SR, why do you want to make yourself look a fool. You really can't be as naive, or expect others to be, as your last post would indicate.

We have all read the reports of the early explorers who found a park like continent, the product of aboriginal burning. Scattered trees with open grassland was the rule.

You surely know of Francis Birtles In 1912, he became one of the first people to make a west to east crossing by car from Fremantle to Sydney in a Brush Runabout. He also made a number of other crossings on completely road less territory. Not even a modern 4WD could repeat those journeys, without a D9 bulldozer in front clearing a path through the modern scrub.

I could show you the 10,000 acre paddock across the river from me. It is typical of millions of acres in Oz today. Cleared to open forest grazing in the mid 1800s, by tough men with axes & fire, we used to train our eventers there at full gallop. You could not walk a horse through much of it to day without being scratched to pieces by the overgrown scrub. It is so bad now that even the roos have moved to my place

The owner found he could not earn the cost of maintaining the paddock by grazing it. Defeated he had signed a sale contract with Japanese interests.

I could show you millions of acres so overgrown that it is virtually impenetrable by man or beast, that was once good bush grazing

I'm sure you must know this, why do you deny the obvious?

Dear Hasbeen,

Let's look at your original claim: "Steely we already have twice as many trees in Oz today"

You are now talking about scrub. Any bloody 'fool' should know the difference.

Within 5 years of Captain Fyans getting to the new township of Geelong on Port Phillip Bay he was lamenting there was not a serviceable tree within 20 miles of the town, just grey ghosts. This bloke was the police magistrate with the nickname 'Flogger Fyans' for his harsh treatment of miscreants, but even he complained bitterly of the squatters 'ruining the country' by denuding it of trees across the Western Districts.

I hope you will understand that anecdotal evidence has its part it is hardly what is needed to prove your point does it. Do you have anything more substantial to offer?

SteeleRedux,

No, he's talking about 230 years ago when there were 10x more forests just before they started felling all the trees to clear the virgin land for farming.

when the far leftist Michael Moore declares solar and windfarms a total scam you know that the cat is out of the bag. Still we have gutless Governments wasting my money on this environmental vandalism. One thing you learn about Marxist is that no matter how much evidence their is of corrupt science, universities and scammers they just dig in deeper. You will never have a rational discussion.

I'm just waiting until the realization that global warming is actually just localized warming due to something they called the " island heat effect." Which basically means cities create more heat. It's not a global warming thing due to the atmosphere, it's smog in cities, concrete and pavement instead of natural greenery, tall buildings and the electricity and heat produced from them. Maybe once we get past the scams and scare politics, we can actually see ways to be enviornmental without throwing everything else away in the process.

Hasbeen,

I believe your quote was in support of tony Abbott for his policy to plant 1 million trees, however planting 1 million trees, while cutting down a few million is akin to taking one step forward and a few kilometres back.

As for your comment about more trees today than at first settlement, might I suggest you do some sort of research - even David Littleproud disagrees with you.

In kindy, they taught us that English ships brought convicts to Australia and returned to England - in the words of George III, "laden with as much timber as they can carry". Consider also Norfolk Island for trees to use as masts.

In 1870 Governor Philip decreed and I quote :-" that the poorly controlled cutting of trees on crown lands and the indiscriminate removal of forest on crown lands alienated to leasehold and freehold would soon leave no land for permanent production of wood. He proposed moves to be made in Parliament towards the
establishment of permanent reservations, and in 1871 reserves were
gazetted in the Murray and Clarence River districts."

It was not until 1875 that special officers to supervise the reserves were appointed, one of them being William Carron, who, as Collector of the Botanic Gardens, had reported on existing reserves and recommended others. He was made ‘inspector of forests and forestry ranger for the Clarence River district’. Our first forest ranger.

It was another forty years after the establishment of these first reservations before the step was taken to set up a government authority to carry out a policy of forest conservation, backed by appropriate legislation, in 1908.

Common sense would suggest that after 120 years of logging and deforestation the situation would not be rectified by planting trees during a century where there was a global depression & 8 wars, communism, Pol Pott amongst other things. Somehow planting trees during the most part of last century wasn't foremost on peoples minds.

If you require further clarification might I suggest a book published by Australian National University titled "A history of forestry in Australia".