Growing hope

It’s a slow recovery for rainforest plants after fire.

Three days of overcast and misty rain are helping our new plantings.

It is three months since the fire.

Our rainforest patch is a species-rich remnant of what used to cover the entire hillside before the pioneering days of clearing. There are 5 acres of glorious rainforest at the top of our property, and some mature rainforest trees in the moist conditions at the river. The rainforest patch is about 8m in diameter -- a shady haven close to our house, a remarkable natural garden.

My favourite tree in the patch did not burn. It is the tall emergent, whose crown survived, providing much needed shade.

Growing plants from seed collected in the mature rainforest, then planting out to extend the existing rainforest patch, is a process requiring much patience. We have been doing this for 15 years. For the fire to spread from the eucalypt woodland, which usually recovers after fire, to the rainforest patch was a calamity.

Arboricide.

What hope when confronted with this?

But surprising regrowth is happening.

Shoots hinting at life in what appeared to be a dead tree.

Small signs of hope.

Suckers determined to regrow what was lost.

Not all of our years of planting efforts gone.

Some species lost, others recovering with strategic watering and weeding.

It can never be the same, but there is renewal.