Learning from Snow Gums

High in the mountains of South-Eastern Australia resides the snow gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora). These inhabitants’ range into the sub-alpine zone of the Australian Alps and are the highest growing trees in the country. With smooth bark that peels off in colourful ribbons, these trees are especially striking after a soaking rain. Living in such high, windy, cold, low nutrient environs is not easy but is the ecological niche of these forests slowly and stoically endure.

As an Outdoor Environmental Educator and mountain enthusiast, I have gradually gotten to know snow gums. Both as a forest collective as well as developing a relationship with particular trees. When I think of snow gums, I often think of specific trees: the summit tree on Mount Stirling (pictured), the Octopus tree on the Bogong High Plains, the gnarled giants overlooking the Edmonson’s Hut (pictured). As an educator, these trees have become co-teachers – colleagues if you will – helping evoke a landscape, its nuances, historicity, challenges and threats. My practice involves taking students to walk, ski-tour, and camp among these forests, getting to know the trees, the place and its socio-ecological histories.

Over the last two decades, due to human induced climate change, an increase in the quantity, intensity and scale of bushfires has impacted snow gum forests in South-Eastern Australia. Cam Walker (2023) has referred to these places as ghost forests due to the stark bare leafless trunks swathing large sections of the Australian Alps. Recently, I have borrowed this elicitation, extending the figuration of ghosts to help conjure the duration of these trees and manifest the memories that can be read in each twisting branch or bent bough (see Jukes & Riley, 2024). These forests contain trees that pre-date European settlement, which can remind us of the past and warn us of possible futures. I have brought such thinking into my teaching practice as an Outdoor Environmental Educator, aiming to work towards ethical ways of living and learning with these forests.

References

Jukes, S., & Riley, K. (2024). Experiments with a Dark Pedagogy: Learning from/through Temporality, Climate Change and Species Extinction (…and Ghosts). Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 40(2), 108–127. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2024.12

Walker, C. (2023). Ghost forests: Australia’s iconic snow gums are the bleaching corals of the high country. Roaring Journals. https://www.patagonia.com.au/blogs/roaring-journals/ghost-forests-australia-s-iconic-snow-gums-are-the-bleaching-corals-of-the-high-country