TO paraphrase Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, or at least until it’s under threat.
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Those things you took for granted, that seemed eternal, turn out to be fragile or transient.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been brooding over the threat to the one mile jetty at Carnarvon, on the West Australian coast, where I grew up.
We fished from and played on that jetty without a thought to the fact that old wood, if not maintained, starts to dissolve into the sea.
A couple of weeks ago, the shire closed it for safety reasons.
The elm tunnel on the way to Perthville is clearly much loved. So many wedding photos, so many memories. The tunnel is atmospheric, changing with the seasons, lending such character to that part of the world.
In Carnarvon, the town has passionately rallied to save the jetty, just as people here are passionately rallying to save the elms.
In both cases, saving these heritage items will cost a lot of time and money. Carnarvon is looking for millions of dollars for its jetty; the elms will need a lot of TLC to keep them going.
As the region gets warmer with climate change, the elm leaf beetles that have now settled in will continue to enjoy longer active seasons.
They normally stop chomping to hibernate through winter, but winter is getting “shorter”. If the elms are to be saved, the trees will need a lot of chemical treatments to keep them going.
Scientifically and rationally, it may be that the elms should be put to rest and hardier trees planted. But sometimes things are so precious for social reasons that we decide to try to keep them anyway.
And that, to me, is perfectly understandable.
Meanwhile, there’s the corridor as a popular cycle route. The lycra brigade is mainly enjoying a weekend hobby, but cycling should also be factored in as a healthy, emissions-free form of transport. (I’m thinking of my dusty bike in the shed, ahem.)
If, in the end, the road is widened despite the waves of opposition, then we should demand a big wide bike path all the way from Perthville to Bathurst.
But that’s getting ahead of the current discussion. Our mature elms are part of what creates a sense of place and grandeur in this old colonial city.
Let’s do our best to keep them.