Forests of Ash

This beautifully-written book tells the story of Australia's giant eucalypt the Mountain Ash which grows in the region north and east of Melbourne. Visited seasonally by indigenous people and later a site of mining and sawmilling for settlers as well as contested ground for conservationists the life cycles and fire cycles of the forests span millennia. Tom Griffiths tells the environmental ecological and social history of a unique Australian forest and in doing so tells the story of the continent as a whole.