Faux Forest

[Stephen Whiteside]

Faux Forest

© Stephen Whiteside 05.09.2011

It never works out properly. It’s a great idea in theory, but it just never works. I don’t know why they persist with it. It’s obvious to everybody, surely, that it doesn’t work, and it never will.

It would be brilliant if it did. Grow a one hundred year old mountain ash in the space of one month. Genetic engineering gone mad. They grow, all right, those hydroponic giants, but they’re not right. They’re all plasticky, or something, and they come out brittle. The plan was to re-locate them, use them to build new forests around. But, of course, the root system is just about as big as the tree – or at least the canopy – and they’re not exactly easy to re-locate. Then when they do, they have to try to pack the soil around them, and they can’t, because the roots become so fine at the end. So they end up having to break off most of the finer roots, which places the trees at huge risk. The few that do survive usually come down in the first decent blow.

The tree ferns and geebung fare a little better, that I’ll grant. And they only take a week or two, which is pretty amazing. Something to do with their size, I guess. But they’re still not right – too shiny, or something.

The birds and the animals know it, of course. They’re not fooled. They’ll check them out for a little while, invade the faux forest from its edges, sniff around, check it out for a few days, but they’re usually gone soon after that.

So they tried growing birds and animals, too. Hydroponic possums and lyre-birds. Grew them into life-size animals, and plonked them in the hydroponic forests. How could they have seriously thought that was going to work? Even if the animals were able to function normally (which they weren’t) they had no social relationships, no life experience, no survival skills. So they all started to die. Of course, they realised what was happening to their precious investment, and brought as many back to the lab as they could, but it was too late for most of them, and even when they were back in their little climate controlled cages, on their scientifically formulated diets, they still continued to die. Very few were able to be stabilised. So it was back to the drawing board.

You should have seen the truck that brought that first eucalyptus regnans in. Absolute utter disaster. All the roots and canopy were smashed on one side of the tree before they even got it into the ground. They spent a billion bucks and ten years developing the technology to grow the thing, and a thousand bucks and three days in transporting it! Well, they didn’t make that mistake twice, I’ll give them that.

Never seen helicopters that size before. Must have been a dozen of them. All arranged radially around this 50 metre high gum tree, suspended a thousand feet above the ground. Holey moley, that was a sight. Lowered it into a great hole about the size of ten swimming pools. And the wheel ruts from the machines that dug that hole had to be seen to be believed!

Yep. I can’t imagine a much harder way to build a forest than what they did. All I can say is, if we ever run out of the real thing, we’re stuffed. Completely stuffed.

[Neville Briggs]

You've shown it Stephen, Technopoly, our seemingly unlimited faith in technology to construct our world.

[Stephen Whiteside]

Well, I Googled it Neville, and I guess you're right.

[Bob Pacey]

You have a very vivid imagination Mr Whiteside.


A good read Bob

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, Bob. Just fooling around.