Time, gentlemen, please - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 12: Hot Air
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by George Seddon (dec.)
DESPITE THE IMMENSE GEOLOGICAL AGE OF MOST OF AUSTRALIA, there is one way in which it is physically young, and that is as an independent continent. It is, arguably, the youngest of the continents, along with Antarctica, from which it had broken entirely free as a new and independent landmass only by the Eocene, some 60 million years ago.
It is also very young latitudinally, which is to say that it has only just arrived at its present latitude and is still on the move. David Williamson once wrote a clever play called Travelling North, a title that could serve for our continent, and only for this one. India and Madagascar have also moved latitudinally, but the other continents have rifted apart by changing longitude – by drifting sideways, if you like. Australia is the only continent that has moved almost from pole to equator.
If the continent has come from the south, however, it has been colonised by our species from the north. There has been no invasion from the south other than a few penguins, and minimal additions from east and west in our own hemisphere. People have come from the north to a continent that has come from the south, with a physical history that is nothing like that of any of the lands from which people have come, not the Indonesian archipelago, not Britain, Ireland, southern Europe, not southern China or India or Vietnam. Its biorhythms are remote from those of any of the lands to the north, and they have been hard to learn. We live in old landscapes with limited water and soils of low fertility, yet with a rich flora that is, with a few exceptions, adapted to those conditions, as we are not. There is much to learn from it, but we have been slow learners. The exceptions are those plants that are hanging on by their toenails, those that evolved in an Australia that was further south. There are quite a few in the extreme south of Western Australia, like the tingles (Eucalyptus brevistylis, E. jacksonii), the red flowering gum (Calophylla ficifolia), and in Tasmania, a considerable list of gymnosperms, such as the Tasmanian pencil pine (Athrotaxis cupressoides), the King Billy pine (A. selaginoides), the Huon pine (Lagarostrobos franklinii [formerly Dacrydium franklinii]), the celery-top pine (Phyllocladus aspleniifolius), and so on.
We will lose all of these as we move north. The long-term consequences of our northward movement are that more and more of southern Australia will move into the arid and subarid zone, and although this is not of immediate concern, the effects appear to be reinforced by changing climate patterns, although their interpretation still involves many uncertainties.
One was explored recently in a fascinating program about the global warming hypothesis on BBC Channel 4. If the Gulf Stream were to fail, London would have a climate like other places at a similar latitude of around 51 degrees north, well north of the city of Quebec, for example. The Gulf Stream is a circulating loop; there is an upwelling of cold water from the ocean deeps off the Caribbean that is warmed at the surface, travels north and moderates the climate of the Mediterranean and western Europe before it is cooled at the northern ocean surface and sinks again to complete the circulation. The hypothesis is that with a quite modest increase in global temperatures, the polar ice will melt (as it already seems to be doing, and has done before), there will be more and fresher water in the oceans, the differentials that drive the Gulf Stream will disappear, and London will have winters like New York and Boston.
This story might be of interest to Australians, because the Leeuwin current plays a critical role in southern Australia, comparable with that of the Gulf Stream. A warm current travels south from North West Cape down the west coast of the continent, turns east at Cape Leeuwin and continues across the south coast, through Bass Strait and then turns south down the east coast of Tasmania, petering out south of Hobart. (This is the reason Hobart has a climate similar to that of Rome, as noted earlier.) Off Perth, the current is five degrees warmer than the Indian Ocean further offshore, and Perth owes its generous rainfall of 860 mm to the current. Were it to fail, our rainfall would drop to that of other west coast cities at a similar latitude, like Safi, the port for inland Marrakesh in Morocco, which has 239mm. Only the west coasts of Europe and Australia have warm currents; all the other continental west coasts have cold currents: the Humboldt, Benguela and California currents.
A different concern is the consequence of the movement of the plate on which Australia is the major landmass. When India had its episode of "travelling north" after the break-up of Gondwana, it collided with and under the west-central Asian plate and pushed up the Himalayas. Our plate is now pushing under the South-East Asian plate, and we have already seen the beginnings of the consequences, the tsunamis and earthquakes of very recent history, and there will be many more. There has been some political debate under John Howard and others as to how far we should go in joining forces with South-East Asia. The truth of the matter is that we will join them literally, willy-nilly, although not in my time or yours. As we push north, we will be subducted beneath the South-East Asian plate, just as India was below west-central Asia. Darwin will slide under Singapore, and the Raffles hotel site will be perched on the top of a new peak higher than Everest. The high mountains are all new mountains. Erosion and time will eventually cut them to size, as they have erased them in our own flat old land.
THAT'S US THEN. MOST OF AUSTRALIA HAS NUTRIENT-POOR SOILS. Most of it lies in the mid-latitudes, and it therefore has limited rainfall, and that appears to be declining. Meanwhile, the coastal cities continue to expand. Sydney has a generous natural rainfall but is, nevertheless, under intense pressure, as are Melbourne and Adelaide.
The problem lies not only with water deficiency, but also with water use.
I was told at a recent conference at which I was speaking that "of course, if you have children, you have to have a lawn. It's all very well for you." (We have no lawn, an area of prostrate grevilleas and banksias etc. and large areas of brick paving.) "Your children are grown up." "Of course you are right," I hastened to agree. "You have to have a lawn if you have children." I added: "Yet millions of children in southern Europe – Italy, Spain, Greece, also Egypt to Morocco – seem somehow able to grow up without one, and have done so for millennia."
So could we. The way we use water in our gardens is part of a more general problem with our water use nationally. We even grow rice by flood irrigation in a dry landscape. But garden use is symptomatic of national attitudes, a reflection of a general failure to comprehend our geography, our latitude, our geological history, where we lie in time and space, our place in the scheme of things. We should learn about it in school, but we don't.
Some years ago, I was listening to a local quiz show for children, who were asked: "When do trees lose their leaves?" The first contestants said "autumn" and won their point. This is what they had learnt, because this is what happens in Europe. The third contestant – they couldn't hear each other – thought for a bit, then said "winter". No score – but he had checked with his own experience and he was right. Most deciduous trees lose their leaves in Perth in late winter.
The Noongah people in south-western Western Australia have six names for the seasons. Summer is the period of dormancy. Rebirth (spring) comes with the first rains in late autumn. Our gardeners try to reverse the seasons. It makes more sense to adapt to natural rhythms, to understand the nature and history of our continent than it does to force nature to adapt to our misguided aspirations. The Noongah knew better. The twelve-year old boy knew better. Listen to them. It's time. ♦
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Works cited
Beilharz, Peter (ed.), 2000, The Bauman Reader, Oxford, Blackwell.
McConnochie, Keith, "Desert Departures: Isolation, Innovation and Introversion in Ice-age Australia" in Xavier Pons, (ed.), 2002, Departures: How Australia Reinvents Itself, Melbourne University Press.