White Beech: The Rainforest Years (6 page)

After the fruit had soaked for a full twenty-four hours, I took on the toil of peeling off the drupe, which was more woody than fleshy, to lay bare the squat round nut with its inset lid. Within minutes my hands were thickly coated in an odd-smelling brownish exudate, that so stuck my fingers together that I could hardly wield my knife. I struggled on for hour after hour as my fingers got pulpy from repeated immersion and stiffened under the relentless build-up of the exudate, which I had regularly to peel off my fingers with the knife blade. As I got progressively clumsier the knife found more opportunities to slip off the small wet nut and bury its short blade in my palm. I had no way of knowing, as the uncomfortable hours crept by, whether what I was doing was for the best, or even necessary. I let the seeds dry off, but not in the sun, tucked them into a special compost in an old broccoli box scavenged from the supermarket, wetted them through, and put over them a car-window pane that I had found lying under the old farmhouse. For six months the box remained forgotten on a shelf, among old woolsacks, broken furniture and rusting machine parts. It was one of my mad ideas. No one else was interested, and anyway, it would never work.

When I came back from England six months later, I made sure that my box was one of those placed in our makeshift propagation unit, where it would be watered automatically twice a day. A month went by. I didn’t even ask about my box because I was so sure that the effort had been wasted. Now and then I’d check to see that the lads hadn’t thrown it out or planted something else in the box. I was fussing over Garry’s bull terrier bitch one morning when Garry stuck his head out of the door of the propagation unit and said, ‘Sump’m here you should see.’

At first I didn’t recognise the five plantlings that stood stiff and erect in the loose planting medium, five furry stems each bearing a single pair of leaves, not entire like the leaves of the adult parent, but with five teeth on each margin. (This phenomenon of dissimilarity between juveniles and adults is not uncommon among the primitive Australian flora.) Though the first five leaf pairs of the baby beeches were different in shape from those of the parent tree, they were the same unmistakeable kitchen-cabinet green. Every day more baby beech trees popped up until we had 150 of them standing proudly side-by-side in their old polystyrene box. I don’t know how people feel when they win the lottery, but I’ll bet they’re no happier than I was then.

We could have grown more, but White Beech is not dominant in our forest. Rightly or wrongly (and there is disagreement on the point) we are concerned to keep our own races pure, at least until we know more about the exact identities of our species, subspecies and varieties, and the extent of their variability. In none of the books could I find any account of the asymmetric venation of our leaves, which can make them look quite lopsided. I know now that the leaves are opposite, but the leaf veins are mostly subalternate, and some actually fork where they leave the midrib. I don’t know if the oddity of the leaves on the CCRRS trees puts them in a different variety or subspecies, but I do know that we won’t mix them up with White Beeches from further away, not yet anyway. The issue is more important than it might seem. Speciation is an ongoing process; the Cave Creek Gmelinas with their lopsided leaves may be in the process of turning into a distinct subspecies or even a species, in which case we should let nature take its course rather than accidentally or deliberately causing our clones to revert to an earlier type.

Botany is an inexact science. What is more, frequent name changes make Australian plant taxonomy rather more challenging than it needs to be, especially as the ill-tempered factionalism that characterises all academic disciplines leads some botanists to leap on the new names as soon as they appear while others steadfastly refuse to use them.
Gmelina leichhardtii
has been that for a good while now; what is not clear is just who has accepted that the genus is in the Lamiaceae, or why. The taxonomic problems presented by the genus
Gmelina
and allied genera are currently being investigated by the Lamiaceae Team of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. As long as they think White Beeches are lamiaceous that’s good enough for me.

When Victorian government botanist Ferdinand Mueller came to identify the specimen of White Beech that had been collected by Ludwig Leichhardt at Myall Creek on 20 November 1843, he decided that it was in the related genus Vitex, and gave it the species name
leichhardtii
(
Fragmenta
, 3:58). At Kew George Bentham had the advantage of being able to compare the specimen he was sent with other members of both genera,
Vitex
and
Gmelina
so, when the name was published in Volume 66 of his
Flora Australiensis
, it was silently corrected to
Gmelina leichhardtii
, the specific name being allowed to stand. Mueller greatly admired Leichhardt, which is about the only thing I am happy to have in common with him. Other observers have expressed less favourable opinions (Chisholm,
passim
). Because Leichhardt’s way of being a naturalist (as distinct from his way of conducting expeditions) seems to me the right way, I shall impose upon your patience by telling you more than you probably want to know about him.

Ludwig Leichhardt was born in Trebatsch, Prussia in 1813, sixth of the eight children of the Royal Peat Inspector. He was accepted by the universities of both Berlin and Göttingen to study philology, but in November 1833 he met a young Englishman called John Nicholson who turned him on to natural science. When Nicholson’s younger brother William came to Germany in 1835, he persuaded Leichhardt to change his field of academic study at the University of Berlin to natural science. As Leichhardt’s family did not have the funds to support him, he had been living in direst poverty. William Nicholson offered not only to share his accommodation with Leichhardt, but also to pay his tuition fees and other expenses. When Nicholson returned to England he invited Leichhardt to join him there so that they could collaborate in studying natural science, in preparation for a career as explorers of Australia. The two travelled and studied together in France, Italy and Switzerland. They were together in Clermont-Ferrand when, on 24 September 1840, Nicholson announced that he no longer intended to follow a career as a naturalist in Australia but would return to England and practise as a physician. Nicholson paid for Leichhardt’s passage to Australia, and his clothing and equipment, and gave him £200 in cash.

Leichhardt arrived in Port Jackson on Valentine’s Day, 1842. For six months he looked for employment in Sydney; then he set off alone on an expedition from Newcastle along the Hunter and across the Liverpool Range to New England, collecting and annotating as he went. After resting a while at Lindesay Station he travelled to Wide Bay and it was on this part of his journey that he collected the first specimen of White Beech at Myall Creek. He was then invited by Thomas Archer to accompany him to his brothers’ property at Durundur on the Stanley River and use it as the base for his explorations of the district. Leichhardt remained at Durundur for seven months, and then set off back to Sydney. On the way he stopped at Cecil Station on the Darling Downs where preliminary plans were laid for his next, far more ambitious enterprise.

An overland expedition from Sydney to Port Essington had been recommended by the Legislative Council in the hope that it would open a lucrative trade route between south-east Asia, India and the colony. The surveyor-general Sir Thomas Mitchell had agreed to lead the expedition but Governor Sir George Gipps refused to authorise ‘an expedition of so hazardous and expensive a nature’ without support from the British government. When Leichhardt offered to lead an expedition of volunteers, newspaper editors decided to assist him in raising a private subscription. The route chosen led from the Darling Downs to Port Essington on the shores of the Arafura Sea, a total of 4,800 kilometres. The ten men involved, with their 17 horses, 16 bullocks, 550 kilos of flour, 90 kilos of sugar, 40 kilos of tea and 10 kilos of gelatine, left Jimbour on 1 October 1844.

They travelled north along the Burdekin, the Lynd and the Mitchell rivers to the shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which they followed to the mouth of the Roper River before turning inland, skirting Arnhem Land to the east. Though Leichhardt had few bush skills, and was happier rambling and botanising than working out logistics, it took them less than fifteen months. They reached Port Essington on 17 December 1845. On the way two men had left the expedition and John Gilbert, himself an expert bushman and naturalist, had been killed by Aborigines. No one had suffered from the scurvy that had crippled Sturt’s expedition inland from Adelaide, because of Leichhardt’s awareness of the nutritional value of the native herbage he saw around him. The team returned by sea to Sydney where Leichhardt was greeted as a hero.

Leichhardt lost no time in raising money for a second expedition and this time the government came on board. The plan was to cross the continent from east to west. The team left in December 1846, but managed to cover only 800 kilometres before flooding, malaria and starvation forced them back. Leichhardt then set off on his own to explore the country around the Condamine River.

In his next attempt to cross the continent from east to west, Leichhardt was determined to travel light. He added to the team of seven Europeans two Aborigines, who would help them to live off the land they were travelling through. As they had no more than one spare horse for each man, it is hard to see how they could have completed a journey of more than four thousand kilometres. The small party left Cogoon Station, on the northern edge of the Darling Downs, on 3 April 1848 and was never heard of again. Since then nine expeditions have been organised in attempts to trace the party but none has been successful.

‘Listen to this!’ I said to my mate Ann, who was reading Rex Stout as she sunned her knees on the verandah. ‘This is Leichhardt’s first encounter with Gondwanan rainforest – it’s in a letter to a fellow naturalist:

And oh that you could have been with me in these brushes. Here grows the nettle tree about 80 and 90 feet high with its large leaves, and the noble red cedar (what is its scientific name?) the red Sterculia, the Sassafras, the Ricinus, the Rosewood, the cohiti wood. It will take some time before we find even their real names . . .

– that was certainly true –

In little gullies, where the waters went down the fern trees grew luxuriantly about 12–15 feet high long leaves of 8–9 feet long. Polypodium, Asplenium, Acrostichum grew everywhere, mosses hung down in festoons and a species of birds had knowingly made use of them to hide its nest – Lichens of various colour covered the rotten and the living trees. The lyre bird, the native turkey with its peculiar nest of leaves, the fermentation of which hatches the eggs, a kind of rat, the Echidna and many curious animals live here. (Aurousseau, ii, 632)

‘Where was he? It sounds just like here,’ said Ann.

‘He was camping on Mount Royal.’ (The Mount Royal National Park is one of the southernmost of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia.) ‘You have to love him. He’s so full of optimism and confidence and generosity. He’s fascinated by the country he’s in, no matter whether it’s spectacular or fertile or dull and stony. He finds something to intrigue him everywhere, and he describes it simply and vividly. He gives attention to all kinds of animals, vertebrate and invertebrate, and all kinds of plants from lichens to forest giants. He knows his botany so well that he recognises plants he’s never seen before from descriptions he has read. He names natural features after ordinary people, including the boy and the convict and the blackfellow in his team. He’s special.’

Ann was unimpressed. ‘Surely the man was a leech. How could he have shared Nicholson’s small allowance and his narrow lodgings and let him pay for everything, even his passage to Australia?’

‘It wasn’t as if he could work as well as study,’ I said uncertainly, because I too found Leichhardt’s willingness to live off Nicholson faintly contemptible.

Ann went on. ‘The key to Leichhardt’s whole messy career is that he was desperate to avoid being drafted into the Prussian army. He’s supposed to do a year’s military service after he completes high school, doesn’t do it, goes to university instead. Hops from one course to another, doesn’t graduate, but he still lets people call him “Dr” Leichhardt. Then he wants to join Nicholson in England and tries really hard to convince the Prussian government that he’s unfit for service, fails, but gets a deferment and is allowed to go to England. The Prussian government won’t let him travel to France so he goes on forged identity papers. Then instead of going home to do his service, he sneaks off to Australia at Nicholson’s expense. The man was a lightweight. A chancer.’

‘He did have very poor eyesight. And since when did you object to anyone’s dodging the draft?’

‘Pfui,’ said Ann, and went back to Nero Wolfe.

I confess that I love White Beeches mostly for themselves alone but also for the name they bear. The verdict of history is mixed. Leichhardt will remain an enigma. His last expedition will continue to seem criminally suicidal but nothing can distort the sensibility that informs his writing.

Nowadays if Leichhardt’s beech is planted at all it is likely to be as a street tree. Its neat round-headed habit, its straight smooth trunk and tidy bole, together with its moderate rate of growth, are positive advantages when it comes to being planted in pavements close to walls and buildings. When I see the White Beeches along the boulevards of the Gold Coast, marooned between roaring carriageways, buffeted by fume-laden draughts, far from their in-dwelling invertebrates, their phalangers and parrots, their festoons of vines and garlands of epiphytes, I pray for them to disqualify themselves for such ignominy by dying soon, but instead, dwarfed, filthy and ragged, they suffer on.