Saving the Ludlow

The Ludlow Tuart Forest was once the entry into Busselton, before the bypass was built. It’s now signposted as the scenic route into town and most people miss it. This week, Capes Conversations looks at what makes the Ludlow Forest so special and why it needs community help to regenerate and thrive. 

The Ludlow Tuart Forest is the only tall Tuart forest ecosystem in the world. Once covering more than 110,000 hectares, it has been reduced to just 3% of its original extent. What remains is fragmented, under‑managed, and facing accelerating ecological decline.

Des Donnolly and Evelyn Taylor are from the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group and they believe community can regenerate this forest.

Visit the Group's website for more information on their activities, opening hours and ways you can support them: Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group

Thanks for listening and if you've enjoyed this podcast, please share with your family and friends.

For more inspiration on visiting the Margaret River Region follow @margaretriver on Instagram or explore www.margaretriver.com.

Transcript

Kellie Tannock 0:01

Welcome to Cape's Conversations, sharing the stories that make the Margaret River region a truly special place to live and visit. I'm Kellie Tannock, and this week we're looking at what makes the Ludlow Forest at the northern entrance of Busselton so special and why it needs your help to regenerate and to thrive. Joining me are two members of the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group. Welcome Evelyn Taylor and Des Donnelly.

Des Donnelly 0:27

Hello.

Kellie Tannock 0:27

First, let's set the scene. The Ludlow Tuart Forest was once the entry into Busselton along Tuart Drive, which comes off the Bussell Highway just past Capel. It's now signed as a scenic route into town. And my guess is, like me, most people miss it.

Des Donnelly 0:44

Yes, they do nowadays, because the traffic flows so quickly and they're all in a hurry to get where they need to go. So they miss out on the opportunity to see the only Tuart forest in the world.

Kellie Tannock 0:55

Well what makes it so special, Des?

Des Donnelly 0:58

Because of its location and because of its um environmental value, we we really don't appreciate how much that forest is worth. There's only three per cent of it left of the original forest in the world, and it's all here in Ludlow, and it's under threat from a whole series of issues that can be fixed and and must be fixed.

Kellie Tannock 1:20

Now you go back a long way with this forest. I understand you started your career in forestry 70 years ago. Um how do you go from being a forestry worker to a forest conservationist?

Des Donnelly 1:31

Forestry is all about conservation, um, but it's it's real conservation. We're trying to replant the the plants that were there and restore this forest. I finished up in Ludlow in 1972 to manage that place for four years was probably the best four years of my life. And at the end of that I got heavily involved in the softwood industry, trying to get that established in WA, and for people to understand that we needed to have softwood to replace Jarrah because we were going to run out of that timber eventually. And um the plantations were being uh extended, and that happened at Ludlow and the Sunklands, just west of Margaret River, or east of Margaret River, I should say. And here I am.

Kellie Tannock 2:16

Evelyn, you've had a long association with forestry too. What makes Tuarts so special?

Evelyn Taylor 2:21

Well, my original um introduction into the Tuart Forest was a picnic in the Tuart Forest in 1956 with my then-to-be husband, who'd just come back from working in Norway, where um softwood plantations were on the rise, and the importance of them was thought to be very important. And he then went on to become involved with the softwood plantation set up in the Nannup Balingup area, and we married and lived in Nannup. We then went from Nannup to Busselton, and so my husband was involved with the Tuart Forest there, and because he'd been um working in Europe, he was very aware of the importance of that forest. At a later period, I lived in France for 10 years where they treat forests in a totally different way, and the community actually look after their forest, and I thought it might be possible to do that at Ludlow, which is why the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group exists.

Kellie Tannock 3:19

So we're talking about how special it is. Can you sort of give us a picture of why it's special? What's in it? What what's special about this particular tall timber?

Evelyn Taylor 3:28

Well, they're very large trees, they're very old trees, and just the fact that these tuart trees exist on that limestone ridge that used to they used to run from Busselton to north of Perth, now they're just in that area, just in between um Capel and Busselton, and they're unique to the world, so it's really important. I mean, they are just some of those trees are huge, maybe up to six hundred years old. What was happening six hundred years ago? Those trees have been there all of that time. We need to respect that.

Kellie Tannock 4:02

Can we jump in a time capsule for a minute? Go back 200 years. Can you describe what this forest looked like before broad axes and fence lines became a thing?

Des Donnelly 4:11

Yeah, look, uh we arrived here in 1835, out of Wonerup cut, if you like. Uh people walked ashore, they carried their goods and chattels across the estuary and settled at one or two houses, and from there the settlement started to grow. They needed to have buildings, so here were all these lovely big trees. So they were able to harvest some of them to build their houses and sheds and fences and use for fuel and all of those things that we used timber for in those days.

Kellie Tannock 4:43

I understand butcher's blocks were very excellent for that.

Des Donnelly 4:47

Yeah, they came a bit later, but they did bring their cattle with them, unfortunately, for the forest. I mean they had to bring them in. But because it was such an open forest and easily accessible, cattle were allowed to roam free. And of course they'd done quite a lot of damage. This led to the government allowing those properties to be or the area to be subdivided, and it was split up into hundred acre lots. These lots were handed to various uh people that had served the c community and they grew cattle. It was their major food production source. They also needed to grow vegetables and they drained some of the swamps so they could grow potatoes and cabbages and all that stuff. So it was an agricultural enterprise. But at the same time there was a big uh whaling experience happening in the bay. The Americans were coming here for their whaling and they would take back with them timber. They bring timber down from America, uh softwood that is, and then take back hardwoods to build their boats and all their fittings and so on. Because it's such a hard wearing timber, it was sought after around the world. And that started our economy. Without that trading economy, who knows where we would have been now. Unfortunately that had done a deal of damage to the forest. The farmers that had been allocated those blocks set about clearing them so they could grow more cattle. And it wasn't until the Royal Commission in 1903 that the government realized they had to save that patch of forest and they bought those properties back. And that's an important part of history that they had the gumption to actually do that. Now that's that set the forest up for some restoration, and in 1918 they employed a forester from overseas, Lane Poole, who actually wrote the first Forest Act in Western Australia and put controls over the forest industry. And they allocated them back to State Forest, and Ludlow became State Forest Number One south of the Ludlow River, and State Forest Number Two north of the Ludlow River. And that that was the beginning of the saving of that forest, if you like. So it's been a hundred years or a hundred and ten years that we've um still been trying to get that forest looked after.

Kellie Tannock 7:10

And you're still going, you still.

Des Donnelly 7:12

And we're still going.

Kellie Tannock 7:12

I'm with Des and Evelyn from the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group. They're with me for Cape's Conversations, which is sponsored by Margaret River Busselton Tourism Association. I'm Kellie Tannock, and we're talking about the very special Ludlow Tuart Forest just north of Busselton. We're going to have a quick music break now, and I want to hear more about what the group are doing to further regenerate the forest. Kira Jas and Askia are two very talented musicians from Margaret River. In 2021, they teamed up for this single Above the Water.

Kellie Tannock 10:50

This is Cape's Conversations, a half-hour spotlight on this wonderful region of ours, and this week we're focused on the Ludlow Tuart Forest, which we've heard is the last remaining tall Tuart Forest in the world. It's under threat, so community has stepped in. I'm with Des and Evelyn from the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group. What is the objective of your group?

Evelyn Taylor 11:12

Well, the objective is it is to focus the community and more than that, focus the government's attention on the plight of the Tuart Forest. Um, we have a Tuart Forest that has had very little management for the last 70 years, and we've had no regeneration, no natural regeneration into that Tuart Forest. And we need to pay attention to it because it's really important to the world, not just to the people that live in this in this area. You cannot find a tree like that anywhere else in the world.

Kellie Tannock 11:44

My understanding is that there's a lot of the impacts of grazing and opening up that area to different fire regimes and that sort of thing have had an impact on, even though you've been working for a hundred years to look after it and it hasn't regenerated. Can you sort of go into the reasons why that hasn't happened naturally?

Des Donnelly 12:01

Yes, the look, the forest has been neglected, there's no other way to put it. Um and fire is one of the big issues. All of our eucalypt forests in Western Australia uh survived because of fire. It's part of the ecosystem and it was used by aboriginals for thousands of years to manage the forest. When we arrived here, the forest had been under a burning program um by nature, and that happened every year. Uh fire would trickle around, and because of that, the the the hazard in the forest was fairly negligible and people could move around quite safely. For 150 years we grazed the forest. This is the Tuart Forest, and that removed most of the native plants. We've got very few native plants left, and it has not had fire in it since we started grazing in 1835 because the farmers wanted the grass for their cattle. So fire has been ignored, and that is the reason why there's no regeneration of Tuart or any other of the fire-dependent biodiversity. We really need to burn it on a more regular basis to encourage wildlife and biodiversity plants to come back. So it's a very important issue that is ignored at the present time.

Kellie Tannock 13:27

But can you tell me a bit about the work that you've done to date with the group? I believe there's a lot of tree planting and trying to reintroduce Tuart saplings.

Evelyn Taylor 13:36

Well, we're trying to get the community behind every project that we do. And we do have a a large number of um uh volunteers that come to the site, and but we also have a large number of members of our group. So we try to make sure that the community have got our back. So we do planting programs in June, July, planting directly into the depleted Tuart Forest, which I as I mentioned, we've done 125,000 trees. But we also have a nursery and we have uh women that come there on a regular basis weekly and um propagate, collect seeds, indigenous to the area, and um organise understory, which is representative of what the understory should look like in the tuart forest. So, right next to the information um building, which has been totally restored and is a pleasure to look through, and is open on Sundays and Wednesdays every week by volunteers manning that. But then right next to that, there is a presentation of an understory that should be in the Tuart Forest, not Arum Lilies, not Watsonia, not Black Flag, and not the numerous other um problems that we have.

Kellie Tannock 14:48

And Peppy trees are uh uh uh a tree that we all know and love in the southwest.

Evelyn Taylor 14:53

Some people are not so keen on it as you are because Des is not that keen on it.

Kellie Tannock 14:57

Can you explain why? I know it's very important to Aboriginal people, um, uh but in this context I understand they shouldn't be there in the numbers that they're there in. Is that correct?

Des Donnelly 15:07

Yeah, that's correct. It's it's the numbers. So I've got nothing against Peppermint Trees growing where they should grow or used to grow, and they never were in the numbers that they are growing now in the Tuart Forest. They're to a point now where they suppress every other plant that used to grow there. Nothing will grow underneath the Peppermint Tree, and if you've got a garden at home, you've probably experienced that. They also use a huge amount of water and that takes that away from the tuart trees. So to get a regrowth Tuart Forest, we really have to eliminate, not eliminate, but reduce the numbers of peppermint to a point where the tuarts can get established.

Kellie Tannock 15:46

I understand there's one of the largest populations of the critically endangered western ringtail possum in the forest area, and brushtail possums and quendas and all of these sorts of animals. Are they how do they um exist in context with the way the Tuart Forest is at the moment?

Des Donnelly 16:01

Well, I I venture to say, and I'll probably get hounded for this, but I don't think that there's as many ringtail possums in the Tuart Forest as there is in Busselton City. Um they're very adaptable animals, they're fairly safe in the forest because they have the ability to climb and uh and they use hollows and they build their own nests so they're safe from predators. Um they're not the only animal in the forest, is what I'm trying to say, because we've got um Fosca gales and we've got quendas uh along the Ludlow River. Uh we've actually got photographs of them coming to our water point at night. Uh there's all the other little critters that we don't talk about much, the bats and the birds, of course. Uh they have to have a place in that forest and we've got to cater to them.

Kellie Tannock 16:49

It sounds like you've got a lot of work going on there. Um can you what's what sort of numbers of volunteers do you have? Uh and what skills do they they have? What skills are you looking for? And what can a volunteer expect to get out of being part of the group?

Evelyn Taylor 17:03

Um well I think that their camaraderie in that um volunteer group is just extraordinary. And they come from all walks of life. There's farmers, there's academics, there's um people that have got history. Um so whenever you need a job done, there's always somebody there that has got the skill to do it. And they all get along really well. I guess that we have the question is how many people do we have there as well? Um we probably have 40 volunteers there on a on a regular basis. It's just amazing what people uh what people have done there. It sounds like um people are really motivated, aren't they, to to be what motivates somebody think we we offer an opportunity for people that are concerned about environmental issues to actually make a difference, to actually be involved in something that is actually making a difference, and we're doing something in the actual forest. You can see the trees that we planted eight years ago, they're taller than this building. Um so it's it's very heart-warming to see the the what a community can actually achieve when they're given an opportunity to make a difference.

Kellie Tannock 18:12

So the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group are pretty keen to get community involved, and they've got some great and creative activities to do that. Stay with me while we listen to some music, and then I'll be back with Des and Evelyn to talk about the new Portrait of a Tree art competition. Somewhat on theme, I've chosen the Plum Trees, which is the talented siblings, Shannon and Clancy, who are Dunsborough-based, and this is one of their earliest singles from 2017. This is One, Two, Three, Four.

Kellie Tannock 21:36

I'm Kelly Tannock, this is Cape's Conversations, and I've two members of the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group with me talking about the importance of the Ludlow Forest at the entrance to Busselton. Um now, Evelyn, tell me about the group's new initiative, Portrait of a Tree competition.

Evelyn Taylor 21:50

Well, we'd be very happy to have a portrait of a Plum Tree. Um we are setting up a competition, an arts competition called A Portrait of a Tree. We need the tree to be an actual tree. We need to have the coordinates of the tree. The canvases are free and available from drop-off points. These portraits will be exhibited during the long weekend of June. And we're hoping that this becomes internationally famous because it's a very unique idea. And people often have a very serious tree that they've known throughout their life. And we'd be very happy for them to paint it and come and exhibit it at Ludlow. So we're hoping that people will come along, we'll have the cafe open for the three days, and the trees will all be available, and you can come and choose your own tree and take it away for $200 for everything. Half of that will be donated to the Ludlow Tuart Forest for our Arboretum project.

Kellie Tannock 22:49

Sounds great, Evelyn. And that will complement your annual landscape art and sculpture exhibition that you have every October.

Evelyn Taylor 22:55

Yes, which that is that's become quite a big uh thing for the Southwest. And we have a building that's been restored by our volunteers. It's a very pleasant experience to go into that gallery, and people are very welcome to come and have uh take part in that in October, and we will be promoting that a bit later on.

Kellie Tannock 23:14

Evelyn Taylor and Des Donnelly from the Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group, thanks so much for coming into the studio for Capes Conversations. It's been really inspiring to learn more about the Ludlow Tuart Forest and why it needs to be protected and regenerated, and how everyone in our community, especially you, can help. Thank you for tirelessly working and advocating for this special piece of forest. If you haven't visited the centre, I encourage you to pop in, wander through the walk trails, and even just take the scenic detour when you're on your next drive into Busselton. I'm Kellie Tannock. Thanks for listening to Capes Conversations, a show that aims to spotlight the great community work and stories that make the Margaret River region such a special place to live and visit. Sponsored by Margaret River Busselton Tourism Association. This is a well-known advocate for the environment and now a Margaret River local, this is John Butler with Good Excuse.