Where to begin, as once again the world spirals into yet another shock?
Whether it’s climate change, fascism, war, pandemic… we can all see that things are unravelling.
With the worsening trajectory of climate disaster and lashings of knuckle-dragging fascist-adjacent race patriotism, there is no longer a ‘normal’ to return to.
Doesn’t matter if it’s fuel crisis, floods, social breakdown, mad inflation, or psychopathic war criminals waging genocides and wars, the basic infrastructure a community needs to survive is similar, and housing and food are at the centre of it.
Which brings me to the inspiring heritage fruit forest that is currently being unofficially bequeathed to future generations by the departing long-term residents of the flood zone.
Though we faced more floods than most people even noticed, and over many generations, floodies thrived, and planted gardens and grew families for generations.
People accepted buy-backs in the hope of escaping the pace of climate-fuelled flood catastrophes, but that does not mean we should accept the NSW government clear-felling our former homes and orchards.
It is insanity that the houses are being reduced to skip bin rubble by the inaptly named Reconstruction Authority. Beautiful old Big Scrub timbers, leadlight windows, seasoned hardwood members, all of it just treated just like a McDonalds wrapper in the wheely bin.
But beyond the houses, there’s the magnificent community fruit forest; a collective, if unintentional bequest of a vital community resource, a diverse, established resilient fruit (and native tree) forest.
In these unstable times, it’s community resilience that keeps us safe, not our weekly pay packet and its dwindling purchasing power at a supermarket. It’s how we as a community survive what we know are challenging times ahead.
There are hundreds of mature, productive and beautiful fruit trees across the former gardens and backyards of the flood zone. Fresh, spray-free, and unaffected by transport costs.
Every one of these fruit trees is not only a resilience resource, it also has a history. Someone planted that tree, maybe decades or more ago. Someone was patient enough and generous enough to plant something for future generations.
Recently, despite all the fine sounding words and reassurances, contractors employed by the Reconstruction Authority have been demolishing not only homes but also pointlessly destroying fruit trees.
Residents and former residents have been arguing ever since the buy-back scheme began that the former backyards should be managed as a community fruit forest (together with the native plantings) but are tired of the bureaucratic war of attrition, fine reassurances followed by intensified ‘destroy and deny’ policies.
So rather than succumb, residents and former residents are forming a volunteer citizen science team to locate, mark and label, and digitally map the heritage fruit forest of the flood zone. It’s like trying to save a library, we have to know what’s there to prevent its destruction.
We have to make it 100% clear that the community wants this shared resource protected and drop the proof on contractors, public works department or our local state member. This heritage forest must be the table of the power holders so they can’t say they didn’t know.
As well as digitally mapping the heritage fruit forest, individual trees are being physically tagged with their common names. There will be no excuse for bureaucrats or contractors. These trees need to be protected now, with strong mandatory protocols.
Of course, the native trees need protecting too and there are people also attending to the much larger task of mapping those.
I lived in Vanuatu for over half a decade, and one of the important things I noticed was how native rainforest and local indigenous fruit propagation had produced a living forest where the rainforest would be punctuated by mango trees, coconuts and other fruit species.
The idea that a heritage fruit forest can grow native and fruit together as a living record of the dreams, aspirations and hard work of former occupants deserves respect.
Much like how the concept of ‘pristine wilderness’ often insults indigenous communities because of its implicit denial of long sustained human integration in the eco system, the Lismore heritage fruit forest can maybe help us understand how feeding the current population in crisis can sit very neatly with much-needed regeneration of native forest over the flood zone.
So, power to the Green Hornets who are swarming to the defence of our community’s shared resilience asset. Let’s push the government and bureaucrats hard to honour the vision, toil and forward sightedness of generations of flood zone residents.
Let’s not add more secondary trauma to those who have fled their homes, by also demolishing the trees they or their grandparents planted. The trees under which lie the deceased family pet, or that generations of children have excitedly clambered to eat mulberries, mandarins or collect mangoes.
It’s now a resource for everyone, let’s not destroy it just because it was easier and cheaper one day in May 2026 for an excavator to just clear-fell our heritage when it could, with a tiny bit of respect and foresight, be saved.
