1095th General Monthly Meeting
Wombats and Wollemis: Amazing Organisms and What they have in Common
James Woodford, Environment Writer at the Sydney Morning Herald
Date: Wednesday, 4th July, 2001
Time: 6:00 for 6:30 pm
Venue: Australian Museum, Collins St., Sydney
(William St. entrance)
What do Wombats and Wollemi Pines have in common? Apart from being uniquely Australian the trees and the northern hairy-nosed wombats are amoung the rarest organisms in the world and isolation has done strange things to their genes. Both are found in just one small and remote national park and both are living fossils. Wollemi Pines are botanical superstars while wombats are taken larely for granted. Both organisms have existed on the Australian continent for tens of millions of years.Wombats, especially, have made incredible adaptations to Australian aridity - the southern hairy-nosed wombat is one of the most drought-adapted mammals on Earth.
James Woodford is the Environment Writer for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Author of "The Wollemi Pine" and "The Secret Life of Wombats". In his early twenties he won an Australian Geographic Young Adventurer of the Year Award. In 1996 he won the Eureka Prize for environmental journalism and he has been awarded the prestigious Michael Daly Prize for journalism twice.
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WATCH OUT FOR WOLLEMIS AND WOMBATS!
Report on the General Monthly Meeting
by Edmund Potter
Physical challenge beckons most of us. To me, toiling up peaks for the view is rewarding, but squirming down canyons and burrows is not. Many other venturers think the opposite, and distinguished among these is Peter Nicholson, pioneering slim and youthful surveyor in 1960 of wombat burrows, and David Noble, discoverer in June 1994 of the Wollemi pine in the damp depths of a formidable Blue Mountains canyon inland from Sydney. Their stories and the contrasting aftermaths were recounted at the July Ordinary Meeting of the Society by James Woodford, himself now distinguished as a science writer and author. The meeting at the Australian Museum was chaired by David Craddock, the Society's President, in the presence of over 20 members and visitors.
The Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis), formerly known only as a fossil contemporary with the dinosaurs roughly 100 million years ago, emerged as 23 tall living specimens in 1995. Through James Woodford’s several absorbing accounts in the Sydney Morning Herald the trees soon became internationally famous, but their precise whereabouts are kept secret to prevent deliberate or unintended harm befalling them. The efforts of a selected few specialists are ensuring that the trees, offspring are being cultivated and studied principally at the Botanical Gardens, Sydney, and at Mount Annan in Sydney’s extreme south-west. Elsewhere in Australia the task of making them commercially available to keen urban naturalists is proceeding apace, and the possibility of saturating the live Christmas tree market by perhaps 2010 is a possibility. Remarkably, their genetic variability is negligible in studies so far and current understanding may have to be revised because genetic variation is regarded as the key to avoidance of the extinction of a species. This is another good reason for keeping the clearly healthy specimens in the canyon in virtual quarantine.
James Woodford highlighted a curious accord between Wollemis and wombats (the brief title of his talk). As things stand, only a couple of dozen special people have been allowed near the Wollemi pines
In their sheer-walled canyon, and only a similar number of bold enthusiasts have sought to meet a live wombat in its home – some 100 metres of snake- and spider-infested branching burrows up to 5 metres underground.
Yet countless thousands of people have viewed the common wombat (Vombatus ursinus) in captivity without appreciating (a) its fierce temper (the animal is formally classed as “hazardous”), (b) its vicious but rootless teeth (repeatedly renewed), and (c) its sprinting prowess (outpacing any of us over 150 metres). Wombats have been around for upwards of 5 million years and very likely there are a million now, fortunately eating only roots and grasses but producing meat (edible too) more efficiently than any other animal.
Sadly, the so-called northern hairy-nosed wombat, the largest of the three kinds, is now known only at one remote area in Queensland. There are maybe 100 left, but they seem destined for extinction unless we successfully protect them from wild dogs (on ongoing project) and soon find out how to keep the eating and breeding after transfer to other suitable locations.
The audience was held enthralled as James Woodford spoke and answered questions, displaying unerring lucidity, a gift remarked upon and admired in the vote of thanks by immediate past President Peter Williams. Afterwards most of the audience availed themselves of the opportunity to acquire one or both of James Woodford’s books “The Wollemi Pine” and “The Secret Life of Wombats” (Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2000 and 2001, respectively).