Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 2 (2003), p. 245

Tom Griffiths begins this account of the mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests of Victoria with reference to the devastating forest fires of ‘Black Friday’ 1939 and passes on to childhood memories of visits to ex-mill sites in the 1960s before reaching back into the colonial past to explain how the fires came about in such a devastating fashion.

Written with style and elegance that belies the author’s command of a vast amount of source material, Forests of ash begins by establishing the characteristics of the fireadapted sclerophyll forests of the Australian ‘bush’. Subsequent chapters address the early colonial botanists’ fixation with the mountain ash as tall trees, discuss the Victorian age’s confidence in progress and improvement before moving to gold mining, the timber industry, water supply issues, and the emergence of field naturalists interested in the forest, as well as early tourists to the area. This first section of the book is also notable for a chapter that restores something of the story of the aboriginal people of the Kulin clans in this part of Victoria.

The culmination of the book is the chapter on the ‘Black Friday’ fires of 13 January 1939. Having set the scene in terms of nature of the forests, of European attitudes to forest management, particularly competing views of controlled burning, and noting a dry winter in 1938 and an exceptionally hot and dry summer in 1939, Griffiths views the resulting fires as a ‘cultural creation, a culmination of a century of white settlement and environmental practice’ (p.135). He deftly uses a series of case studies to discuss the spread of the fire and to document how some remarkably enough survived it. Equally evocative is his use of Judge Leonard Stratton’s Royal Commission report on the fires which extends to a useful concise biographical sketch of the man.

The 1939 fires are not however, the termination point of the book. Two subsequent chapters consider, first, long term botanical research into forest dynamics that answered some long unknown basic questions about growth rates and reproduction and, second, the former mill remnants and tramways as heritage sites. In these chapters Griffiths is able to explore something of the politics of both scientific research and conservation as well as heritage.

The volume is interwoven with what the author describes as ‘spotlights’, one per chapter, taking the form of natural history vignettes written by scientists from Museum Victoria. These can be read alongside the main chapters or as stand-alone essays.

Forests of ash is a revised edition of Secrets of the forest. Discovering history in Melbourne’s Ash Range originally published in 1992. The revised edition follows a similar structure though with the addition of a prefatory chapter on forest and fire in Australia as well as a new chapter on the Kulin clan. The chapters have been shortened and more sharply focused. A second part on selected heritage sites has been deleted in favour of the natural history ‘spotlights’. Finally in what he merely entitles ‘Epilogue’ Griffiths concludes with a short chapter of considerable expansiveness. It surveys subsequent fires, notably the New South Wales fires in 1983, reflexively considers the origins of Griffiths’ own history in historical site surveys for Victoria’s Land Conservation Council and finally offers an incisive discussion of the writing of environmental history in Australia. In itself this last chapter is thought provoking. Forests of ash is well illustrated and includes maps, though as a minor gripe I would suggest that the publisher’s reproduction of the maps showing the extent of bush fires in Victoria in 1939 and 1983 lacks clarity.

This book is a pleasure to read and is likely to appeal to both specialist and general audiences.