Forest Giants: Locating Southwest Australian Old-Growth Country

Abstract

Within the wide-ranging context provided by Chapters 1 and 2, I situate 'Forest Family: Australian Culture, Art, and Trees'. The old-growth eucalypts of the Southwest of Western Australia are non-human protagonists in the narrative of the Giblett family (Chapters 4 and 5) and the seminal forest protection campaigns of the 1990s (Chapter 8) that swept the region and resulted in models for subsequent environmental activism in Australia. Central to this narrative are karri ('Eucalyptus diversicolor') and its companion species jarrah ('E. marginata'). Karris cover roughly 200,000 hectares, or 500,000 acres, about one-fifth of which is classified as old-growth. The iconic forests and charismatic trees are limited principally to a high-rainfall coastal strip extending from the towns of Nannup in the north, Augusta in the south-west, and Denmark in the south-east.