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Saturday was a dark and stormy day in the Illawarra, which was made worse ... when I saw another giant hole in the rainforest canopy called Wollongong.

My family are from the Illawarra. My ancestors in their European farming ignorance logged out an area called Cabbage Tree Creek, where they had their property.

Early rainforest paintings at the time of colonization and settlement of the Illawarra show Cabbage Tree Creek to be one of the most stunning subtropical rainforest that I've seen depicted in paintings. Cabbage Tree Creek nowadays looks very sad and somewhat industrial ... coal mining above the old property hasn't helped.

Sadly only 2.5% of the original rainforest in Oz remains as prime forest (undisturbed old growth forest) since colonization with only 12% left of the total area of the original rainforests, now remaining in various levels of disturbance ... and basically found in tiny remnant pockets that are very difficult to access ... a blessing, otherwise the situation would be worse.

We certainly have done our bit here in Oz to destroy an irreplaceable resource. In fact we have been Masters of Rainforest Destruction.

Youwah [link] and I took a trip along the south coast from Canberra to Sydney via the Macquarie Pass on Sunday and just when we got to the rainforest on the Hacking River, that I'd been telling him about for several hours ... it bucketed down in biblical proportions and we didn't see squat. It is good to see rainforest getting rain though.

Description
Saturday was a dark and stormy day in the Illawarra, which was made worse ... when I saw another giant hole in the rainforest canopy called Wollongong.

My family are from the Illawarra. My ancestors in their European farming ignorance logged out an area called Cabbage Tree Creek, where they had their property.

Early rainforest paintings at the time of colonization and settlement of the Illawarra show Cabbage Tree Creek to be one of the most stunning subtropical rainforest that I've seen depicted in paintings. Cabbage Tree Creek nowadays looks very sad and somewhat industrial ... coal mining above the old property hasn't helped.

Sadly only 2.5% of the original rainforest in Oz remains as prime forest (undisturbed old growth forest) since colonization with only 12% left of the total area of the original rainforests, now remaining in various levels of disturbance ... and basically found in tiny remnant pockets that are very difficult to access ... a blessing, otherwise the situation would be worse.

We certainly have done our bit here in Oz to destroy an irreplaceable resource. In fact we have been Masters of Rainforest Destruction.

Youwah [link] and I took a trip along the south coast from Canberra to Sydney via the Macquarie Pass on Sunday and just when we got to the rainforest on the Hacking River, that I'd been telling him about for several hours ... it bucketed down in biblical proportions and we didn't see squat. It is good to see rainforest getting rain though.