SERIES 36 | Episode 24
We visit environmentalist and conservationist Professor Tim Flannery and explore his lush backyard.
Tim has spent most of his career trying to protect the environment and make sure that we address climate change before it’s too late. He lives about 70km south of Sydney in the Illawarra escarpment area and his home is surrounded by temperate rainforest; it’s one of the most ancient habitats in Australia.
Tim trained as a palaeontologist, studying fossils, and that gave him an appreciation that the earth’s climate can change over time. His home is a refuge from his frequent travels for work, and his home is on a wildlife corridor between the escarpment and the ocean; a creek runs through the property, flowing from the hills to the sea.
His approach to gardening is that a rainforest space such as this, might look messy to others, but he sees perfect order, in that each leaf and plant is perfectly adapted to its environment, having evolved there over millions of years. He prefers this to a garden that is forced to be a certain way by human effort, which he finds disordered.
The older eucalypts on his property have been mature for a long time but the rainforest plants growing underneath are all quite new; he thinks it was grassland a century or two ago, then became someone’s garden, but now he is letting it revert to its natural state. The Illawarra flame trees were the pioneers of this change, and under them are the cabbage palms, sandpaper fig, and a new tree, maiden’s blush, that has grown from birds dropping seed.
He has removed the weedy non-native plants but left many others because he can see they’re playing a role in the ecosystem. They may be replaced with natives later if they’re in the wrong spot.
He sees a major part of his role as educational, alerting others to the threat posed by climate change and human activity on biodiversity. Tim was made Australian of the Year in 2007 and worked in the role of Climate Commissioner from 2010-2013. Around then, nearly 90 per cent of the electricity being generated in Australia was from fossil fuel; now it’s below 65 per cent, with the rest from clean sources such as solar and wind.
He worries that in the garden and elsewhere, people want things to be done quickly but it takes a bit of commitment and patience. “Think about it a century hence,” he says.
Featured Plants ILLAWARRA FLAME TREEBrachychiton acerifoliusCABBAGE TREE PALMLivistona australisSANDPAPER FIGFicus coronataMAIDEN’S BLUSHSloanea australis
Filmed on Dharawal Country | Illawarra Region, NSW
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