The Otways Rainforest is as much my home as the sea is here, and captivates me as much, although it's to the skirts of the sea that I often run. For many years we've worried about logging in these forests, but it seems that a balance has been reached between man and tree, where some are left to grow tall and proud and offer us quiet and loveliness, whilst some are inevitably felled for timber.

The faded, black and white photos on the walls of country cafes tell the stories of the loggers of old, and all about the district are signs of past slaughter - rusting machinery and saws with tiger teeth nailed under rafters, grisly souvenirs.

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The stumps too, covered in lichen on wet pathways, are scarred like woman beaten, black eyed and shy. But still, there's life there - tiny funghi, ants, lichen. Sometimes even trees grow within trees, tiny saplings finding footing in the rotting wood where dirt has gathered like a cradle to nurture the new generation that grows from the old and fallen giants. The hearts are still there though, exposed - the unwanted stumps, the ones with iron pegs and footholds carved. The men that sliced away at acres and acres of forest are dead and gone now, ghosts, whilst the trees are more than, still. There's a kind of victory in that, I suppose. There always seems left, than less - you just have to wait for enough time to pass to see renewal.

Whilst we might mourn the passing of the old giants and the wildness that once was (Imagine! we say, what these hills might have looked like covered in forests!) there is still a sense that the forests will stay, because we treasure them so. The logging trucks still rattle beast like along highways and great swathes of plantations look apocalyptic in the daytime and eerie in the moonlight, white bones exposes to lunar sympathy, but still, there's much protected, and much treasured. There's a management now, rather than ruthless devastation without foresight. In parts of Victoria I see old photos where all the timber has left the hillsides bare because it was needed in the coal mines, but now those places are wild again, huge trees defiant of man, treeferns trembling in the wind, old gravestones covered in lichen so that man's name is covered once again, his children scattered.

The trees become more than desired timber - they become about memory and loss, and of a desired peace away from the modern cities upon which fortunes were built. Years ago we knew secret places away from the tourists, hidden waterfalls and redwood forests - now, the tourists seek them out, they too looking for what they've lost, some secret magic in the trees. The Californian Redwoods are a case in point - tourists pass that way now for picnics and admire their beauty. There is a holy communion of the trees for all, and whilst I'm sad that the secret is no longer my own, I can't begrudge those who also seek out what the forest offers. The article that started the tourists seeking them out a few years ago wrote that they were 'hidden down old unsealed logging road near Beech Forest'. Were they aware that just by writing those lines, they wouldn't be hidden anymore, and the droves would come, destroying the sacred quiet down those roads?

Redwoods in the Otways

They were planted in the 1930's, an experiment for logging, and grew slowing. Now they are around 60 to 70 metres high, and could grow twice that, making them some of the tallest in the world. This is silver lining to me - we mourn the death of trees, yet when we are dead and gone, the ones now will be huge, towering. With luck, our grandchildren will marvel over them. Hidden amongst the natives, they thrive in the fertile soil. Loved, they become protected.

They have become far more than the timber desired.

I still miss the silent days in the Otways though, where there was no one else in the forest but me, and the wild things. Have you noticed the flux and change of your forests across time?

I still miss the silent days in the Otways though, where there was no one else in the forest but me, and the wild things. Have you noticed the flux and change of your forests across time?

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