White Beech: The Rainforest Years - Hardcover

Greer, Germaine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 162040611X ISBN 13: 9781620406113

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2014

Synopsis

One bright day in December 2001, sixty-two-year-old Germaine Greer found herself confronted by an irresistible challenge in the shape of sixty hectares of dairy farm, one of many in southeast Queensland, Australia, which, after a century of logging, clearing, and downright devastation, had been abandoned to their fate.

She didn't think for a minute that by restoring the land she was saving the world. She was in search of heart's ease. Beyond the acres of exotic pasture grass and soft weed and the impenetrable curtains of tangled lantana canes, there were macadamias dangling their strings of unripe nuts, black beans with red and yellow pea flowers growing on their branches . . . and the few remaining white beeches, stupendous trees up to 120 feet in height, logged out within forty years of the arrival of the first white settlers. To have turned down even a faint chance of bringing them back to their old haunts would have been to succumb to despair.

Once the process of rehabilitation had begun, the chance proved to be a dead certainty. When the first replanting shot up to make a forest and rare caterpillars turned up to feed on the leaves of the new young trees, she knew beyond a doubt that at least here, biodepletion could be reversed.

Greer describes herself as an old dog who succeeded in learning a load of new tricks, inspired and rejuvenated by her passionate love of Australia and of Earth, the most exuberant of small planets.

About this title

About the Author

Germaine Greer is an Australian academic and journalist, and a major feminist voice of the mid-twentieth century. She earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1967. She is Professor Emerita of English Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick. Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since The Female Eunuch became an international bestseller in 1970. She is the author of many other books including Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984); The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991); Shakespeare's Wife (2007); and The Whole Woman (1999).

From Booklist

Greer (The Female Eunuch, 1970; Shakespeare’s Wife, 2008) is known far and wide as a seminal feminist, so many readers will be surprised to learn that for the past dozen years she’s been restoring a damaged rain forest in her native Australia. Greer had no idea what she was in for when she purchased 150 acres of “steep rocky country” in Queensland, land now designated as the Cave Creek Rainforest Rehabilitation Scheme. Greer chronicles the forest’s intricate biodiversity and her eco-adventures with passion, wit, literary artistry, and scientific precision. With guidance from her flinty sister, Jane, “a proper botanist,” Greer revels in a dazzling array of insects, frogs, pythons, “galaxies of rare plants,” spectacular birds, and magnificent trees, including the white beech, which was nearly logged into extinction. Greer pointedly alternates between scathing historical accounts of “two centuries of misguided exploitation” and bemused descriptions of her nursing “baby beeches” and battling invasive species. Greer delineates both the enormous difficulties involved in restoring a rain forest and the profound rewards. Pair this with Edward O. Wilson’s A Window on Eternity (2014). --Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 162040611X
• ISBN 13: 9781620406113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384