10 May 2025 FILM DIARY

On April 30, I took my cousin Sue from the UK, on a walk in Palm Grove. The last time I was in the rainforest (other than visits to Sky Walk) was nearly four years ago. I have avoided going there because the ground has never really dried out after high rainfall and I didn’t want to be leeched, whereas on our night walks I was willing to take the leeches for the party if someone else took the spider webs. We had the good fortune of seeing several pademelons inside the entrance, on our way in and out. A combination of the Christmas 2023 tornado and Cyclone Alfred has severely thinned out the upper slopes next to the path where we began our descent to the shelf land, and the spot occupied by the mighty Moreton Bay fig tree which had been uprooted by ex-cyclone Oswald in 2013, blocking the path. Once the trunk had been cut, the weight of the root ball lifted  the base of the trunk towards its original position, while the remainder stretched for tens of metres across the soil. In 2017 I filmed the unblemished base of the trunk, which, when the root ball was sufficiently depleted, would have again fallen to the ground.

Today I returned to photograph where the tree once stood, marvelling at the change which had occurred in a little over eight years. The base has succumbed to the recycling process of the forest floor, with only a few paltry remnants of timber visible and the hollowed-out area of the root ball barely discernible. Somewhat more of the rest of the trunk is visible, though most of it is covered by leaves and palm fronds. I saw no pademelons today.