probably most extensively changed farms in the Potter era, and the original farm plans that were drawn up for there are quite different to what you see today. We were thinking 10 to 15 per cent of the farms out to trees is now looking at 30 per cent out to trees, so it's a huge change in fifteen years."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] "Well Lyn, here we are in the heart of the Western District, prime sheep producing country, but the land that we're standing on was seriously degraded until you came in and greened it. Could you describe what the farm was like before you started to introduce the land care principles here?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] Well we had a severely degraded farm because it had been ringbarked in the Depression years. Farm neighbours were paid ten pence a tree to ringbark those trees, because the previous farmers thought that the grass was competing with the trees. We had 50 living red gums on the farm, salt affected areas in the drainage lines and not much shelter for stock or for humans. And it wasn't a real nice place to work."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Lyn Milne and her family have made the sheep and cattle property, 'Helm View' a showpiece for the Landcare movement.
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] "We don't see it as land lost to production, we say Helm View has 15 per cent under trees and nearly 20 per cent now, but it's land unavailable for grazing but assisting production.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In this sheep producing, wool producing area, which is one of Australia's best, how many sheep would you graze on good pasture and given the degradation on this farm what was it like before the greening? Is there an argument to say that the greening made it more productive?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] Well just in one isolated case for instance we had a very saline area, which was called the basin, because it was a basin of unproductive land, and we were carrying one sheep to the acre on that land and when we put in deep rooted salt tolerant pastures like tall American wheat grass and we put a wicket keeper effect around that paddock with trees and shelter belts, we were able to lift the production to five to six sheep to the acre. And it's a better place to work too, much nicer.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Certainly very much greener than the photos you have here of the way the farm looked before you started to green it with the help of the Potter Foundation. Could you just describe for us, create a picture of what challenges you had to face?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] You need to actually tip your farm practices on its head so to speak and not think on the square, you think about paddocks being all different odd shapes and sizes and you can do that with electric fencing. Of course you need to plant a lot of trees, because we're high in the catchment there were two significant drainage outlets coming off from the top of the farm to outlying neighbours. And what we needed to do there was fence those drainage areas out and tree them up completely, so that a. they act as a filter for water going down into the dams and into the catchments, and b. that they make the land adjoining it more productive by not having the encroaching salt out further.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Now just looking at the property now that it is back under sheoaks and gums and native vegetation, and I notice you had seeds you've collected out here of the local trees to do more planting, it seems like a never ending job. Does that give you an idea of how it must have been before Europeans settled the area?
[b]LYN MILNE:[/b] Yes there is a site at Helm View which we have planted out and it's a Koori midden site, and we often imagined the Aborigines walking down to the creek and fishing there in amongst sheoaks and wattles and nice big red gums, and previous to us planting it out it was just severely degraded. So we've honoured that site and planted it out and it's just quite beautiful now. So you can get a feel for what it was like in the past, I mean we've only been planting, these have only been planted 15 years, and that's such a tiny timeframe when you've got 500 or 600 year old red gums out in the paddock."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] You're listening to AUSTRALIA NOW from Radio Australia, Program 4 - TAMING THE LAND.
[b]DEAN STEWART:[/b] "Only 20,000 years ago was the last Ice Age, you can actually walk from here to New Guinea if you wanted to. Aboriginal people were here; aboriginal people hunted kangaroos right around here but the kangaroos were the size of this tree fern. If you all got up in the early morning and looked along the western districts, on the horizon you'd see huge plumes of volcanic smoke going off into the air. The last volcanoes in the western districts only became extinct five-thousand years ago, well within the time of Aboriginal people."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The philosophy of 'Landcare' is well understood by Australia's Aboriginal community - who are major land managers especially in the North, West and Centre of Australia.
Dean Stewart has worked down South with Victorian land care groups to eradicate exotic introduced grasses and trees that in some places have become problem weeds. Dean sees real irony in the fact that for the past five years he's been conducting 'Koori Heritage Tours' in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, that are best known for their manicured English lawns and exotic introduced trees.
[b]DEAN STEWART:[/b] "I was actually with the Environment Department at one of the local councils and I worked with Landcare groups and community groups and friends groups, actually it's funny when I think about it now because what I was doing then was pulling out, weeding out all the European grasses and vines and trees and planting indigenous grasses and eucalypts and wattles, and I thought about it not that long ago actually when I was doing the walks and somebody asked a similar question in that, I still feel that I'm doing exactly the same thing but just in a different way. I'm weeding out all those misconceptions and those stereotypes and trying to just plant a seed of the indigenous connections, and plant a seed of spirit, so I don't really call myself a tour guide, I actually call myself a cultural interpreter. And all I can do for everybody is give them nothing more than a glimpse, nothing more than a bit of an echo today, like the echoes that we're hearing in the background as well. All I say is that I have got to try to put 90-thousand years into about 90 minutes for everybody, and so just glimpses today. You could do this in a lecture hall, I could say exactly the same words in a lecture hall and it wouldn't be anywhere near the same. And when you're out here with the wind blowing through the River Red Gums and wah, the black raven in the trees, it's the land as much as anything else that makes this experience what it is."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Dean's Koori Heritage trail follows 'the Australian Rainforest Walk' - where a small portion of the Gardens has been set aside for native Australian trees.
[b]DEAN STEWART:[/b] "The path that we're on is actually known as the rainforest border, for the first part of the walk we'll be going from, we'll be travelling a couple of thousand kilometres from Tasmania all the way through to Queensland. I'll just start off with this old grandfather just in front of us here, it's not very old, it's only about 80 years old, it's from Queensland, it's called the Hoop Pine and some of the Murris or the Queensland Aboriginal communities would call this the 'Koonung', they would notch the bark with their tomahawks, their stone axes and allow the gum or the resin to ooze out of this tree. And if I'm lucky I might have some here, yep, there we go, they'd collect this gum, this resin and then they'd mix it up with ashes from the fire, maybe even a bit of dried kangaroo poo, mix it all up together and you've got what you call today super glue. Now we don't have these old fellas down here in Victoria, but the Kulin, the Aboriginal communities use gum in a very similar way but off wattle trees. But the thing about the wattle gum is if you don't mix it up with all those ingredients you can actually eat it. Yeah, ok. Well we'll go over and join this mob so I'm not yelling out. Good On 'ya darling. No worries, anytime Auntie. Here's a good example of two clan groups coming together, right. Just rub it in your fingers and then turn around. Not sure what it smells like? Yeah, anybody got an idea what it might smell like? No? Mint? Yes the common name is the mint bush, the Aboriginal name for this, the local Aboriginal name is called the 'Corranderk' tree. And it's another really good example of a multifunctional plant, many different uses, the leaves and you might even smell it, they were used for coughs and colds and were good for clearing out the sinuses and respiratory illnesses and different things like that as well. They were also good for muscular aches and pains, a bit like a Tiger balm or a Dencorub as well, and I actually have a lot of senior citizen groups that come on the walk, which is why I've got no leaves left, they defoliate it as soon as they find out it's good for muscular aches and pains. And the branches were prefabricated into lengths of about say three foot and were dried out and were made into what you call fire drills, and basically all a fire drill is is rubbing two sticks together. So if you were just to grab any stick off the ground you'd be there with just blisters on your hands right? Then you put it in there and you'd go like this really quickly, and you'd get a fire going. And in the early colonial reports they mentioned fires being started on average within about 20 to 30 seconds by using one of these."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] When Europeans settled in the Australian bush they discovered just how vulnerable they were to fire. Australian Aborigines understood the threat of bush fires and used fire to keep the land clear of plant material that could fuel a bush fire in dry conditions.
[b]TOM GRIFFITHS:[/b] "Aboriginal people used fire to keep the forest open, the woodland open so that it was easier for hunting. They regarded a fired landscape as a cleaned up landscape, and they regarded fire very positively. So it would keep the landscape open, but it would also bring on a green pick, you know green grass, new shoots which would attract game and make it easier for them to hunt game, animals and so on, kangaroos, marsupials of various kinds they could more easily be hunters in a fired more open woodland landscape. So they used fire very creatively."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Like so many Australians, Tom Griffiths grew up with stories about the horrendous bush-fires that Australians have had to endure.
An historian at the Australian National University in Canberra, Tom's written a book about the fires that periodically break out in the tall Mountain Ash forests around Melbourne.
While European settlers eager to exploit the timber set up logging camps deep in the heart of the forests, local Aborigines chose to live on the grassy outskirts.
[b]TOM GRIFFITHS:[/b] "Aboriginal people didn't live in the heart of those forests. They did live around the edges of the forests and they would have burnt parts of the mountain ash forests, but largely they lived around the edge and they burnt the edges of them, they burnt pathways and so on. But they didn't live in the middle of them for one very good reason, and it is that the tall mountain ash forests of Southeastern Australia are incredibly dangerous to live in, in Summer, particularly after a dry season. They were no place to settle, have a permanent settlement. Europeans moved in, they were excited by the amount of timber that was available through these tall glorious cathedral like trees, and they wanted to get in there and utilise them as quickly as possible. And so saw milling was set up in the heart of the forests and that made them very vulnerable to fire.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] You've described them as holocaust fires. It's quite a shocking evocative term and I think the best example of that was in this state in 1939. What did the 1939 fires, and you might just describe the impact they had in a state the size of Victoria down south here, on both people and the trees and industry and the economy as a whole, the devastating effects they had, what lessons have we learnt from that in terms of land management and what we now and farmers talk about as land care?
[b]TOM GRIFFITHS:[/b] Well the Black Friday 1939 fire was several weeks of very hot weather after years of drought and 71 people died in those fires, 69 sawmill settlements were incinerated, some whole townships completely destroyed. One-point-four-million hectares of Victoria were burnt, it was a horrific fire and people who lived through it will never, ever forget it. It's absolutely seared onto their memories. And it's strangely for a 100 years before black Friday 1939 we'd been using those forests, cutting them down, using the timber, drawing on the water. But 1939 devastated the forests so completely that for the first time we began to think about their ecology, how would we grow them again? Where for the first time, it took a 100 years or more for European settlers to start to think about well what's the life story of the trees, the main trees that make up these forests, the Mountain Ash? And so in the 1940s and 50s ecologists, botanists, scientists began to study the life history of the ash, and they began to realise that it needed these sorts of massive fires to regenerate, because the ash type species are uniquely dependent upon their seed supply for regeneration. Other eucalypts can grow new shoots after fire, but ash depends upon its seed supply to be cracked open by that fire and upon light from the sun in order to nurture the younger saplings. So it needs a fire to open up the forest and regenerate. But Black Friday really prompted us to think about how we might grow a new forest, and it also made us aware that to some extent European settlement had tipped Australian nature into an escalating instability, and after the 1939 disaster there was a Royal Commission into the causes of the fires, and the judge, Judge Leonard Stretton, who ran the Royal Commission said of the European settlers, they had not lived long enough, they were innocent, they did not know the danger that they were courting by living in those forests. So Europeans failed to learn from Aboriginal people at that moment of settlement and we're still failing to learn in many cases. There are many parts of inland and northern Australia where Aboriginal people are still living on the land and maintaining various sorts of traditional forms of land use, and we're only now beginning to really learn from them there. So it's not too late, there's a great tragedy of loss in what we haven't done before, but we can still do better. And one of the promising signs is that in national parks and other areas of the North particularly there's a lot more cross management, co-management of areas where Aboriginal knowledge and European scientific knowledge about land are coming together, and I think that's really a very promising development."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Tom Griffiths, whose book is called FORESTS OF ASH - AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY.
And though Australians like to think the bush is the heart of the country, eighty per cent of Australians actually live in the suburbs.
So join me - Sue Slamen - next time when Radio Australia looks at the Australian Dream, a home of your own on a quarter acre block.
My thanks to the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne for academic advice and to Ryan Egan for technical production.
[/quote]
2006-8-7 02:32
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