Humans have lost their connection with nature. Or so we are often told. And I think this is true for a great many people who live in urban areas, because nature has been somewhat denied to them by its destruction. But some of us try to maintain that contact with nature, even if it is for brief periods of a couple of hours a day here and there, or a week in the bush. We all have our own personal reasons for bushwalking, but I bet that the reason most people bushwalk is a desire for contact with nature. But what about those of us who live in urban areas? Do you leave the reality of the bush behind? Perhaps you plan future walks or reminisce about your previous walks by poring over topographic maps and creating the terrain in your mind’s eye. But the bush doesn’t necessarily end where the suburbs start. Perhaps, like me, you have lived in urban areas where there are links to the previous natural landscape are still evident, even if they are restricted to an ancient remnant tree that was once a member of a vast forest, but now resides alone in a local park or in a patch of weed infested urban bush; or a road cutting drilled and blasted through a rock that was once a prominent ridge, but is now covered in houses and other development; or the topography of a gentle slope downhill to a concrete storm water drain, that was once a pretty bushland creek but now drains an industrial area. I think most people would look at these features and not give it a second thought that they were not always covered in weeds or houses or concrete. Not me. Since I was a kid I have always looked at the landscape and wondered about what the drain in the park down the road looked like when it was a natural creek, or what the forest that “Forest Road” was named for looked like.
Where I grew up in the St George district of southern Sydney we were/are lucky to have some patches of remnant bushland, which is mainly restricted to a small ribbon of sandstone vegetation around the shoreline of the Georges River. Sandstone country is relatively infertile and more rugged and as a consequence it was not as developed as more fertile clay regions. This is why Sydney is surrounded by so many great bushland areas that are still in a generally natural state. However, back from the Georges River, the St George region is also caped by shale-based clay soils which once supported great turpentine-ironbark forests, a vegetation community that is now critically endangered, with approximately 0.5%- 3% remaining across the entire Sydney region. This was the great forest for which Forest Road that I mention in the paragraph above was named. There are remnant trees from this great forest if you know where to look, but they are more often than not lone street trees or occurring in small clumps in parks. I suppose most people wouldn’t even know the significance of what they are looking at, even if they lived next door to a small park containing a remnant tree.
- This example of a turpentine tree (Syncarpia glomulifera) is found in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney. However, extensive turpentine-ironbark forests once dominated fertile shale-based clay soils of the Sydney region.
The Sydney region contains a diverse range of plant communities, which are species rich at approximately 2500 native plant species. However, because the region is one of the most heavily modified landscapes in Australia it is often difficult to imagine what it looked like in pre-European times. Despite this, some of my first memories of the bush are from the small patches of urban bush in the area I grew up. I mainly remember jumping over rocks and playing on the small beach at Jewfish Bay of Oatley Park, which is a sandstone headland in the Georges River. Another early recollection of bush is the Wolli Creek Valley around Bexley North, Bardwell Park and Turrella, mainly viewed from the train, or from the car on our way to my Grandma’s place. Wolli Creek is an urban creek that drains into the Cooks River and its banks are infested with morning glory vine (Ipomoea sp.) and weeping willow (Salix babylonica), but further back towards the small sandstone escarpment bordering the valley there are Angophoras and eucalypts sticking out. What I remember most from when I was a kid was that the valley was very green and I loved passing through on the train or car, thinking it was like a trip though the bush. I imagine that Wolli Creek and the surrounding catchment was a very pretty in pre-European times. I have explored parts of the Valley, and to be honest it really is a weed infested mess, but there are also some excellent patches of remnant vegetation along the cliff lines that give an indication of its former state. Urban bushland patches such as Oatley Park, Wolli Creek and a number of other locations around Sydney also contain a few cultural links to Aboriginal habitation in the forms of middens and carvings etc.
- Jewfish Bay on the Georges River at Oatley Park. Some of my first memories of natural bush are from Oatley Park. I spent a lot of time in the park when I was growing up and still try to visit when I am back in Sydney.
- 12-4-06 Oatley Park.jpg (154.72 KiB) Viewed 4423 times
When I was a little kid I would sit on my Grandma’s veranda looking out on the Cooks River, which could really be described as a polluted drain, and try to imagining what it was like when Captain Cook saw the mouth of the river from Botany Bay. This imagination stemmed somewhat from jokes we made with my Grandma, that she was on her veranda the day Cook rowed up the river to greet him with a cup of tea! Despite the joke, I still tried to picture the river and the surrounding houses, golf courses, parklands and sports fields as a pretty river with sandy banks surrounded by forest. Explorer’s journals are a great source of what a landscape once looked like and there are early descriptions of the Cooks River Valley around Tempe in the diary of First Fleet Royal Marine Captain Watkin Tench, who probably explored and described more of the Sydney region between the years 1788 – 1791 than any of his colleagues. If only they had cameras back in those days. I would love to have seen exactly what Tench described.
Despite its polluted quality, I was fascinated by the Cooks River, and years later I read a book about the natural vegetation of the Cooks River Valley which had this photo that gives us a hint of what one of the natural creeks around the Cooks River once looked like. The photo shows two boys standing beside a sandstone waterfall on Cup and Saucer Creek, a tributary of the Cooks River that is now a concrete drain. To anyone familiar with natural creeks in Sydney’s sandstone areas, the photo of Cup and Saucer Creek could have been any of numerous rocky creeks of the Sydney region’s sandstone country. It is hard to believe that such a pretty scene could be turned into a concrete drain. That is what they call progress, and they knew no better at the time it was converted, though we know now that concrete drains contribute to flash flooding because they actually speed up the rate of water flow. There are some areas where urban drains are being converted back into wetlands and creeks, to slow the water down and to filter it. I believe this is also the case at Cup and Saucer Creek, where a wetland has been created near its junction with the Cooks River, to naturalise the river bank and treat storm water runoff from the surrounding urban areas. Sure, they won’t be changed back to anything like their original state, but it is a start. Restoration such as this makes the urban landscape a little more bush-like...perhaps...and it improves the quality of water too. Furthermore, it creates new habitat for many animals and it could be argued that it allows people some sort of connection with nature.
Water draining through the landscape a key process in the formation of topography, and so waterways are one of the major features we notice in most landscapes. Fresh water sources are important for sustaining life, so humans tend to site settlements on freshwater sources. Recently I was catching up with some friends in a bar on Bridge Street in Sydney’s CBD, and as the rain poured down out the window, I watched the gutters over flowing with storm water down the hill to a drain that would eventually flow into Sydney Harbour. Having a sense of history and knowing the topography around the Sydney CBD, I knew the storm water drain that the water was flowing into was the Tank Stream. The Tank Stream was once the small freshwater creek that drained the region behind Sydney Cove/Warrane that now corresponds to Sydney’s CBD. It was the reliable fresh water from the Tank Stream, and the deep water anchorage close to the shore in the cove, that were the key reasons why Captain Arthur Phillip of the First Fleet selected this particular site on Sydney Harbour for the first colony of New South Wales. I can only imagine that the Tank Stream must have been a very pretty little stream in pre-European times. When my friends and I left the bar and walked down the road, I noticed the marker on the footpath that denoted the location of the stream in its subterranean pipe below the present day surface. Though it is hard to imagine what the little catchment looked like, the topography of the CBD gives some clue with a noticeable slope from both the east and west. Of course Bridge Street was named so because it was one of the first roads in the colony and a bridge was built over the Tank Stream where the current marker is on the foot path.
Around Sydney’s CBD there are other clues to the landscapes’ former natural state. There are markers on the pavement around Sydney Cove that show the location of the original shoreline. I wonder if Sydneysiders and visitors give these markers any thought as to what they represent. If you are familiar with Sydney’s natural rocky shores, it is not too difficult to think about what the shoreline around the cove once looked like. On the western side of Sydney Cove is The Rocks, which is the oldest built up area in Australia, and was named for the sandstone ridge that dominates the headland. This is where they unloaded and barracked the convicts in 1788. Now it is dominated by the southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Parts of the sandstone ridge can still be seen, particularly at the Argyle Cut and nearby Observatory Hill. Because there are countless examples of similar sandstone headlands around the region it is once again not too difficult to picture what this area looked like before it was modified.
- Markers showing the outline of the natural shoreline at Sydney Cove when the First Fleet rocked up in 1788.
A good imaginative exercise is to look across Farm Cove to the Domain from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, and try to think of how it looked before it was developed. There are some good clues here to help the imagination. At the tip of the Domain’s headland is Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, which was cut out of the sandstone by convicts so Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s wife could sit and view the harbour. The sandstone outcrops are still visible along the headland. In the middle of the harbour to the left of the point is Fort Denison, with its round Martello tower. In pre-European times it was a rocky islet in the shape of a pyramid and known as Mat-te-wan-ye by the local Eora Aborigines. This was named “Pinchgut Island” by the convicts, for whom it was a place of solitary confinement and finally converted to a fort in the mid 1850s. Behind Fort Denison is the forested Bradley’s head. The headland is covered in native vegetation, with only a small number of signs of buildings, mainly at Taronga Zoo. Using these clues, imagine what the scene looked like in pre-European times, looking down the harbour from the shore of Farm Cove! I wonder how many people really appreciate that there are still areas close to the CBD of Australia’s largest and oldest city that have not been overly developed with housing and other buildings. And once again, if you know where to look there are patches of remnant vegetation around the coves of Middle Harbour, North, Middle and South Heads, the Lane Cove River etc.
- Sydney Harbour from the foreshore of Farm Cove at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. The headland on the left is Mrs Macquaries Point at the end of the Domain. Fort Denison can be seen at centre left, and the relatively natural looking Bradleys Head is behind it. Take away the ships, boats and buildings and it is not too hard to imagine this scene in its natural state.
For six years I lived in Brisbane, which is quite unlike Sydney in its geology, topography and vegetation. The main feature of the landscape is the Brisbane River, which meanders through its flood plain. Away from the river, the topography of Brisbane is hilly. Mt Coot-tha is the most obvious feature at 287 m, occurring several km to the west of the CBD. For six years Mt Coot-tha was my local stomping ground and connector with nature when I couldn’t get further afield for some of the excellent bushwalking around the South East Queensland region. Mt Coot-tha and other remnants such as Mt Gravatt and Toohey Forest Conservation Area give a clue to what the local bush around the Brisbane region looked like in pre-European times. What is missing however, are the extensive rainforests along the Brisbane River and its tributaries. Explorer John Oxley’s observations of these rainforests, which are often referred to as “scrub”, include descriptions of large stands of hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) growing along the river, which were quickly harvested in the years following settlement. A clue to the previous rainforests is found in the name of the suburb of Fig Tree, which is named for a giant strangler fig (Ficus sp.) that once grew there. Sub-tropical rainforests used to be common through the south east Queensland and northern New South Wales regions and I regularly walked in the remnant rainforests of the mountainous terrain of the Border and Main Ranges (McPherson Range). But most of the lowland alluvial rainforests of SEQ and northern NSW have disappeared. For example, approximately 1% of the Big Scrub in northern NSW, once Australia’s largest lowland subtropical rainforest, remains.
- Ithaca Creek at Mt Coot-tha in Brisbane.
New visitors to Brisbane seem to get disoriented very quickly and I think this is the hilly nature of the city and the winding river. There are dips and hills everywhere it seems, but it was not until floods like that in January 2011 that the lowness of some of the flood plain areas became apparent. At that time I lived near Oxley Creek, a major tributary of the Brisbane River, which happens to be named after explorer John Oxley. Apparently this area was mostly lowland rainforest with large stands of hoop pine. During the flood the Oxley Creek rose to over 9 m, dumping silt everywhere. I imagine that regular inundation of the flood plains in pre-European time was an important process for the rainforests of the floodplain. Another area around the Brisbane River that was significantly flooded was the suburb of Milton, which is approximately 1-2 km west of the Brisbane CBD. The topography around Milton is undulating hills. I have driven down Milton Road countless times, and noticed the large storm water drain in the dip near the old abandoned Milton Tennis Centre not far from the XXXX brewery. This is a typical urban drain, and more recently I came across this website which explores the pre-development course of that creek, which drains the Milton area. According to the website, the creek has been referred to by several names but the most common seems to be Western Creek. There were swamps, chains of ponds and most likely rainforest along this lost creek system. Today catchment is an urban built environment, with a small number of weed infested remnant bushland. To most it might seem like an insignificant and ugly drain, but clearly the topography of the area inspired at least one person to dig into the small catchment’s pre-history.
Creeks and drainage lines are clearly the natural place to conceptualise the how the previous topography, and in many cases weed infested remnant bushland give clues to the remnant vegetation of an area. Bush regenerators attempt to improve these remnant patches of bush, or restore vacant land too. These patches of urban bush are highly important habitat for native species, and even though they can never reproduce the functionality of the former forest, they provide resources and corridors for urban wildlife. It could be strongly argued that these patches are important for people of the city too, by giving them some connection with nature that they are mostly denied or do not attempt to engage with. Perhaps most people are not that interested and do not even consider what their environment looked like 200 or so years ago. Maybe they don’t have a “feel” for the topography, even when they cross the bridge over the dirty drain and drive up the steep hill on the other side. But for me, these give me inspiration, and no matter where I am, I can’t help but try to imagine what the landscape looked like before it was developed.
A fantastic read. Thanks for that.
