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Widespread Interest in Nature
By Warwick Frost
The decade or so after the end of World War One was characterised by a substantial increase in interest in the natural environment. This was manifested in a number of ways. Nature studies was a popular pastime. Bushwalking, including both day-trips and overnight walks, attracted large numbers. Tourism boomed in scenic areas, most notably the mountains and the coast. Wildlife watching developed in both natural areas and in specially constructed sanctuaries or wild zoos. Commentary on nature became a major topic in books, newspapers and radio.
Why did Australians become so interested in Nature, particularly given these were such turbulent times? Three main factors were at work. The first was the emphasis given to Nature Studies in schools since the beginning of the twentieth century. By the 1920s, it was a well-established part of the curriculum, serviced by many passionately interested teachers. Interest amongst schools was reinforced by celebrations such as Arbor Day, Wattle Day and Bird Day. The last was the invention of the Gould League of Bird Lovers, which by 1935 had 100,000 members in Victoria alone. Nature Studies was taught in both urban and rural schools, the O'Reillys excelled at it at their small country school. A critical group of educationalists stimulated interest both in the classroom and amongst the general public through their writings and involvement with bushwalking clubs.
The second factor was that the environment provided an outlet or escape for the horrors of World War One. The introduction for Charles Barrett's In Australian wilds (1919) explains that the author has returned from the War, but, `he has come back, not to tell us of war, … but to drop quietly into the old haunts and seclusions and give us in his first published words just the old hobby and the old home things. Another returned soldier, Horatio Jones, turned his back on his pre-war urban life and built a rough artists/ writers camp in the Dandenong Ranges.
War casualties were specifically commemorated in a range of projects, including the building of the scenic Great Ocean Road along Victoria's rugged western coast, an ANZAC memorial road to the Lamington National Park and the establishment of the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane. Many returned servicemen may have seen bushwalking clubs and camping as ways of recapturing feelings of camaraderie and adventure. One bushwalking club, the Wallaby Club, offered ritual and commemoration through its `ANZAC stick' a tree root salvaged from a Gallipoli trench and fashioned into a walking stick to be carried only by its president.
A third factor was that changes in society may have added to the attractiveness of the natural environment. Bushwalking and nature-based tourism were popular amongst the growing urban population. The place of women in society changed rapidly, most notably through a massive rise in employment after the War. This flowed through into recreation. Previously an elite male-only pursuit, walking became popular amongst women. Indeed, the term bushwalking was coined in 1927 to describe a club for mixed groups of walkers. Some of the new walking clubs were based on offices or factories, while others were promotional vehicles for new media companies, particularly radio and cinema. Particularly popular were mystery walks. Like today's mystery flights the participants did not know where they were going until the day. One included 2,000 walkers and another required two seven carriage trains to reach its destination. Bushwalking guides and newspaper columns were highly popular. Croll's The open road in Victoria: being the way of many walkers (1928) was a practical guide with a range of walks to be followed by bushwalkers. It sold out immediately and a second edition was published in three weeks.
In Queensland, Lahey and his supporters promoted the Lamington Plateau as an ideal holiday destination for groups, such as women and office workers, who had not previously been usually associated with the outdoors. Tourism resorts in forested mountainous areas catered for large numbers of what today would be termed mass tourists. In the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne, in 1929-30 42 guesthouses provided over 1,000 beds, about twice the accommodation capacity in the area today. At nearby Healesville, there were over 100 guesthouses and it attracted 8-10,000 visitors at Christmas and Easter. Healesville Sanctuary, a wild zoo with indigenous fauna, opened in 1930 and by the late 1930s was attracting nearly 100,000 visitors a year.
This surge in interest in the natural environment was translated into action to preserve natural areas, particularly forests, from agricultural and other development. In NSW, during the early 1930s bushwalkers successfully campaigned against the clearance of the Blue Gum Forest and for the creation of a National Park in the Blue Mountains. In Queensland, walkers and tourists supported Romeo Lahey's campaigns, resulting in the declaration of 183 National Parks comprising over 500,000 acres (210,000 hectares) by 1940. In Victoria from 1928, a range of groups engaged in a campaign to preserve from logging 3,200 acres (1,350 hectares) of mountain ash (eucalyptus regnans) in the Cumberland Valley in the Yarra Ranges.
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.5Public interest in preserving forests was reflected in the works of a wide range of writers and artists. Three are considered here. The first was Sir Arthur Streeton, famous as one of the key members of the Heidelberg School, which had revolutionised Australian art in the 1880s. In the 1920s, Streeton moved to the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne, where he became involved in the campaign to save the Cumberland Valley. Increasingly he represented the impact of forest clearing in paintings titled Our Vanishing Forests (1934) and Gippsland Forests for Paper Pulp (1940). In Silvan Dam and Donna Buang AD 2000, Streeton presented an apocalyptic future vision of the forests of the Dandenong Ranges. As described by Bonyhady, `the only trees in Streeton's painting were dead. The hills were so eroded and barren that when the painting reappeared in 1992 it was thought to depict the Flinders Ranges [in the Outback]'.
The second example was Keith Hancock, Professor of History at the University of Adelaide. In 1930 he wrote Australia as one of a British "Modern World' series of volumes on various countries. Hancock launched a scathing attack on forest clearance. The early settlers were `invaders', who `hated trees' and,
The greed of the pioneers caused them to devastate hundreds of thousands of acres of forest-land which they could not hope to till or to graze effectively. To punish their folly the land brought forth for them bracken and poor scrub and other rubbish. They ruined valuable timber to make a few wretched farms.
Hancock also attacked Bruce's policy of `Men, Money and Markets' as being simplistic and ill thought out. Significantly, unlike his fellow academic Taylor, Hancock was not criticised as taking a disloyal position, nor was his book banned. The popularity of Australia demonstrated that by 1930 attitudes to the environment and development schemes had shifted.
The third example was My Australia, written by two young women, Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw under the name M. Barnard Eldershaw. Echoing Hancock, they wrote of a history of, `bitter hostility towards trees'. However, rather than just considering utilitarian conservation their concern was more spiritual,
There is nothing sadder or more forsaken than bush after the ring-barker has been through it … It seems like more than the death of the trees, it is the land itself that is stripped, exposed, brought low. Everything dies with the trees.
Source: Monash University, http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/2574
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