Chapter 1: What makes eucalyptus trees iconic in Australia?
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If you're listening to this in Australia, the chances are, wherever you are, that you're not too far from a gum tree. Eucalyptus are found in the streets of all our cities and towns, on the top of mountain ranges, in ancient rainforests. They're scattered across outback farms and grow along the shores of the ocean.
For many Australians, the sight of gum trees and the distinctive smell of their leaves, the blue haze they give off on hot days, this is a big part of what makes this place feel like it does. Stephen Hopper has devoted much of his life to studying eucalyptus, and his career ended up taking him to the world-famous Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, where he was director for six years.
But Steve left the Royal Botanic Gardens to come home to West Australia because he wanted to learn from the real experts when it came to eucalyptus, Aboriginal people. And that began what Steve now calls the second part of his education. Steve's new book, the culmination of his lifelong obsession with gum trees, is simply called Eucalyptus. Hi, Steve.
Hi, Sarah.
As I say, Albany is home for you now. So can you see eucalyptus trees from your office window?
Sure can. In fact, from the ABC window, I'm looking out right now. Looking at Mount Clarence, which is one of the two little granite peaks in Albany, and it's clothed with flowering eucalypt at the moment. What sort of eucalypt?
Mary is the one that's in flower, and these hills are of granite rock, and there's a species that's confined to the granites called Eucalyptus cornuta, which was the first eucalypt named by Europeans in WA. So there's two of them there.
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Chapter 2: How did Steve Hopper's career lead him to study eucalyptus?
A nuclear physicist?
Yes. Well, it was just for a young fellow in those days, you know, was regarded as the top of the range in terms of science. But marine biology, I was also hooked on a little bit and Dad encouraged me to go in that direction. Yeah. Anyway, I sorted out the physics very quickly and it failed it first year. And so I had to pick up that unit and a couple of others.
I was actually increasingly more interested in playing in a band at that stage.
What instrument did you play?
Guitar, mandolin, a little bit of banjo. We had a jug band called Mud, M-U-D. And then, you know, as we got a little bit more sophisticated, we broadened into a bit of jazz and country blues and that sort of thing, so...
What did that mean for your university marks, MUD?
It took me four years to get a three-year degree. In order to make up units, I decided to do a bit of botany as well and ended up doing a double major in zoology and botany.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Aboriginal knowledge in botany?
And then there was an inspiring lecturer in plant evolution. Sid James was his name. He was just spot on, you know, just didn't pull any punches, just told the genetics and evolutionary story as it was and how exciting being in the field was and making discoveries all the time. So he really got me hooked on the big question which every person who grows up in Western Australia has,
has to ask, and that is, why is such a flat landscape so full of so many species found nowhere else? And that question has preoccupied me ever since.
Is there an easy answer to that, Steve?
Well, it took me 30 years to think about it.
Well, you can save us all our hard work and just reach to the cut to the chase.
Yeah, yeah. So in 2009, I published a new body of theory, which I called OCBIL theory, O-C-B-I-L. And that stands, that's an acronym for Old Climatically Buffered and Infertile Landscapes.
what it appears to be is those three attributes of old, you know, I mean, landscapes that are millions of, tens of millions of years old, climatically buffered, because ocean on two sides for the best part of 90 million years or more, and in fertile soils, particularly low in phosphorus, when you combine those three factors together,
all of a sudden the places richest in plants and animals that don't move around much become evident. And they're just like the little hill I'm looking at now, Mount Clarence, in the heart of Albany. They're tiny little hills. They're not big mountains where species richness is a feature. You know, if you think of
the Andes or the Himalayas, they're traditionally regarded as the richest places on earth for plants and animals. And extraordinarily, we've got this subdued plateau gently rising up from the sea in southwestern Australia. And parts of it are just as rich as the Himalayas or parts of the Andes. So they were the three attributes that I'd finally worked out after thinking about 30 years or so.
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Chapter 4: How does Western Australia’s biodiversity compare to other regions?
A quarter of a year, and was that to grow wood for use of, to harvest for wood, or why was there such a commitment to planting eucalypt?
It was primarily for wood. Paper pulp has become a modern use as well. And, you know, wood for construction as well as for furniture and all that sort of thing. The eucalypts were just such fast-growing things that they gave an economic return very quickly if planted widely.
So Steve, we've talked about, you know, eucalypts in terms of Western science and I guess economic benefit, environmental management. You've also increasingly been interested in First Nation understandings of these trees and their place in the landscape and their role culturally.
In what ways is the dreaming of Aboriginal people a different framework to think about eucalypts than, say, the way you were taught at university?
It's been like a second education for me. My kudjul bidawang is what I call it, which is two Noongar words, kudjul meaning number two or second, and bidawang is the initiation grand journey that every young adult goes. male and female Noongar would go on throughout southwestern Australia.
So I, you know, I spent the first part of my career mapping plants and trying to work out how to care for them using western science approaches. And the failure, unfortunately, of most conservation efforts has been patently obvious that, you know, we're not doing a crash-hot job. There's more and more endangered species as time goes by.
And yet the Aboriginal peoples that occupied Australia for what, up to 65,000 years, some current estimates are, bequeathed to us the biological diversity we have today. They must have been doing something right. And I was curious to learn about that. So I left Kew and came to Albany specifically to conduct research in the last two decades on that question. And the dreaming is fantastic.
You know, it's framed around you don't own country, country owns you. Family is central and family embraces not only the extended family with humans but all the totems and all the animals and plants and also the landscapes. That's all regarded as part of family. And knowledge is cherished in the dreaming so that particularly, you know, the older you get...
the more valuable you become to your family because you retain the stories and pass them on to younger generations. When you think about how Western culture regards country, for example... It's as a commodity. Land is there to make money out of. Similarly with family and movement, there's a fundamental difference, which I've found, and many other people far more than me.
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