Acacia baueri
Herbarium specimin Acacia baueri
What is conservation all about? This week’s illustration shows Acacia baueri, a tiny acacia species, collected in the Girraween Estate by Dr. Arthur Harrold in the 1960’s, and photographed by me last weekend at Tin Can Bay. It is listed as “vulnerable” by the Queensland Herbarium. I have tried unsuccessfully over the last two years to find and photograph Acacia baueri here in Noosa Shire – it used to live where the Aquatic Centre now stands.
Every square metre of native bushland appears to be a miracle of sustainability. But this is no miracle – each species has evolved to suit the surrounding conditions. As the conditions change, so do the plants and animals, each just perfect and in perfect combinations for the amount of light, wind, soil type and underlying rock, rainfall and drainage. As conditions change from one side of the hill to the other, so do the species that inhabit them.
These plants and animals are, in fact, the indicators of the conditions where they grow. Moving a single species to preserve it is a pointless exercise. It is the conditions that produced them that should be preserved, and that is what conservation is all about – the protection of a balanced ecosystem, thousands of years in the making.
Many people are passionate about getting this message across. The late artist Maree Edmiston-Prior is one. Her exhibition in Gympie at the Cooloola Gallery celebrates an 11 ha. Wallum Block in the middle of the Tin Can Bay township where I took this week’s photograph. It is vulnerable on all sides but a perfect example of coastal wallum woodland, complete with scribbly gums, banksia spinulosa, curly macrozamias. A chain wire fence protects it from the manicured lawns of nearby residents. Local lobbying has protected it so far, but a concreted spoon drain down the middle of the block shows the council’s lack of understanding of the sedges and grasses that once drained it and kept the water clean. Tin Can Bay must have been a beautiful place when it all looked like the wallum block, and that is the story local artists are telling with painting and dance. The art is eye-catching and provocative and so far the conditions that produced Acacia baueri are protected.
Article and photograph by Stephanie Haslam
Herbarium specimen by Dr. Arthur Harrold
