Call of the Wild (tree day)
Our favourite singer, Olivia Newton-John, is back home in Australia fighting for the ancient trees of southern Tasmania. In the next few months, she will be encouraging all of us to plant trees and boost our shrinking forests.
When Olivia Newton-John heard a knock at the entrance to her NSW North Coast home three months ago, she had no idea she was about to face an issue close to her heart. “There was a man I’d never seen before,” recalls Olivia, 53. “He said he needed to tell me about the trees in Tasmania. ‘I’m really worried,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you can do, but I need to tell you that they are destroying old-growth forests in Tasmania.’”
“I was startled because he had just shown up out of the blue on my doorstep. I didn’t quite know what to make of him but, as I listened, I realised his heart was in the right place and maybe there was something I could do to help after all.”
This chance meeting with a stranger proved strangely coincidental. Olivia was already talking to Jon Dee, co-founder of the environmental organisation Planet Ark, about fronting a national media campaign to promote this year’s National Tree Day on Sunday, July 28, 2002.
A few weeks later, Olivia, Jon and a film crew were standing in a devastated old-growth forest in the Styx River Valley in southern Tasmania.
“In this particular part of the world, they have the tallest hardwood trees ever recorded, even taller than the American redwoods that we read so much about,” says Olivia, who is in Australia on an indefinite break to care for her ailing mother, Irene, now in her 80s.
“These trees are hundreds of years old and they are hacked down and burned so wood chippers can plant plantation timber. How does that make any sense?”
“It absolutely touched my heart. I couldn’t believe people were destroying this truly beautiful part of the world. And the fact that these trees are some of the world’s oldest and tallest makes it even more unbelievable. It’s depressing and sad.”
Evidence of forest destruction along the Styx River provides an emotionally charged backdrop for the National Tree Day TV campaign, an annual initiative that Olivia helped to launch six years ago.
“I can’t for a moment begin to imagine a world without trees,” says Olivia. “How barren and desolate would our lives be without them? There’d be no shade, no birds singing, no beauty, no changes of season and no oxygen.”
“During the past 200 years, we have chopped down billions of trees in Australia. National Tree Day, which saw 1.2million trees planted last year, aims to reverse that trend. Along the way we can green the country and the city, and help resolve land problems, such as salinity and rising water tables.”
National Tree Day, says Olivia, is just like a “Green Up Australia” day. “Instead of getting people to organise sites to pick up litter,” she says, “we get them to organise sites where they plant trees.”
This year, the organisers are encouraging schools, church and community groups, as well as individuals, to plant trees and shrubs that are native to their area. Planting sites could be in their local park, school grounds, along creeks, at the roadside or in the bush - even their own back garden.
As well as the main National Tree Day on July 28, a special Schools Tree Day is planned for Friday, July 26.
Olivia believes in practising what she preaches. The 70 hectare property that she owns on the NSW North Coast is a former dairy farm that she purchased 20 years ago as a country retreat. Back then, it was mostly cleared pasture, with magnificent views down to the sea, and a series of spectacular Moreton Bay fig trees.
“I had dreams of encouraging the bush to regenerate on the areas that had been cleared for pasture,” says Olivia. “Much of my land sits next to a national park and I had an idea to plant native trees to link up remnants of rainforest and entice the bush out of the park and back onto my land, just as it was hundreds of years ago.”
Olivia engaged a local horticulturalist, Michael Waite, who drew up a plan to regenerate the property in 1997. Today, five hectares of Olivia’s farm are covered by newly grown bush, creating corridors for animals such as wallabies and possums.
“It’s immensely satisfying to stand in what was once simply grassland and be surrounded by native trees and bushes,” says Olivia. “I can feel the life in the land surging around me and I feel very happy. Michael did most of the difficult work. He hand-planted more than 10,000 trees for me, which he then tended and cared for until they were established enough to survive on their own.”
“That has extended the habitat and food sources for a whole range of animals. And you can see it in everything from the lemon myrtle bushes to the number of butterflies, particularly the rare nightwing, which has returned in large numbers.”
Olivia is protecting her new-growth bush for posterity. Last year, she placed the area under a trust, which ensures that no one will ever be able to cut it down, even if she sells the land in the future. “And I want to do a lot more planting, especially along the two creeks on the property, where there is a lot of erosion.”
Born in Cambridge, England, on September 26, 1948, to Brinley and Irene Newton-John, Olivia was raised in Melbourne from the age of five. Brinley, a professor of German literature, moved his family to Australia in 1954 when he took up the post of Master of Melbourne University’s Ormond College.
Olivia’s concern for the environment, springs from her parents’ awareness of nature and environmental issues.
“When I was a little girl, I remember sitting on the steps of Ormond College with my dad, looking up at the trees with him and writing poetry about them, so I have always had an affinity with the natural world,” she says.
Her beloved father died of cancer on July 3, 1992, the same day Olivia was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was later cured after a mastectomy. In her family’s tradition, Olivia has passed her attitudes on to her daughter Chloe, 16, from Olivia’s former marriage to US actor and dancer Matt Lattanzi.
“I have always been aware of the planet and our responsibility in preserving it, rather than destroying it,” says Chloe. “We can’t just take all the time and not give anything back. My mum and I have always believed that.”
And that, says Olivia, is one of the key messages of the Planet Ark campaign.
“For hundreds of years we have been clearing the land without regard to nature’s balance,” she says. “If I can persuade people to make a contribution, even if it is only to plant a tree, then I’m happy to do that.
“I think it’s important, not just for the environment, but for all our futures.”
For information about taking part in National Tree Day, a joint venture by Planet Ark and Toyota phone 1800 303 232 or go to the website www.planetark.org/trees/
By Michael Sheather. Photography By Mike Newlung
Photo captions:
Olivia among the native trees she planted on her North Coast NSW property.
Above: Giants of the forest the Styx River Valley trees are among the tallest and oldest in the world. Above right: Olivia is joining forces with Planet Ark’s Jon Dee to raise awareness of the need to save old-growth forests and to promote National Tree Day on Sunday, July 28, 2002.