Wild Australia: The Edge (1996) - full transcript

Okay.

That's a better one.

That's really
a new species?

Yeah, there was
an article about it...

Towards the end of 1994

explorers found a small grove
of ancient trees,

a remnant of a species that was
thought to have been extinct

for 65 million years.

It was about as likely
as finding a small dinosaur

wandering through the forest.

The trees are among the rarest
living things on Earth--



a window into
an unimaginably ancient past...

if they survive
their discovery.

Their exact location
is a closely held secret.

Access is strictly controlled,

clothing and equipment
sterilized.

Up until now this wild
and dangerous labyrinth

has been protection enough

for many rare
and endangered species.

But it is not enough anymore.

This is the Old World.

When Europe was young
this was ancient.

When the Grand Canyon was
a shallow creek

these valleys looked
much as they do today.

Over eons of time
Australia evolved



an extraordinary diversity
of plants and animals,

a flood of creativity
that continued

until the arrival
of mankind.

All of the very large animals
soon became extinct.

And since the arrival
of Europeans

another hundred species of
plant and animal have vanished.

Five thousand more are now
close to the edge of extinction.

The tallest tree ever measured
was a eucalyptus like these,

a mountain ash 435 feet high,
133 meters--

as tall as a 40-story
office building.

It was measured by the men
who cut it down.

There are no trees of that size
in Australia anymore.

Most of the old forests
are gone forever.

In 1931 a farmer set about
felling these trees.

By chance a group of bushwalkers
arrived on the scene

and begged him to stop.

He said he had to
make a living.

It was too much to lose.

The bushwalkers
offered to buy the land.

They had no money,
and it took two years

of desperate struggle
to raise the cash.

They gave this forest to
the people of New South Wales.

It became the core of
the Great National Park.

The leader of that campaign
was Miles Dunphy.

He recorded the old names
and made these maps.

He shared with his friends
an almost ferocious commitment

to saving this place.

They were young,
they were from the city,

but they were among
the first to realize

that the wilderness did not
go on forever.

Their struggle gave us this--

a million hectares
where even today

it is possible to walk where
no one has ever walked before,

to take your life
into your own hands.

Woo, down there,
go, go, go, go, go!

Whoa, woo!

Woo!

Jump, come on, jump!

Woo!

Deep in this wilderness

it is still possible
to be confronted

by the paradox
of the platypus--

the furry monotreme
with a duck's bill

and webbed feet
that lays eggs,

but feeds milk to its babies
after they have hatched.

Platypus are rare now,

gone from the pools and creeks
where they were once common.

Wilderness is a spell
that is easily broken.

A few farms,
a mine,

a single road can rob
vast tracts of land

of that elusive magic,

that memory of the world
when it was young.

Most of Australia's wilderness

is where you would
expect it to be--

far from the farms

and even further from
the sprawling cities.

But in the Blue Mountains
of New South Wales

there is an extraordinary
exception

right next to
the biggest city of all.

Sydney is a city of
four million people

spreading inexorably westward

since the earliest days
of European settlement.

It has already consumed
a million hectares

of coastal plain.

But at the mountain wall

the city stops.

For ancient Australia,
the great sandstone walls

were the walls
of the century.

But to the new settlers
of the coastal plain,

the thousand-meter escarpment
was simply a barrier

standing between
the colony and its future.

In 1813 after many failed
expeditions into the valleys

three settlers followed
the ridge tops

and were able to ride
their horses across.

They were hailed
as heroes.

The journey was uneventful

and seems to have followed
an Aboriginal trade route.

But for the new colony,
it was a defining moment.

Convict laborers
cut through the rock,

built the bridges,
and opened the road

to the deceptively limitless
pastures of the Golden West.

The fragile ancient grasslands
were devastated

by European livestock
and European methods.

Wilderness was there
to be tamed.

...sinking low

And a world
where golden glow

I'm a-thinking dear
of you

And those
happy days we knew

In 1901 Australia
became a nation,

and Australians began
to embrace the challenge

of being a new people in
a new and different land,

began to lose their uneasiness
with this strange place,

to appreciate
the wilderness--

the "bush"
as they called it--

for its own
innate qualities,

not for any fancied
resemblance

to the Europe
they'd left behind.

Some had learned to see it
and to love it for itself,

but most still saw the land
through European eyes.

The clearing of
native vegetation

was seen as a simple expression
of advancing civilization.

And on the rare patches
of volcanic soil

the settlers did their best

to pretend that they
were still at home.

In the transplanted
English culture

of traditional Australia,

the word "garden"
meant a piece of land

from which every trace of native
vegetation had been removed

and universally replaced
with the flowers and trees

of 19th-century Europe.

In their determination to build
a new England in the South Seas,

the settlers staunchly refused
to notice

that rainfall followed
no pattern at all,

that the patches of fertile soil
were small and rare.

They had come to live
in an ancient desert,

the fossil soil long ago
leached of its nutrients,

and the wayward climate

lay down the unbreakable law
for this land:

Every living thing
must be tough

and economical and ingenious
if it is to survive.

Life responded
to this challenge

with fantastic inventiveness,

throwing up more than
twice as many species

as in the more fertile lands
of Europe.

But there is a plant
or animal

for every conceivable
ecological niche,

no matter how small
or tenuous it might be.

The wombat is one of the world's
great energy misers.

It can weigh
as much as a sheep,

but achieves that size
eating only a third as much.

Kangaroos and wallabies
evolved hopping

as the most energy efficient way
of covering large distances.

In such an unpredictable
environment

it is important
to be ready for bad times,

but also to be ready
for good.

Female kangaroos are almost
constantly pregnant.

They carry a supply
of fertilized eggs

and a developing embryo

so that they can quickly
produce an offspring

if a season seems promising.

A koala copes with
the scarcity of resources

by doing very little.

It avoids competition

by eating nothing but the leaves
of a few species of gum tree.

But if those particular leaves
are unavailable, the koala dies.

In evolving to perfectly fit
one small ecological niche

it has cut off
all escape.

These dwarf pine trees

evolved to live in the spray
of this waterfall

and four others.

If the habitat is lost,
so is the species.

The streams of the plateau
flow away from the present,

away from the merely ancient.

They fall into
the abyss of time.

The streams lead us
into the world

as it was
90 million years ago.

The only way of
getting to that world

is to go through
the canyons.

There's no other way.

Okay?

Yeah.

Still going.

Following this route
into the past

demands experience
and careful preparation.

Here, this is amazing.

At least four people
have died in this canyon.

It was a group of bushwalkers
in search of the ultimate canyon

that made the most amazing
botanical discovery

of the century...

the Wollemi Pine,

a totally unexpected survivor
from the time of the dinosaurs.

When these trees
ruled the forests

the ancestors of the human race
were the size of mice.

The future for the trees
is terribly uncertain.

They are less than an hour
by helicopter

from the center of Sydney.

A small fire or
an unfamiliar disease

could quickly wipe out
the entire species.

The film crew
was cut to the minimum

and offered to wear blindfolds
for the flight in

to ensure that they could not--
even accidentally--

reveal the location.

The trees look like
nothing else in the forest.

They grow to more
than 35 meters,

more than
120 feet high.

Only in such a wilderness

could they have remained
undiscovered for so long.

From the improvised helipad

the way leads
straight down a cliff,

200 meters to the floor
of the canyon

that is the only sanctuary
on Earth for the survivors

of a family that dominated
the world's forests

for 100 million years.

Fewer than 40 adult trees
have been found.

They are a kind of
platypus of a tree.

They are pines but they have
fronds like a palm tree

and their bark is alive,

as if covered in
a million sprouting tips.

It is not known whether
the species

has fallen below
the genetic threshold

that would permit survival
in the wild.

The survivors are monitored
and protected with great care.

But as a final line
of defense,

scientists have carefully
nurtured seeds and cuttings,

and already the species
is more numerous

in the laboratory
than in the wild.

Looks viable.

But the ancient trees
still make their own bid

for immortality.

This was probably the first time
in the history of the Earth

that human beings watched
these trees shed their spore.

We don't even know if
it happens every year.

We have everything to learn.

All over the world the huddled
remnants of the wild young Earth

are desperately threatened,

going or already gone.

Even in Australia
one of every four species

has become rare and endangered
as the wilderness goes,

and the world becomes
a poorer place.

It is not easy
to be optimistic,

but it is possible
to hope

that a generation
may grow up

to be as tough and
ingenious and creative

as the other living creatures
that have evolved in this place

and learned to live
lightly on the land.

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