Frictions of Management: Engaging and Performing ‘Nature’ in Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park

Frictions of management: Engaging and performing ‘nature’ in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

Sarah Jane Bell, BDevStud (Hons)

School of Environmental and Life Sciences University of Newcastle, NSW Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Human Geography) February 2015

Statement of Originality The thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to the final version of my thesis being made available worldwide when deposited in the University Digital Repository**, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. **Unless an Embargo has been approved for a determined period.

Sarah Bell February 2015

Abstract This work offers a more-than-human, performative reconfiguring of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, that embraces a motley collection of natures. Previously national parks have been understood as spaces of wilderness that require management to protect them from the detrimental effects of the human population. However as boundaries between nature and culture are being broken down and nature is recognised as connected to and entangled with culture, universal notions of national parks are brought into question. If there is no universal and true nature that is separate to humans and culture then: what is the purpose of national parks? How do decisions get made about what counts as national park nature and what species belong in park spaces? And what is the role of park management? It is these questions that I seek to tackle in this project. I combine Tsing’s notion of ‘friction’, with performative more- than-human geographies to rethink the ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase is constantly being enacted by more-than-human bodies, objects and forces.

I argue that if we think differently about national park nature, then we can also rethink national park management, not as a straightforward human process of preserving or conserving a universal ‘nature’, but as a set of more-than-human encounters that come together in moments of ‘”friction”: the awkward, unequal, unstable and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’ (Tsing 2005: 4). Throughout this thesis I examine a number of ‘frictions’ that spark up when universal notions of ‘national park nature’, ‘nativeness’ and ‘management’ land on the ground in Ku-ring-gai Chase and become messy as they encounter and rub up against the local. The point is not to show how to best manage Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, but to challenge thinkings and doings to highlight the work that park management does in creating the park on a daily basis. I aim to show how Ku-ring-gai Chase is constituted by a myriad of natures that are constantly being created and recreated through messy, more-than-human encounters of friction.

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Acknowledgments Lesley, where to start! This thesis would not have been possible if not for the immense amount of time and effort that you devoted. Thank you for knowing when to rein me in and for all your finessing elegance. It has been a privilege working with you. I also thank you for your guidance, patience and never ending enthusiasm. You have made this work infinitely better.

Kathy, I thank you for the endless encouragement and support you have offered me throughout the years. Thanks for being there to chat about the academic things, life and Harry Potter when I needed it. You started me on this journey, and although it was not always easy, I will be forever grateful that you did.

The rest of the geography staff, thank you for the supportive environment you have created. You have all helped me in one way or another throughout this project, so thank you! Also special thanks to Sarah for her supervision stint.

Post grads, thank you for letting me know I am not alone in the struggles of the past few years. Thanks to those who shared an office with me, listened to my whinging, gave me advice, proofread my writing, supported me, encouraged me and shared the occasional (one too many) beers with me. Thanks for getting me through.

Participants, thank you to the NPWS employees, Discovery vols and the Advisory Committee members for participating in this research. Special thanks to Peter for making this possible and to Vera for organising everything! I am especially appreciative to those let me hang out with them, who answered my questions and who shared their stories, you enlivened this project and made my fieldwork an exciting and rewarding experience.

Dennis Foley, thank you for your help and guidance especially during the beginning of this project and for sharing your love of the park with me.

My parents and grandparents, thank you for your unwavering belief in me and for all the support you have given me. I am enormously thankful. Mum, I also thank you for the bushwalking trips and the countless hours you spent reading my writing.

My family and friends, thank for the constant support throughout the years and for the welcome distractions that kept me sane.

Josh, thank you for your patience, love, support and about a million other things. I could not have done it without you bud.

I would also like to thank John Revington for his proofreading services and Olivier Rey Lescure for all his assistance with the maps in this thesis.

Contents Statement of Originality ...... ii Abstract ...... iii Acknowledgments...... iv Contents ...... v List of Maps...... ix List of Figures ...... ix Abbreviations ...... xi

Introduction ...... 1

Part 1: Introducing the project ...... 11

Chapter 1 Welcome to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park ...... 12 1.1 Introduction ...... 12 1.2 Creation of Ku-ring-gai Chase ...... 16 1.3 Effects of the Great Depression ...... 19 1.4 Introduction of the NPWS and a new way of thinking ...... 20 1.5 Indigenous history and contentions ...... 24 1.6 Australian park management ...... 28 1.7 Waratah ...... 31 1.8 Bandicoot monitoring ...... 35 1.9 Conflicting national parks ...... 40 Chapter 2 Theorising a disruptive nature ...... 41 2.1 Introduction ...... 41 2.2 Rethinking nature ...... 41 2.2.1 Performativity ...... 42 2.2.2 New materiality ...... 44 2.2.3 More-than-human geographies ...... 45 2.2.4 Challenges for protected areas ...... 47 2.3 Disruptive natures ...... 48 2.3.1 New ecology ...... 48 2.3.2 Novel ecosystems ...... 49 2.3.3 New nature ...... 51 2.3.4 Bioinvasion as natural ...... 52 2.4 Friction ...... 53 2.4.1 Tsing and friction ...... 53 2.4.2 Co-fabricated Frictions ...... 57

2.5 Useful frictions ...... 60 Chapter 3 Practising and co-fabricating research ...... 63 3.1 Introduction...... 63 3.2 Theorising research practices ...... 63 3.2.1 Co-fabricating multiple worlds ...... 63 3.2.2 New practices of witnessing ...... 65 3.2.3 Engaged witnessing ...... 67 3.3 Putting engaged witnessing into practice ...... 68 3.3.1 Introduction ...... 68 3.3.2 Documents, signs and interpretive devices ...... 71 3.3.3 Participant observation ...... 75 3.3.4 Volunteering ...... 76 3.3.5 Work experience ...... 79 3.3.6 Semi-structured interviews ...... 82 3.3.7 Staging human-nonhuman encounters ...... 87 3.3.8 Following the nonhuman ...... 89 3.3.9 Encountering individual persons ...... 93 3.3.10 Dadirri ...... 96 3.4 Unchartable methodologies ...... 97

Part 2: Frictions of defining and performing Ku-ring-gai Chase ...... 99

Chapter 4 Introduction to Part 2 ...... 100 Chapter 5 Categorising and legislating national parks ...... 105 5.1 International ideas of protected areas ...... 106 5.2 Australian context ...... 111 5.3 Performing universal national park nature ...... 116 Chapter 6 Performing national park nature ...... 121 6.1 Kalkari Discovery Centre...... 121 6.2 Kalkari as a place of discovery ...... 125 6.3 Guided discovery ...... 128 6.4 Speaking for themselves ...... 131 6.5 Enframing empty wilderness ...... 134 6.6 The non-Indigenous visitor enacting special nature ...... 140 Chapter 7 Performing bodies in the bush ...... 142 7.1 Spreading the message ...... 142 7.2 Wilderness walkers in the trackless bush ...... 146 7.3 Emparking wilderness ...... 150 7.4 Rickety and powerful universals...... 154 Chapter 8 Giving nature grip ...... 156 8.1 Law matters ...... 157 8.2 Entering the fray ...... 161 8.3 Engaging multiple natures ...... 166

Chapter 9 Overgrown Aboriginal Country ...... 167 9.1 Differing ontologies ...... 167 9.2 Ku-ring-gai Chase as Country ...... 173 9.3 Effective particularities ...... 179 Chapter 10 Conclusion: Co-fabricating Ku-ring-gai Chase nature ...... 181

Part 3: Frictions of belonging in Ku-ring-gai Chase ...... 185

Chapter 11 Introduction to Part 3 ...... 186 11.1 Contesting belonging ...... 187 11.2 Shaping park management ...... 192 Chapter 12 Kangaroos at Kalkari ...... 195 12.1 Fence as a ‘zone of awkward engagement’? ...... 196 12.2 Native nature belongs? ...... 200 12.3 Quasi-natural: How native is native? ...... 203 12.4 Wilderness, wild spaces and re-wilding ...... 207 12.5 Managing emotional belonging ...... 211 12.6 More-than-human belongings ...... 214 12.7 Uneasy belongings ...... 219 Chapter 13 Rabbits on the edge ...... 221 13.1 Creating the demon rabbit: History of rabbits in Australia ...... 223 13.2 Co-fabricating the pest category ...... 227 13.3 Feral frictions ...... 234 Chapter 14 Belonging-with angophora ...... 236 14.1 Finding a large bumpy tree with pink bark ...... 237 14.2 Charlie ...... 240 Material belongings ...... 240 14.3 Colin ...... 248 Emergent co-becomings ...... 248 14.4 Sarah ...... 251 More-than-human performances of belonging ...... 251 14.5 Belonging surprises ...... 260 Chapter 15 Conclusion: Multiple Belongings ...... 263

Part 4: Frictions of how management happens in Ku-ring-gai Chase ...... 265

Chapter 16 Introduction to Part 4 ...... 266 16.1 Parks need management ...... 268 16.2 Questioning management ontologies...... 270 16.3 Sticky situated management ...... 275 Chapter 17 Managing horse bodies ...... 278

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17.1 A new policy and establishing rational planning ...... 278 17.2 Contentions around horses ...... 281 17.3 Impact of previous negotiations...... 287 17.4 Colonial heritage ...... 289 17.5 Creating and rupturing rationality ...... 290 17.6 Road block ...... 298 17.7 Disrupting rationality ...... 301 Chapter 18 Managing fire, managing with fire and managing for fire ...... 303 18.1 Fire Management through documents ...... 304 18.2 Understanding fire ...... 310 18.3 Indifferent fire ...... 314 18.4 Fire as hindrance and opportunity ...... 323 18.5 Inhuman friction ...... 334 Chapter 19 Conclusion: Rethinking management ...... 337

Conclusion ...... 341

Useful conceptual tools ...... 348

References ...... 355 Appendix ...... 369 Details of Approved Research Design...... 369 Details of Interviews Conducted ...... 371 Indicative Interview Topics ...... 372 Details of Documents and Interpretative Devices Analysed ...... 373 Details of Fieldwork ...... 373 Participant Observation ...... 373 Volunteering ...... 374 Work Experience ...... 374 Copyright Approval ...... 375 Figure 12.4 Australian tourism advertisement and Tourism Australia ...... 375 Figure 12.5 Popular Australian television series, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo ...... 376 Figure 13.1 European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus ...... 376 Figure 13.2 Rabbits in plague proportions in the 1950s ...... 376 Figure 18.2 Fire burning along West Head Road, near Towlers Bay Trail ...... 377

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List of Maps Map 1 Location of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park ...... 8 Map 2 Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park ...... 9

List of Figures Figure 1-1 View from road looking down on boats on Cowan Creek ...... 14 Figure 1-2 Bobbin Head featuring Cowan Creek in the background ...... 14 Figure 1-3 'Welcome to Bobbin Head' sign with marina in the background ...... 15 Figure 1-4 The historic Bobbin Inn built in the 1930s at Bobbin Head ...... 15 Figure 1-5 Narrow-leaf drumsticks (Isopogon aethifolius) ...... 32 Figure 1-6 Grey spider flower (Grevillea buxifolia) ...... 32 Figure 1-7 Red spider flowers (Grevillea speciosa) ...... 33 Figure 1-8 Mountain devil (Lambertia formosa) ...... 33 Figure 1-9 Small waxlip orchid (Glossodia minor) ...... 33 Figure 1-10 Banksia (Banksia spinulosa) ...... 33 Figure 1-11 Waratah Telopea ...... 34 Figure 1-12 Waratah showing the blue painted leaves ...... 34 Figure 1-13 Bandicoot monitoring camera set up ...... 38 Figure 1-14 Heathlands that we had to ‘walk’ through ...... 38 Figure 1-15 Bush around the K04 ...... 38 Figure 3-1 Lace monitor that I followed around Bobbin Head ...... 91 Figure 3-2 Kids and parents looking at the Diamond python at Kalkari ...... 93 Figure 6-1 Kalkari Discovery Centre ...... 122 Figure 6-2 Entrance to Kalkari Discovery Centre ...... 123 Figure 6-3 Map of Kalkari Discovery Centre ...... 124 Figure 6-4 Sign in Kalkari grounds ...... 125 Figure 6-5 Inside the Kalkari Discovery Centre ...... 126 Figure 6-6 Touch and feel box inside Kalkari ...... 127 Figure 6-7 Sign at beginning of America Bay Track ...... 128 Figure 6-8 Sign at beginning of Flint and Steel Track ...... 128 Figure 6-9 Kalkari Discovery Trail with information huts and signs ...... 129 Figure 6-10 An example of the information signs around the Discovery Trail ...... 130 Figure 6-11 Kalkari display featuring a koala and a male lyrebird ...... 132 Figure 6-12 Map of Ku-ring-gai Chase and surrounds in Kalkari...... 135 Figure 6-13 3D map of Ku-ring-gai Chase located in the Kalkari grounds ...... 136 Figure 6-14 View from the Kalkari lookout ...... 137 Figure 7-1 Volunteer staffing the desk at Kalkari ...... 143 Figure 7-2 Discovery Volunteers leading a guided walk ...... 152

Figure 9-1 Indigenous axe and bark bowl, along with rock specimens in Kalkari ...... 169 Figure 9-2 Sign inside Kalkari grounds giving visitors information ...... 170 Figure 9-3 Entrance to the Aboriginal engraving site along the Basin Trail...... 176 Figure 9-4 Engraving of a man ...... 177 Figure 9-5 Engraving of a fish ...... 177 Figure 9-6 View from the Aboriginal women’s area ...... 177 Figure 9-7 One of the birthing baths in the women's area ...... 178 Figure 12-1 Kalkari fence ...... 196 Figure 12-2 Eastern Grey Kangaroo ...... 198 Figure 12-3 Kangaroos hiding in Kalkari bush ...... 201 Figure 12-4 Australian tourism advertisement and Tourism Australia logo ...... 202 Figure 12-5 Popular Australian television series, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, ...... 209 Figure 12-6 The Kalkari bush where the kangaroos usually hide ...... 217 Figure 12-7 Kalkari Kangaroos bouncing away as I try to ‘encounter’ them ...... 217 Figure 13-1 European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus ...... 222 Figure 13-2 Rabbits in plague proportions in 1938 ...... 223 Figure 13-3 Laying a trail of RHDV-laced carrots ...... 228 Figure 14-1 Angophora Costata taken in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park ...... 239 Figure 14-2 Charlie walking along the Jerusalem Bay Track ...... 240 Figure 14-3 The angophora along the Jerusalem Bay Track ...... 242 Figure 14-4 Gruesome appearance of the Jerusalem Bay Track angophora ...... 242 Figure 14-5 Cowan Station highlighting its temporary appearance ...... 243 Figure 14-6 Jerusalem Bay and the palm tree that was planted by Rhode’s wife in 1920 ...... 244 Figure 14-7 Angophora after shedding its bark ...... 253 Figure 14-8 The angophora I encountered along the Gibberagong Trail ...... 253 Figure 14-9 View over Cowan Creek where I conducted Dadirri ...... 256 Figure 14-10 Angophora with forked trunk ...... 256 Figure 14-11 Dead angophora still with crooked branches but no lumps ...... 256 Figure 17-1 Trail in Rho-Ker Reserve ...... 292 Figure 18-1 Entrance to Ku-ring-gai Chase with signs warning visitors of the total fire ban .... 317 Figure 18-2 Fire burning along West Head Road, near Towlers Bay Trail ...... 319 Figure 18-3 Grass tree (Xanthorrhoea) beginning to regenerate after the Towlers Bay fire .... 328 Figure 18-4 Walking through the blackened bush near Topham Track ...... 329 Figure 18-5 Cave containing Aboriginal rock art that was damaged in the Towlers Bay fire .... 329 Figure 18-6 My ash covered hand after bush bashing ...... 329

Abbreviations BFMC – Bush Fire management committee CBD – Central Business District EEC – Ecological Endangered Community FMS – Fire Management Strategy IUCN – International Union for the Conservation of Nature NPWS – NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service NSW – New South Wales OEH – Office of Environment and Heritage POM – Plan of Management REF – Review of Environmental Factors RFS – NSW Rural Fire Service RHDV – Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease Virus RMP – Rabbit Management Plan RPMS – Metro North East Region NPWS Pest Management Strategy UFAAG – Urban Feral Animals Action Group

Introduction

Research into national parks has explored the myriad of benefits these spaces offer to people and the merit of different management techniques. National parks are understood as the cornerstone of conservation and the designation and management of nature is seen as essential to the protection of biodiversity on a national and international scale (Low 2002;

National Parks Association of NSW [NPA] 2013a). As Australian biologist Tim Low (2002: 206) states ‘[c]onservation is intervention. You can’t save nature by letting it alone; management is a must’. If managed correctly, national parks, along with other protected areas, can provide people with access to valuable nature, a place for recreation and scientific research and those all-important ecosystem services that purify water and air and ensure a sustainable food source. National parks have a long a proud tradition that began in the United States in 1872

(Worboys et al. 2005). Today they are found across the globe and cover all types of landscapes from scorching deserts, frozen tundra, steamy jungles to rolling plains.

During 1788 European colonisers landed on Australian soil and, with little knowledge of this continent and armed with Western cultural traditions, began exploiting the land for economic and development purposes (Frawley 1994). Very much based on an assumed human superiority over nature, and Eurocentric superiority over Indigenous values, Europeans began shaping the land to suit their own pastoral visions (Frawley 1994; Howitt and Suchet Pearson

2006). However as the land deteriorated and prospects became dire, ideas shifted to recognise the need to conserve aspects of the Australian environment. This shift however was not based on an ecological vision, but rather emerged from a growing recognition of the value of

Australian scenery (Frawley 1994). One of the first tactics for protecting the country’s unique

1 fauna was through transporting and grouping them together in safe spaces. Here ‘[a]nimals from hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away were thrown together into islands of forest, usually to die quick deaths’ (Low 2002: 167). Ideas have now changed, and the emphasis has been placed on the conservation of entire ecosystems and managing spaces as they ‘once were’. However, what cannot be denied are the remnants of history that surface in today’s national parks. We cannot assume that nature is as it once was in Australia, or the rest of the world.

Despite coming in all shapes and forms, and emerging from a vast variety of circumstances and histories national parks are emphasised as globally beneficial spaces of ‘nature’. Nature here is assumed to be definable, static and valuable, and this goes unquestioned. This thesis aims to question these assumptions and rethink notions of:

- What is a national park?

- What belongs in national parks?

- How does park management happen in national parks?

What I am interested in is how the unruly histories and the local specificities impact on these spaces and how people engage with them on a daily basis. More than this I explore what happens if we consider nature’s role in all of this. Management itself is a task that involves working with, against and alongside other-than-human forces – the wind will determine the trajectory of a fire and the animals themselves impact on whether or not they run into the trap or eat the bait. How does park management accommodate for these forces that may not be within human control?

Taking the lead from the breakdown in the nature/culture dualism and the recognition that nature is entangled with culture, I argue that we need to rethink the global vision of national parks as spaces of special ‘nature’ that represent how things ‘once were’. If there is no one true nature to be preserved or conserved, then what is the role of national parks? It is these questions of what is a national park and what is nature within a national park that I seek to tackle in this thesis. In doing so I delve into the question of national park management: if there is no pure nature then what is the role of park management? In order to explore these questions I look closely at Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, a national park on the northern edge of Sydney, Australia, and the daily processes of management that occur there (see Map 1 and Map 2).

This thesis is divided into four parts. Part 1 works towards developing a conceptual and methodological framework for the thesis. I start by introducing Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park through a selection of stories from my time in the park. These stories have a dual role. Firstly they inform the reader about the park itself, its human and nonhuman inhabitants and its history, and in doing so they situate Ku-ring-gai Chase within the international context of protected areas. I utilise the history of Ku-ring-gai Chase to illuminate the conflicting ideas of protected areas and their management on a global level, and thus give insight into the founding anxiety upon which this thesis sits – to question global notions of national parks and their management. This brings me to the second task of these stories – to reveal the three enduring questions that both initiated and propelled the research. I put my stories of Ku-ring- gai Chase to work as a way of bringing into question what is a national park (Part 2), what belongs in a national park (Part 3), and how does park management happen in national parks

(Part 4). In light of these questions Part 1 then turns to explore the theoretical underpinnings

3 of the thesis. Drawing on my unease with global ideals of what is a national park, I utilise a performative and more-than-human approach to rethink nature as multiple, disruptive and messy. I combine this theoretical approach with Anna Tsing’s concept of ‘friction’ to suggest that Ku-ring-gai Chase can be thought about as being enacted within more-than-human encounters where global ideals, or universal notions of what is a national park, what constitutes national park nature and the role of park management, are given and refused purchase in surprising and messy ways.

Chapter 3 explores the methodological challenges of this performative and more-than-human approach. In doing so I develop the concept of ‘engaged witnessing’ as a particular way of being in the field that attempts to open up research practices to the more-than-human, more- than-cognitive and multi-sensual nature of encounters. I then explore how I put ‘engaged witnessing’ into practice in Ku-ring-gai Chase.

Part 2 explores the questions of what is a national park through examining how a number of different actors envisage Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. I firstly examine the international and national legislation that guides how national parks are managed and defined. By looking closely at categories and legislation, I develop a sense of national parks as spaces of special nature that require human management. I argue that national parks are understood within universal notions, where it is assumed that all parks across the globe can be similarly defined, managed and protected. I however use changes in paradigms for understanding and categorising protected areas and the Australian Indigenous perspective to highlight that claims for a ‘universal’ vision for national parks are fraught with tensions, complexities and mess.

To further these ideas Part 2 explores how universal notions of what is a national park, including a space for conservation, a space of scenic grandeur and a space for recreation, come to fruition in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. To do this I examine how the visitors centre, park signage, volunteers, and park staff enact different and multiple visions of Ku-ring-gai Chase.

This is not to deny the power of universal notions of what is a national parks, rather I argue that by enacting particular ‘universals’ human and nonhuman actors give power to these visions of national parks. Ku-ring-gai Chase then is constantly being created and recreated through the performances of partial and multiple visions of what is a national park. I end Part 2 by highlighting the ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase is performed as an Indigenous landscape. I use this case study to highlight the ways in which multiple universals are enacted in one location through showing how Ku-ring-gai Chase is created through both Indigenous and

Eurocentric ontologies.

Part 3 then moves to investigate the question of what belongs in national parks. I focus on the assumption that native nature belongs in national parks and utilise three stories to highlight that belonging in national parks is much more nuanced than first thought. To mess with dualistic notions of belonging/not-belonging, native/non-native I use stories of two animals residing in Ku-ring-gai Chase who seem to sit neatly on either side of the divide – the kangaroo, an iconic Australian animal, and the rabbit, an introduced pest. However, by exploring how these animals are dealt with, encountered and managed in Ku-ring-gai Chase I uncover a sense of belonging that is relational, performative and more-than-human.

I take these ideas further by recasting belonging away from dualistic ideas, towards understanding belonging as enacted within more-than-human encounters that create and

5 recreate a particular type of park and particular types of nature. I examine encounters with

Angophora costata to highlight how we can rethink belonging as multiple, messy and performative. I not only argue that encounter shapes belonging, but that belonging becomes a belonging-with through encounter. Belonging then is not a human category and there is no single delineation of belonging in national parks.

Rethinking belonging in national parks as messy and more-than-human raises a number of questions for the role of park management. Part 4 investigates how park management is done in Ku-ring-gai Chase. National park management is usually assumed to be an objective and scientific endeavour. However, in Part 4 I introduce the concept of ‘sticky situated engagement’ to suggest that park management can be understood as occurring within more- than-human encounters where humans are not always in control.

I examine the management of horse bodies in Ku-ring-gai Chase to highlight how other-than- human actors come to impact on management activities and can get in the way of rational decision making processes. By engaging with practices of management I argue that universal notions of management as scientific and rational are empowered at times, dismissed at others and always have the potential to stray from their original purpose. I then move to examine the management of fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase to highlight the inhuman frictions that spark up in park management. By focusing on the inhuman nature of fire and fire management, I argue that we need to acknowledge that park management is never completely in human control and can shift in surprising directions. Management of national parks is not an entirely scientific process that produces a more natural park; instead it is a co-fabrication of human and nonhuman actors that act as a source of friction that produce difference.

This work offers a more-than-human, performative reconfiguring of Ku-ring-gai Chase National

Park, that embraces a motley collection of natures. I argue that by thinking about nature as disruptive, rather than pure and universal, we can rethink management as an engagement of more-than-human agencies that brings Ku-ring-gai Chase into being as a national park. The point is not to show how to best manage Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, but to challenge thinkings and doings to highlight the work that park management does in creating the park on a daily basis. I aim to show how Ku-ring-gai Chase is constituted by a myriad of natures that are constantly being created and recreated through messy, more-than-human encounters of friction.

Map 1 Location of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (Source: Prepared by Olivier Rey Lescure, University of Newcastle, NSW)

Map 2 Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (Source: Prepared by Author) 9

Part 1: Introducing the project

11 Sandstone cave and Sarah in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (Source: Author) Chapter 1 Welcome to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

1.1 Introduction Driving south along the Pacific Highway (M1), one of the busiest roads in Australia, there are three lanes of traffic travelling in each direction as you approach Sydney (see Map 2). Between mid-2013 and mid-2014 I drove this stretch of road what seemed like countless times as I travelled between Newcastle and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park for fieldwork. Taking the last exit before the M1 makes way for city streets; I am plunged into the northern outskirts of suburban Sydney. After weaving through streets lined with petrol stations, parks, shops and endless single storey houses, I cross back over the M1, to reach Ku-ring-gai Chase National

Park. First there is a large sage-coloured sign saying ‘Welcome to Ku-ring-gai Chase National

Park – Park Open Sunrise to Sunset’. This, however, is not the only indication that I am entering a national park. After a sign identifying how many kilometres to certain attractions including picnic areas and the visitors centre, there is an information bay sporting a large map and information about the park and the activities available for visitors. The information bay is followed by a sign stating the park entrance fees, and several symbols indicating the places in the park for picnicking, barbequing, boating and gathering information. However, the sign notes the park is not a place to bring dogs or to camp. Just after the sign is the pay station where drivers stop and pay the $11 day fee or show their annual pass. The pay station is not staffed all the time, only on random days and times. One National Parks and Wildlife Service

(NPWS) employee told me this was an attempt to deter those who try to drive through the park without paying, as the main road through the park acts as a thoroughfare between Mount

Colah and Turramurra (see Map 2). When the pay station is staffed it is surrounded by bright orange traffic cones, an A-frame sign stating ‘STOP SIGN AHEAD’ and a flashing red sign

12 indicating vehicles need to stop. When the pay station is not staffed, visitors are directed to one of the ‘Pay and Display’ machines scattered around the park where they can purchase day passes.

After passing through the onslaught of signs, cones and instructions of the park boundary, the change in scenery is dramatic. The dense, traffic light-filled suburbia of northern Sydney is replaced with tall eucalypt forests and dense heathlands. Over the next few kilometres the encroaching vegetation on the sides of the road is only broken every now and again by a view of the valley plummeting down to Cowan Creek (see Figure 1-1), and the odd sign telling visitors to slow down and watch for wildlife and warnings about upcoming turns and steep slopes. However, as I reach the base of the escarpment, another change in scenery takes unaware visitors off guard. The forest suddenly gives way to a picturesque picnic ground,

Bobbin Head, popular with picnickers since the 1930s. The steep, rocky and tree covered slopes

I just passed through are transformed into a flat grassed area that runs along the walled edges of Cowan Creek (see Figure 1-2). The Empire Marina can be seen just across a small bridge, along with hundreds of shiny boats and yachts (see Figure 1-3). The iconic peak-roofed picnic shelters (as can be seen in Figure 1-2) are scattered around the grounds along with a children’s playground, information signs, toilet blocks and ample car parking. The Bobbin Inn, which once functioned as a restaurant, now houses an information centre and café (see Figure 1-4).

Towering Norfolk pines dominate the grassed areas (see Figure 1-2). The area including Bobbin

Inn and the picnic shelters was constructed in the 1930s and been maintained and restored to reflect this.

Figure 1-1 View from road looking down on boats on Cowan Creek (Source: Author, 21 February 2013)

Figure 1-2 Bobbin Head featuring Cowan Creek in the background, the peaked picnic shelters built in the 1930s and a Norfolk pine (Source: Author, 22 March 2013)

Figure 1-3 'Welcome to Bobbin Head' sign with marina in the background (Source: Author, 23 March 2013)

Figure 1-4 The historic Bobbin Inn built in the 1930s at Bobbin Head (Source: Author, 19 March 2013)

During my first trip to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park the dramatic contrast in scenery sparked my interest and set me on the path of questioning: What is a national park? What belongs in a national park? And how does management happen in national parks? During my subsequent trips to the park, and through my research into the park and its history, I began to develop an uneasy understanding of Ku-ring-gai Chase, one that pushed me further into the park, and into a tangled web of stories, information, ‘facts’, trails, insights and dead ends. As an introduction to Ku-ring-gai Chase and my ponderings, thinkings and questions, I follow a number of threads that I hope give the reader an insight into how my thesis developed. I first explore the creation of Ku-ring-gai Chase and the changes to how the park was thought about that reflect shifts that were occurring on an international level. I then look at contentions around the Indigenous heritage of Ku-ring-gai Chase and Australian park management to explore the role of universal management in light of the complexities and contestations of local particularities. I then tell two stories of my time in Ku-ring-gai Chase that led me to question the assumption that national parks are spaces of special nature. Chapter 2 then picks up these questions and offers a framework for understanding nature as performative, disruptive and more-than-human, before turning to Anna Tsing’s concept of ‘friction’ to suggest a new way of considering national park nature as enacted within productive encounters. And finally Chapter 3 explores how I went about researching nature, belonging and how management happens in Ku-ring-gai

Chase National Park.

1.2 Creation of Ku-ring-gai Chase Ku-ring-gai Chase was established in 1894. Its designation as a park has been attributed to the work of one man in particular, Eccleston Du Faur (AHC 2006). Du Faur sought the creation of the park to protect the wildflowers of northern Sydney. Du Faur was born in London in 1832

16 and arrived at Melbourne in 1853 before settling permanently in Sydney in 1863. He lived in the western suburbs of Sydney for many years, then moved to the Turramurra area, and then closer to Bobbin Head (Mathews 1978). Du Faur was involved in a number of cultural, business and commerce-related ventures and became a key player in the establishment of the Art

Gallery of New South Wales (AHC 2006; Mathews 1978). However, it was his love of and fascination with the Australian bush that led him to push for a national park in northern Sydney

(Mathews 1978). Du Faur lobbied for a natural reserve to be created in the Turramurra area to protect the native flowers and natural bushland of the local area from the rapidly expanding city (AHC 2006).

However his campaign was met with opposition, especially from Henry Copeland, who was the

Minister of Lands at the time. During this time Sydney had one of only two national parks in the world (the other, Yellowstone National Park in the United States). Those opposed suggested that this national park, now known as Royal National Park, on the southern edge of Sydney, was adequate for preserving the environment (Mathews 1978). In the early European colonisation of Australia the word of the Governor played a final and powerful role in political decisions. So Du Faur invited the Governor to join him on a slyly positioned boat ride, with the underlying intention of ‘dazzling’ the Governor with the beauty of the landscape and gaining his assistance and financial support in creating a national park. However, despite the planning, the Governor got lost in the bush on the way to the boat, which then became stranded by tides. Eventually the Governor emerged from the scrub and despite his misadventures he was captivated by the landscape and Du Faur got his way. The area was set aside as a park in 1894, making it the earliest reserve to be established primarily for conservation (AHC 2006; NPWS

2013a). A board of trustees was also appointed with Du Faur acting as managing trustee from

1894 until his death in 1915 (AHC 2006). The irony was that the Minster of Lands, Copeland who had lobbied against the park, appointed himself as president (Mathews 1978).

The story of how Ku-ring-gai Chase was lobbied for typifies ideas of protecting nature that were coming out of the United States (US) at the time. In 1872 Yellowstone National Park became the first of many designations of land that were set aside to protect the monumental and grand beauty of pristine US wilderness (Adams, 2009; Cronon 1995b, Schelhas 2001).

Although Ku-ring-gai Chase may not have been seen as pristine wilderness, the idea of protecting areas of natural environment from the destructive effects of the expanding human population resonate throughout both cases (Adams 2009). Originally branded the ‘Yellowstone model’, ideas of protecting nature by setting it aside and limiting human access exemplifies what is now known as the ‘old paradigm’. As demonstrated by the Ku-ring-gai Chase story, the

‘old paradigm’ spread to areas outside the US and soon became the dominant way of understanding and managing these sites (Phillips 2003).

Similar to Du Faur’s insistence on the need to protect wildflowers, the old paradigm is concerned with preserving the scenic value and grandeur of nature. The visual appearance of protected areas is valued and seen as more important than the natural, or ecosystem function

(Phillips 2003). The way in which the Ku-ring-gai Chase landscape effectively charmed and enthralled the Governor also reinforces the importance and power of scenic, special nature.

The old paradigm holds that protected areas should be managed by natural scientists or natural resource experts, with little consideration given to the political climate or the needs of local or Indigenous populations. Management is directed towards stopping the impacts of people, except for tourists and visitors, to ensure the naturalness of the space (Phillips 2003).

People here are understood as negatively impacting on the natural environment and as such, protected areas need to remain free of human influence. Paradoxically, visitors and tourists are not considered to impact negatively on protected areas. Bobbin Head, and its pleasure ground character, is one of the key remaining artefacts that give us insights into the old paradigm way of thinking.

1.3 Effects of the Great Depression To this day Bobbin Head is one of the most popular picnic areas in Ku-ring-gai Chase. The majority of the structures at Bobbin Head were built during the 1930s. During the 1930s, while the rest of Sydney experienced harsh economic decline brought on by the Great Depression, the Ku-ring-gai Chase Trust secured a number of grants and loans leading to the expansion of

Bobbin Head and the construction of new amenities. This money was the result of the state government’s attempt to relieve unemployment pressures through offering money to local councils and parks, and greatly improved the popularity of the park, especially the Bobbin Head area. During this time Orchard Park was created in the Bobbin Head area and named after the managing trustee at the time, Hon. R. B. Orchard (NPWS 2006a). Improvements at Bobbin

Head during the 1930s included the construction of a new bridge across Cockle Creek (the initial bridge was washed away during a storm in 1927); widening of the roads into the park and the construction of additional roads around Bobbin Head and Apple Tree Bay; tree planting around Bobbin Head; construction of a retaining wall along Cockle Creek; and the construction of a number of structures including shelter sheds, the Pavilion, toilet block (at Orchard Park), additional boatsheds, dwellings (including Bobbin Inn in 1937), playground equipment and a ranger cottage (Baglin and Mullins 1968; Jehne 1992; NPWS 2013a).

However, by the 1940s petrol rationing introduced during World War II was starting to take its toll and visitor numbers to the park were decreasing dramatically. This impacted on the revenue of the Trust through decreased collections from parking fees (introduced in the

1930s). Although additional features including a merry-go-round and public baths increased the number of visitors during the early 1940s, these people arrived on foot and thus still left the Trust without revenue from parking fees. It was not until 1947 and the completion of a new traffic bridge across Cockle Creek, that visitation increased and opened up for the Trust to begin more improvements on the park, including a number of stone kiosks including the ‘bus stop kiosk’ and the koala sanctuary kiosk (now Kalkari Discovery Centre) and a children playground and miniature train tracks (all completed during the early 1950s) (Baglin and

Mullins 1968; Jehne 1992; NPWS 2013a). Then in 1956 ‘a pre-stressed concrete bridge the first of its kind in NSW’ was constructed across Cockle Creek at Bobbin Head (Jehne 1992: 21).

These developments in the park from the 1930s to the 1950s can be seen as actively creating a more tourist- and visitor-friendly park, again reinforcing the old paradigm of creating parks for the recreational enjoyment of people (Phillips 2003).

1.4 Introduction of the NPWS and a new way of thinking In 1967 the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) was established under the National

Parks and Wildlife Act 1967 (NSW) and replaced the Trust (which had managed the park for 73 years) as the managing authority for Ku-ring-gai Chase (AHC 2006; NPWS 2013a; Mathews

1978). The NPWS also took over the management of a number of national parks and other protected areas across New South Wales (NSW) and today is charged with the management and control of nearly all parks and reserves across the state (NPWS 2002). The NPWS shifted the focus of park management from increasing its recreational popularity to nature

20 conservation. This occurred through the removal of many structures including kiosks and amusement facilities in an attempt to return the park to a pristine state (Jehne 1992). The

NPWS also turned the koala sanctuary into the Kalkari Discovery Centre and restored the facilities at Bobin Head (NPWS 2013a).

The creation of the NPWS and the resulting impacts for Ku-ring-gai Chase can be understood as reflecting a greater change in how protected areas were understood which was occurring on an international level. The NPWS grew out of desire for an overarching management agency and a level of consistency in how protected areas are managed across the state. Here there is a key shift from understanding Ku-ring-gai Chase, and other protected areas in NSW, as ‘islands’ to be managed separately (as the old paradigm suggests), towards a recognition that these spaces needed to be understood and managed as part of a greater network of national, regional and international protected areas. The move from islands to networks is seen as a defining change away from the ‘old paradigm’ of protected areas and towards what the

International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) popularised as the ‘new paradigm’

(Phillips 2003).

The shift from the old to new paradigm was not an instantaneous thing, and was by no means complete with the introduction of the NPWS. Instead, the formation of NWPS simply sheds light on one instance where we can see how understandings of protected areas changed. The existence of a ‘new paradigm’ was not formally recognised until 1994. I explore the details of how the ‘new paradigm’ came about and how its formal recognition impacted on the categorisation of protected areas more closely in Chapter 5. Suffice to say here that the shift from the old to new paradigm was not a sudden revolution, nor a totally encompassing

21 overhaul. Instead, the shift was more a recognition of decades of small changes in understandings and the limitations of the old paradigm (Phillips 2003).

The new paradigm recognises the importance of people for protected areas and vice versa, in more ways than just offering people a pretty place to recreate. The new paradigm also introduces two important shifts in the management of these spaces: First, it acknowledges that humanised landscapes such as cultural landscapes could be classified as protected areas.

And second, the rights and needs of local and Indigenous populations were recognised. These two shifts saw the recognition of the ‘cultural significance of so-called “wilderness”’ (Phillips

2003: 13) and that if necessary, landscapes can be restored and rehabilitated as well as protected.

The new paradigm is said to represent a shift to a more sophisticated view of the reasons for protecting areas. Instead of simply ‘setting aside’ areas of special wilderness and scenic wonder to protect them from the destructive effects of people, it is understood that protected areas are conserved for economic, scientific and cultural reasons. For Ku-ring-gai Chase the restoration of the facilities at Bobbin Head to reflect its 1930s heritage can be seen as an example of this. The role of Bobbin Head shifts from a picnic area for people (although it is still this), to being an attraction which gives visitors a glimpse into the heritage and history of the park. Currently there is a project underway to restore the picnic shelters at Bobbin Head which, since their construction in the 1930s, have become degraded and decayed due to termites and general weathering. Rather than being removed, these structures are being used to signify the importance of the park’s history.

For me the shift raises a number of questions around the ‘universal’ notions of protected areas that the old and new paradigms endorse. Despite their differences both paradigms suggest firstly, that protected areas require specific human management in order to ensure the conservation of nature; secondly, that protected areas can occur anywhere yet they will all fit within an overall definition; and finally, that through specific measures such as regulation, designation and dedication, biodiversity can be conserved. Both paradigms position themselves as representing the universal ideal of protected areas. This globalised vision enacts a ‘self-fulfilling abstract truth’ (Tsing 2005: 16). It is these claims to universality in the two conceptualisations of protected areas that I query. My time in Ku-ring-gai Chase led me to question the usefulness of an overarching paradigm for understanding and managing protected areas. My initial experience of driving into Ku-ring-gai Chase and the drastic change of scenery hints towards my uncertainties.

The bushland that I drove through stood in stark contrast to the manicured landscape of

Bobbin Head, and made me consider the role of the history of the park, and which elements of the park’s history are championed, and which are ignored? Why are some areas of the park, in particular Bobbin Head, maintained to reflect their use during the 1930s, when in other spaces structures have been removed and the bush has been regenerated to reflect more recent attitudes? In particular, I was concerned with the specific view of history that was put forward by NPWS at Ku-ring-gai Chase.

One day when I was walking around Bobbin Head, just on the edge where the mowed lawn makes way for the scrub, I came across a pile of shell fragments. This Aboriginal midden is a rare indication of the pre-colonisation history of Bobbin Head and of the park in general. Shell

23 middens are places where Indigenous populations deposit refuse such as shellfish remains, bones, tools and campfire charcoal (OEH 2013). Shell middens are recognised as one of the most widespread forms of evidence of Indigenous occupation of the land in Ku-ring-gai Chase, although it is the engravings and rock art that attract tourist attention (NPWS 2002). The midden at Bobbin Head makes it obvious that Bobbin Head and other spaces of the park did not simply appear in 1930 when the structures were built, or in 1894 when the park was established, or even in 1788 when Europeans colonised the country. My encounter with the midden therefore raised a number of questions: What was the area used for and what did it look like prior to European colonisation and the creation of Ku-ring-gai Chase? And how did it come to be as it is now?

1.5 Indigenous history and contentions Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is believed to have been home to Indigenous people for at least 7400 years (AHC 2006). It is believed that the park was originally home to two Aboriginal clans, the Garigal and Turramerragal people. The former occupied the areas around Broken Bay and the latter the Turramurra area (AHC 2006). The park contains over 800 sites indicating extensive Aboriginal use and occupation including shell middens, rock engravings and paintings, grinding grooves, stone arrangements, and burial and occupation sites (AHC 2006;

Baglin and Mullins 1968; NPWS 2013a). From my experience in the park and talking to people, including a Traditional Owner of the park, this number does not come close to the actual number of significant Indigenous sites in the park. The rock engravings and paintings are believed to date back over 600 years (AHC 2006). I talk more about sites of Indigenous significance, how they were used and continue to be used in Chapter 9 and Chapter 14.

Around six weeks after the landing of the First Fleet at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) in 1788,

Governor Arthur Phillip initiated the first exploration of the Ku-ring-gai Chase area (AHC 2006).

Camping at Resolute Beach near West Head (see Map 2), he explored the areas of Pittwater and Broken Bay in search of fertile land for farming (AHC 2006; Mathews 1978). It is stated that

Phillip commented on the friendliness of the Aboriginal people of the area who greeted him during his visit (NPWS 2013a). However, the Aboriginal people were far less welcoming during

Phillip’s second trip the following year. Many Aboriginal people had died (their skeletons hung in rock hollows along the harbour) or were sick from smallpox, and the survivors fled from him.

By 1790 it is estimated over half of the Aboriginal people of the Ku-ring-gai Chase area had died from smallpox. The introduction of smallpox and additional skirmishes and conflicts between

Europeans and Aborigines caused the majority of Aboriginal people to leave the Ku-ring-gai

Chase area and by the 1840s, Europeans had taken up their traditional lands (AHC 2006; NPWS

2013a).

The above is the story of Aboriginal occupation of the Ku-ring-gai Chase region as put forward by the NSW Government and NPWS. However, a conversation I had with Colin, a Traditional

Owner of the park, suggests something different. He told me the following1:

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park falls into the northern areas of the Garigal people, who prior to 1818 were recognised as one of the six clans of the Gai-marigal people. Now, after 1818 we had a horrible, ugly man called Bungaree who came down to Sydney and claimed it all as his country. So he claimed from the Hawkesbury River all the way to down to the Parramatta River, as his country, as Guringah. Prior to that Guringah actually went from the Hawkesbury River up to Wyong, and [the Ku-ring-gai Chase] area was actually Gai-marigal, and Gai-marigal was six clans … the Garigal, the Camaragial, the Turramurrigal, the Burra Burra Burra-gul, the Gatlay, the Gaymai … that should be six I think. So you had six clans that covered this area. So at the top end

1 One research methodology used in this project was semi-structured interviews with people involved in the management of Ku-ring-gai Chase. Excerpts from these interviews, such as the one above, can be found throughout this thesis. See Chapter 3 for more details of the research design.

here [points to map of KCNP] you had the, Camaragial which actually went up to as far north as Hornsby for ceremony, and even Mount Kuringai and those areas, ah Berowra Heights. There were ceremonial sites up there which went down to, to what’s now called Bobbin Head. So there were ceremony sites all along here [pointing to area of Mt Kuringai, Bobbin Head/Berowra on map]. So Mount Colah, Asquith ... All that area, so that’s all a part of the ceremonial sites ... You had the Garigal on the right-hand side which covered all this area of the northern beaches. You had several major ceremonial sites near Palm Beach, the most important one being near Avalon, and the headland behind Avalon, and that’s a very important one and that linked up to … West Head, and that linked up there. The whole area is littered with really sacred Aboriginal sites … But, yeah 1818 to 1822 Bungaree came down and then he claimed all of this [pointing to the area north of Sydney Harbour and south of the Hawkesbury to the Berowra Valley area in the west]. And Macarthur, Governor Macarthur he then accepted that this was now Guringah land, and history was rewritten. But prior to this was it wasn’t Guringah (Colin, Traditional Owner/Custodian).

Despite the insistence of the official NPWS story that by 1840 the majority of the area’s

Indigenous populations had either fled or been killed, Colin suggests that:

Pre-1920 [the Ku-ring-gai Chase area] was still heavily occupied by Aboriginal people, in fact there’s lots of middens around and they were still actively used up until the 1940s, 1950s … This was still the Garigal, yeah but by the 1920s to 1940s, 1950s and even back in the 1880s you had remnants of so many different people, so we had a lot of our people living in here, but there were other people ... in the 1930s there was a large number of non-Indigenous people living up there, living in caves, fishing you know, chopping down the odd tree, chopping train sleepers, you know whatever they could to get money, cutting wild flowers and taking them by boat to Sydney. There were all sorts of strange things, cutting wildflowers and also walking, they would bring their boats down to near Apple Tree Bay, near Bobbin Head and they would walk up to the train station and catch the steam train into Sydney and sell their flowers, you know they would cut native flowers, wildflowers in the park. There was an orchard over the back here, up in Berowra Creek, another uncle had a big, he was a bit of a hermit he had a big fruit orchard. He would sometimes sell fruit, and once again he would come around to the train stations and sell, so it was quite active … [I’ve] gone to a couple of really isolated middens that I knew [my] family lived in ’cause they lived in the caves and we’ve found alcohol bottles dating from the 1880s right up to the 1940s, 1950s. So they were still actively fishing here, and I’ve actually fished in there in the 1950s with several uncles who are now deceased, they were still commercially fishing in there right up to the late 1950s, early 1960s (Colin, Traditional Owner/Custodian).

Colin goes on to say:

There’s so much there, you know that we can develop. And even some of the Aboriginal middens along here, you know make them accessible for people and let them know, not to destroy them but so they can appreciate the Aboriginal heritage of the country and that the Aboriginal people were still living here up until the 1950s, on a regular basis. That’s the thing ... people sorta think that we disappeared in the 1820s or something. Actually we’ve lived here ... we were active here up until the 1950s and 1960s. We were still fishing here in the 1960s, and we were still camping out in the 1960s ... well I’m still camping out now so ... so we’ve still got a Traditional Owner presence that’s there all the time you know, and we’ve got a lot of other Aboriginal people come in on a regular basis. You know the Aboriginal people that live in the northern suburbs of Sydney, well it’s really funny they’re from all over Australia (Colin, Traditional Owner/Custodian).

Colin’s story therefore disrupts ideas of Indigenous use of and engagement with the land as something that ended during early colonisation. Colin makes it clear that Indigenous engagement with the land did not stop in the early 1800s, and also that the park was being actively used by Indigenous people for personal and commercial uses well after the creation of

Ku-ring-gai Chase. Others stories told to me throughout this project make it clear that from colonisation up until the 1960s (and possibly stopping with the introduction of the NPWS) Ku- ring-gai Chase was used by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people for many activities.

People were living in and living off the Ku-ring-gai Chase landscape. However, evidence of this period of occupation, outside of tourist use, is seldom referenced and many of the structures that were constructed by people during this time have since been removed. For me these conflicting stories or contentions around the Indigenous history and use of the Ku-ring-gai

Chase area bring to light questions of understanding national parks within a universal paradigm, or as a globalised vision. Not only do local histories and differences impact on the natural and cultural landscape that is to be preserved, but these histories can also be

27 contentious and uncertain. Whose version of history therefore gets preserved? And which version of history is used in developing management strategies and ontologies?

1.6 Australian park management Current Australian park management practices have been formed out of a long and varied history of protecting and altering natural areas. Management of the Australian environment began with Indigenous Australians over 40,000 years ago (Worboys et al. 2005). Since they arrived on the Australian continent, Indigenous people have manipulated the environment through processes such as burning, redistributing plants and restricting access to or use of certain sites or species (Worboys et al. 2005). Indigenous practices of altering the environment, which we would now label as management, were based on deeply felt spiritual connections to the land and aimed at preserving a cultural landscape. This cultural landscape is a collection of land, bodies and spirits that is constantly changing and is not part of an essential ‘nature’ or

‘culture’. The arrival of Europeans and later European ideas of preserving ‘nature’ created a disjunction in management practices. European ideas of separation and exploitation superseded Indigenous ideas of intimacy and connection as the dominant way of managing the

Australian environment (Worboys et al. 2005).

It is generally accepted that colonial perceptions of Indigenous management as being primitive have been dismissed and replaced by a conjunction of Indigenous and non-Indigenous understandings (Worboys et al. 2005; Head 2000). However it is argued that Australian colonial heritage is much more complex than generally acknowledged and is still deeply embedded in the management of ‘natural’ landscapes (Head 2000; Willems-Braun 1997). Willems-Braun argues that traces of colonial thought:

are not always immediately visible, nor do they comprise a homogenous, internally consistent, (neo)colonial discourse. Instead they take the form of ‘buried epistemologies’ or ‘bad epistemic habits’ that have been naturalized as ‘common sense’ in everyday relations and in social, economic, and political institutions (Willems- Braun 1997: 4-5). Therefore if we revisit the debates surrounding the role of both traditional and contemporary

Indigenous management, what is brought to light is that colonial ways of thinking are still buried in management practices of natural areas and they resurface in complicated and unpredictable ways (Head 2000; Willems-Braun 1997).

Australian management has been criticised for not taking seriously Indigenous understandings of ‘nature’ as a cultural landscape of entwined human and nonhuman bodies, spirits and land.

Moreover, management is still dominated by the idea that there are principles which can be applied universally. More than this, Eurocentric ideas of management are seen to instil a deep division between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ and the superiority of humans over nonhumans, and they are seen to imply that there is a linear pattern of ‘nature’ as it progresses from an original pristine state to an altered, developed and contaminated one through human-induced degradation (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). Under this Eurocentric ontology, ideas of separation, hierarchy and progression are used to justify human intervention in and control of natural resources for the benefit and use of human populations (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson

2006). Therefore management of protected areas is mainly concerned with Eurocentric ideas of managing human impacts in order to conserve or restore areas of pristine ‘nature’, rather than engaging with Indigenous ideas of the land as something that is animate, constantly changing and a mix of more-than-human and more-than-nonhuman relations (Palmer 2005).

Colonial understandings of conserving ‘nature’ and the perceptions of Indigenous practices as primitive and ad hoc, dominated Australian management for two hundred years. Although there were advances in the 1980s and ’90s which saw greater recognition of Indigenous rights to land and management, it has been argued that instead of removing the concept of

‘wilderness’ altogether, these changes have resulted in Indigenous land being included in

‘wilderness’ areas (Langton 1998). The classification of most Indigenous land in Australia as

‘wilderness’ is problematic as it ‘reduces the potential for future Aboriginal use of the land’

(Langton 1998: 10), while other areas of land that have been subjected to unsustainable and destructive practices in the past are not subject to restrictions on future land use as they are not classified in the same way. Classifying Indigenous land as ‘wilderness’ can be seen to stereotype Indigenous culture as primitive, unchanging and ‘natural’, and ignores the idea that

Indigenous Australians managed land in specific ways and consciously sought to create a particular desired type of ‘nature’ (Gammage 2011; Langton 1998).

More than rendering invisible potential current Indigenous use of the land, Eurocentric ontologies of management ignore the ‘work’ that goes into managing the land and the centuries of land management practices that occurred prior to European colonisation.

Eurocentric ontologies suggest a distinct and taken-for-granted separation between the wild and the domestic, where the wild is seen as ‘original’, ‘authentic’ and ‘natural’. These notions are often naturalised within Eurocentric thought; however, there are many other understandings of humans’ place in the world that challenge these ontologies (Suchet 2002).

Suchet argues that: [m]any ontologies do not assume that the wild is something separate from humans, something authentic and untouched. It is important to recognise that humans actively

interact with and transform complex worlds, both metaphorically and literally (Suchet 2002: 147). Under Eurocentric management ontologies national parks are often positioned as exemplars of unspoilt, pristine nature. Suchet (2002: 148) states that ‘management mechanisms such as roads, fences, constructed water points, wildlife counts, re-introduced animals, culling quotas, feral animal baits and tourist infrastructure, as well as experiences of interaction and dispossession’ are all rendered invisible in this discourse.

The stories of the multiple and conflicting histories of Ku-ring-gai Chase and its Indigenous and colonial occupation suggest that management that aims to remove the unnatural to make way for nature, falls short of recognising the complexities of local heritage and the fragments of legacy left behind. As I argue above, the ontologies through which park management is organised are often positioned in such a way as to render other ways of knowing invisible. I therefore suggest that park management needs to be rethought, not just for what it does but for what it ignores. I now turn to two stories, one of waratah and one of bandicoots that moved me to further question ideas around what the purpose of a national park is, and what constitutes national park nature.

1.7 Waratah As I mentioned earlier, Ku-ring-gai Chase was initially created to protect the wildflowers of northern Sydney. However, during the 1930s a lot of the wildflowers were cut and transported by boat to Sydney to be sold. A volunteer working at the visitors centre in Ku-ring-gai Chase also told me that a lady came into the centre one day to ask about the waratah, she said the park used to be full of waratah, I used to come and pick them all the time, but I haven’t seen any in many years. The volunteer had to explain that plants do not flower for people, and their

31 role in an ecosystem stems beyond giving people something pretty to look at. By picking the flowers of waratah and many other plants, the species cannot be pollinated and regrow.

When I first started fieldwork I heard that waratah grew in the park, so a number of my first bushwalks had the secondary aim of being able to glimpse one of these rare and spectacular flowers. Despite being the floral emblem of NSW I had never seen one in the ‘wild’. There is a trail in the park called Waratah Track, sounds like a good place to start. During early spring I went on a number of bushwalks in the area around Waratah Track (see Map 2) in an attempt to find waratah. I saw narrow-leaf drumsticks (Isopogon aethifolius) (see Figure 1-5), grey and red spider flowers (Grevillea buxifolia and Grevillea speciosa) (see Figure 1-6 and Figure 1-7), mountain devil (Lambertia formosa) (see Figure 1-8), native orchids (Glossodia minor) (see

Figure 1-9) and banksias (Banksia spinulosa) (see Figure 1-10), but no waratah.

Figure 1-5 Narrow-leaf drumsticks (Isopogon Figure 1-6 Grey spider flower (Grevillea buxifolia) aethifolius) (Source: Author, 26 September 2012) (Source: Author, 26 September 2012)

Figure 1-7 Red spider flowers (Grevillea speciosa) Figure 1-9 Small waxlip orchid (Glossodia minor) (Source: Author 24 April 2012) (Source: Author, 11 July 2012)

Figure 1-8 Mountain devil (Lambertia formosa) (Source: Author 24 April 2012) Figure 1-10 Banksia (Banksia spinulosa) (Source: Author, 24 April 2012)

However, I came back a couple of weeks later to go bushwalking again along the Lambert

Peninsular. After a day of bushwalking, I was driving home and happened to notice a glimpse of red on the side of the road. Pulling over I found a cluster of waratah not two metres from one of the main roads in Ku-ring-gai Chase (see Figure 1-11). Over the past few weeks I had searched all through the depths of the park, along steep walking trails through dense vegetation for this flower, and there they were on the side of the road. When I got closer to the waratah I found the leaves under the flower were painted with blue paint (see Figure 1-12).

They painted the waratah blue? Have I fallen down a rabbit hole? I found out later the blue paint is used to deter the poaching of flowers as, just like during the early days of the park,

33 people pick these flowers and sell them at markets. But this encounter did leave me with a number of questions – if the blue paint reduces the value of the flowers for human use, what does it do for the pollination capacity of the flowers? Will it deter pollinators too? And the position of the waratah on the side of the road made me question the divisions that I took for granted – between the tourist areas of the parks, which had obviously been altered for visitor use, and those more ‘natural’ spaces which are assumed to be along the rugged walking trails, or off tracks. Surely the waratah would rather grow in these more pristine, natural spaces than on the side of a tarred two-lane road where exhaust fumes linger.

Figure 1-11 Waratah Telopea(Source: Author, 26 September 2012)

Figure 1-12 Waratah showing the blue painted leaves (Source: Author, 26 September 2012)

The waratahs and my search for these flowers brought up questions about why Ku-ring-gai

Chase was created and what its current purpose was. Ku-ring-gai Chase was created initially to preserve the wildflowers, so that people could enjoy them, but over the years this idea has been altered somewhat so that the protection of the flowers for nature’s sake is more important. This is highlighted by painting the leaves blue, which is done to decrease the value of the flowers to people in order to ensure their protection. The volunteer also reinforced this when they suggested to the visitor that the flowers are not there for people, but form part of natural ecosystems that have an intrinsic value. In addition the park’s wildflowers are currently under threat by the very people that the park was initially created for. The waratah also brings out the need for management in the park and suggest that active management, in this case on a flower by flower basis, is needed to maintain the park. On other occasions when I ventured into areas of the park that are generally seen as more natural or less altered by humans, I became similarly confused about the naturalness of nature as the following section shows.

1.8 Bandicoot monitoring My time spent in the park was fraught with conflicting moments. During my first couple of bushwalks which were figuratively (and literally) a walk in the park, I walked along the trails oohing and ahhing at the flowers, being startled by swamp wallabies and lace monitors, watching peacefully as the scenery changed from the towering eucalypt on the sandstone ridges to the volcanic dykes and casuarina forests.

I now look back on those experiences as strolls through the park, rather than bushwalking. One time whilst conducting research for this project I found myself part of a bandicoot monitoring program. The Southern Brown Bandicoot is one of 13 threatened species found in Ku-ring-gai

Chase according to the Threatened Species and Conservation Act 1995 (NSW) (others include the spotted quoll, the koala and the eastern-wing bat) (NPWS 2013b). There have been very limited recent sightings of the Southern Brown Bandicoot and there are fears that foxes in the park may be causing bandicoot numbers to decrease. The bandicoot monitoring program therefore involved tandem fox baiting and bandicoot monitoring to record bandicoot numbers and reduce the number of bandicoots killed by foxes. During May 2013, I was part of this program which involved placing motion sensor cameras at randomly generated global positioning system (GPS) coordinates throughout Ku-ring-gai Chase and nearby Garigal

National Park. Teams of two were given a number of GPS co-ordinates that were scattered around the parks and we would walk to these locations and set these cameras up facing a ball of peanut butter and oats to attract the bandicoots. The cameras would be left for several days and hopefully, as they are activated by a motion sensor, they would take photos of bandicoots that came to the bait. That was a simple enough process, or so I thought. The following is an excerpt from my field diary on one day of setting up the cameras:

When I was asked to be part of a bandicoot monitoring program I imagined strolling through picturesque Ku-ring-gai Chase watching cute bandicoots scamper by. My experience however was very different than I expected. We were meant to be bush bashing ‘off-track’ and as such getting a glimpse at the more special areas of the park. Ku-ring-gai Chase has a number of different walking tracks and management trails through it that give visitors insights into the many different vantage points, vegetation types, geological formations of the park, but the off track spaces are reserved for the more special varieties of flora and fauna, and accessed only by the most avid of bushwalkers or those in an elite group such as employees and volunteers of the park who participate in activities such as the one we were doing today. The first GPS coordinates that we had to place a camera happened to be close to the road, so that one was ticked off the list quickly [see Figure 1-13]. The next, however was further into the park, right in the middle of nearly impenetrable heathlands [see Figure 1-14]. So, GPS [device] in hand, off we went into the wall of twigs, leaves and branches, why does everything in the Australian bush have to be so spiky! Finding a space to place your feet was hard enough, let alone trying to see and read the GPS. So after some time and

36 many dead ends where the bush was just too thick to break through, we reached the site. After clearing a number branches so we could actually fit the camera in place, we smashed our way back through the heath, thinking that it would probably be the last time we would see that camera, as even with the GPS, surely we would not be able to find our way back to that spot. Thinking the worst was behind us we set off for the next camera. This one was labelled K04, but still to this day I remember it as the ‘dreaded K04’. This one was further up the ridge line, where the heathlands had made way for tall eucalypt forests [see Figure 1-15]. These forests of Angophora costata, Scribbly Gums, bloodwoods, lomandra and xanthorrhoea were much easier to walk through and see where you were going. However after leisurely walking along a trail, we realised that the camera needed to be placed at the top of that opposing ridgeline beside us. So we scrambled, pushed, slipped and climbed the slope, hoping that every time you put your foot or hand somewhere that it wasn’t home to a snake, spider or something else that stings or bites. Then after walking in circles awhile we finally found the right place, this GPS must be programmed to find the hardest, steepest, and most ridiculous route possible. We set up the camera only to find that we had forgotten the bait! The cameras are painted in camouflage to hide them from anyone who happens upon them and likely to steal them, so we flagged the spot with a fluro pink ribbon so that we could find it more easily and trudged back to the car. After getting the bait we returned to the site but could not find the camera or pink tape anywhere. Every direction looked the same, so the next twenty minutes saw us scouring the ridge top searching for what we thought would be an obvious pink ribbon amongst a sea of green and brown. We eventually found it well away from where we both were sure it was. But the fun did not stop there, on the way back to the car the labyrinth of the bush took us on a small detour and spat us back out on the road, but well away from the car (field diary excerpt, 17 April 2013).

Figure 1-13 Bandicoot monitoring camera set up Figure 1-14 Heathlands that we had to ‘walk’ (Source: Author 17 April 2013) through (Source: Author 17 April 2013)

Figure 1-15 Bush around the K04 (Source: Author 17 April 2013)

My conflicting experiences in Ku-ring-gai Chase – as an idyllic environment, and a labyrinth of spikes and things that bite – highlight uncertainties that plagued my initial interactions with the park. I began to question what exactly a national park was – was it a space of scenic nature full of cute and cuddly threatened species? Or a dangerous landscape where one wrong move could result in you becoming lost or stung? My experiences ‘bush bashing’ off track to set up the bandicoot cameras reminded me of Gary Paul Nabhan’s description of walking through the

Arizonian desert. He states:

We left the musky shade to trudge the sparse, exposed incline. Each semblance of a series of trail switchbacks we saw ended up a bum steer – a mere cow trail leading no further than the next patch of grass. So we did what any decent upstanding citizen would do when faced with chaos – we bushwhacked. Or rather, the bushes whacked us. And we didn’t remain ‘upstanding’ too long either. We down shifted into a three-point crawl. The upper bajada was armed to the teeth. Thorns, spines, and stickers of every kind came with the sprawling ocotillo, wait-a-minute bushes, Palmer’s century plants, desert spoons, cholla, prickly pear, barrel, rainbow, and saguaro cactus. I looked uphill into the future – nights at home pulling the desert’s vestiges out of my skin with tweezers. A white-necked raven flew over us, laughing (Nabhan 1982: 17-19). The idyllic image of the bush (especially the off-track pristine parts) is dispelled when you have to heave, scramble and plough your way through it. Travelling through the bush off track for bandicoot monitoring, I was a little disappointed. Instead of striding across pristine wilderness that would leave me captivated, dropping to my knees with the awe-inspiring tranquillity of nature, I found it hot, sweaty, scratchy and dangerous. With my steel cap boots, that I hadn’t fully worn in yet, I was not frolicking in nature; I was stomping on it, trampling homes and new growth. The magic of the bush doesn’t linger long when you have to struggle over, under and around it – can’t go under it, can’t go over it, have to go through it. Most of the time setting up the bandicoot cameras was spent staring at the GPS wandering around in circles, and it was only once you looked up from your feet or the GPS that you would think shit where am I?

Getting lost and having doubts about whether we were using the GPS correctly created a different type of nature and made me think differently about what national park nature is and how we come to understand it.

1.9 Conflicting national parks The difficulties and confusions that I encountered when trying to develop an understanding of

Ku-ring-gai Chase led to a number of questions relating to the usefulness and universality of understandings of national parks as presented in the new and old paradigms. If being in and walking through a national park is fraught with conflicting experiences, then how can universal ideals of what these spaces are, and why they are important, be used to understand and manage them? If nature decides to sprout on the sides of busy roads and not in the bushier areas of the park, is it still special? If there are multiple histories of the park that are either emphasised or hidden to park visitors, then how do decisions get made about what histories are important and how is the park managed to make the chosen histories visible to visitors?

My initial exploration of Ku-ring-gai Chase therefore led me to reconsider universal notions of what a national park is, what belongs in a national park, and how management happens in these spaces. It is these questions: what is a national park, what counts as national park nature, and how management happens in the park, that I seek to explore in the following chapters. To do this I have taken a performative, more-than-human approach that understands nature as messy and disruptive. I combine this approach with Anna Tsing’s (2005) notion of

‘friction’ to highlight the ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, its nature and management are enacted within more-than-human encounters. Next I explore the theoretical underpinnings of this thesis.

Chapter 2 Theorising a disruptive nature

2.1 Introduction Universal and dualistic notions of nature have been critiqued in recent geographic studies.

Universal concepts of nature as beneficial and stable ignore the ability of nature to surprise us and act in ways that are deemed unacceptable by humans. From the threatened species who turn up in a garbage dump, to the weeds infiltrating wilderness areas, and the native species that have escaped from backyards for a new life in the wild, ‘nature is seldom as natural as we think’ (Low 2002: 57). There has been a recent shift in human geography that argues that there is no easy separation between nature and culture, and that nature is not a passive resource.

These geographers do not argue that we have moved into an age where the nature/culture dualism is no longer appropriate; rather, they suggest that we have always lived in a world where society and nature are connected and intertwined such that they cannot be considered in isolation. Rather than seeing nature as pure and static, it is rethought as disruptive and active (Castree 2005). Universal and dualistic ideas of nature and culture are currently being broken down and replaced with more relational models where boundaries between nature and culture are seen as emerging from specific, lively and material encounters (Lorimer 2010).

2.2 Rethinking nature Many human geographers are now rethinking ‘nature’, and ‘culture’, and they are viewing the relationship between the two through a number of different lenses. The concepts of performance and materiality have been used by a number of theorists (see Bakker and Bridge

2006; Castree 2005; Cronon 1995a; Crouch 2003; Gregson and Rose 2000; Lorimer 2010;

Szerszynski et al. 2003; and Whatmore 2006) to make sense of the multiple and complex ways

41 that ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are relationally bound. In addition, greater emphasis has been placed on recognising the agency of the nonhuman world, and how this acknowledgement shifts us into surprising and often uncontrollable spaces. Stemming from these shifts is a push towards a relational understanding of nature which sees it as co-fabricated through more-than- human practices and encounters.

2.2.1 Performativity Notions of performance have been used to describe how the actions and behaviours of humans and nonhumans create ‘nature’. Performativity suggests that actions, processes and practices are not just indicative of the world but actively create it (Nash 2000). Concepts of performativity emerged from dissatisfaction with the use of representations for understanding space, and instead envision spaces and ‘natures’ as unstable, partial and contestable (Nash

2000; Stoller 2010). Originating from Judith Butler’s argument that gender is not a given truth but is actively performed by people through regulatory practices, the concept of performativity is now being used to suggest that meaning and things are brought into being as they are performed (McCormack 2009; Stoller 2010). Concepts such as ‘nature’ and ‘gender’ therefore do not exist outside of these performances and as they are not fixed they can be potentially challenged, changed and performed in multiple ways (Nash 2000). Gregson and Rose state: this multiplicity in turn implies that the possibilities for slippage, subversion, disruption, and critical reworking of power through practice are messier, fuzzier, and just far more unpredictable than current theoretical arguments – including Butler’s – pointing to the citationality of discourse and power begin to suggest (Gregson and Rose 2000: 446). Performative studies therefore acknowledge the multiplicity and unpredictability of encounters.

The concept of performativity has been taken up through what is known as nonrepresentational theory, which advocates that ‘nature’ is something that cannot be adequately explained through written or verbal forms (Nash 2000). Nonrepresentational theory calls for a move away from ‘the analysis of texts, images and discourses and towards understanding the micro-geographies of habitual practices, departing from deconstructing representations to explore the nonrepresentational’ (Nash 2000: 656). ‘Nature’ and ‘culture’ are revealed as being dynamic, more-than-human and more-than-cognitive and as such cannot be contained within the current languages surrounding them.

Lorimer (2010) suggests ‘more-than-representational’ can be seen as a better alternative than

‘nonrepresentational’ as it opens up the multiple and varied range of encounters that are involved in practices. Being ‘more-than-representational’ involves dismissing the idea that meanings and values are ‘out-there’ waiting to be discovered, interpreted, judged and represented, and instead involves a focus on ‘how life takes shape and gains expression in shared experiences, everyday routines, fleeting encounters, embodied movements, precognitive triggers, practical skills, affective intensities, enduring urges, unexceptional interactions and sensuous dispositions’ (Lorimer 2005: 84). In this sense there can be multiple

‘natures’ that cannot be simply expressed or represented but rather are brought into being through performances. Focusing on the more-than-representational aspects of ‘nature’ does not just matter on a theoretical and academic level; it also has ‘real world’ implications for how we relate to and experience ‘nature’ on a daily basis and how environmental policies and politics are thought about and constructed (Szerszynski et al. 2003: 1). In this sense how

‘nature’ is understood is entangled in the management of parks and reserves and will influence the practices and performances of management and what ‘nature’ is created.

2.2.2 New materiality Concepts of performativity now extend beyond Butler’s original notions. Butler’s ideas have been critiqued for not allowing for the influence of material or nonhuman performances

(Crouch 2003; Gregson and Rose 2000). In response, different theorists (see Bakker and Bridge

2006; Gregson and Rose 2000; Lorimer 2010; and Whatmore 2006) have utilised more relational models of thinking in which the boundaries between nature and culture, and human and nonhuman are blurred as they are understood as emerging from specific lively and material encounters (Lorimer 2010: 492). The specific materialities of spaces, objects and bodies are active in that they influence how encounters unfold and the different and surprising results that are created. The turn to materiality has seen an acknowledgement of the need to

‘re-animate the missing “matter” of landscape, focusing attention on bodily involvements in the world in which landscapes are co-fabricated between more-than-human bodies and a lively earth’ (Whatmore 2006: 603).

Understanding the ‘livingness of the world’ is one way of describing the return to materiality through the acknowledgment of the ‘rich conjunction’ of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ (Whatmore

2006: 602). Looking at the livingness of the world: shifts the register of materiality from the indifferent stuff of a world ‘out there’, articulated through notions of ‘land’, ‘nature’ or ‘environment’, to the intimate fabric of corporeality that includes and redistributes the ‘in here’ of human beings (Whatmore 2006: 602). The concept of livingness connects bodies, including human ones, with geophysical worlds

(Whatmore 2006). Recent work on materiality in human geography suggests that we need to focus on the differing ways ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are connected, rather than on how they are separate or distinct, in order to generate an understanding of the ‘motley assemblages’ of different materialities (Bakker and Bridge 2006: 17).

Whilst western culture often portrays ‘nature’ as being a commonly understood universal reality, if we utilise a performative material approach there are in fact a number of human visions of ‘nature’ that often challenge and contradict each other (Cronon 1995a). This stands in contrast to the understandings put forward by the old and new paradigms which attempt a universal understanding of what nature in protected areas should look like, and how it is managed. ‘Nature’ will always be contested and as such we need to stop thinking of it as being a singular entity and move towards understanding it in a similar way to understanding

‘culture’, as being multiple (Muecke 2006). Materiality acts as a way of situating our understanding of ‘nature’ and also grounds our research so that we are able to experience the heterogeneity, difference and multiplicity of ‘nature’ (Bakker and Bridge 2006). There is no overarching theory that can explain ‘nature’, as there is no ‘pure nature’ out there waiting to be discovered. Instead, humans and nonhumans are always acting with and against each other in messy and material engagements to create ‘nature’ in multiple ways. In this way, my ‘bush bashing’ when setting up cameras for bandicoot monitoring can be understood as a material encounter through which a particular messy nature was enacted.

2.2.3 More-than-human geographies2 Inherent within concepts of ‘new materiality’ and ‘performativity’ is the idea that spaces and worlds are created by human and nonhuman bodies, objects and forces. Hinchliffe et al. (2005:

2 Here, the term more-than-human is used to ‘acknowledge both the pervasiveness of human influence and its interaction with nonhumans (plants, animals, rocks, weather)’ (Head 2011). I use the terms ‘nonhuman’, ‘more- than-human’ and ‘inhuman’ throughout this thesis in specific ways with different connotations. I use the term nonhuman to refer to the specific bodies, objects and forces that are not human, and to denote their differences, rather than their similarities and connections. Following Clark (2012) ‘inhuman’ acts as a way of traversing the realm where humans may not be (I talk more about this in Part 4). While ‘more-than-human’ implies a connection to humans (more-than-just-humans), inhuman shifts further away from humans to recognise that there are phenomenon, events and encounters that are beyond our grasp. I use the term ‘more-than-human’ in this thesis to refer to the entangled nature and the messiness of connections between humans and nonhumans.

643) argues the term ‘nonhuman’ reminds us of the ‘possibility that agency, creativity, morality, and all those things that are normally associated with human minds might well have more to them than “home alone” minds’. It also signifies a ‘worldliness of worlds, suggesting that cultures and societies are shaped by more than human geographies’ (Hinchliffe et al.

2005: 643). The natural world is now no longer thought of as a mute force. Cloke and Jones

(2003) argue that just because this world of nonhuman beings and materials is incapable of thought (in the human sense), does not mean that it is not capable of agency. In recent studies there has been an increased awareness of the need to recognise the range of agencies that can be present and the contribution that these nonhuman agencies make (Cloke and Jones 2003).

Haraway (2004) however argues that it would be a mistake to consider these nonhuman agencies in an anthropomorphic or anthropocentric way. The unique ‘otherness’ of nonhuman agencies needs to be taken into account and non-anthropomorphic ways of understanding these agencies need to be found.

Gregson and Rose (2000) and Haraway (2008) similarly argue that ‘more-than-human’ encounters are productive. Through encounters, partners come together and influence each other such that the partners themselves and spaces are altered in the process. The entangled nature of humans, nonhumans, objects, things and spaces in encounters that produce performances means that these things cannot be easily distinguished; they are stitched together and impact on each other in complex and surprising ways (Gregson and Rose 2000).

As Haraway states: Encounterings do not produce harmonious wholes, and smoothly preconstituted entities do not ever meet in the first place. Such things cannot touch, much less attach; there is no first place; and species, neither singular nor plural, demand another practice of reckoning. In the fashion of turtles (with their epibionts) on turtles all the way down, meetings make us who and what we are in the avid contact zones that are

the world. Once ‘we’ have met, we can never be ‘the same’ again. Propelled by the tasty but risky obligation of curiosity among companion species, once we know, we cannot not know. If we know well, searching with fingery eyes, we care. That is how responsibility grows (Haraway 2008: 287). Acknowledging the agency of humans and nonhumans means recognising that we have incomplete knowledge of nature. As we are not the only ones to impact on how nature is produced, we can never fully understand or define it, as it has the ability to ‘surprise[] us, thwart[] our plans and evolve[] in unexpected ways’ (Bakker and Bridge 2006: 19).

2.2.4 Challenges for protected areas Understanding ‘nature’ as a product of messy, material, human and nonhuman engagements brings into question a number of environmental issues, especially in relation to what should be conserved or preserved, what management techniques should be used and under what moral and ethical framework these are justified. These changing understandings also lead to the questioning of our personal concepts of what we enjoy as ‘nature’ and why. The move towards understanding nature as a more-than-human practice therefore challenges a number of assumptions that the new and old paradigms take as basic. If we follow the more-than-human geographies’ school of thought, in which nature is messy, multiple and co-fabricated by humans and nonhumans, then how are decisions to be made about what the purpose of protected areas is and what are they trying to protect if not a universal nature? In addition, questions are raised about which ‘nature’ or knowledges of nature are made powerful and which are ignored under universal notions of national park nature. Out of these challenges I am particularly interested in how we can rethink national park nature as disruptive, and what this means for management. In the following section I look at a number of responses to nature as being active and unstable and which suggest nature is, and has always been, disruptive.

2.3 Disruptive natures Acknowledging the human ability to impact on and alter the environment has brought about the idea that nature is not pure and has led some to suggest that we have entered an era of

‘the end of nature’ (McKibben 2003). Environmental damage caused by humans is seen to have resulted in possible permanent disruption to the natural flows and cycles of the earth (Clark

2003; Low 2002). A number of theorists (Clark 2003; Hobbs et al. 2006; Low 2002; Scoones

1999; Zimmerer 1994) however have suggested that the changing environment is not necessarily an indication that ‘nature’ is being removed or is ending. Instead, they argue that

‘nature’ is not stable or constant, and that what is occurring is the continuation of the already occurring process of ‘nature’, which is (and always has been) constantly changing. What is needed is a change in how we understand ‘nature’ and the processes of change. The following sections look at a number of the disruptive ways of understanding ‘nature’ and its management.

2.3.1 New ecology One approach to understanding ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ in different ways is known as the ‘new ecology’ which was created out of dissatisfaction with the ‘old’ ecology which held that

‘species existed in relatively stable, predictable relationships with one another and their surrounding biophysical environment’ (Castree 2005: 243). The old ecology also saw humans as either ‘well adapted parts of wider ecosystems or else disruptive forces that failed to respect the integrity of those ecosystems’ (Castree 2005: 234-235). The ‘new ecology’, however, put forward that there is no ‘balance of nature’ as the environment is not in a state of equilibrium but rather is unstable and created through constant chaotic fluctuations (Scoones 1999). New ecology also argues that the changes to ecosystems made by humans do not necessarily

48 represent disruptions of the ecosystem equilibrium, as humans are seen as being part of complex biophysical systems. Human alteration of the environment is therefore not necessarily something disruptive that needs to be reversed (Scoones 1999; Zimmerer 1994). New ecology calls for the dismissal of the separate nature and culture spheres, and replacement by a nature-culture hybrid in which humans and nonhumans both impact on and influence each other in complex and integrated ways (Castree 2005).

2.3.2 Novel ecosystems ‘Novel ecosystems’ is another concept used to challenge traditional notions of ‘nature’, especially in relation to what it should look like and how it should be managed. Novel ecosystem theories suggest that a variety of local and global forces are producing ecological changes that are resulting in ecosystems which are ‘new non-historical configurations’ (Hobbs et al. 2009: 599). Non-historical configurations are created when ‘species occur in combination and relative abundances that have not occurred previously within a given biome’ (Hobbs et al.

2006: 1). Changes to ecosystems and spaces do not necessarily result in the demise of the

‘natural’; rather, these spaces are adaptive and can be transformed to create new functioning ecosystems. Understandings of novel ecosystems however still suggest that certain ecosystems are more ‘natural’ than others, as they have been subject to less alteration by humans, and thus position humans as ‘unnatural’. Novel ecosystems are also characterised as being formed out of deliberate or inadvertent human intervention. Whilst other biotic and abiotic forces are seen as influencing environments, human intervention is seen as the main force causing ‘novel’ change. Therefore, novel ecosystems can be seen to perpetuate understandings of human and nonhuman activities and behaviours as being inherently different.

Under the concept of novel ecosystems, the type of management strategy used for an ecosystem depends on its level of change and whether it is possible to return to the baseline environment. The historic original state of the environment is considered the most favourable ecosystem, however if it cannot be restored then management needs to be redirected from

‘damage control’ towards what Hobbs et al. (2009: 604) call ‘ecosystem engineering’, or

‘designer ecosystems’. Here, management strategies will need to decide what would be beneficial for the ecosystem and what would cause more damage. The implementation of these types of strategies which involve our cultural understandings of what ‘nature’ is, and how it should be managed, will need to evolve and adapt along with the ecosystems. A more dynamic and flexible approach to management may not involve totally disregarding previous understandings of ‘nature’, but will need to take into account the increasing uncertainty about how to view ecosystems (Hobbs et al. 2009).

Novel ecosystems still rely on ideas of an original, pure ecosystem that was more ‘natural’ than the others and should (if possible) be restored. The right of humans to make decisions over what is beneficial for the ecosystem downplays the agency of nonhuman actors and suggests that humans know what’s best for an ecosystem and how it will respond to management.

However, the concept of novel ecosystems can be taken further and used to break down the dichotomous notion that ecosystems progress from an original ‘nature’ to human managed systems. The concept of novel ecosystems could be expanded to take into consideration the notion that ecosystems and spaces are (and have always been) constantly changing and evolving and as such there is no (and has never been an) original baseline ‘nature’.

2.3.3 New nature ‘New nature’ is another disruptive way of understanding ‘nature’ that problematises the idea that human populations continue to increase at the expense of natural habitats, forests and bushlands (Low 2002). The destruction of habitats by humans is often seen as detrimentally impacting on the environment. However Low (2002) argues that there will always be species that benefit from this destruction (Low 2002). The waratah in my earlier story exemplifies this, as they would rather grow on the side of the road than in the more isolated areas of Ku-ring- gai Chase. Not only this, but the notion of ‘new nature’ suggests ‘nature’ does not always want to remain separate from us, and that often the survival of some species is irrevocably linked with humans. Low argues:

This shows ... the danger of assuming that ‘nature does not seek to make a connection with us’, that ‘nature does not care if we live or die’. Animals and plants do what they can to survive. If that means taking over a quarry or a dump, so be it. We should not judge this as ‘unnatural’. If we are surprised, it only shows that our picture of nature is faulty. We need new ways to explain what we see (Low 2002: 36). New nature argues that ‘nature’ is not ‘out-there’, separate from and untouched by humans, but rather that it is all around us and something that we are constantly interacting, engaging and living with (Low 2002). Therefore, our understanding of what ‘nature’ is needs to be altered. The acceptance that ‘nature’ does not come in one pure form, but can change and adapt to human influences, opens up the range of behaviours, species, habitats and encounters that could be seen as normal within national parks. Therefore, if there is no baseline ‘nature’, then the role of management is also brought into question. ‘New nature’ challenges the notions of what is natural, what are pests and weeds, and where certain species belong or don’t belong. Clark’s (2003) concept of bioinvasion is useful for rethinking ideas of belonging, especially regarding where pests and weeds belong.

2.3.4 Bioinvasion as natural Clark (2003) argues that bioinvasion can be used to look at the ways in which changes to the biophysical environment do not necessarily represent the ‘end of nature’. Although the presence of invasive pests and weeds is generally viewed as ‘an epitome of fallen nature, a final and irrevocable effacement of biogeographic integrity played out on a global scale’ (Clark

2003: 165), the ability of organisms to adapt to and improvise in new surroundings highlights the continuation of new forms of ‘nature’. The actions of invasives in creating new forms of

‘nature’ can result in situations where new species become more suited to new environments than to their original ‘natural’ habitats. In Australia, for example, it is now suggested that there are rabbits unique to the country (Clark 2003). The processes of bioinvasion highlight that native wildlife and plants can also adapt to the presence of invasives. For example, in New

Zealand some native plants have become more resistant to the damage caused by possums and some endangered Australian species are dependent upon weeds for food (Clark 2003).

Clark states:

What achievements of the invasive organism highlight is the extraordinary – or perhaps merely ordinary – ability of living things to improvise in new settings, to compose themselves into new rhythms and patterns and to recompose the milieus in which they dwell. And in this sense, we might look to the idea of the ‘performativity of life’ as more fruitful way of coming to terms with ‘life out of bounds’ than any sense of the total socialization or demise of the natural (Clark 2003: 165). Understanding bioinvasion as a continuation of the processes of ‘nature’ challenges the straightforward ideas that currently dominate national park management.

Through understanding life as being performed, we can begin to look at the creation of new

‘natures’, rather than the ‘end of nature’. Therefore, spaces can be performatively understood as being constantly made by the practices of human and nonhuman entities that are entangled in complex and messy engagements. There is no original balance of ‘nature’ that is destroyed

52 by human-induced changes, but rather change is seen to represent the continuation of already occurring processes that produce constantly changing and fluctuating, multiple ‘natures’.

Within these ‘natures’, classifications and categories such as the dichotomies of human and animal, culture and nature and pest and non-pest, fall apart; they are understood as being brought together and produced through performative encounters. Understanding ‘nature’ as disruptive and performative challenges ideas that management of national parks is a logical process of improving the environment through mitigating human practices that destroy

‘nature’.

I therefore argue that there is a need for a new approach to understanding national park nature that takes into consideration a motley collection of more-than-human, messy natures. I draw together the concepts of nature as performative, agentic and disruptive through utilising

Anna Tsing’s (2005) concept of ‘friction’ to suggest that they can be used to rethink national park nature and management. Tsing (2005) uses the metaphor of ‘friction’ to describe the ways in which universal notions come to operate in specific local settings with surprising results. I argue that the metaphor of ‘friction’ can be expanded through drawing together concepts of performativity, disruptive natures, other-than-human agency and new thinkings around the ontologies of management as a way of recasting light on the issues of national park nature and management.

2.4 Friction

2.4.1 Tsing and friction Anna Tsing (2005) argues that universal claims about how things should look or how policies and processes should work break down when they engage with the particulars of local spaces.

In her ethnographic work into the Kalimantan region of Indonesia in the 1980s and ’90s, Tsing highlights the messy and complicated ways in which global connections come into, and are created in, this region. She explores the processes, impacts, effects and encounters of the changing Indonesian rainforest and the surrounding communities of forest dwellers,

Indigenous communities, mining companies, activists and the Indonesian state, to highlight that things turn out differently in different places. Tsing (2005: 1) uses the metaphor of

‘friction’ to explain how these ‘aspirations for global connection … come to life in “friction,” the grip of worldly encounter’. She argues that: a study of global connections shows the grip of encounter: friction. A wheel turns because of its encounter with the surface of the road; spinning in the air it goes nowhere. Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light; one stick alone is just a stick. As a metaphorical image, friction reminds us that heterogeneous and unequal encounters can lead to new arrangements of culture and power (Tsing 2005: 5). Tsing (2005) argues that processes of globalisation (in her case the destruction of Indonesian forests to be traded on the international market) do not necessarily have a homogenising effect in which the particular, or local, is superseded by the global, or universal.

The metaphor of friction focuses on how global connections are brought together in messy and awkward engagements of ‘friction’ to show how we cannot look at the global, or globalisation, as operating in the same way in different places. Instead, when people of difference, whether the differences are in ideology, motives, geographical location, context or situation, come together, surprising events happen. Tsing (2005: 4) suggests that ‘cultures are continually co- produced in the interactions … [of] “friction”: the awkward, unequal, unstable and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’. Here Tsing (2005) argues that we should be looking at the unexpected and unstable aspects of global interaction to understand the ways in

54 which cultures and cultural difference are produced, rather than at how universals encompass the world.

Further to this, Tsing argues that not only are universals changed as they ‘land’ in particular local settings but universals are themselves created in these sticky, messy and situated frictions of the local. She argues that “[u]niversals are indeed local knowledge in the sense that they cannot be understood without the benefit of historically specific cultural assumptions” (Tsing

2005: 7). As Tsing argues:

To turn to universals is to identify knowledge that moves – mobile and mobilising – across localities and culture. Whether it is seen as underlying or transcending cultural difference, the mission of the universal is to form bridges, road, and channels of circulation. Knowledge gained from particular experience percolates into these channels, widening rather than interrupting them.

Universals then originate in these grounded particularities, only to be picked up and become mobile. It is through this movement that the situated locales that gave rise to these universal ideas are forgotten and specific knowledges are inflated to represent self-evident science and the ‘truth’ (I talk about this process in relation of plants and their scientific classification more in Section 6.4).

Friction highlights the importance of encounter and interaction, but these encounters and interactions do not have endless possibilities. Friction is about slowing things down and making movement possible but it is also limiting in the results that can be produced through these encounters. Friction is about enabling and encouraging some global connections while inhibiting others. Although friction causes the creation of certain types of results or events, there are constraints, as ‘friction inflects historical trajectories, enabling, excluding, and

55 particularizing’ (Tsing 2005: 6). Therefore Tsing (2005: 6) argues that we need to think about

‘universals not as truths or lies but as sticky engagements’.

Tsing (2005: 8) argues that universals are important and ‘through friction, universals become practically effective’, however they can never become entirely universal, or travel anywhere at any time. Instead of replacing universals with Indigenous or local knowledge, Tsing believes what we need to do is recognise the limits and contextual nature of universals, and understand that they are only effective if understood within a particular locational and historical space, or what Tsing (2005: 8) refers to as ‘engaged universals’ which are constantly on the move and being altered and changed due to their encounters with localities and knowledges. According to Tsing (2005: 8, original emphasis) ‘All universals are engaged when considered as practical projects accomplished in a heterogeneous world’.

Tsing (2005: 217) argues that through creating categories there will always be ‘persistently uninteresting, invisible, and sometimes illegitimate zones’ that she calls ‘gaps’. She argues that the nonhuman often falls into one of these gaps that people tend to overlook as being insignificant. She argues that in order to understand universals, their power and their limitations, we need to acknowledge and pay attention to these gaps, or the categories that are often seen as ‘other’, insignificant, unreadable or boring. One way of taking these gaps seriously is to focus on the nonhuman ‘not just as symbols and resources, but as co-residents and collaborators’ (Tsing 2005: 172).

Tsing (2005) calls for a focus on ‘landscape’, which she refers to as ‘configurations of humans and nonhumans across a terrain’ (Tsing 2005: 173) and which she argues is therefore ‘both

“social” (created within human projects) and “natural” (outside of human control; populated

56 by nonhuman species)’ (Tsing 2005: 174). She argues that by focusing on the ways in which these landscapes are created and maintained we can develop a deeper understanding of how humans and nonhumans interact and influence each other. This shift towards understanding a social-natural landscape forces us into the gaps which are ‘conceptual spaces and real places into which powerful demarcations do not travel well’ (Tsing 2005: 175). By looking at the gaps in universals, or spaces that dualistic categories make unimaginable, we are able to look at how both humans and nonhumans come together to produce, reinforce, break down and blur universals (Tsing 2005).

2.4.2 Co-fabricated Frictions I suggest that ‘friction’ is a useful concept for exploring and challenging universal understandings of nature and park management. Instead of seeing park management and national park nature as universal concepts, ‘friction’ helps reveal how these concepts work out in different places and at different times. Under this analogy, park management can be understood as a process that brings together different elements into moments of encounter that produce specific (and multiple) forms of nature. In addition, Tsing’s concept of friction is useful in understanding the way in which universal concepts of park management and national park nature are themselves created in sticky, situated and messy frictions of park management. From this perspective national park management actively creates national park nature, however because of local differences such as histories, materialities and more-than- human agencies, practices of management will never work exactly the same or produce the same nature in different spaces. Management therefore cannot be understood as a universally applicable good or bad thing; rather, it is viewed as a process of ‘friction’, or ‘sticky engagement’ that produces difference (Tsing 2005: 6).

I build on Tsing’s concept of friction to focus more closely on the more-than-human and performative nature of encounters and the work that humans and nonhumans do in influencing how ideas, universals and events come together. I argue that this focus on nonhuman actors is more than a way of identifying gaps; it is essential to looking at the ways in which nature is produced and how universals work out in different spaces. Nonhuman actors act as sources of friction as they are active in the processes, performances and encounters that produce nature.

I also argue that examinations of the encounters of friction should adopt a performative focus.

Universal notions of national park nature are not self-evident truths; instead they land in particular spaces and have to be enacted. I argue that encounters of friction draw together a number of heterogeneous bodies, objects and forces which together bring spaces, including national park nature, into being. However the local particularities of each encounter will mean that the nature produced will always be in a state of flux and can never be properly predicted.

Therefore, when looking at the multiple worlds and agencies of a space, it is important to realise that these spaces are not static; rather, they are formed through networks of interaction and encounters of friction and thus are constantly changing.

Acknowledging the role of nonhuman actors in performing spaces also highlights their role in the production of knowledges. Tsing suggests that knowledge is a collaboration and different knowledges are produced when different people come together. She states: ‘[k]nowledge grows through multiple layers of collaboration – as both empathy and betrayal. The process of layering is perhaps most striking in insignificant, vernacular collaborations’ (Tsing 2005: 155). I therefore argue that knowledge is a more-than-human collaboration that is constantly

58 produced, broken down and reformed in more-than-human encounters. Therefore the production of knowledges of national park nature is entangled with the production or performances of nature itself.

I also utilise ‘friction’ to highlight that history, context and the material construction of engagements is important to how frictions play out and the results that are produced.

Although friction does cause the creation of certain types of nature, the possibilities are not endless. Tsing (2005) argues that historical trajectories are confining. I also want to add that materiality and context are equally important. Barad (2003: 810) argues that to ‘figure matter as merely an end product rather than an active force in future materializations, is to cheat matter out of the fullness of its capacity’. The material world is therefore given the power to impact on and become a part of the encounters of friction, and part of the results that are produced. The specific materiality of spaces, objects and bodies can be seen as acting as a source of friction, as they influence how encounters unfold and the different results that are produced. The material assemblage therefore makes certain natures possible and not others.

Desirable and undesirable natures are produced through friction. These are constantly changing and they are not universally ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but are seen and understood differently by different people, nonhumans, and bodies and in different times, spaces and contexts.

I argue for the usefulness of a more-than-human, material and performative friction for examining the way in which multiple and messy natures are constantly being produced in national parks. Management of national parks can be understood as a more-than-human assemblage that is constantly performing ‘nature’. Management brings together human and nonhuman bodies, objects, forces and practices in awkward and messy engagements of

59 friction. Through these engagements of frictions, universal perceptions of what ‘nature’ should be and what role management should play are broken down and become messy as they are put into practice. The material context and local specificities of situations mean that universal notions will not perform in the same manner in different situations and as such will create multiple ‘natures’ that are disruptive and unique. This research examines how understanding management can be understood as a ‘co-fabricated friction’ in which universal notions of management and nature become messy through processes of human and nonhuman engagement.

2.5 Useful frictions This project seeks to address the challenge of discerning how management happens if we are no longer managing for an original baseline ‘nature’. As perceptions of what constitutes

‘nature’ are being altered, broken down and fused together, how management happens becomes contested. Management can no longer be viewed as a universal. Rather, it is seen as a motley assemblage of documents, practices, humans, animals, plants, weather, soil, fire and so on, that are brought together in messy and awkward engagements of friction to produce different ‘natures’. If we acknowledge that ‘nature’ can occur in different and disruptive ways, then how are decisions made as to what or who belongs in national parks? A concept of

‘anything goes’ would be just as futile. Instead we need to attend to the materiality and specific context of the park and its history in order to generate an understanding of the ways in which management practices actively create new forms of ‘nature’ within national parks through encounters of ‘co-fabricated friction’.

My notion of nature and parks as being performed through encounters of friction highlights how the perceptions of nature put forward by the new and old paradigms do not allow for the local particularities that could get in the way of and mess up a universalised nature. The paradigms take for granted that their particular understandings of nature and management will be appropriate for all spaces and places across the globe. I argue that this is not enough – they have to be enacted. And it is through this performance that the local particularities – the human and other-than-human actors, materialities, local and personal histories – act as a source of friction and cause messy, multiple natures to be created. I therefore aim to reconceptualise national park nature as being performed through encounters of ‘co-fabricated friction’.

Unlike the new and old paradigms, I understand national park nature as active, messy and unstable, and in the following chapters I examine the sorts of frictions that are created within

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to highlight the problems of universal and static notions of

‘nature’. I utilise the ideas of performativity to think through what a national park is if it is not an area of pure ‘nature’ (Part 2). Then I draw on concepts of disruptive nature to rethink ideas of what belongs in a national park and what doesn’t (Part 3). And then finally I utilise the notion of friction as ‘engaged universals’ to think about the management of Ku-ring-gai Chase and how it happens through more-than-human performances (Part 4). I reconceptualise what a national park is through the lens of management as a way of understanding how universal notions of nature, as established within international conservation guidelines and understandings, filter down and are enacted on the ground in a particular national park.

Understanding nature in this messy, disruptive way that is tangled up with other-than-human actors and performances, however, brings with it a number of methodological challenges regarding how to study, understand and report on the ways in which human and nonhuman actors perform co-fabricated natures. The next chapter considers the methodological implications and challenges of utilising a messy, more-than-human reconfiguration of nature in national parks. Further, I develop the concept of ‘engaged witnessing’ as a research method that takes into consideration the transformational effects of encountering other-than-human actors.

Chapter 3 Practising and co-fabricating research

3.1 Introduction Theoretical underpinnings are important to all aspects of the research process. How we choose to position our research has consequences for the methodological approach used and how we choose to ‘do’ research (Pryke et al. 2003). The approach taken in this project has implications for how knowledges and realities are seen and in turn influenced the methods chosen. The use of a more-than-human, performative theoretical approach to understand national park management creates a number of methodological challenges surrounding how both human and nonhuman of ‘nature’ can be investigated. A qualitative approach utilising a variety of methods was chosen to enable the research to generate an understanding of the multiple ways in which the management of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park performs ‘nature’. This chapter explores how the theoretical underpinnings of the project influenced how research was carried out, the methods that were chosen and how they were put into practice. In doing this, I develop the notion of ‘engaged witnessing’ as a way of attending to the more-than-human co- fabrication of nature.

3.2 Theorising research practices

3.2.1 Co-fabricating multiple worlds As previously stated this project is informed by a growing field of research which acknowledges that ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are brought into existence through more-than-human performances

(Szerszynski et al. 2003). According to this position the world is not ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered; instead, multiple worlds are constantly being created or produced through the actions, behaviours and encounters of humans and nonhumans. From this perspective,

63 research itself can be seen as performative as it has the ability to bring realities into being rather than simply describe results or findings (Davies and Dwyer 2007; Clark 2003; Pryke et al.

2003). Research is therefore understood as a co-fabrication of a number of human and nonhuman parties including ‘researcher and researched, bodies and texts, instruments and field all of which condition each other’ (Whatmore 2003: 95). These human and nonhuman parties are active in the production of multiple knowledges and worlds. Law (2004) argues multiple worlds overlap and interfere with each other in complex and messy ways. In a similar way this project acknowledges that there will always be too much happening to report on, and therefore some things will need to be ‘othered’ and categorised. However, it is not the aim of this project to produce an accurate portrayal of realities but rather to offer another tale and another understanding of our complex and overlapping worlds (Clark 2003; Law 2004).

Acknowledging that research is a more-than-human co-fabrication involves a number of challenges including how to view and understand the more-than-human and more-than- cognitive aspects of the performances of management, and further how to report on these

(Davies and Dwyer 2007; Head and Muir 2006). Traditional qualitative method techniques such as semi-structured interviews, focus groups and short ethnographies are limiting in that they privilege human voices and understandings, and do not allow for the emergence of a co- fabrication of materials (Duncan and Duncan 2010; Seymour and Wolch 2010). In addition

Duncan and Duncan (2010: 244) argue that ‘radically performative’ ways of looking at spaces are especially challenging when it comes to finding appropriate methodological techniques because the ‘development of theory is far more sophisticated than the development of methods’. Whatmore (2003) argues that because evidence is not pre-existing but is produced through research, we need to allow ourselves to be affected by the data and the field.

Research therefore needs to be understood as an iterative process involving shaping, reshaping, repetition, moving forward and beginning again (Whatmore 2003).

Some researchers (see Davies and Dwyer 2007; Law 2004) argue that the ambiguity and complexity of studying more-than-human performances needs to be embraced. Law (2004: 6) points out that routinely, the ‘social is taken to be fairly definite’. He questions this practice, and the assumption that social science is therefore meant to ‘discover the most important of these definite processes’ (Law 2004: 6). Instead he argues that the task is to imagine methods that ‘no longer seek the definite, the repeatable, the more or less stable’ (Law 2004: 6). It has been recognised by performative theorists that the world is subject to unpredictable changes and fluctuations, and our methods need to reflect this (Clark 2010). Davies and Dwyer (2007) and Law (2004) argue that we need to suppress our desires for certainty and the ‘expectation that we can usually arrive at more or less stable conclusions about the way things really are’

(Law 2004: 9).

3.2.2 New practices of witnessing Haraway (1997: 269) argues that the methodological challenge of co-fabrication can be overcome by researchers developing ‘new practices of witnessing’. Drawing on Haraway’s assertion, Whatmore argues that these are:

[p]ractices which attend more closely to the multi-sensual business of becoming animals – a relational process in which animal subjects are configured through particular social bonds, bodily comportments and life habits that are complicated but neither originated nor erased, by the various ways in which they may be enmeshed in the categorical and practical orderings of people (Whatmore 2002: 37).

Witnessing the ‘doing’ or performances of humans and nonhumans is an important aspect of more-than-human research as it allows access to a range of experiences and emotions that would not be possible through other methods such as interviews or secondary data analysis.

Witnessing opens us up to the agency of nonhumans but, more than an account of action, witnessing has to be a sensory endeavour. Understanding more-than-human spaces involves an ‘engagement with that which cannot be easily seen or narrated – but is instead imagined or felt’ (Davies and Dwyer 2007: 262). Although it is not completely possible, we need to consider how we can avoid viewing nonhumans through a human lens, and how to view and understand the ‘voices’ of nonhumans. Whatmore also argues that we need to:

supplement the familiar repertoire of humanist methods that rely on generating talk and text with experimental practices that amplify other sensory bodily and affective registers and extend the company and modality of what constitutes a research subject (Whatmore 2006: 606-607).

Massey (2003) argues that only through being in the field and thinking in the field can we capture the complexities and constant creation of the world. Therefore, extended periods of fieldwork, allow researchers to engage with the nonhuman world they are studying, and to learn how to ‘read’ the nonhumans (Hinchliffe et al. 2005). Hinchliffe et al. (2005: 648) argue that ‘to be a good reader requires a form of expertise that can combine multiple indications of presence, a looser kind of sense, a knowing around [nonhumans], a diagnostic and a diagramming’. Further, they suggest that during fieldwork we need to learn to be affected by our surroundings and gain new ‘ways of looking, a new set of eyes (or newly conditioned retina), a slightly more wary nose, a different sensibility’ (Hinchliffe et al. 2005: 648).

Therefore, researchers can in a way discover the unseeable through deeply immersing

66 themselves in particular spaces and becoming attuned to the variety of performances that are occurring there.

When conducting this type of research, however, it is also important to recognise that through witnessing we are also becoming part of the realities that we are creating. The researcher cannot be seen as separate and objective, as the processes of witnessing actively brings them into the performances of realities. Witnessing the actions, behaviours and interactions of humans and nonhumans within the park space allows for a greater understanding of performances that create spaces. For example, through ‘witnessing’ practices we can develop an understanding of the ways in which the park space is constantly being changed by actions such as the invasion of new pest species, forces of weather, vandalism or the repeated walking of certain paths by humans or animals.

3.2.3 Engaged witnessing Building on ideas of witnessing and of learning to be affected, I argue for a particular type of being in the field that I call ‘engaged witnessing’. Engaged witnessing takes into consideration the affective nature of encountering other-than-human actors, and involves an concerted attempt to accept or be open to being changed, moved or shifted through paying close attention and becoming ‘immerse[d] … in the contests and engagements of the present’ (Tsing

2005: 271). This openness is respectfully reciprocal and as such we ‘enter the world of becoming with, where who and what are is precisely what is at stake’ (Haraway 2008: 19, original emphasis). Following Whatmore (2006) and Haraway (2008), engaged witnessing is about a focus on the ‘multi-sensual business’ of ‘becoming with’, where encounters are both transformative and creative. Engaged witnessing is about being there, in the ‘grip of encounter’

(Tsing 2005: 5) where it is messy, productive and awkward. Through respectful awareness,

‘engaged witnessing’ is about learning to see things differently and acknowledging the co- fabrication of partners, worlds and knowledges.

During my fieldwork I utilised the practice of ‘engaged witnessing’ by employing a number of qualitative approaches to bring out the multiplicity of encounters, interactions and performances that impact on national park nature3. Each approach to ‘engaged witnessing’ was used as an attempt to let nonhuman agencies into my research, to avoid viewing nonhumans through a human lens, and to ‘listen’ to the ‘voices’ of nonhumans. The following sections explore how I put ‘engaged witnessing’ into practice, and I describe the conglomeration of approaches I used to open up my methodology to a wider range of senses, communications and actors that were not necessarily human, cognitive or understandable.

3.3 Putting engaged witnessing into practice

3.3.1 Introduction The concept of engaged witnessing is about opening up the research process to the affective qualities of other-than-human actors. However, I have undertaken practices of engaged witnessing with an understanding that I am human and as such my thoughts, actions and analysis have been conditioned by my humanness. However, to suggest that attempting to think like a nonhuman, or become nonhuman is futile and a waste of time is, I think, missing the point. I feel this type of position ignores the vast amount of influence that nonhumans

3Although some practices of ‘engaged witnessing’ are ethnographic in nature, the omission of the term ‘ethnography’ has been done deliberately. Ethnographic traditions have deep roots within humanist methodologies and I felt that the explicit focus on more-than-human encounters and methodologies called for a new language that was not bound up with anthropocentric assumptions of research design and outcomes. Tsing (2005: 271) suggests an ethnographer is a ‘listener and teller of tales’. And as such throughout my research I found myself an unexpected ethnographer. Like Tsing (2005: xi), I make no assumption that my research is a true ethnographic account, ‘but it can be deeply ethnographic in the sense of drawing from the learning experiences of the ethnographer’.

68 have on our everyday bodies, thoughts, actions and performances. Yes, we may never be able to completely understand and write about the performances of other-than-human actors, and exactly how they are connected to the actions of humans. But I feel there are great benefits to be gained from opening up the human body to being influenced by nonhumans (and being aware of this) and becoming vulnerable to where these interactions and encounters take us. It is this vulnerability and openness that I aim for through practices of engaged witnessing.

My experiences, understandings, vocabulary and expressions are all tainted with my humanness, yet they are the only ways I have to communicate the nonhuman. My writing has been shaped, altered and produced by a range of co-creators who are not just human, or living.

I modestly seek to describe my stories and experiences as best I can. This may be seen by some to be anthropomorphic, but I feel that if I decided against this undertaking in order to avoid opening myself up to some forms of anthropic criticisms I would have found myself in a stale, distant and un-embodied place. I take up Plumwood’s (2009:126, original emphasis) challenge of ‘being open to experiences of nature as powerful, agentic and creative, making space in our culture for an animating sensibility and vocabulary’.

Plumwood (2009: 127) goes on to argue that the accusation of being anthropomorphic is often used to ‘bully people out of “thinking differently”’. Her advice is to: [f]ree up your mind, and make your own contribution to the project of disrupting reductionism and mechanism. Help us re-imagine the world in richer terms that will allow us to find ourselves in dialogue with and limited by other species’ needs, other kinds of minds. I’m not going to try and tell you how to do it. There are many ways to do it. But I hope I have convinced you that this is not a dilettante project. The struggle to think differently, to remake our reductionist culture, is a basic survival project in our present context. I hope you will join it (Plumwood 2009: 127-128).

Engaged witnessing and being moved by more-than-human engagements often occurred as sometimes subtle enticements, and sometimes violent jerks. I spent time getting to know Ku- ring-gai Chase, and attending to its range of other-than-human forces. I experimented profusely, I made wrong turns, I deliberately acted in certain ways, I went along for the ride and found myself in surprising locations, and I did the unexpected and the profoundly mundane. At times I acted on impulse and whim, and at other times I thought about every step. I changed my perspective, looking at things differently, literally and figuratively. I gave up, got tired, and pushed on. I replicated actions, and did things differently.

Ku-ring-gai Chase National park was chosen as the site for this research due to its close proximity to a large urban area and its diverse connections with colonial and Aboriginal heritage. These features mean that the park has a rich history of different management practices that have shaped its current form. The park is also a popular spot for day trips for residents of Sydney and Central Coast areas (NPWS 2013a). This park can be seen as both being an important recreational and conservation resource and as such provides an interesting case study for examining how management strategies balance these values and how this in turn performs the park space. In addition, Ku-ring-gai Chase was chosen for its unhuman character and nonhuman history. The park’s diverse landscapes, busy waterways, remote beaches, dense heathlands and towering forests are home to vast array of iconic natives, threatened species, caged wildlife, pests, weeds and a generous helping of things that slither, bite and sting. These plants, animals, bodies of water, geological formations and the bits in between are entangled with human and nonhuman histories, relations and artefacts to constitute Ku-ring-gai Chase.

Therefore, Ku-ring-gai Chase is made, occupied by and facilitates the interaction of an intriguing and diverse ensemble of human and nonhuman actors.

The following sections examine the multiple and varied methods that I developed, utilised and adapted in order to sense and witness the un-talkative nature of national park nature in Ku- ring-gai Chase National Park. Although the techniques are presented somewhat individually below, they were by no means conducted in isolation from each other. The various practices of engaged witnessing I conducted became entangled and impacted on each other and the knowledges generated. However, I discuss the practices individually for the purposes of clarity and to give the reader a better sense of how I put into practice my notion of engaged witnessing (see Appendix for more details regarding the ethics approval for this project and research design).

3.3.2 Documents, signs and interpretive devices Analysis of documents and interpretive devices at Ku-ring-gai Chase was used to develop an understanding of what is considered ‘natural’ in the park, what belongs, and how park management happens. This included an in-depth analysis of management, policy and legal documents, including plans of management; pest, weed and fire strategies; and relevant legislation to develop an understanding of the strategies and knowledges by which Ku-ring-gai

Chase is managed. I also analysed media reports, historical documents, tourism brochures, promotional materials and websites including the NPWS, the NSW Government and tourism websites, to gain insights into the ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase was advertised, including what features or activities were endorsed, and what aspects of the history were highlighted or ignored. Further to this, I also analysed interpretive devices located in Ku-ring-gai Chase including signage and displays within the park and an information centre, to examine the ways in which national park nature is presented to park visitors. Analysis of documents and interpretive devices was used as a way of developing an understanding of different

71 perspectives of what national park nature is and how it should be encountered and managed by park visitors and managers. Analysing these documents also allowed access to data that is not directly observable within the park, such as accounts of its history, previous land use and how it is marketed (see Appendix for details of documents analysed and the analysis process).

Documents and interpretive devices were analysed for their performative role, through looking at what effect they had on how management happens on a daily basis within the park and how national park nature is performed. Brown and Duguid (1996) and Hunter (2008) argue that documents are living ‘material semiotic actors’ and have a social life in that they are not only the ‘product of social relations, but … [they are also] productive of social relations’ (Hunter

2008: 506). Traditional ideas of documents see them as being what Brown and Duguid (1996) have labelled as ‘darts’. This is based on the idea of a paper ‘dart’ or ‘aeroplane’, which is used to transport notes, or information, usually by children transporting notes across classrooms.

Here the ‘pre-formed’ information is stored on the ‘dart’ and is unchanged through transportation across space and time. Documents such as policy documents, management plans and pieces of legislation are often understood in this way, as static objects containing the rules and guidelines for the operations and maintenance of places such as national parks.

However, through looking at how these documents are used and the effects that they produce, we can understand them to be constantly changing as new amendments are introduced, interpretations are made and ideas and strategies become out-dated.

Brown and Duguid (1996) suggest that the creator of the document does not and cannot determine its meaning, and nor is the meaning present within the document itself. Rather, the meaning is created through interpretation. The document can therefore have multiple

72 different, similar, contrasting and overlapping meanings and can be understood as created through messy encounters that produce difference (Tsing 2005). Hunter (2008) talks about the ways in which multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives and ideas come together to produce and alter policy documents. Here, documents can be seen as ‘a meeting point for … multiple perspectives’ rather than representing a forging of a single perspective (Hunter 2008: 518).

Taking this into account, I concluded that management documents, policy guidelines and legislation cannot be understood as static ‘darts’ of information that transport stable ideas across time and space. Instead, these documents are constantly being altered by more-than- human agencies, and are themselves more-than-human agents that impact on the behaviours and actions of humans and nonhumans and on the creation of the park space. For example, I looked at the ways in which the Ku-ring-gai Chase Plan of Management (POM) was amended when a new policy on horse riding was introduced, and how this impacted on the actions of

NPWS employees on the ground. In addition, I argue that the visitor centre displays and park signage can be similarly understood as material semiotic actors, as they are actively altering how people understand and perform Ku-ring-gai Chase ‘nature’.

Documents and interpretative devices of Ku-ring-gai Chase can therefore be thought of as containing multiple ideas of what nature is and how it should be managed. However, this multiplicity of ideas does not necessarily render documents as wrong or ‘untrue’. Hunter

(2008: 519) suggests that policy documents can ‘withstand and contain multiple apparently paradoxical perspectives’, and as such can be viewed as ‘transitional objects’. With this in mind

Hunter (2008) suggests that we need to think about how the fragments of these differing perspectives surface in documents and the role they have in altering encounters. One way I put this into practice was by looking at the multiple and contrasting ways the visitor centre

73 positioned national park nature, and the ways in which the centre attempted to regulate park visitor bodies.

Documents and interpretive devices therefore can be understood as actively influencing understandings of what nature is, what belongs in nature, and how park management happens, as well as dictating the codes, rules and guidelines for how people (both park managers and visitors) should act in the park. Documents and interpretive devices can therefore be seen as being performative as they have the ability to not only ‘write, but also underwrite social interactions; not simply to communicate, but also coordinate social practices’

(Brown and Duguid 1996 Documents as darts section, para. 4). For example, I examined how the tourism signage in the park positioned nature, and how the signs attempted to condition a particular type of park user by influencing what activities they did and what aspects of the park they focused on. My analysis therefore aimed to highlighting the ways in which documents and interpretive devices are active in the performances of national park nature and management.

Document analysis was used in conjunction with participant observation and semi-structured interviews to reveal the ways in which these documents influence the day-to-day management practices that occur within the park. I looked at the ways in which managers interact with these documents and the role that these documents play in producing ‘nature’. I took copies of management documents into the field with me whilst conducting participant observation to examine how what is said in these documents is performed in the park. Having these documents in the field allowed me to develop a better understanding of how the presumably static and stable ideas of management policies and strategies fall apart or work on the ground.

I similarly analysed the information centre and the signage in the park as material semiotic actors. I spent time in the Kalkari Discovery Centre and paid attention to the displays, signs and exhibits. I also examined the signage in the park, along walking trails, in picnic areas and along roads. I took notice of how the signs and displays positioned Ku-ring-gai Chase, what aspects of the park they told visitors to look for, and what aspects of the park were missing. These interpretive devices are one of the main ways that the ambitions of the NPWS are presented to park visitors, and therefore were analysed for the message they sent about what the purpose of the park is and about how people should act.

3.3.3 Participant observation Haraway argues that: relationships are the smallest possible patterns for analysis; the partners and actors are their still ongoing products. It is all extremely prosaic, relentlessly mundane, and exactly how worlds come into being (Haraway 2008: 25-26). Following Haraway, I sought to examine the relationships on the ground in the park, and how encounters between actors and partners are productive. To examine these ongoing and more- than-human encounters in Ku-ring-gai Chase, I practised engaged witnessing through conducting several stages of participant observation. Participant observation was chosen in order to gain an understanding of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, how it is managed and how it functions on a daily basis. During participant observation I was able to experience the space, rather than just read and hear about it (Cloke et al. 2004). Experiencing the park allowed for a more in-depth understanding of the role that humans and nonhumans play in relation to how the space is managed and how this in turn performs the park.

I conducted an initial stage of participant observation which involved spending large amounts of time in the park participating in ‘normal’ activities. I determined the ‘normal’ activities in

75 the park by reading tourism, media and policy documents to see which types of uses and activities are encouraged, and through general observation of the site and when bushwalking, picnicking, nature watching and ‘hanging out’ in the park.

During the initial participant observations I paid particular attention to signage, what people were doing and in which locations, any indicators of park management, what activities visitors were directed towards, and the types of vegetation, animals and landscape forms that could be found in different areas. I also focused on the other-than-human actors in the park and how they impacted on my actions and park visitors’. Through spending extended periods of time in the park I developed a basic understanding of various actors’ perspectives on what is natural in the park, what activities belong, and more importantly what did not belong.

3.3.4 Volunteering I also conducted in-depth participant observation of the management of Ku-ring-gai Chase through volunteering. I volunteered with the Discovery Volunteers over a period of six months at Ku-ring-gai Chase. Discovery Volunteers is a group of around 90 people, mostly retirees from the northern Sydney area. Upon joining the Discovery Volunteers, people are asked to sign a contract requiring them to complete two shifts a month at the visitors’ centre (Kalkari

Discovery Centre), help facilitate the opening of Muogamarra Nature Reserve (which only happens six weekends a year during spring), and consider participating in other activities such as leading walks, facilitating children’s activities, helping maintain the Kalkari centre and grounds, and running kayak tours.

The majority of my volunteering occurred over summer of 2012/2013, and the main activity that I participated in was staffing the information desk at the Kalkari Discovery Centre. Kalkari

Discovery Centre is open from 9am to 5pm every day of the year except Christmas Day. There are generally two volunteers on the information desk at a time, and there are two shifts per day (9am to 1pm and 1pm to 5pm). During my time volunteering at Kalkari I helped out at the information desk, answered phones, made tea, fed the birds and kangaroos, organised the desk, swept floors, counted and tallied visitor numbers and phone calls and gave out brochures. Volunteering at Kalkari generally revolved around talking to the other volunteers and the visitors who walked into the centre. I listened to and shared information about the park, its management, my project, personal stories, histories and connections to the park, and current news and events. I also chatted with the NPWS staff who would regularly visit the centre and with the contractors who work tirelessly to maintain and regenerate the Kalkari grounds. On slow days I would sit in the office out the back and read old issues of DeRanger

(the volunteer’s newsletter), and the vast amounts of policy, reference and historical materials at the centre.

Through being in the centre, and observing and experiencing the daily routines of the volunteers, I was able to learn about the volunteers themselves and their understandings of what nature is and what national parks are important for, and how they think parks should be managed. A popular pastime at the Kalkari desk was identifying flora and fauna. Often volunteers would bring in photographs of wildflowers from their latest bushwalk, or talk about a different bird they had seen within the Kalkari grounds or around the park, and use the books at Kalkari, the internet and the knowledge of the other volunteers to help identify them and learn their Latin names. The volunteers were constantly trying to learn more about the flora and fauna of the park so that they could tell park visitors something new or different. I too

77 became involved in this process of looking through old-fashioned glossy, worn out books of birds and flowers, and trying to pronounce their Latin names.

I learned from the volunteers that many of them made it part of their routine to walk around the 1.2 kilometre Discovery Trail within the Kalkari grounds. So this too became part of my routine when I volunteered. Repeated walking around the Discovery Trail acted as a way to learn about the landscape. As Waitt et al. state: embodied knowledge through walking can be understood to help make sense of self, nature, and natural place, we become alert to possibilities of how the boundaries between categories such as ‘society’ and ‘nature’ are simultaneously made resilient and ruptured (Waitt et al. 2009: 44). Not only this, walking around the trail daily also had practical benefits of being able to advise visitors on what to look at – if you go to the lookout you can see the smoke of the hazard reduction burn currently happening in the park – or the location of the most popular attraction

– today the kangaroos are hiding in the far left hand corner, look for them out the back of the dam.

As I mentioned earlier, the volunteers have a number of roles outside of Kalkari, including leading walks, talks and tours. However, the majority of my volunteering happened at Kalkari, as I was mainly volunteering over summer. The volunteers do not lead many guided walks during summer due to the heat and potential fire danger. I did however manage to attend one volunteer-led guided walk in Ku-ring-gai Chase. This walk was originally scheduled during mid-

January 2013, but had to be postponed until February due to a fire in the park, as the following excerpt from my field diary shows:

This morning I was getting ready to head down to Sydney to attend one of volunteers’ guided walks at Ku-ring-gai Chase. The walk was to be conducted between 4 pm and 8 pm. We would walk from Resolute picnic area down to Resolute Bay for a swim then

head back up to West Head. From there we would head back to the picnic area and bring our cars down to West Head to have a picnic tea at twilight. I had organised with Gregory, who was leading the walk, to meet him at 2:30 pm at the picnic area to interview him before the walk. However, as I was getting ready Gregory called me to say that he had to cancel the walk as there is a fire burning on West Head, near Towlers Bay [see Map 2]. Yesterday the temperature in Sydney hit a record high of 45 degrees across greater Sydney and temperatures reached 46.4 degrees Celsius at the airport and western suburbs. I was down at Kalkari for half the day then I came home at 1 pm; temperatures at our house in Newcastle were still over 40 degrees at 6 pm. However, in the early evening Sydney (and then Newcastle later on) experienced a southerly change and temperatures dropped to the mid-20s by the next morning. The change also brought some rain with it. Today the weather is overcast, and cool. So I was surprised when Gregory called me about the bushfire. Yet again the nonhuman factors have altered my fieldwork. Gregory told me that it was not the size of the fire that was the problem, rather it was the location. The fire was on both sides of the only access road to the Lambert Peninsular. And as such cars could not access the site. The place where we were to go walking was completely safe but we could not get there. (Reflection, 19 January 2013)

3.3.5 Work experience In addition to volunteering at Kalkari, I also undertook participant observation through conducting work experience with the NPWS. By working alongside the NPWS staff members I was able to gain an understanding of what is involved in the management of Ku-ring-gai Chase on a daily basis. More than this, I was able to experience the processes of management and the reactive nature of the job as employees are made to drop everything at a moment’s notice to fight a fire, or are sent to put out fox baits but find themselves picking up rubbish or removing weeds.

When I first began discussing my project with the NPWS during mid-2012, a prominent issue was that earlier in the year there was a change of government in NSW that resulted in a restructure of NPWS. The restructure meant a complete overhaul of the way in which the

NPWS was organised and for many staff members it meant losing, gaining or changing positions. The process of restructuring the agency was already occurring when I approached

NPWS to be involved in the project, and continued throughout my fieldwork. The restructure had drastic impacts on the day-to-day activities of the NPWS staff, and often made them busier and put them under more pressure as they had to reapply for their positions, or cope with extra workloads. The chaotic nature of the NPWS therefore meant that it took until February

2013 before I was able to commence work experience. However instead of seeing the delay as a negative, I focused on the restructure as an interesting process that shows how politics influences park management. A focus on park management during the restructure highlighted the ways in which park management can be drawn in different directions, altered or stopped in the face of a changing political climate. I argue that the concept of engaged witnessing, and the flexibility and openness it involves, are important for perceiving the agency of political forces, not as a hindrance to research, but a way of allowing the project to be moved in surprising ways.

Despite these setbacks and surprises I was able to undertake work experience with the NPWS from February until May 2013. During this time I attended meetings with stakeholder groups and local councils, participated in fox and rabbit baiting, bandicoot monitoring, volunteer bush regeneration days, site visits, general duty days with the field officers, snake relocation, tree lopping, and Aboriginal site assessments (see Appendix for more details).

A typical day:

I arrived at the Mount Colah Depot at 7:15 am. Today I was ‘hanging out’ with some NPWS employees for the day. When I arrived everyone was pairing up and divvying up the jobs for the day. Today I would be tagging along with Vincent. After a bit of paperwork we headed off towards Bobbin Head. On the drive down we spotted a man

camping a few metres off the road – despite being among trees his bright red tent was clearly visible. Vincent beeped the horn at the man, hoping he would get the hint – I would normally stop and tell him to move on, but we need to get down to Bobbin Head, the others will see him as they drive past Vincent told me. After that the morning flew by as Vincent fixed a boat (I watched), drove around to several hardware and paint shops for supplies, picking up rubbish, making sure barbeques and toilets were clean and functioning and fixing a firefighting water pump. After a morning tea back at the depot Vincent got a call to say that there was a python at the nearby hospital and they need him to relocate it, apparently this was a normal occurrence. So Vincent, Ginny (another NPWS employee) and I went out to pick up the snake. Vincent soon found the snake hiding behind an air-con unit just outside the hospital, and picked it up. It was a diamond python about two metres long and he held it up to show the curious patients. He then draped it around his shoulders and we got back in the car. Before the car had even started the snake became particularly interested in me and kept poking its head through to coil its way onto the backseat with me. Seeing the look on my face, Vincent decided it best to wrap the python in a shirt to keep him contained. After my heart rate had come back down to a relatively normal level, I asked where they were thinking of releasing the snake, probably down near the marina, there should be lots of rats and mice down there for him to eat. When we arrive at the Empire Marina at Bobbin Head, Vincent had the snake and was walking him across the road to the brushy area behind the bus stop when a man driving past in a van stopped to have a look. This started a flourish of park visitors who came running over, and several cars who doubled back to get another look. The NPWS employees seemed quite happy to be able to show off the snake. After many photos and a couple of hesitant pats, the snake was released and slithered off into the leaf litter (Field diary excerpt, 21 February 2013).

Throughout all stages of participant observation, including my initial stages, volunteering and work experience, I recorded my observations in a field diary. These would normally be in the form of jotted handwritten notes on a note pad, or typed on my iPad which I carried with me.

My field notes recorded what I did, who I did it with, what I saw and how I felt. During participant observation I focused particularly on the nonhuman actors within Ku-ring-gai

Chase, and as such my field notes often describe the presence, actions, behaviours and interactions of plants, animals, weather, rocks, paper, rubbish, fences and so on. I also took

81 many photographs, which not only aided the analysis of my field notes, but acted as a reminder of the activities I had done, the things I had seen, and where I had been.

Scribbling even brief notes and taking photos were of immense importance for my fieldwork and analysis. Often, participant observation would require an early start. I would often start work experience with NPWS at 6am or 7am, and volunteering at Kalkari began at 9am. Then, after eight hours of walking trails, driving between sites, talking to visitors, and bush bashing, I was exhausted, and still had to drive two hours home. Therefore my field notes often did not get written until the next day. The photographs and jotted notes were very important during this process. In addition to field notes, I would often utilise my drive home by talking out loud and voice recording what I had done that day. I would listen to the recordings at another time and in addition to the photographs and jotted notes I would write up my field notes.

Exhaustion due to the nature of the work that I was doing therefore played a big role in the way I took notes and processed data. Even taking photos was at times difficult. Participant observation often saw me scrambling over sandstone boulders or trying to heave my way up a dusty slippery slope, therefore I often wasn’t able to hang the camera around my neck as it would have knocked against rocks or got caught on trees.

3.3.6 Semi-structured interviews Participant observation and document analysis were supplemented with semi-structured interviews, which were used to develop further understandings of the experiences and insights of the people involved in park management. Interviews were conducted in conjunction with participant observation. Rather than interviewing people prior to volunteering and conducting work experience, I used my time working with and helping NPWS staff and volunteers as a way to develop my understanding of how the park operates in order to ask more informed

82 questions. By commencing participant observation prior to interviews I was also able to get to know some of the interviewees and their roles. I conducted 19 interviews, eight of them with volunteers, eight with NPWS staff members and three with NPWS Advisory Committee members4. Interviews ranged from seven minutes to 1 hour 45 mins (see Appendix for details of the interviews and the topics covered).

Following Hitchings and Jones (2004) I aimed to conduct my interviews in the park and preferably whilst walking around the park. Hitchings and Jones (2004) report that through walking and being in the space whilst talking to (interviewing) participants, they were able to gain different insights, and get participants to talk about the everyday routines of their relationships with the plants and their gardens. Hitchings and Jones (2004) used observations of how people touch, smell and see the plants – to do this they noted differences between how plants were handled and talked about compared to other nonhumans such as garden ornaments, tools and furniture. This also allowed the plants to become active as a source of conversation, stimulation and prompting. Being on the move in the garden also helped trigger ideas and conversations and allowed the researcher to observe the activities of the participants in the garden (pulling weeds, touching plant leaves etc.) and to develop an understanding of how human–plant relationships were established and performed on a daily basis.

All bar two of my interviews were conducted in the park, or whilst driving around the park.

Conducting interviews in the park was done strategically as a practice of engaged witnessing to allow people to be influenced by their surroundings. Whether we were driving around the park, sitting at a picnic bench, sitting behind the information desk at a Kalkari, or in a

4 Pseudonyms have been used in this thesis to refer to the interviewees, as well as the volunteers and NPWS employees who I observed during this project. This was done to protect the identity of participants.

83 lunchroom, being in the spaces that people worked in allowed additional stimulus for conversations. Being in the park also afforded a way of letting the nonhumans of the park influence not only what was observed but also what was talked about.

I had originally asked interviewees to take me on a tour of their favourite area of the park, or a place that was significant to them. However, I soon found my ideas were based on unrealistic notions of what park management involves, and of the Ku-ring-gai Chase bush. The busy schedules of the NPWS staff and the rugged nature and size of Ku-ring-gai Chase often meant that this wasn’t an option. Instead, I worked around the schedules of NPWS employees and often interviewed them during their lunch breaks, between meetings, whilst driving between jobs, when walking along trails or whilst waiting for the boss to get off the phone. Due to the size of Ku-ring-gai Chase and the time it takes to travel from one area to another, it was not practical for employees to take me out on a tour. For the volunteers, I often spent hours sitting with them at the Kalkari desk, and therefore, for reasons of practicality, the majority of my interviews were conducted in or just outside of the Kalkari Discovery Centre. Several of the interviews were conducted over two or more sessions. Often interviews with volunteers at the

Kalkari desk were interrupted as visitors walked in, and some interviews with the NPWS employees were put on hold as we checked directions for where we were driving, or someone walked into the lunchroom with news.

As well as formal interviews I used work experience activities to talk informally with park staff about the tasks they were doing, their role in the NPWS, and their understandings of park management and Ku-ring-gai Chase. I had originally thought that work experience activities such as bush regeneration and bandicoot monitoring would be an opportunity for more formal

84 interviews. However, these activities often involved sitting in the hot sun pulling, hacking, levering, and sweating over asparagus fern, aloe vera, fishbone fern and lantana, and ‘bush bashing’ during which we would crawl, scramble, trip and fight our way across the scrub. These hot, exhausting situations did not lend themselves to concentrated thinking and I am sure that any recording device would have quickly been lost in the bush or accidentally thrown into the white tarpaulin bags along with the weeds. Informal conservations with the NPWS staff and other volunteers involved in the activities were used more as a background to the interviews themselves. They were a chance for me to develop an understanding of the work involved in managing a national park and therefore enabled me to ask more informed questions in subsequent interviews. More than this though, these experiences highlighted the agency of the bush as the hot sun and rugged terrain caused me to change my initial plans and ideas.

Two volunteers agreed to take me on a tour of a particular area of the park. I wrote the following reflection after completing the first ‘walking interview’:

Today I had an interview with one of the volunteers; it was the first one that was conducted ‘on-the-move’. At first I was a little unsure about how to conduct an interview whilst walking, a lot of researchers have conducted them before but often in smaller spaces such as a backyard. So I was a bit unsure about how I would go about it – ask my questions whilst walking, would this mean that my interviewee and I would miss paying attention to the environment as we were discussing the topics that I brought up. I thought that this would mean that I would be somewhat dominating the conversations through the cues given and questions asked, although the semi- structured interview style does allow the interviewee to somewhat influence the conversation, I thought that if I asked the questions whilst walking my questions would not be connected to the surroundings and as such the interviewee and the conversation would be more influenced by my questions rather than the surroundings. So I decided to have a bit of a chat with the volunteer before we went on the walk. We spoke for about an hour then we went walking around the mangrove walk and up the Gibberagong track for a little bit. I think that this method worked well as it allowed the volunteer to walk through an area of the park that they had chosen and wanted to talk about, but also having just spoken to me they also had already got into the groove of

sharing stories and chatting to me freely. So we walked through the track and the volunteer shared knowledge about the track and park. She told me information about the flora and fauna in the area and general knowledge that she had accumulated such as the impact of tides (similar information that she would share with school groups) but she also spoke of different stories and events that had occurred in her previous outings along the track and in the park in general (Reflection, 27 February 2013).

The other walking interview with a volunteer was conducted as we walked from Cowan station to Jerusalem Bay. The Jerusalem Bay Trail (see Map 2) is around five kilometres return and is one that this volunteer frequently led walks along. We had planned to chat whilst walking along the trail. However it was raining when we met up at Cowan station, so instead we sat at the station and had a chat while waiting for the rain to ease. However, the rain continued and we ended up walking in the rain. We therefore were not able to conduct the interview whilst walking the trail as this would have meant any recording device or note books would have become wet quite quickly. Instead, we finished our interview over lunch at a nearby café after returning from the walk.

The interviews themselves acted as supplementary material to the ‘data’ I collected as a result of being witness to or participating in volunteering activities and NPWS work experience. As best I could, I actively opened up the interview process to the affective nature of more-than- human encounters. Through being in the park and paying close attention to the ways in which conversations were altered by other-than-human actors, I aimed to put engaged witnessing into practice through semi-structured interviews.

Participant observation and interviews allowed me to look at the agency of humans in the park.

In particular these two research methods made it possible to view and experience the differences between what the human managers of the park said, and what they did. For

86 example human managers, when asked direct questions in interviews often conceptualised phenomenon more dualistically, than in conversations and practices that happened in the field.

Similar to Hitchings and Jones’ (2004) study of gardens, observing how people talk about nature and how they interact with nature allowed an understanding of the developing relationships between and performances of people and nature. In addition the combination of these methods allowed me to focus on the agency of humans in ways that ‘neither presume that socio-material change is an exclusively human achievement nor exclude the ‘human’ from the stuff of fabrication’ (Whatmore 2006: 604). This then allowed me to unsettle the notion of human and nonhuman agency, to uncover the multiple and messy ways that the categories of human and nonhuman are performed in Ku-ring-gai Chase in partial and complex ways.

3.3.7 Staging human-nonhuman encounters There are a number of challenges involved in finding ways to observe and experience nonhuman and human behaviours and encounters without privileging human voices. Whilst acknowledging that this may not be completely possible, I supplemented the observation of humans in Ku-ring-gai Chase with more directed participant observation of the nonhuman forces in the park as a way of attempting to overcome some of the challenges. Directed participant observation of nonhumans involved ‘following them’ and observing their behaviours and interactions with the practices of management. In becoming attuned to the presence and actions of nonhumans I aimed to ‘unearth the complex web of relations between humans and non-humans ... [in] an attempt to accord non-humans their due place in the construction of the world’ (Ruming 2009: 453-454).

Through extended periods of fieldwork I attempted to put ideas of engaged witnessing into practice through attending to multi-sensual, and more-than-human encounters in Ku-ring-gai

Chase. By being in the park in the ‘grip of encounter’ I paid close attention to the ways in which more-than-human bodies, objects and forces all came together to impact on each other and the research process. Being open to the impact of other-than-human agents involves ‘learning to be affected’ (Latour 2004: 205) and acknowledging that research is a collective endeavour in which the researcher and the researched are changed through fieldwork. Fieldwork therefore involved encountering, being with, learning from and learning with nonhumans (Hinchliffe et al. 2005).

Hitchings and Jones’ (2004) paper is a retrospective look at work that they have done and methods that they have used to research the nonhuman. In the paper they reflect on two studies that they previously completed and identify useful techniques and review how they worked to highlight the agency of plants. These ideas are useful for understanding possibilities of nonhuman research, and their paper also indicates that in nonhuman research you need to get out into the field, and get amongst nonhumans first before appropriate methods can be ironed out and created. This means that you can have ideas of what you are studying and how best to do it, but in the end the nonhumans themselves will influence what you do, how you understand what you do, and the results and methods that are produced. I therefore argue that researching the nonhuman is a collaborative process, not just in the creation of results, but also in the creation of methods. Being open to the affective nature of encounters also involves acknowledging the power of the other-than-human agents you are encountering.

Therefore, my practices of engaged witnessing involved attending to the specific otherness of the agency of nonhumans.

3.3.8 Following the nonhuman The ways that I attempted to ‘learn to be affected’ and to attend to nonhuman otherness within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park involved spending time following nonhumans such as the weather, plants, animals, soil and rubbish, and observing how they encountered each other and humans in order to produce management. The following is a reflection of an attempt to open myself to being affected by my surroundings, through a practice of ‘attentive wandering’:

Today I did some ‘attentive wandering’ at Bobbin Head. The idea behind attentive wandering was to walk around and be influenced by my surroundings. I would try and go in without any preconceived notions of what I might do and what I might see, rather I would just walk around and see what took my interest. When doing this I would always try and walk differently, around the edges, zigzag across the middle, slowly, quickly, looking up, looking down. Bobbin Head picnic area was a good place for attentive wandering as it combined many different aspects of the park – it was right on the water so there was a chance to engage with and observe water-dwelling creatures such as crabs, fish, boats, fishermen, canoes, birds, and so on. Bobbin Head also housed a variety of wildlife as many creatures such as kookaburras, lace monitors, magpies and crows were attracted to the open grasslands, the sun that poured through the scattered trees, and the food scraps left by people. Also, having humans present makes it possible to view how the humans and nonhuman elements of the park interact with each other. I previously attempted attentive wandering along tracks and trails, however I found that this type of activity was better suited to an open picnic area than a narrow walking trail. Along the walking trails there was less opportunity to be moved by the surroundings, as the direction of the wander was very much dictated by the flow of the trail. In addition to the trampling of vegetation that occurs through walking off track, attentive wandering off track in the dense scrub and forests could lead to me becoming lost quite quickly (Reflection, 21 March 2013).

To highlight the role that nonhumans play in Ku-ring-gai Chase I planned to closely follow the behaviours, movements and encounters of certain nonhumans within the park that are seen as iconic, desirable or beneficial, and also ones that are seen as nuisances or pests. Although that sounded good in theory, when I got into the field it proved harder than I imagined.

Initially I did a lot of experimenting and generally just tried a variety of different tactics based on the methods of a number of more-than-human studies (see for example Bear 2011; Collard

2012; Hitchings and Jones 2004; Longhurst 2006; and Waitt et al. 2009). One way that I went about ‘encountering the nonhuman’ or opening myself up to the affective qualities of nonhumans in Ku-ring-gai Chase was through staging physical encounters with certain individual nonhumans. I went into the park on several occasions with the intention of following the movements or effects of a particular nonhuman. Sometimes I planned what I would do and

I would go to a particular area of the park and actively engage a particular nonhuman, or group of nonhumans. At other times I would happen across a nonhuman that would spark my interest (as per ‘attentive wandering’). I literally followed some nonhumans, some with greater success than others. For example, the lace monitor that I followed around for a morning at

Bobbin Head seemed to just ignore me and go about his day. However the Eastern Grey

Kangaroos who are in a large enclosure were not happy with the arrangement (see Chapter 12 for more details on this encounter).

The following is an excerpt from my field notes from the day I followed the lace monitor around Bobbin Head:

After lunch I decided to do some ‘attentive wandering’ to see what took my attention, however on the way back to the car to drop off my lunch stuff I was distracted by a lace monitor that took off from its hiding place as I approached. So I decide to follow him, and take the ‘following the nonhuman’ literally. (I have assumed he is male, but I really have no idea). I sit on top of a picnic table near where he is wandering and stay still. He doesn’t seem to notice, or mind my presence. The noisy minors which can always be counted on for notifying people of the presence of lizards, lace monitors or snakes, are squawking profusely and swooping the lace monitor. The lace monitor moves very slowly when not startled by, or trying to get away from, a person or car, and his tongue is constantly flicking in and out as he senses his surroundings [see Figure 3-1]. He walked towards me then turned away. His legs flick

out wide as he walks. As he moves away from the picnic table I get slowly down and walk towards him. I must look mad; it’s a quiet day at Bobbin Head, only a few families with young children playing on the playground. One lone girl following a lace monitor, taking long but exaggerated slow steps, notebook and pen in hand, does not fit with normal Bobbin Head behaviour. The lace monitor often walks in circles, and I follow. He has a big fat belly that almost drags along the ground. For some reason he reminds me a little of a dog. Occasionally he flattens himself, trying to absorb the sun. I try and keep as still as possible, like a tree, so as not to startle him. But I try and not get too close – I am worried my tree impression may be too good and I don’t fancy those long claws scampering up my body. He never walked in straight lines, often he would freeze and move his head around if I got too close, so I would stand very still and after a little while he would continue on his way and ignore me (Field diary excerpt, 21 March 2013).

Figure 3-1 Lace monitor that I followed around Bobbin Head (Source: Author, 21 March 2013)

Following Collard (2012), I looked at the ways in which spaces are changed by actors, as a way of witnessing the work that goes into maintenance of spaces on a daily basis. These changes do not have to be as drastic as causing spaces to completely break down, but can be more subtle in altering the feel or meaning of space. Collard (2012) argues that people often attempt to create safe spaces – for example people put up fences, buy sheep and create pastoral lands –

91 but these boundaries are porous. Often the porosity of these boundaries goes unnoticed – small animals run in and out unnoticed, runoff from rain travels through – but on occasion the movement of actors alters the space and can make them unsafe, for example when a cougar breaks a fence barrier and threatens lives and livelihoods.

Whilst conducting my fieldwork I looked for the porosity of boundaries by looking at how the presence of new actors made spaces different. An example of this can be seen in the below field diary excerpt:

I was sitting at the Kalkari desk with two other volunteers. A mother with two young children had just walked through the centre to the Discovery Trail. One of the young boys however came back to the desk. Two small hands reached up the top of the desk to lift his head high enough to see us, excuse me, but do you know what type of snake that is, out there on the rock? he asked. After a little confusion, the yellow spotty one, he confirmed. The volunteers and I assumed he meant the dot painting of the snake on the rock just outside the Kalkari door. But we followed him out and found his mother and sister standing around a large diamond python curled up by a rock. They were taking photos of it and getting quite close. They were however taken by surprise when one of the volunteers assured them that the snake wasn’t a display and was in fact a real live snake. The mother was a little put off, but the kids were ecstatic. After a while the family continued to walk around the Discovery Trail, but before they got back another mother and her children had walked into Kalkari to ask where they could see the snake that they had been sent photos of. The excitement began again as the kids began yelling, waving and pointing as they showed their friends the snake. Soon after heading back to the office we noticed the kids jumping around and waving their arms [see Figure 3-2]. After going out to investigate we saw the python moving up into a nearby tree. The branches bowing under the snake’s weight. That afternoon the snake was a big hit, and Kalkari was a buzz of excitement. Would you like to see a snake? the volunteers would ask as visitors came into the centre, which was often followed by the reassurance that Yes, it is a real wild snake, but no it will not hurt you. (Field diary excerpt, 25 January 2013)

Figure 3-2 Kids and parents looking at the Diamond python at Kalkari (the snake can be seen in front of the rock, making its way towards the tree) (Source: Author, 25 January 2013)

By looking at the way that this snake disrupted the normal flows of Kalkari, we can begin to see the work that goes into creating Kalkari. The python was seen by some as a danger, not only in itself but also due to what it represented – if there is one snake inside the Kalkari grounds, then there could be others. The snake not only created Kalkari as a dangerous space, but also an exciting one, highlighting the prospects of discovering something new, different or surprising.

3.3.9 Encountering individual persons I then faced questions of how to follow nonhumans who didn’t move such as plants? M. Hall

(2011) argues for the importance of considering plants when he states that: [m]ost places of Earth which contain life are visibly plantscapes. Whether they walk in human transformed habitats or in wilderness, human beings are far more likely to encounter plants than any other type of living being (Hall, M. 2011: 3). My first conscious attempt at following a non-moving nonhuman was with the angophora trees. I had previously been told by a Traditional Owner of the land that these trees were

93 special and that I should pay attention to them. So I set off into the park in an attempt to find and learn about these trees. Though at first they were hard to identify, I was soon able to recognise them easily. I found that there was an easily accessible cluster of these trees along a walking trail not far from Bobbin Head, which is the most popular picnic area in the park. So on many different occasions I went to this area with the intention of ‘encountering’ the angophora. And I found that I usually noticed something different every time (see Chapter 14 for more details on my encounters with the angophora). Hitchings and Jones (2004) suggest that understanding the agency of nonhumans, such as trees, requires intense engagement with all senses, not just vision. Therefore I learned about the angophora through encounter, being there with them, touching them, smelling them, seeing them, hearing them.

I often set off into the area with different ideas of how I would encounter these trees. It was initially an off-putting process. Unlike reading written material or conducting an interview, there were no logical steps that I could rationalise. At first I was anxious to conduct ‘proper research’ and stuck with the limits of my humanness. I then took a step back and began to simply focus on the trees, what was happening to me, and what was happening around me. I would draw a number of them, focus on what I could hear, look at what other species are found around them, what colour are they, how many limbs they had, what the foliage cover was like, the angle of their trunks.

By practising engaged witnessing I was able to shift my perspective and put my anxieties to rest by paying close attention to the encounter. Instead of looking to the trees to tell me answers, I simply sat with them. I sat with different individual trees; I looked at the differences between them and their similarities. Bear (2011) argues that in order to take seriously nonhuman

94 difference we should focus on individual animals, rather than collectives, such as species. Bear

(2011) closely observed the movements and activities of Angelica, an octopus in an aquarium.

He monitored her interactions with aquarium visitors and staff members on many occasions and also talked to employees about her behaviour and personality. I used these ideas and tried to look at the angophora as individuals, rather than as part of a collective, so I focused on how the trees were different and what each individual tree could show me. The notion of focusing on tree communications came from M. Hall’s (2011) notions of ‘plants as persons’. He suggests that plants can be understood through the concept of personhood, where persons are those with whom we interact, with varying degrees of reciprocity. They are living beings that have the ability to communicate in their own unique ways (Hall, M. 2011).

The individual angophora trees told me stories, of themselves and of the collective. I spent time with individual trees and tried to think about them as persons, and about what they were communicating to me. I generally found that being in the field helped me to see the angophora trees differently. I also thought about this whilst I was conducting work experience and other activities in the park to see how these trees communicated to other people. So for example the trees were often an indicator to NPWS employees of recent fire and the conditions the approaching summer would bring through the shedding of their bark. One Indigenous tour guide told me that they indicated that you were entering a women’s area.

As well as being with trees, I also collected stories about them. Through walking in the park, and walking and talking with volunteers and park staff, I paid attention to the stories that were told to me by people, and stories on park signs and in books. One group of stories, for example, is about the lumps and bumps that are all over the angophoras. To some these are naughty

95 children who have been put inside the tree as a punishment for mucking up on a walk, to others the lumps were scars from an insect infestation, or remnants of fallen branches. Others said that because the trees are seen as women’s trees the lumps are thought to represent the female body. These stories and my own experiences of the angophora provoked me to question the types of knowledge that are used within management, particularly in management plans and policy documents.

3.3.10 Dadirri What needs to be reiterated at this stage is the importance of understanding Ku-ring-gai Chase as an Indigenous place. On the surface national parks can be seen as spaces full of visitor and management facilities and infrastructure such as signage, barriers, fences, roads, toilet blocks, boat ramps and pathways, which often mean the Indigenous significance of the place is overlooked or presented as an exhibit or attraction. I therefore argue that practices of engaged witnessing need to be undertaken in a way that reminds us that we are on Indigenous land and that encounters with the park will always be a colonial experience. I therefore suggest that engaged witnessing can utilise the Indigenous concept of Dadirri as a way of respectfully and responsibly being in the park that acknowledges the colonial heritage and the always present

‘buried epistemologies’ of colonial thought (Willems-Braun: 1997). Dadirri involves deep listening with respect: In paying attention to different ways of knowing and being, new sensibilities can emerge. The concept of Dadirri offers a different way of knowing and being. Dadirri is about being profoundly aware and respectful. It is about being patient and taking the time that is needed (Brearley et al. 2008: 158).

Atkinson (2002) is credited with first utilising Dadirri as a research methodology. She states the following as the main principles and functions of Dadirri:

A knowledge and consideration of community and the diversity and unique nature that each individual brings to community; a non-intrusive observation, or quietly aware watching; a deep listening and hearing with more than ears; a reflective non- judgemental consideration of what is being seen and heard; and, having actions informed by learning, wisdom, and the informed responsibility that comes with knowledge (Atkinson 2002: 16, original emphasis). Although Dadirri is often used as a way of learning about, and learning from Aboriginal people and communities, I utilised the notions of ‘deep listening and hearing with more than ears’ as a way of learning about and learning from my surroundings in Ku-ring-gai Chase. Dadirri reminds us that engaged witnessing needs to be enacted in certain sorts of ways that are respectful of the Indigenous connection to place and country. Through practices of engaged witnessing and listening, watching and learning I attempted to learn to see the park differently (I talk more about my experiences of Dadirri in Chapter 14).

3.4 Unchartable methodologies A messy, at times chaotic and always experimental methodology has been used to open up the research to the range of more-than-human, more-than-cognitive ways that Ku-ring-gai Chase is actively performed. What needs to be reiterated at this point is that this research understands all knowledge as a co-fabrication. All my writings, stories and musings are reflections of my being in place, and engaging and communicating in various ways with more-than-human, more-than-nonhuman agencies who came to impact on the research directly or from afar, in small and large ways, but who nevertheless co-fabricated the knowledges of this project.

I have tried to develop a varied range of practices of ‘engaged witnessing’. To the best of my ability I have carried out each of these practices (even the more human focused ones) with respect and consideration of the other-than-human actors and the messy, multiple and conflicting ways that they come together to impact on each other. The ‘patchwork and

97 haphazard’ (Tsing 2005: xi) conglomeration of practices of engaged witnessing I have assembled do not aim for perfection but rather accept that mess is a constituent part of research (Law 2004). I argue that by becoming open to the movements, flows and actions of the human and other-than-human actors, practices of engaged witnessing can be used as a reflexive methodology that acknowledges the co-fabrication of partners and knowledges and is respectful of Ku-ring-gai Chase as an Indigenous place. I argue that through these practices of engaged witnessing we can see how Tsing’s notion of the ‘grip of encounter’ is enacted. The openness to being affected that I advocate under engaged witnessing allows the researcher to become immersed in the mess of encounters and witness the generative nature of awkward and unequal engagements.

I do not claim my practices of engaged witnessing are the best or most appropriate way to study the more-than-human. Rather, I argue practices of engaged witnessing allow for an appreciation and awareness of the transformational and affective nature of more-than-human research. Through a focus on the sensory and productive nature of more-than-human encounters, we can pay close attention to the ‘performativity of life’ and: the multitude of repeated actions that make up everyday life: to the many small gestures and postures that configure the social world, and in so doing reconfigure the very bodies that perform them (Clark 2003: 165). Such fleeting moments can be a challenge to research, but as Nash (2000: 657) argues, the challenge is therefore ‘not to chart it but to find ways of writing about its unchartability’. It is this challenge that I take up in the following chapters. I not turn to trace my coming to terms with co-fabricated research through exploring the ‘grip of encounters’ that perform what is national park nature (Part 2), what belongs in a national park (Part 3) and management in national park (Part 4).

Part 2: Frictions of defining and performing Ku-ring-gai Chase

99 Swamp wallaby in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and The Basin Picnic Ground Wharf (Source: Author) Chapter 4 Introduction to Part 2

Globalised notions of national parks shape land and people in particular ways. They are based on a set of presumptions about what a national park is and what it should look like. They also enlist a set of practices and actions to ensure that visitors who enter a national park are made aware that they are entering an area of national park nature, and specialness of this place is impressed upon them. Following Tsing, Part 2 of this thesis examines a number of universal notions of what a national park is and how they come to fruition in Ku-ring-gai Chase National

Park.

I utilise Tsing’s notion of ‘sticky engagements’ in Part 2 as a way of acknowledging that universals do not simply land in particular spaces. Instead, they have to be enacted, and through this enactment the ‘stickiness of engagements’ causes the particularities of localities to become active in producing differences in irregularities. I explore the ‘sticky materiality of practical encounters’ that ‘give grip’ to universal notions of national parks and national park nature as they land in Ku-ring-gai Chase (Tsing 2005: 1).

By focusing on the stickiness of encounters I argue that universals of national park nature could be understood differently, not as homogenising universals but as ‘engaged universals’.

‘Engaged universals,’ argues Tsing, ‘travel across difference and are charged and changed by their travels. Through friction, universals become practically effective. Yet they can never fulfil their promise of universality’ (Tsing 2005: 8). Rather than seeking truths, Tsing (2005) argues that we need to pay attention to the way in which knowledge moves. In this regard, the following five chapters look at how different definitions of what a national park is move in and

100 through Ku-ring-gai Chase, become stuck, bent, are given power, create change, are changed and float off. Universals become sticky and messy through travel.

Through the lens of materiality and performativity, Part 2 applies Tsing’s ideas of friction to performances of national park nature. Part 2 also explores how local specificities impact on the ways in which ideas, universals and events come together, and the difference that is produced.

These encounters therefore do not produce one pure nature, but rather multiple and differing natures through moments of friction.

To explore the ways in which universal notions of what a national park is travel and are put to work in Ku-ring-gai Chase, I examine five performances of the national park which highlight the ways in which the specific area of Ku-ring-gai Chase is brought into being as national park nature in multiple, messy and often conflicting ways. I suggest that through these performances, universals are put to work, ignored, transformed and made messy in ways that make certain natures discernible in the park. The following chapters aim to explore a number of stories which unravel ideas of a national park as a space of special nature, as a service provider, as a space of recreation and an Indigenous landscape. I argue that all of these conceptualisations of what a national park is are brought into being through the performances of more than human actors.

Chapter 5 will explore the ways in which the tensions between the old and new paradigms, and between colonial and Indigenous understandings of national park nature, are often silenced in universal notions of national park nature. Universals do not allow for other ways of being with nature that do not see a national park as a defined space that requires preservation from destructive human actions. I argue that when we position categories and laws as universal, we

101 silence multiple knowledges of what national parks are or could be. This is not to deny the power or importance of universal notions of national park nature – quite the opposite. I argue that universals are active in the performances of national parks, but this does not mean that they fulfil their dream of universality. Universals become a more-than-human agency that is not representative of national parks, but is active in the performances of national park nature.

Universals become engaged as they travel and are performed.

In Chapter 6 I examine the ways in which the Kalkari Discovery Centre and the signage within

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park position national parks as spaces of special native nature that people can experience or discover. I argue that these interpretive devices are active in the performance of Ku-ring-gai Chase as special nature as they actively condition park visitors through influencing what and how people see as national park nature. Through examining the ways the interpretative devices position nature in the national park, and what they reveal to visitors, I suggest that the interpretive devices shape visitor behaviour and encourage performances of national parks as special native nature. As such the interpretive devices are active in the performances of the old paradigm understanding of national parks. As such, universals of nature-as-wilderness help shape the interpretive devices but are also reinforced and perpetuated through them.

In Chapter 7 I examine the ways in which volunteers discipline visitor bodies to reinforce ideas of national parks as special wilderness. I argue that the volunteers regulate bodies by ensuring the park visitors are aware of the specialness of the park and are educated about what is considered appropriate behaviours in the park including staying on tracks, removing rubbish and not lighting fires. Through taking visitors on guided walks and running the visitors’ centre,

102 the volunteers are able to reinforce a particular notion of what a national park is through their own individual performances and through conditioning visitor bodies. Through disciplining visitor bodies and minds, the volunteers are active in the performances of national park nature as an essential nature, separate from humans. The volunteers build on the ‘old paradigm’ as established by the interpretive devices and reinforce universal ideas of national parks.

However, by looking at the ways in which the NPWS employees perform the park, several tensions emerge which highlight the messy and multiple ways in which universals of nature are brought into being in the park. The NPWS employees, acting under government legislation and policies, perform the park as a service provider, a position aligned with the ‘new paradigm’. I highlight that political pressures often mean that NPWS employees are obliged to perform Ku- ring-gai Chase as a space that provides customer service as a recreational resource, yet the employees often personally feel that these ideas go against ideas of conservation, which is what they think the role of national parks is. A tension therefore exists between national parks for nature’s sake, and parks for people. There is also a tension between the operations of the staff which can be seen to align with the new paradigm of national parks and the performances of the volunteers and interpretive devices which are more firmly grounded in old ways of seeing national parks as special wilderness. I use these tensions to highlight that universals do not simply land on the ground and become seamlessly enacted; instead, a focus on these tensions reveals the ‘stickiness’ of encounters and contentions between different universal notions of what a national park is.

In Chapter 9, I examine the multiple ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase is performed as an

Indigenous landscape. I argue that a tension emerges around understanding Ku-ring-gai Chase

103 as a past and present Indigenous landscape, and that this tension also highlights the multiplicity of natures that are performed in the park. Part 2 therefore aims to highlight how multiple different human and nonhuman actors are active in the co-fabrication of Ku-ring-gai

Chase National Park.

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Chapter 5 Categorising and legislating national parks

Ideas of protected areas, their use and roles have changed dramatically since 1872 when the first national park, Yellowstone National Park, was created in Wyoming, in the US (Adams

2009: 487; Cronon 1995b: 69). Yellowstone National Park marked the beginning of a number of designations of areas of land that were set aside to protect the monumental and grand beauty of pristine US wilderness (Cronon 1995b; Schelhas 2001). The idea of protecting areas of the natural environment from the destructive effects of the expanding human population was extended to areas outside of the US and soon became the dominant way of understanding protected areas and their management (Adams 2009).

As protected areas emerged, so too did ideas that these spaces required human management to ensure the continuation of ‘natural’ features. Today, protected areas (and their adequate and correct management) are seen as an essential part of conservation strategies (NPA 2013b).

Protected areas currently cover about 12 per cent of the world’s land surface and range from highly protected sites that are isolated from human populations to sites that are recognised for their cultural and recreational significance and are less restricted in terms of land use (Dudley

2008: vii). Since the 1930s desires for a universal standard for protected areas led to the creation and use of a number of different categorisation systems (Dudley 2008; Phillips 2004).

The current system, developed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature

(IUCN) in 1994, comprises six categories of protected areas that are based on differing management requirements (Phillips 2004). Today the categories are used worldwide as a guide for how protected areas should be designed and managed (Adams 2009).

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However, there are a number of theorists (see for example Bowker and Star 1999; Cronon

1995a; and Jones 2009) who argue that categorisation is a problematic human phenomenon.

Cronon (1995a) argues that creating categories is problematic as it acts to perpetuate certain ideas of what ‘nature’ is and what it should look like, while also suggesting that these ideas are universal and self-evident. As I have highlighted earlier, it is now argued that there is no overarching theory to explain nature, as there is no ‘pure nature’ out there waiting to be discovered. Instead, humans and nonhumans are always acting with and against each other to perform nature in sticky and material engagements. The multiple visions of nature and the in- between messy natures that do not fit neatly into categories are ignored within universalised notions. The following section looks at the ways in which national and international categorisations of protected areas are active in creating certain natures and the ways in which universal understandings of what a national park is do not just land in park setting but are created through local and situated engagements.

5.1 International ideas of protected areas Since the first attempt to categorise protected areas at the International Conference for the

Protection of Flora and Fauna in 1933, there have been a number of changes to the terminology used to identify the different types of protected areas, and to what the designations mean for management (Dudley 2008: 3). The IUCN was founded in 1948 as the

‘world’s first global environmental organisation’ (IUCN 2014a). In 1978, in response to the absence of universal consistency among nations in relation to how to define and categorise protected areas, an IUCN report announced a ten-category system that grouped protected areas according to how they should be managed (Phillips 2008: 7). These categories were replaced in 1994 by an adjusted six-category system that was primarily based on management

106 objectives. The new system, developed by the IUCN, was similar to its predecessor but had clearer guidelines and offered a universal definition of protected areas which the 1978 version lacked (Phillips 2004: 7-10).

Under the 1994 guidelines a protected area was defined as an ‘area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means’

(Dudley 2008: 4). The categories are as follows (Dudley 2008: 4):

I – Strict protection – [Ia) strict nature reserve and Ib) wilderness area] II – Ecosystem conservation and protection (i.e., national park) III – Conservation of natural features (i.e., natural monument) IV – Conservation through active management (i.e., habitat/species management areas) V – Landscape/seascape conservation and recreation (i.e. protected landscape/seascape) VI – Sustainable use of natural resources (i.e., managed resource protected area) The changes in categories from the 1978 to 1994 involved the inclusion of marine, a special emphasis on the protection of biodiversity, the introduction of the idea that human management is necessary to protect these spaces, and the inclusion of the protection of cultural resources found within areas of natural significance (Phillips 2004: 10).

The 1994 categories represented a shift from understanding protected areas as pristine wilderness, as was established by the original Yellowstone model, towards understanding them as spaces of cultural significance. It is suggested that this shift was occurring in the decades leading up to the creation of the 1994 categories but it was not until the IUCN World Parks

Congress 2003 in Durban, South Africa that the change was formally recognised and given the

107 title of the ‘new paradigm’ (Phillips 2003:6). The new paradigm reworks the traditional separation of humans and ‘nature’ to recognise the importance of human-nature relations for protected areas and their management (Phillips 2003). The new paradigm recognises that protected areas are no longer spaces of spectacular scenic and wildlife value that need to be

‘set aside’ mainly for the enjoyment of tourists and visitors; they are now recognised and utilised for scientific, economic, cultural and recreational purposes. The paradigm shift involved a move from seeing protected areas as isolated islands to understanding and managing them as ‘networks’. The protected area category was also widened to include the restoration and rehabilitation of nature, and an acknowledgment that ‘wilderness’ areas did not have to be spaces completely free from human interference but could be areas of cultural significance (Phillips 2003).

The shift to the new paradigm also came out of the desires of local and Indigenous populations to have their rights, needs and cultures recognised within the running and management of these spaces. As such, the new paradigm involved a shift so that protected areas were managed with, for and often by, local or Indigenous groups. It is recognised within the new paradigm that local and Indigenous groups are the main beneficiaries of certain protected areas and as such the site needs to be managed in order to suit their needs and desires (Phillips

2003; Worboys et al. 2005). The new paradigm also broadened management techniques from being strictly scientific and led by natural resource experts, to management involving an adaptive and diverse skill range, including local knowledge that is sensitive to the political landscape of the time (Phillips 2003). Despite this, human-initiated management was still seen as essential to ensuring the continuation of protected areas.

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The IUCN categories and new paradigm highlight the significance of protected areas on an international scale and present them as defined spaces of important nature that can be used and enjoyed by humans. The ‘human’ focused shift exemplified by the new paradigm is understood by some as degrading the potential of protected areas. As Locke and Dearden

(2005: 1) state the ‘very purpose of PAs is the protection of wild biodiversity’, and:

[w]ild biodiversity will not be well served by adoption of this new paradigm, which will devalue conservation biology, undermine the creation of more strictly protected reserves, inflate the amount of area in reserves and place people at the centre of the protected area agenda at the expense of wild biodiversity (Locke and Dearden 2005: 1).

Despite critiques such as Locke and Dearden’s, the development of an international categorisation system and paradigm suggests that protected areas across the globe can be universally recognised, understood and managed. Tensions around what constitutes a protected area are ignored within the categorisation system and paradigm. However, if we look at these categories as being performative, a different notion of protected areas comes to light. Jones (2009) suggests that categories are not simply about describing phenomena but are actively involved in the creation and understanding of the world. Instead of seeing categories as stable and fixed, he argues that we need to:

acknowledge that every concept or category is socially constructed. Yes, there is a real world out there, but as humans who experience the world through our bodies and senses, we understand it only from a particular perspective based on our knowledge and relationship with it (Jones 2009: 175). Creating universal categories of protected areas is therefore not a description of a universal truth of nature; instead the process of categorising actively brings natures into being. What is important to note is that the physical environment does not organise itself into these

109 categorical forms; this is an entirely human way of making sense of the world (Bowker and Star

1999; Cronon 1995a).

The use of universal categories, therefore, does not just perpetuate certain ideas of what nature is and what it should look like. Categories are actively involved in the performance and creation of natures. Universal categories imply a need for a consistent definition of protected areas and guidelines on how they should be managed. This suggests that areas of protected nature across the globe are similar in how they can be best managed and understood.

However, if we think about the vastly different types of environments that are currently being protected it is hard to imagine how all of these could fit neatly into the six categories.

The paradigm shift and the proposal for a common understanding of protected areas and their management is therefore problematic in that it ignores fundamental cultural differences in ideas of what nature is, what nature should be protected, and how to do this. The Australian context in particular reveals that a universal understanding of protected area nature is problematic. In Australia it is now understood that the Indigenous people have always impacted on and altered the environment. This relatively recent change has meant that

Australian national parks can no longer be viewed as untouched wilderness. Although, as I will show, tensions have still emerged around how the acknowledgement of Indigenous impact is recognised within park management. The next section describes the history of protected areas in Australia and sheds light on how universal understandings are not as straightforward as they are often assumed to be.

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5.2 Australian context In Australia most protected areas are managed at the state government level. In NSW the state government agency, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), manages around 800 protected areas which cover around 8.4% of the total land area, or 6.7 million hectares, and an additional 345,000 hectares of marine parks and reserves (Park 2010: 1). NSW parks and reserves are popular attractions and currently receive around 22 million visitors annually

(NPWS 2006d).

The history of protected areas in NSW began with the designation of the Jenolan Caves Reserve in 1866, which was subsequently followed by the creation of the first national park in Australia

(second in the world), Royal National Park, south of Sydney (Park 2010: 1). Royal National Park was then created as a refuge, to ensure the ‘health and vigour’ of the Sydney community through allowing them a natural space for rest and recreation. It was hoped that the park would ‘stand as a beautiful reserve, possessing undisturbed the best of its natural grandeur in the midst of a dense population’ (NPWS 2006d: 8). Carruthers’ (1997) argues that national pride was difficult to muster during the 19th century due to the stark differences in Australian and British landscapes. To the early British colonisers Australia’s landscape was viewed as

‘gentle and park-like, but it soon demonstrated that it was a harsh and unyielding environment’ (Carruthers 1997: 125). It’s strange and unusual flora and fauna were initially viewed with disdain and as such, early colonisers set out to convert the landscape to mirror the lush and open parklands of their imperial home (Robin and Griffiths 2004). Royal National Park was created in this image, and therefore is much more representative of the colonial connections of Australia, than of US ideals of protecting pristine wilderness (Robin 2013).

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Carruthers (1997: 129) argues that during early colonisation, patriotism in Australia was much more based on imperial or parochial connections, than ideas of a nation or nationalism. This was exacerbated by the remote and sparse nature of white settlements at the time. During this time white colonisers were not concerned with protecting wildlife from extinction as it was assumed that these ‘unusual creatures were doomed to extinction anyway, because they could not compete against more advanced forms of life’ (Carruthers 1997: 130). However, the creation of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in 1894, Australia’s second national park, can be seen as a shift in understanding towards protected areas and the Australian landscape. As I mentioned previously, Ku-ring-gai Chase was the first national park in Australia to be created primarily for the conservation of nature, in particular to protect the wildflowers in the park

(Park 2010: 1). This can be understood as representing a shift towards valuing and preserving the unique and diverse Australian landscapes and native species.so that the ‘unfamiliar’ and

‘strange’ natural world became valued rather than denigrated (Robin 2013).

It is argued that the creation of national parks is often a merely symbolic gesture by governments to show their commitment to conservation and the international community

(Carruthers 1997; O’Neil 1996). However, the creation of Ku-ring-gai Chase at a time when

Australia was on the cusp of becoming a nation, suggests that Ku-ring-gai Chase was much more a nationalistic symbol, than an international one. When talking of the importance of national parks for the nation Carruthers (1997: 125) suggests ‘the word carries with it connotation which were expressed by the Sydney Morning Herald in 1888, “’Nation’ is a big word to use but there is dignity in it and pride… though, it is rather the symbol of what shall be than the expression of what is…”’. Therefore although Ku-ring-gai Chase was created several years before the federation of Australia in 1901, it can be seen as representative of an

112 emerging national identity and shifting ideas of the purpose of national parks (Carruthers 1997;

Robin 2013).

Around the turn of the twentieth century national parks in Australia were seen as spaces to be set aside for people and to protect the land from the spread of the industrialised world. These ideas linked people and nature more closely together and suggested that national parks and other reserves were necessary to allow people access to nature. These spaces were not just important for the sake of the nonhuman, but also the health and wellbeing of humans, especially those living in urban areas (Adams 2012). As Adams (2012) states ‘[n]ature was important for its beauty or rarity but also for its significance to human society at a time of rapid change [and as such] [n]ational parks embody deeply rooted ideas about national identity”.

This shift was further exacerbated during the 1930s and ‘40s when a significant number of parks were added to the reserve system, due to interest sparked by bushwalkers and a changing appreciation of the uniqueness of the Australian bush (Park 2010; Harper 2007). The early history of national parks in Australia therefore suggests that universal ideas of what a national park is do not just land in park spaces but arise from the sticky, situated and messy frictions of the local. Ideas of national parks in Australia changed again with the introduction of new state legislation.

In 1967 the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1967 (NSW) ‘was the first systematic attempt to create a system of national parks, state parks and nature reserves in NSW, and the first legislation of its kind in Australia’ (Park 2010: 2). Prior to the 1967 NP&W Act, the associated legislation at the time (Wild Flowers and Native Plant Protection Act 1927 and the Fauna

Protection Act 1948 (NSW)), held that only certain desirable or beautiful flora and fauna

113 species (i.e. only selected natives) should be protected, and not that they should be protected for their intrinsic value, or for the purposes of maintaining biodiversity (Smith 1998: 2). The Act also ‘provided for the permanent protection, as national parks or state parks, of spacious areas with unique or outstanding scenery or natural features’ (Park 2010: 2).

The NPWS was also established under this act and was charged with managing parks and reserves in NSW. The 1967 Act was focused on protecting the beauty of nature and the aesthetic qualities of parks and reserves, rather than on conservation or biodiversity. In addition the Act highlighted that all protected areas required management plans that established the main attributes of the parks and the practices and objectives that would need to be carried out in order to protect the environment for future generations.

In 1974 the NP&W Act was amended to accommodate Aboriginal protected areas, wilderness areas and the protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage and flora and fauna (Park 2010: 3).

Similar to the IUCN categories, the NP&W Act 1974 lists eight different types of protected areas within NSW based on the value and intended use of the landscape (Smith 1998). National parks are the highest ranking or most special category and are defined as ‘areas protected for their unspoiled landscapes and native plants and animals. They are set aside for conservation and public enjoyment, and usually offer visitor facilities’ (OEH 2014a). Today the NP&W Act

1974 is still the guiding legislation for the management of parks and reserves in NSW. It states that:

[t]he purpose of reserving land as a national park is to identify, protect and conserve areas containing outstanding or representative ecosystems, natural or cultural features or landscapes or phenomena that provide opportunities for public appreciation and inspiration and sustainable visitor or tourist use and enjoyment so as to enable those areas to be managed in accordance with [the following principles]:

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(a) the conservation of biodiversity, the maintenance of ecosystem function, the protection of geological and geomorphological features and natural phenomena and the maintenance of natural landscapes, (b) the conservation of places, objects, features and landscapes of cultural value, (c) the protection of the ecological integrity of one or more ecosystems for present and future generations, (d) the promotion of public appreciation and understanding of the national park’s natural and cultural values, (e) provision for sustainable visitor or tourist use and enjoyment that is compatible with the conservation of the national park’s natural and cultural values, (f) provision for the sustainable use (including adaptive reuse) of any buildings or structures or modified natural areas having regard to the conservation of the national park’s natural and cultural values, (fa) provision for the carrying out of development in any part of a special area (within the meaning of the Hunter Water Act 1991 ) in the national park that is permitted under section 185A having regard to the conservation of the national park’s natural and cultural values, (g) provision for appropriate research and monitoring. (NP&W Act 1974, Section 30E).

The categorisation within the NP&W Act 1974 suggests that national parks are spaces of important, special or exemplary nature, and cultural heritage. The NP&W Act 1974 can be seen to link with the new paradigm, as national parks are understood to offer a number of benefits and facilities to humans including recreation, appreciation of nature and heritage, education and so on. In saying this, national parks are also spaces of natural landscapes and ecosystems.

This creates a tension as national parks are understood as spaces containing separate and defined ‘nature’, but also as spaces that can (and should) be experienced and utilised by people. In addition the Act suggests that the development and implementation of a correct management regime, outlined in a plan of management (POM), is essential to ensuring that the natural and cultural values of the park are preserved for future generations whilst also

115 allowing current generations to enjoy and recreate in areas of healthy, natural and unique bushland.

Delaney argues that:

[a]ttention to law sharpens our awareness that control over the word, over meaning, over the terms of categorical inclusion and exclusion, is strongly conducive to – if not determinative of – control over segments of the material world that are given meaning by reference to categories (Delaney 2001: 489). Therefore what is included, and more importantly what is excluded, in the category of national parks under the NP&W Act will have material consequences for the nature that is enacted.

Delaney (2001) argues that law matters as it does not just inform but gives expression to conceptions of nature, and nature-human relations (Delaney 2001: 489). The following section therefore examines how universal categorisations and legislation can be rethought as being performative and messy.

5.3 Performing universal national park nature The understandings of protected areas put forward by the international (IUCN) and Australian

(NP&W Act) categorisations of protected areas suggest that ‘nature’ is a straightforward concept that is easily recognisable. The creation and use of standardised categories act to highlight certain ‘natures’ as being either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Protected area management is therefore seen as a valuable task that seeks out ‘unnatural’ aspects of the park and determines ways to remove or correct them (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006; Lorimer 2010). This is problematic as it acts to perpetuate certain ideas of what ‘nature’ is and what it should look like, while also suggesting that protected areas across the globe are similar in how they can be managed and understood. The in-between, messy and changing ‘natures’ that do not fit neatly into categories are thereby ignored.

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This chapter has begun to explore tensions emerging between notions of what a national park is, as put forward by the old and new paradigms, and the resulting universal categorisation systems. By suggesting that all national parks across the globe can fit within one category, the paradigms assume a specific type of definable and knowable nature. However, the creation of the early national parks and reserves in Australia and their links to a developing national identity also hints towards the idea that national parks and universal ideas also emerge in local situations.

Further, when we look at the Australian context another tension emerges around the inherent assumption of a ‘colonial’ nature, or a Eurocentric one that is definable, out-there and able to be understood and managed by people. By breaking this cycle and questioning the universal legitimacy of both the Australian Eurocentric and Indigenous universals of national park nature,

I argue that we can begin to see the cracks in the foundations of global visions of national parks.

Bowker and Star (1999: 1) argue that ‘to classify is human’ and in this sense categories are not pre-given or self-evident but rather social constructions. We can question this universal legitimacy of categories and legislation of protected areas, including the category of the national park in Australia, by rethinking what categorises do. Understanding categories as performative suggests that when we apply the labels of ‘nature’, ‘special nature’ or

‘wilderness’, we are not mimicking the world. Rather, these labels act to create and limit the world. Cronon argues that:

we must never forget that these stories are ours, not nature’s. The natural world does not organize itself into parables. Only people do that, because this is our peculiarly human method for making the world make sense (Cronon 1995a).

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We therefore need to move away from categories and laws related to national parks which assume the existence of universal truths; instead they are active performances of nature as separate, valued or uninhabited.

Understanding the performative power of categories also calls for the recognition that categories are always in process without ever being fully formed (Jones 2009). Protected area categories, such as the ‘national park’ category, are positioned as having defined and stable borders. However, if we understand them as human constructions that are always in the process of being performed, then their boundaries begin to appear porous and inchoate.

Classifications act to create boundaries through which something is ignored or excluded, while something else is privileged. Bowker and Star (1999: 32) therefore suggest that we need to understand classifications as containing some ambiguity and as such, ‘some areas will be left wild, or in darkness, or even unmapped’. Bowker and Star (1999: 326) argue that the ‘key for the future is to produce flexible classifications whose users are aware of their political and organizational dimensions and which explicitly retain traces of their construction’. They conclude by suggesting ‘the only good classification is a living classification’ (Bowker and Star

1999: 326). The categorisations of protected areas and the laws which regulate them therefore perform the space in particular ways. The category of national park and the legislation surrounding it enact a delineated space, made special and distinguished from the surrounding area by being categorised as a national park.

I suggest that through focusing on the way in which universals move between paradigms and become effective in Ku-ring-gai Chase, we can see how notions of national park nature, as put forward by the international and national categorisations, become messy as they encounter

118 the particularities of the local. In the following sections I look at the ways in which ‘frictions’ of these encounters make universals powerful and effective, yet also get in the way of ideal visions of nature (Tsing 2005). Drawing on Haraway (2003) and Nash (2000) actions, processes and practices are not just indicative of the world but actively create it. Therefore I argue that universals do not just meet the particular; they have to be performed. The following chapters look at how these universals land in, and are performed in, multiple and messy ways in Ku-ring- gai Chase.

I do not dismiss the role of the universal. Instead, following Tsing (2005) I see the aspiration of universals as a powerful influence, not a stable description. Universals, however, can never fulfil the role of universality, as they encounter the particularities of the local surrounded by sticky entities, actors, forces and practices that all rub against each other to produce difference. Through looking at the encounters of the universal and the particular we can look at how universals become ‘engaged’. Building on my discussion of Tsing (2005) in Chapter 2, the next four chapters draw out how universal notions of what is a national park travel and become effective as they move and are put to work in specific locations.

I argue that the practices of people can make certain universals practically effective as they actively perform national park nature in a certain way. However, this is not the entire story.

There is a multitude of other frictions going on in these ‘sticky engagements’ that cause surprising and unpredictable results to occur. The stickiness of engagements, however, is constantly changing and will never be the same in different locations and at different times.

Universals, therefore, can be altered, changed and brought into being in multiple and messy ways through the co-mingling of actors, some humans, some nonhuman.

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Categorisations and legislation bring delineated spaces into being as national parks through positioning national parks as special natures that are separate from the residential, farming or urban areas that surround them. This categorisation and legislation affect how the park is thought about and managed. However, designation is not enough. Notions of special national park nature require human action to bring them into being. In the following chapter I investigate how a visitors’ centre in Ku-ring-gai Chase actively interprets and translates nature into special national park nature for park visitors. In Chapter 7 I explore how volunteers condition visitor bodies into enacting a trackless wilderness. I then look at the performances of park managers and the ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase is performed as an Indigenous landscape as a way of highlighting the multiplicity and inconsistencies in perceptions of what a national park is and how it is understood.

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Chapter 6 Performing national park nature

Park visitors are often unaware of the national and international guidelines that regulate national parks, so how is it they come to recognise and understand national park nature? Tsing suggests that ‘we know and use nature through engaged universals’ and that to become engaged or ‘effective they must enter the fray’ (Tsing 2005: 270 emphasis added). The following three chapters delve into the fray over how universals of national park nature become engaged in Ku-ring-gai Chase. In this chapter I look at how Ku-ring-gai Chase nature is performed and made knowable through the park signage and the visitors’ centre, however I save the ways these interpretive devices attempt to regulate the behaviour of park visitor bodies for the following chapter.

6.1 Kalkari Discovery Centre Immerse yourself in the knowledge Kalkari Discovery Centre has to offer. At Kalkari, you’ll be inspired to learn more about the park’s plants, animals and Aboriginal history, under the guidance of Kalkari’s knowledgeable volunteers. Find out more about the Discovery trail and the range of educational activities for adults and children on offer. You may find yourself making a model wombat and burrow, sipping morning tea with visitors from around the world, or playing Aboriginal games (NPWS 2014a).

Kalkari will be promoted as a centre for environmental education, interpretation and activities which encourage a greater understanding and appreciation of the park (NPWS 2002: 39).

The above texts highlight that Kalkari Discovery Centre as a place where visitors can get information about Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Kalkari is a place where people of all ages and demographics can learn about the rest of the park and develop an appreciation for it. In a sense Kalkari sets itself up as an introduction to the park and acts as a space to shape and

121 condition visitor perceptions of the park, and the activities and behaviours that belong in the park.

The Kalkari Discovery Centre is located on the narrow, windy Ku-ring-gai Chase Road, one of the main access roads to the park which leads to the park’s most popular picnic area, the historic Bobbin Head (see Map 2). Driving into Ku-ring-gai Chase from Mount Colah, before the road takes the one kilometre plunge down the escarpment to the picnic ground, there is a sign

‘Kalkari Discovery Centre 200m Ahead’. Pulling off the narrow road, in between hordes of lycra-clad cyclists who have become almost a permanent feature of the tree lined road, a sandstone building can be found next to a small dirt car park (see Figure 6-1). The Kalkari

Discovery Centre (see Figure 6-2) was built in the 1950s and was originally used as a koala sanctuary and small zoo (NPWS 2002: 38). It was however converted to a volunteer run visitors’ centre in about 1970 and today is open to the public from 9am to 5pm every day of the year except Christmas Day (NPWS 2002: 38).

Figure 6-1 Kalkari Discovery Centre (Source: Author, 13 September 2014)

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Figure 6-2 Entrance to Kalkari Discovery Centre (Source: Author, 25 January 2013)

Inside Kalkari Discovery Centre, visitors find a number of educational and ‘fun’ activities, displays and signs, and an information desk staffed by volunteers. Three of the four walls of the centre are dominated by large glass windows, which look out over the surrounding bush landscape and the start of the Discovery Trail. The Discovery Trail is a 1.6 kilometre concrete path that meanders around an example of Ku-ring-gai Chase bush. The trail is suitable for wheelchairs and strollers and is a 15 minute loop track. The trail is located within a fenced area of around six hectares, which also contains a number of interpretive signs and displays, a lookout, two ponds, 12 resident Eastern Grey Kangaroos, and numerous animals such as birds, lace monitors and snakes that come and go over, under and through the fence (see Figure 6-3).

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Figure 6-3 Map of Kalkari Discovery Centre (Source: Author)

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6.2 Kalkari as a place of discovery The location of Kalkari Discovery Centre (see Map 2) close to one of the main park entrances strategically positions it as a place to inform visitors about Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and teach them how to view the park and national park nature. Upon walking into the centre (see

Figure 6-5) visitors are greeted with a variety of brightly coloured signs, which give information about the history and the natural and cultural significance of the park. The signs also encourage visitors to get out and experience or discover the bush in order to learn more about it. Kalkari contains a number of displays of stuffed animals. Some are behind perspex, but others are arranged around rocks, leaves and branches to show how they would look in a natural setting. People can get up close and learn what the animals look and even feel like.

Near the roof is a sea eagle, wings and talons outstretched, as if about to pick up prey. There is a pile of rock specimens in one corner so that visitors can feel the difference between sandstone and shale, the primary geological formations of the park. There are pieces of scribbly gum bark scattered around so that visitors can run their fingers over the fine zigzag ridges made by the scribbly gum moth. These displays are all accompanied by signs, posters and even hand written sheets of paper that inform the visitor about what they are looking at or touching. In this way nature is not just made understandable, but knowable, tangible, touchable, familiar and encounter-able. This is reinforced by a sign along the Discovery Trail:

I am the Kalkari bush This track will lead you past some of my many treasures. They may seem hidden but be gentle and patient. Touch and smell me, listen to me, open your eyes and you will discover me. Figure 6-4 Sign in Kalkari grounds (Source: Author, 13 September 2014)

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Figure 6-5 Inside the Kalkari Discovery Centre (Source: Author, 25 January 2013)

In the middle of Kalkari there is a small wooden table with a number of children’s books and stuffed animals scattered around it (as can be seen in Figure 6-5). The books and toys all have an Australian theme and include a stuffed emu, bat, koala, echidna and possum, and stories such as Wombat Stew, Kokey the Koala, Olga the Brolga and Shy the Platypus. After making the koala and emu fight each other, kids can wander over to the touch and feel box (see Figure 6-6) where they can pick up and look at a number of bones, feathers, snake skins, rocks, sticks, a shark egg, seed pods and dried leaves. The touch and feel box helps show kids the types of things that can be found in the park and encourages them to interact with nature, to pick up and look closely at the different artefacts from the park and learn what they are called and what they feel like.

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Figure 6-6 Touch and feel box inside Kalkari (Source: Author, 25 January 2013)

Kalkari encourages visitors to get out and into the park, and through doing so visitors are also expected to learn about the park and develop an appreciation of the park’s nature and therefore understand the importance of management and the need for conservation. This suggests that national parks are not just places to look at from a distance, but need to be experienced. However, as I will show, Kalkari puts forward the idea that experiencing the park should occur in a particular way. Willems-Braun (1997: 24, original emphasis) argues that ‘how nature is constructed matters’, as notions of natures do not come pre-figured; instead, through repeated practices they become knowable and enacted. Through their shaping of visitor interactions and understandings of national park nature, the Kalkari Discovery Centre and the park signage are active in the performances of the park as native nature.

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6.3 Guided discovery In Ku-ring-gai Chase there are signs at the start of all major tracks and trails that give people information about the physical track itself – the grade, length, route, estimated time needed to complete – and also educational information including history and information about the plants and animals that might be seen along the track. Here are two examples:

America Bay Track 2 kilometre return. Moderate walk to waterfall Aboriginal engravings Look for white breasted eagles flying overhead Goannas common along track

Figure 6-7 Sign at beginning of America Bay Track (Source: Author, 26 September 2012) Flint and Steel Track 2 kilometre return walk. Difficult walking in sections Good fishing at Flint and Steel Point Good view of Broken Bay and Patonga Look for cabbage tree palms along Figure 6-8 Sign at beginning of Flint and Steel Track (Source: Author, 23 April 2012) volcanic dyke

By identifying what plants, animals, views or geological formations people should look for, the signs also impact on what visitors understand to be the most valuable aspects of nature. In this way the signs shape visitor understandings of nature and what nature is made see-able in Ku- ring-gai Chase. Here the primary way in which visitors are instructed to interact with nature is

128 through sight; the visitors are encouraged to ‘look’, rather that touch, hear or smell. This contrasts with the displays within Kalkari where touching and engaging with nature were encouraged.

Inside Kalkari there is a door that leads to the Discovery Trail. Before you head out the door you are first confronted with a stop sign on the door reading STOP Bikes and Scooters

Prohibited, along with another sign, Please do not take food and drink past this point. The sign on the door states that you can see kangaroos & wallabies, birds, turtles, goannas & more. But only if you keep your eyes open! The Discovery Trail acts as a way for people to experience a

‘bushwalk’, but in a safe and controlled environment. All along the trail there are signs that inform visitors about the flora, fauna and history of the park (see Figure 6-9). Scientific details of the flora and fauna teach the visitors about the park nature (see Figure 6-10).

Figure 6-9 Kalkari Discovery Trail with information huts and signs (Source: Author, 13 September 2013)

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Figure 6-10 An example of the information signs around the Discovery Trail (Source: Author, 19 February 2013)

The Kalkari Discovery Trail is seen as a ‘gentle’ introduction to the bush. It is a relatively safe area where people can get their ‘first bush experience’. For those who may be scared of the bush, or new to the country, this is a good opportunity to have a safe experience of the

Australian bush. Helga, a Discovery Volunteer, talks about how Kalkari acts as a safe way of introducing people to the bush:

I mean the track [Kalkari Discovery Trail] itself, I don’t think is that interesting. I think the lookout’s nice and you need the animals to sort of keep them in, the rest of the track isn’t that interesting for me. But it’s also good for people maybe new migrants, people new to the country who are a bit scared of the bush ‘cause they can at least walk on a concrete track too, so they come here and you tell them ‘look it’s an introduction to the bush, stay on the concrete path’, particularly if they are very scared of snakes and things, and then they can get a bit more information. She goes on to say that Kalkari is ‘a stepping stone for people who’ve just arrived in the country and probably very scared of a lot of things’.

Therefore, Kalkari sets up Ku-ring-gai Chase as a place where people can learn about the bush, but also learn what aspects of the bush are the most important. By visiting Kalkari and taking

130 themselves on the Discovery Trail visitors can get their first bush experience, with the safety provided by the volunteers and with the signage to inform them, not just about the potential dangers but also about the environment and history. They are informed about what they should be looking for and what is valuable. Park signs can be understood as ‘material semiotic actors’ that have a social life in that they are not only the ‘product of social relations, but…

[they are also] productive of social relations’ (Hunter 2008: 506). By shaping what visitors understand as nature, the park signage is active in the co-fabrication of nature.

6.4 Speaking for themselves Kalkari and the signage around the park also set the park up as a place of ‘natural nature’ and

‘natural ecosystems’ that is teeming with plant and animal life. In addition national park nature, including the flora and fauna, is seen as particularly special and unique. As I mentioned earlier, attached to displays in Kalkari and scattered throughout the Discovery Trail and other trails in the park are signs which tell visitors about particular plants and animals that they might see. These signs often tell visitors of the scientific names and classifications of species and their habitats and provide brief descriptions of what they look like (see Figure 6-10 for an example of one of these signs). The signs give visitors an opportunity to better understand the variety of flora and fauna in the park. In addition, there are a number of stuffed animals at

Kalkari including two echidnas, a possum, a kookaburra, two lace monitors, a koala, a Port

Jackson shark, two wedge-tailed eagles, a lyrebird, a diamond python and a bandicoot which enable visitors to look closely at animals they would normally only see from afar (the koala and lyrebird can be seen in Figure 6-11).

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Figure 6-11 Kalkari display featuring a koala and a male lyrebird (Source: Author, 13 September 2013)

The signage and centre create the park as not just a space where people can come and see plants and animals, but as a place where people can come and see special, important, native nature that counts as national park nature. As one signs states:

Over 1,000 plant species and over 200 different animals occur here. It is a myriad of plant communities – all specially adapted to the sandstone environments here that range from hanging swamps to mangroves. It is one of the few refuges in Sydney for endangered species such as the Southern Brown Bandicoot and the Powerful Owl. This highlights the specialness of Ku-ring-gai Chase nature for the protection of the environment through providing habitats and protection for native species. But it also positions the park as a delimited space that is separate from both its surrounding urban environment and humans. This sign, along with many others in the park, describe national park nature in terms of scientific and western concepts, suggesting that species can be systematically counted, listed and located. Perera and Pugliese (1998: 91) argue the scientific categorisation,

132 classification and explanation of species of flora and fauna ‘reproduce the colonial tropes of accumulation, enumeration and inventory’.

Speaking specifically about the classification of plants, Tsing (2005) argues that the botanical classification, categorisation and naming of plants was one of the first sciences concerned with creating a single global knowledge. Today, notions of plant kingdoms that contain families, genera and species, are understood as a self-evident tool for classifying plants. However, Tsing

(2005) argues that by understanding this classification system as ‘natural’, or a universal truth, is to ignore the collaboration that made this global knowledge possible. During the 16th and

17th centuries, European knowledge of plants and their classification was created through collaboration with Asian, African and Indigenous American cultures. However as the power of

Europe grew, European knowledge came to be view as self-evident science and the truth. And in the process the cross-cultural dialogues that created this knowledge were forgotten and ‘the plants were asked to speak for themselves as elements of Nature’ (Tsing 2005: 91). Instead of acknowledging the global sharing of knowledge that produced these botanical classifications,

European ideas advocated the formation of a universalised system that was supposedly free of cultural influences and biases. Asking plants to ‘speak for themselves’ actively ‘empties’ nature of any human occupation and influence, and also rationalises European colonisation of these

‘empty’ lands. Through this process, notions of a global scale and the universal, upon which we could discuss flora and fauna, was created.

The use of Latin scientific names as the proper or correct way of referring to flora and fauna, as evidenced by the signs in Ku-ring-gai Chase, therefore reinforces this notion of a universal nature, and a universal language for global dialogue. Bowker and Star (1999) point out that

133 these categorisations of nature are neither natural nor self-evident, and so positioning them as such actively creates a particular type of nature – one that is colonial, scientific and effectively empties the Ku-ring-gai Chase landscape by conceptualising it as a global nature. Using scientific classifications and categorisations is not the only way in which Ku-ring-gai Chase nature is emptied of culture, human influence and messy natures. Another way this happens in

Ku-ring-gai Chase is through two maps and a lookout at Kalkari which I will argue ‘enframe’ an empty wilderness.

6.5 Enframing empty wilderness Inside the Kalkari centre there is a large map of the park stretching from floor to ceiling. It is at least two metres wide (as can be seen in Figure 6-12). This map shows Ku-ring-gai Chase and other close-by parks and reserves, which are all denoted by a bright green colour. Around the edges of the green expanses is light grey shading to represent the surrounding residential areas and blue for the bordering ocean and rivers. The green section on the map, that represents Ku- ring-gai Chase and surrounding national parks, is broken only by several lines and symbols that mark the walking tracks, picnic areas, lookouts and marinas within the park. By looking at this map you get a sense of the size of the park as there are large blocks of green with only a few scattered tracks, trails and picnic areas, and only three major roads running through the park.

This, along with the bright green sections that differentiate the national park landscape from surrounding grey residential areas, is suggestive of a great flourishing and abundant natural nature and gives the sense that the park is largely free from human interference.

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Figure 6-12 Map of Ku-ring-gai Chase and surrounds in Kalkari (Source: Author, 19 September 2013)

A three-dimensional map of Ku-ring-gai Chase within the Kalkari grounds also furthers the understanding of the park as untouched wilderness. As can be seen in Figure 6-13 the three- dimensional map is around two metres square and displays the topography of the park. This map positions Ku-ring-gai Chase as a rugged landscape through its steep, jagged and irregular representation. Like the map inside the Kalkari centre, the three-dimensional map also uses green to represent nature in the park. This display has very little detail aside from the topography of the park, and the occasional painted line to indicate picnic areas and walking trails which again portrays Ku-ring-gai Chase as a wild space of little to no human occupation.

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Figure 6-13 3D map of Ku-ring-gai Chase located in the Kalkari grounds (Source: Author, 13 September 2013)

In the Kalkari grounds there is also a lookout. As shown in Figure 6-14, from the wooden platform you can see out over a sea of greyish green, with the pink bark of the angophora blending into the grey, orange cliff faces. There are a few blackened trunks but from this vantage point there is no sign of large fires or any disturbances. Looking down you can see the suspension bridge that crosses Cowan Creek along the Gibberagong walking trail, and glimpse the white of the yachts on Empire Marina. Often, one can hear the buzz of Bobbin Head picnickers (see Figure 6-14).

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Figure 6-14 View from the Kalkari lookout– the Gibberagong suspension bridge can just be seen in the foreground along the water, and the white of the yachts at the marina at Bobbin Head can be seen towards the centre of the photo (Source: Author, 24 April 2013)

Volunteers Frank, Rita and Charlie suggest that the lookout can give visitors an insight into the pristine nature and expanse of the park and reinforce the message put forward by the maps.

Through going to the lookout visitors are able to develop an appreciation of the bush and the need to preserve it. The volunteers’ state:

We’re so fortunate you can stand out at the lookout out here and you can look out on so many spots and virtually even, you know the horizons and the ridges and so on have been preserved and in so many places virtually no sign of human habitation which adds to the value of the park, to me (Frank, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added). I think there must be some pristine bits, look if you go to the lookout and look around, you go ‘oh my god some of that must be untouched [nature] cause it’s, it’s huge!’, and I love it that way. But you’d probably get there and I hate it when you get there, and you find that’s somebody’s built steps, and you know that they’ve already been there, with concrete bags as well! [Laughs], and you go ‘how pristine is that’ but it seems good to me, there’s lots of built up areas like West Head [see Map 2], is really developed now, but um it’s still ok (Rita, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added).

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And it’s a little microcosm, if you like, of this northern part of Sydney, you know you walk around there [Kalkari Discovery Trail] you’ve got the vegetation, you’ve got the lookout and people comment on the lookout, I always tell them to go to the lookout and look down into the valley, it gives you that sense of space … stand out at the lookout and you’ve got the world in front of you, a bit of space and that’s a nice feeling (Charlie, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added).

The volunteers’ suggestion that the park must contain areas of untouched nature or wilderness as you can look out over the horizon without seeing signs of human occupation, connects to notions of wilderness as sensory. Griffiths argues that definitions of wilderness are sensory, as:

they concern the boundaries of sight, lengths of walks in one direction, and the maintenance of an authentic sense of human danger and isolation [and] … if the definitions are about the feel and look of the place, then, ‘wilderness’ need not be actually ancient, pristine and timeless; it just needs to seem so (Griffiths 16: 259-260). In the eyes of the volunteers the lookout ignores the variety of human alterations to the environment (including the very one upon which they are standing).

The lookout then can be compared to Windows of the Wetlands Visitors Centre in Kakadu

National Park as it is portrayed in Perera and Puliese’s (1998) study. Perera and Pugliese (1998:

83) argue that this visitors’ centre, which is strategically perched on top of a hill, offers the

‘visitors a viewing position that makes possible visual consumption and enjoyment … [of nature] without the possibility of actually intruding upon, contaminating or being contaminated by the natural landscape’. The Kakadu visitors centre and the Kalkari lookout both create a separation between humans and nature, as humans can objectively look down at nature, yet are not considered to be in nature. In this sense it can be argued that the Kalkari lookout and the Windows of the Wetlands Visitors Centre enframe a particular type of wilderness that is visible, knowable, yet not touchable (Willems-Braun 1997; Perera and

Pugliese 1998). The lookout then creates, but also limits nature as it ‘enframes the manner in

138 which the wilderness is it to be viewed. It physically determines or mediates the parameters of the visitor’s vision’ (Perera and Pugliese 1998: 84). This again shows how the Kalkari Discovery

Centre and park signage position nature in tension, as it is seen in some regards to be something to interact with and discover yet it is also something that humans should not be in.

Griffiths (1996) argues that to conceptualise national park nature as uninhabited wilderness is to: actively deny history, the remnants of human history are often physically removed, and any other changes to the land are ignored. We are led to believe that the landscape is exactly how it was many years ago (Griffiths 1996: 261). Wilderness then is not only a human construction; it represents a very particular moment in human history and a particular understanding of what is ‘natural’ (Cronon 1995b). The maps and lookout actively empty the landscape of its Indigenous heritage, by delineating a colonial vision of national park nature as something to view, rather than something that people and their histories are a part of. All forms of human (Indigenous, colonial, tourist and management) interference are silenced as the park is positioned as containing uninhabited wilderness. This notion can also been seen in the following sign at Kalkari:

Fire, climate, soil and topography have shaped the natural environment of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park as you see it today. The park offers protection for an array of natural ecosystems bound by urban development. By suggesting that it is only ‘natural forces’ that have shaped the park, this statement renders invisible the thousands of years of Indigenous alteration to the environment. It also renders invisible the roads, pests, weeds, power cables, tourist infrastructure, management operations and so on that are currently shaping the park (Gammage 2011; Suchet 2002).

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6.6 The non-Indigenous visitor enacting special nature The use of scientific and expert knowledges to inform visitors about the park conceptualises nature within a western framework in which nature is understandable and knowable. Signs around Kalkari also encourage people to think about the park as being ‘special nature’ that people need to look after and appreciate. The Kalkari Discovery Centre and signage within the park enact a tension around what is national park nature, as Ku-ring-gai Chase nature is created as something that is valued, separate and uninhabited, but also something to engage with, discover and learn about. The interpretive devices are therefore active in the creation of multiple national park natures in Ku-ring-gai Chase.

Kalkari Discovery Centre and the signage within Ku-ring-gai Chase do not just call forth a particular vision of national park nature, but also a particular park visitor. In a similar vein to

Perera and Pugliese’s (1998) study of the visitors’ centre in Kakadu, the signage and Kalkari in

Ku-ring-gai Chase assumes:

the visitor is implicitly a western visitor who is already literate in the dichotomous relations of the cultural and natural, and who will reproduce this dichotomy as s/he moves through and interacts [with the park and its exhibits] (Perera and Pugliese 1998: 84). Kalkari also accommodates a nature-loving visitor who has an interest in flora and fauna and their conservation.

I argue that the signage within the park and the Kalkari Discovery Centre is active in the performance of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park as worthy of being categorised as national park nature. As I have shown, these interpretive devices shape the park visitors’ understandings of what national park nature is in Ku-ring-gai Chase. Through schooling visitors in what types of plants and animals to look out for, what scenery is special or important, what artefacts reveal

140 certain aspects of history, I argue that the interpretive devices do not simply reveal nature, but also actively influence how people know national park nature. In addition, the interpretive devices shape what people do through advertising certain activities, but also by conditioning what the visitors consider to be good or appropriate behaviour in national parks. The interpretive devices reinforce the universal notions of a national park as a place of spectacular and special nature and a place where people can experience or discover national park nature. I argue that the interpretive devices can be seen as nonhuman actors who are active in the performance of Ku-ring-gai Chase as national park nature.

This section has highlighted the ways in which the interpretive elements of Ku-ring-gai Chase

National Park (Kalkari Discovery Centre and park signage) set up notions of what a national park is in ways that attempt to create a certain type of park visitor and instil a vision of national parks as spaces of special nature. This is reinforced by Bakker and Bridge who argue that:

material nature is not a reflection of properties intrinsic to nature but rather a projection onto the material world, via language, of categories which are irreducibly social, and culturally rooted. Science, in other words, is not nature’s mirror (Bakker and Bridge 2006: 14). The next section furthers these ideas and argues that nature is by no means simply a social construction. In making this case I use the lens of corporeality to explore the ways that ideas of national parks are reinforced and performed by the volunteers who work in Ku-ring-gai Chase.

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Chapter 7 Performing bodies in the bush

This chapter focuses on the ways in which national park nature is created through corporeal performances. Taking cues from Bakker and Bridge (2006: 15) I focus on the ‘materially situated self’ to acknowledge how bodies and physical worlds come together to enact nature. I examine how the volunteers at Kalkari enact nature while also conditioning park visitor bodies in certain ways that perpetuate, disrupt and create ideas of national park nature.

Nonrepresentational theory seeks to move beyond dualisms and ‘develop new approaches to body and society, culture and nature, thought and action, representation and practice’ (Wylie

2007: 164 original emphasis). Drawing on Nash (2000) and Lorimer’s (2010) work on nonrepresentational theory, we can rethink the world and national park spaces as being processual and performative and therefore continually being created and recreated. This chapter draws on the concepts of materiality and performativity to show how embodied practices bring particular natures into being. It seeks to explore the habitual practices of the volunteers in Ku-ring-gai Chase in order to highlight how they not only enact a particular conceptualisation of nature, but also how they engage park visitor bodies into these enactments.

7.1 Spreading the message Kalkari is run by the Discovery Volunteers, a group of around 80 volunteers who, in addition to staffing Kalkari, also run a series of ‘walks, talks and tours’ in Ku-ring-gai Chase and surrounding parks. The 80 volunteers, of whom I am told only 60 are active participating members, are mostly retirees who live in the nearby northern Sydney suburbs. Many of them joined the

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Discovery Volunteers because they wanted to get out in the bush more, learn about the park and its plant and animal inhabitants, and spend their days interacting with people and giving something back to the community. As Frank, a volunteer, stated ‘I had an affinity with the park,

I guess, I’d always been quite keen on bushwalking, on getting out in the Australia bush’. He explained that ‘it appeals to me, the idea of spreading the message and helping other people enjoy, ah this great park we have here’. Another volunteer, Helga, who was still working full- time through the week, stated that:

I was looking for something to do on the weekends, and it was out in the bush, talking to people, it just sounded like it would be fun and a good escape from the office. As part of their role the volunteers are required to complete at least two four-hour shifts a month at Kalkari (see Figure 7-1), and to contribute to the other activities including leading or helping on guided walks or kayak tours through the park, organising children’s’ activities, or conducting ‘meet and greets’ at the picnic grounds and lookouts where they talk to the public and inform them of the activities occurring in the park.

Figure 7-1 Volunteer staffing the desk at Kalkari (Source: Author, 25 March 2013)

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The volunteers see their role in Ku-ring-gai Chase as being the primary face-to-face contact of the NPWS organisation with the park visitors. Due to other demands on their time the NPWS employees are not often able to engage the park visitors, so the role is pushed to the volunteers. Through greeting visitors at the Kalkari Discovery Centre, leading guided walks and conducting ‘meet and greets’ the volunteers are able to talk with park visitors, show them aspects of the park and inform them about the park and the available activities. This usually occurs through casual chats either in Kalkari or while wandering around the park. Although they are not part of formal management practice, volunteers’ interactions with park visitors can be seen as a major way in which the public is informed about the park and about how they should (or shouldn’t) behave in the park. As Charlie (a Discovery Volunteer) states:

Our principal role is obviously to get people interested and get them out into the park, but we are the first point of contact for many people between national parks and the public, and I think that’s an extremely important role. Charlie goes on to talk about the importance of encouraging visitors into the park so that they can experience ‘nature’:

But the basic idea of course is getting people out in national parks to enjoy what’s there, because if people don’t go out there and see it, many people just say ‘it’s just bush, it’s not important’, but it is very important for our wellbeing and our recreation and all those sorts of things, and if we don’t get people out there, if they don’t know what’s there, they don’t value it, so there’s always the risk that the bush could disappear, we are very lucky to have it. Molly, another volunteer, agrees:

Well I think it’s very important that everybody get out and enjoys our natural surroundings, rather than hanging around shopping centres.

The volunteers see the national park and allowing visitors to experience national parks, as essential to the visitors’ health and wellbeing, but also the health and continuation of the park itself. This supports the ‘new paradigm’ as it recognises the importance of human-nature

144 relations for national parks (Phillips 2003). The volunteers, however, see their role as being more than informing visitors of the importance of nature; they also must prepare visitors for the park and instruct them on how to view it (Perera and Pugliese 1998: 82). Many of the volunteers have long histories of being in the bush, as Charlie states ‘I grew up playing in the bush; I was familiar with the bush’. Other volunteers talk about the variety of bushwalking they have done as an indicator of their knowledge of the bush. Lee told me that before volunteering he was doing:

a lot of solo bushwalking … for recreation. I’d just prepare properly, have a compass, look at a track … It has its risks, but with my background … but it’s worthwhile taking those risks, measured risks. Through repeated interactions with the bush the volunteers developed an understanding and familiarity with it, and especially its dangers. The volunteers therefore see one of their primary roles as being to teach people who have not grown up in it (paraphrased from Lee, Discovery

Volunteer). Rita (Discovery Volunteer) supports this by saying that:

some people don’t have an idea, ‘cause we’ve got a lot of people who’ve come to Australia in the past couple of years, they don’t have that same understanding of national parks as those who have lived here for say 60 years do, and so some of them don’t even know to keep to the paths, and they don’t understand that you don’t pull stuff out of the bush, I mean once you tell them and once they see you working they learn in a flash, it’s no problem, and some of them don’t understand how rugged it is, now we say it’s a moderate walk, we mean, to us moderate means 10 kilometres, good shoes, you’ll get pretty tired and you’ve got to have good thigh muscles, and they think moderate means walking comfy, yeah a couple of stairs, a bit worse than going around Hornsby Mall, but you know moderate, we mean bushy moderate, we don’t mean, so they don’t understand that at first. The self, body and landscape are seen in nonrepresentational theory as constantly being shaped through the practices and performances of nature (Wylie 2007). The bodily attainments of the volunteers – the strengthening of thigh muscles, developing a sense of direction, learning to assess risks – are all processes of enacting a particular nature. The volunteers then

145 feel they have a duty of care to pass on this embodied knowledge through educating park visitors of the dangers of the park. Through the seemingly mundane routines of the volunteers, in which they undertake repeated actions of talking to visitors, sharing stories and walking around the Discovery Trail, they not only enact a particular type of nature but tend to create a certain type of park visitor (Lorimer 2005; Nash 2000).

7.2 Wilderness walkers in the trackless bush In Australia during the 1930s and ‘40s a surge in the popularity of bushwalking brought with it a new way of conceptualising nature and the Australian bush. Bushwalking was seen as the practice of exploring the unknown, the dangerous and the uninhabited to emulate ‘hardy pioneers’ who traversed virgin bushland and recorded their observations and travels for the benefit of the greater population (Harper 2007: 250). Crowned the Australian ‘father of bushwalking’, Myles Dunphy is credited with being one of the pioneering ‘bushwalkers’ in

Australia. Primarily focused on the Sydney area, Dunphy saw bushwalking as an exploratory process that involved ‘sleeping rough’ in remote locations, negotiating rugged landscapes, and discovering the unknown. For Dunphy, bushwalking was no leisurely pastime, but ‘a craft that required skill, endurance and self-reliance’ (Harper 2007: 203). I suggest that the volunteers actively perform this vision of nature through their regulation of visitor bodies in Ku-ring-gai

Chase. By talking to park visitors and taking them on guided walks, the volunteers are able to instil a particular notion of what a national park is, and also teach visitors the correct way to behave in the bush so that this vision of nature as wilderness is maintained.

Kalkari Discovery Centre acts as one platform for the volunteers to be able engage with the visitors. Soon after entering the centre, visitors are greeted by one of the volunteers behind

146 the large wooden desk. The desk is littered with maps, pamphlets and notices. Have you been here before? – will usually be the first question that one of the volunteers will ask. Would you like to see some kangaroos? I can recommend a good bushwalk or a lovely lookout? Isn’t it a lovely day to be out and about? When visitors first enter Kalkari, the volunteers will often strike up a conversation in order to gauge what the visitors want to do in the park, and assess what activities are appropriate for them. Lee describes how he assesses the visitors who come into

Kalkari who ask about where they should go walking:

And I’ll look at them. Thongs, don’t go anywhere. Have you got water, no. You need water. Have you got someone to walk with? Go through the checklist. The guidance note is there in our brochure; take them through it; it’s just conversational. Look at a map and give an idea of distance and time, of rise and fall. Geography. And they’re gonna hear me spruik about protective clothing and I close with a mini-safety brief about ticks, spiders, snakes, bull ants. Have you got your Aeroguard, have you got your … leeches is the fifth one. And if they tremble and walk out… good. No one has ever said ‘too scary’… they’re either ready or they wanna know a bit more. Similar to Dunphy’s view of bushwalking, the volunteers see the park as a potentially dangerous space that people should not go into unprepared and without the proper attire and supplies. Volunteers feel a sense of duty to ensure park visitors are aware of and prepared for the dangers of venturing into nature. Dehydration, uneven surfaces, getting lost, exhaustion, and risks posed by weather and insects and animals, are all things people need to be warned of before they set off on a walking trail. And as Lee states: ‘No, you can’t encourage people to …

[go off the tracks], it would be wilfully reckless’.

Again we can see the ways in which repeated practices of talking to visitors become naturalised, but also active in the performance of a particular nature. Expanding my discussion in Chapter 2, through focusing on the ‘more-than-representational’, we can understand the way that life takes shape in embodied encounters, repeated actions, surprising affections and

147 corporeal practices (Lorimer 2005). The repeated practice of warning visitors that the volunteers undertake enacts (rather than describes) a nature that is harsh and fraught with danger and difficulties. It is one where

[i]n pushing into the unknown, bushwalkers accept the vagaries of the weather, hunger and thirst, the cuts, scratches and insect bites and the aching shoulders and legs, the body that simply wanted to throw off the pack and to drop (Harper 2007: 250).

Conceptualising and performing nature in the light of traditional bushwalking archetypes also enacts a nature that is not just dangerous, but one that ‘should not contain signs of human life’

(Harper 2007: 265 original emphasis). According to the legislation and management documents about the park, Ku-ring-gai Chase is not seen to officially hold any ‘wilderness’ areas. However the volunteers often argue that of course the park contains wilderness, but this wilderness is found off the track, in the places that visitors don’t (or shouldn’t) go. The park however is not complete wilderness, as there has to be some ‘unnatural stuff’, as one volunteer put it, to facilitate visitation. The following statements by Neville, Helga and Molly exemplify the volunteers’ views on the park as containing wilderness areas:

Oh yeah! Definitely, yeah you don’t have to go very far off some of the developed tracks to get to places that there’s a good chance no one has been there, and I’ve done it myself (Neville, Discovery Volunteer). There is always unnatural stuff that’s happened, there are certainly pockets though, there’s pockets of the national park which may be a bit rugged that wouldn’t have changed much, there’s been no urban encroachment or anything like that, so you can get lovely little pockets with, with almost virgin bushland in it … You don’t have to walk that far off one of the major tracks to find an unspoilt area, if you look at the map and where all the tracks are, there’s plenty of little hill tops and things where to me, it’s totally undisturbed, plenty of them thank goodness. I think it’s because of how rugged the terrain is, it creates those little pockets (Helga, Discovery Volunteer, original emphasis).

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Oh, yes I think so, off the tracks and but you know one doesn’t necessarily need to encourage people to go there, yes I think there are particularly out the West Head Road (Molly, Discovery Volunteer). The volunteers therefore see the park as containing pockets of untouched nature that is exclusive and special. The pockets are untouched and unseen by the ‘ordinary’ park visitor, but may have been accessed by a couple of experienced bushwalkers, as Neville’s statement suggests. However this does not detract from the wilderness status of national parks. During the 1930s when there was a surge in the creation of parks and reserves in Australia, Dunphy argued that national parks should ‘have extensive areas left in their natural state and designated as suitable for only for those prepared to walk to reach them’ (Harper 2007: 261).

Wilderness therefore requires a particular embodied practice of bushwalking.

The Discovery Volunteers argue that through being in the park, especially walking the trails, you can experience the park as it was when the country was first colonised during the late 18th century. Seeing the Aboriginal engravings and rock art, looking at the angophora trees which are hundreds of years old and even walking around the historic Bobbin Head with its 1930s character, all give people an insight into what the space was like during pre-colonisation and early colonisation times. The volunteers acknowledge that the park has changed as things such as the amusement features at Bobbin Head, and certain tracks and houses within the park, have come and gone. But as one volunteer stated ‘the feeling in the bush is much the same’

(Rita, Discovery Volunteer). It can be argued that some things have changed, some of which are natural changes, part of the ebbs and flows of nature, and some changes are not permanent and will change back. Change is not a threat to the survival of the park, but rather a part of it, as long as the ‘feel’ or vital essence of the park remains. Charlie (Discovery Volunteer) describes the park as:

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A natural oasis in the middle of a sea of mediocre around Sydney, an example obviously of the way the landscape would have been for many years so and a welcome refuge for people who need to get away from their everyday cares and worries, and pressures and get out into nature. It’s very precious.

7.3 Emparking wilderness Cronon argues that: far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, [wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation – indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history (Cronon 1995b: 69). Wilderness, therefore, is not a natural category but has to be actively maintained. Hermer

(2002: 4) argues ‘if landscapes deemed to be natural are to be protected they must be emparked – that is, enclosed under the protection of legislation and managed within a detailed juridical framework’ (original emphasis). I argue that volunteers ‘empark’ wilderness through regulating and schooling visitor bodies. Through this emparkment a particular nature-as- wilderness is actively manufactured through corporeal enactments.

Despite arguing that the park is a place for ‘real’ wilderness bushwalking, the volunteers paradoxically argue that Ku-ring-gai Chase is a place where visitors can interact with the bush and develop a level of comfort with the bush. The volunteers run a selection of guided ‘walks, talks and tours’. The ‘walks, talks and tours’ act as a way for the volunteers to show the visitors how to behave in the park, whilst also teaching them about different aspects of the park (such as the Aboriginal engravings that can be seen in Figure 7-2). The activity program is seen as allowing park visitors a chance to get out and become familiar with the bush in a safe way.

Molly (Discovery Volunteer) suggests that guided walks are ‘good for getting people out walking who perhaps want to walk but their friends don’t, so they come on a [guided] walk and

150 they’re not walking alone in the bush’. Guided walks also help people get comfortable with the bush before they go out on their own. As Frank explains:

And for me, getting back to the activity program I often feel that the, what, what we are doing, and I think this is way it should be, we are providing a bit of hand holding for people to make them feel comfortable about going into the park and appreciating the natural environment ah so you know I know I’ve been on tracks and I’ve said well you know ‘this is something you could do yourself, you know you can bring your friends and family back and it’s a fairly straight forward walk and it’s on a fire trail or whatever’ and so we are we’re sort of facilitating that familiarity with the natural environment (Frank, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added). Charlie emphasises this point by saying:

I enjoy taking people out into the bush, cause in some cases, it is taking them out of their comfort zone to some extent, that’s good cause I can see it on them, you get them to do something, like something like a difficult creek crossing, nothing really dangerous, but just something they may not have done before and they get a kick out of it, you can see they’re going to go back and tell people ‘guess what I did today’, sort of thing. But that’s nice, but anyway yeah that’s how, I started leading a few more walks after that, the more you do the more comfortable you feel I suppose, on the other hand it is important to realise that it is an important responsibility, taking people out into the bush, taking maybe 25 people out maybe somewhere where people can get hurt maybe if you’re not careful, so the safety aspects I am really aware of and that’s important to tell people about because sometime they don’t even think about the safety aspect of it, so the elements of danger, or the risks (Charlie, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added).

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Figure 7-2 Discovery Volunteers leading a guided walk and pointing out Aboriginal engravings to visitors (Source: Author, 9 February 2013) By taking visitors on guided walks and chatting to them at Kalkari, the volunteers instil notions of what a national park is and how people should act within them. The volunteers can be seen as guiding the visitors in the best way to perform ‘wild’ nature. Waitt et al. (2009) suggest that walking is a place- and-nature-making practice and a way of doing nature. Waitt et al. state that:

when people, plants, animals and place are understood as relationally constituted with processes that are distinctly performative, then understandings of what is nature become embedded within ideas, values, desires and experiences of doing (Waitt et al. 2009: 44) Repetitive practices of walking can therefore be understood processes of creating knowledge about the space and what does and does not belong. It is through guided walking practices and conversations at Kalkari and elsewhere in the park that the volunteers actively condition park visitor bodies to perform wild nature.

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The volunteers use the visitors’ centre as a space to reinforce the rules of the park. As mentioned in the previous chapter there is a ‘touch and feel’ box at Kalkari full of bones, feather, leaves and other bits and pieces for children to pick up and look at (see Figure 6-6).

Can you tell me where this bone came from? one of the volunteers will ask. The box contains a number of items collected from the park. Oh no you cannot take that, this is a national park. It is very naughty to remove anything from a national park. You can pick it up and look at it but you must not take it home. Kalkari is not just a place for visitors to learn about the park and what it offers; it also teaches park visitors about the acceptable ways to behave in the park. In a way Kalkari conditions visitors and attempts to control their actions. One sign in Kalkari encourages visitors to behave in a certain way in order to ensure the continual ‘beauty’ of the park:

Helping us keep Ku-ring-gai beautiful If you: Prevent erosion, keep on the tracks; Observe total fire bans; Only camp in designated campsites; Drive slowly to avoid injury to wildlife; Don’t pick the flowers – a picked flower doesn’t produce seeds; Never dump weeds in reserves – compost them, take them to the tip or get your local council to collect them; Keep your pets in at night so they don’t go hunting; Wash your car on your lawn to reduce run-off into waterways Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park will remain beautiful for future generations.

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The numerous signs around Kalkari and the volunteers’ practices therefore encourage people to think about Ku-ring-gai Chase as a special space that requires people to look after it and appreciate it. This suggests that if all park visitors follow the rules and respect the park then it will continue to be beautiful and remain the same. This also implies that a beautiful park is a healthy park, highlighting the important aspects of the aesthetic qualities of the park. In addition, by getting people involved in looking after the park, a sense of ownership is instilled on the park visitors. They feel like it is their park that needs to be maintained. Ku-ring-gai

Chase is therefore positioned as a park belonging to people and this reinforces a personal connection to the park, yet as I mentioned earlier it is also one that is fraught with dangers.

7.4 Rickety and powerful universals The volunteers also suggest that national parks are places in which there are areas that people shouldn’t go. The volunteers see the ‘off the track’ pockets as special places that could be easily destroyed if people were to venture into them without a proper knowledge of how to act. In order to ensure the continuation of the special untouched bushland, people should keep to the human spaces, the walking tracks, picnic areas and so on. By encouraging visitors to stay on the tracks the volunteers are active in the performances of Ku-ring-gai Chase as a space of rugged, special wilderness. Here again we see the ways in which the volunteers perform the universal notion of national parks as places of wilderness and scenic grandeur as envisaged in the old paradigm. Ku-ring-gai Chase is presented as a particular kind of wilderness that is exclusively for proper bushwalkers. The volunteers, however, can be seen as enacting a colonial view of nature that ignores the Indigenous heritage of the landscape by setting it up as uninhabited wilderness.

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I suggest that the volunteers perform a particular universal view of national parks as special wilderness and also condition park visitors to behave in a way that will perpetuate this universal. This is not to say that the universal reaches its desire for universality; instead it is performed in an imperfect way. The volunteers enact a nature that is harsh and uninhabited by the ordinary park visitor; yet also argue that Ku-ring-gai Chase is a place where people can get an authentic bush experience. Universal ideas of national parks as special wilderness become engaged as they are transported into Ku-ring-gai Chase and they are given power and effectiveness through the actions of the volunteers, and by extension, the visitors who behave properly. The universal, however, is made messy and broken down by visitors who may go out on the walking trails in thongs, leave their rubbish at the beach or trample saplings as they push off track. Unruly bodies can therefore make universals rickety, unstable and even crumble, just as easily as properly performing bodies give them power.

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Chapter 8 Giving nature grip

Having previously shown that the volunteers, Kalkari Discovery Centre and the signage in Ku- ring-gai Chase actively perform the park as discoverable wilderness, I now turn to NPWS employees’ understandings of national park nature to highlight the contradictions or frictions in the performances of nature. I argue that the NPWS employees have a less romantic notion of what is a national park than the volunteers and interpretive devices, and perform the park in a different way. NPWS employees argue Ku-ring-gai Chase, its future and management are dependent on government priorities. The NPWS employees currently perform the park as a service provider, as stipulated by the current government policies and in their job descriptions.

However, their personal opinions often differ from this neoliberal notion of national parks. In this chapter I show the tensions that emerge in the performances of national parks by revealing the ways in which NPWS employees perform an uneasy mix of the old and new paradigms in which national parks are seen as spaces of scenic grandeur, places for recreation, as providers of services and spaces for conservation.

I argue that through looking at the ways in which NPWS employees perform the park we are able to understand the tension between parks for conservation and the neoliberal view of parks as service providers, and the tension between the old and new paradigms for understanding what a national park is. I use these tensions to highlight the ways in which universal notions of what a national park is land on the ground and become messy. I therefore argue that universals of national park nature as special wilderness, or service providers, could be understood differently as ‘engaged universals’ that travel across locations and are altered and made effective as they encounter local specificities and are enacted in multiple ways.

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In March 2011 the NSW parliamentary election resulted in changes to the NSW government as the 16-year rule of the Australian Labor party came to an end with the election of the Liberal

National Coalition, led by Barry O’Farrell. The NPWS employees argue that the changes to the meta-politics of the state had flow-on effects that influenced the policy decisions of NPWS and ideas of what a national park is. As one NPWS employee states, a change in government

‘changes budgets, changes focus, changes … where the issues are’ (Angelina, NPWS employee).

I therefore use the 2011 change in state government as a point of departure for examining the ways in which universal notions of national park nature become ‘engaged’ when they are enacted through legislation and policy changes in Ku-ring-gai Chase, and are given grip.

8.1 Law matters The 2011 change in NSW government resulted in a major realignment in the way the government and its various agencies, including the NPWS, were structured. For the NPWS this meant that a number of employees lost jobs, gained new roles or had to reapply for their positions, while others took up acting roles. The change in government also brought a number of policy changes that altered the principles upon which national parks are managed. I argue that the policy change also had impacts on the ways in which national parks are performed.

Many of the park staff saw the change in government as creating a shift in priorities towards national parks as places for human recreation, with less emphasis on conservation. This shift is epitomised in the change of priorities that repositioned national parks as providing customer services. Although according to NPWS staff their roles were slowly moving towards a larger emphasis on improving the experiences of human park users and stakeholders, the most

157 noticeable changes were the explicit focus on customer service and the associated change in terminology. As Hannah explains:

In order to meet the new priorities we’ve been given a new director general who has, who is firmly grounded in customer service, that’s why they picked her so she could change everything around so we could really focus on customer service, delivery of whatever the public wants, with regards to national parks, which does mean that less energy may be put into our conservation programs (Hannah, NPWS employee, original emphasis) Understanding national parks as providing customer service can be seen as a shift towards the new paradigm (Phillips 2003). The new government introduced policies that called for NPWS to increase the opportunities for recreational activities in national parks. For Ku-ring-gai Chase the main activities included mountain bike riding and horse riding (I talk more about the impacts of increasing horse riding on Ku-ring-gai Chase in Chapter 17). Under the policy change the definition of a customer was also widened. Angelina, a NPWS employee, talks about how people and groups were defined when she started working for NPWS:

Customers I guess were seen more as the people who would rock up to a counter and want to purchase something, whereas a stakeholder was your neighbours, your community groups, your bush regen groups, you know, rural fire service, horse riders, mountain bikers, they had a stake in actually what was being discussed, developed, policy, planning all that sort of stuff, I think they’re being put into a customer basket now (Angelina, NPWS Employee). The change in terminology and how these individuals are talked about reinforces the notion of national parks as service providers. Ku-ring-gai Chase can be understood as a resource that needs to be specifically aimed at ensuring customer satisfaction. It also places the emphasis on employees to be more focused on ensuring the customers of the park are enjoying themselves and are satisfied with their visit, than ensuring environmental issues are being taken care of.

According to this view, the value of Ku-ring-gai Chase lies in its ability to meet customer

158 desires. This represents a shift back to early days of Australian national parks where they were seen as being primarily for the enjoyment of park visitors.

The shift towards parks as service providers however is seen by some of the NPWS employees as a negative thing. Lily talks about the shift in the focus of conservation and recreation in Ku- ring-gai: Yeah, as a result of a new state government really, the focus now is really being put on tourism, and recreation with the aim of getting as many people into the park as possible, which concerns me … from a conservation point of view (Lily, NPWS employee).

Hannah (NPWS employee) talks about the change of government shifting the focus away from conversation and highlights that the government in power drastically influences park management: Which is really quite disappointing when you’ve spent 20 years with conservation and biodiversity as your key focus, so I guess, I mean it’s really important to understand that what ends up on the ground is very much driven by what government is in and what their priorities are, even though we’ve got legislation, and at the moment some of us feel like and I’m not saying this is how it is, it’s just a feeling, is that we’re sort of clinging to the legislation in a way ‘cause there’s not a lot else that’s giving us that drive, anyway so we sort of try and keep that business as usual but very much answer to what government requires us to do. The NPWS employees therefore feel that what a national park is and what their role in managing the park is can be drastically changed by a change in the political climate. How the

NPWS employees perform national park nature is therefore not a straightforward practice.

They are obligated to conduct practices such as park management, the creation of work plans and policy documents and specific tasks that perform the park as a service provider. However, their activities are also shaped by personal and professional opinions that understand the park as a space for conservation. Therefore, the activities, behaviours and practices of the NPWS

159 employees are shaped by multiple concepts of nature. Through their performances, universal notions of nature are put to work, enacted and transformed.

Further to feeling that the change in government has altered the basis upon which a national park is valued, a number of NPWS employees see this change as a major challenge that is affecting the management of Ku-ring-gai Chase:

It’s been a challenge having a change of government, and the change, having a shift in values, conservation hasn’t disappeared but if definitely seems to have taken a secondary role and for those of us who have been here for years and years that’s always been the mainstay of what we do, that why we’re here to conserve biodiversity really (Hannah, NPWS employee). Another impact of this realignment is that it changes public perceptions of what a national park is: Well I think in terms of the message that it sends in cutting public servants and, if you like, cutting directly from our organisation, the only message, the logical message that I take out of it, is that it’s [conservation of national parks] not as higher priority as it once was (Cedric, NPWS employee).

What the changes highlight is that legislation and policies, whilst often spoken about as static and ‘right’, are constantly being altered, changed and reassessed. They are also often adapted and interpreted in different ways. Laws are constantly being tweaked or amended to accommodate new situations or new uses. Delaney (2001) argues that law and specifically how law delineates inclusions, exclusions and definitions, does not just inform, but gives expression to nature. Through making decisions around what a national park is, law matters and is active in shaping understandings, practices and engagements that perform national park nature.

Changes in law can therefore be seen as the enactment of a variety of practices that have material effects (Delaney 2001). It is through this enactment that legislation and law become

‘engaged’ or practically effective (Tsing 2005).

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8.2 Entering the fray The fact that nature is enacted suggests that it can be changed, created, recreated and performed in multiple and messy ways (Gregson and Rose 2000; Nash 2000). Despite the shift towards national parks as service providers, when I asked the NPWS employees to describe the park, none suggested that this was the primary role of national park. Their descriptions of Ku- ring-gai Chase did not represent one vision of a universal nature. By looking at the different ways in which the NPWS employees conceptualise national park nature we can ‘enter the fray’

(Tsing 2005: 270) to see how universal notions of nature are enacted and become engaged, as they encounter the local specificities of Ku-ring-gai Chase. The following shows three NPWS employees’ descriptions of Ku-ring-gai Chase:

I would describe it as a wonderful landscape and waterway that is one of the gifts of history to Sydneysiders and the world, it’s one of the most beautiful places, I know, full of you know rich flora and fauna, and Aboriginal sites, places you can get lost, rocks you can sit on and have a picnic, it’s a truly wonderful place, you know and it’s protected in perpetuity you know across generations as a national park, and it’s a privilege to work here (Cormac, NPWS employee, emphasis added). I would describe it as a relatively pristine piece of native bush, that serves as a … very important wildlife corridor, so a lot of the species need big areas to survive, and to thrive, so having a little patchwork of small parks, just don’t cut it … it’s really critical to … maintain it in good health, … I’m not a scientist but you know it’s quoted as being the lungs of the city, and all the, you know there is so much vegetation (Cedric, NPWS employee, emphasis added). From a conservation perspective … [it is] very important, because … it’s on that edge of the Sydney metropolitan area …[and] it provides a service for our native flora and fauna to live as close to its natural life as possible and it’s a big enough area for that and also because it very important in that it [provide links that make up a] expanse of native bushland,.. Describing the park as well from a visitor’s perspective, very important, because it is one of the closest parks to the Sydney metropolitan area, it gives people an opportunity to come in and enjoy the park, either coming in and bushwalking or cycling um coming in and just sitting and enjoying the natural surrounds, bird watching, just that ability that the park gives to people in the Sydney area, I think is very important, and I suppose, it’s a bit trivial but I think it’s a very beautiful park as well … having the number of visitors it gets … [it is important to

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encourage visitors] to think ‘okay conservation is an important thing’, and to look at it in their own lives and on a more national or global scale, then, cause really it’s the conservation and the education of people that’s going to make a difference and again that’s why, Ku-ring-gai having that locality, is really important to give children and adults the opportunity to experience the beauty of the area and the importance of it (Lily, NPWS employee, emphasis added). These three statements can be seen as conceptualising multiple different natures. There are a number of tensions within these statements that do not fit neatly within notions of nature as wilderness, nature as service provider or nature as valued.

Both the new and old paradigms of national parks are presented within the above statements by the NPWS employees. By focusing on the importance of allowing visitors to experience the beauty of the park and its natural environment, the old paradigm is reinforced. However, the park is seen as more than this. It is part of a network of parks that need to be conserved for a variety of reasons, including the protection of cultural and Indigenous heritage, ecosystem services, education, recreation and the health and wellbeing of people and nature. This shift can therefore be seen as a move towards the new paradigm in which the reasons for national parks are more complicated. This suggests a tension between the old and new paradigms as they rub up against each other and are expressed in the NPWS employees’ understandings of

Ku-ring-gai Chase. Universal notions of the park as wilderness, as a service provider or a space of recreation therefore do not supersede each other. Instead they are all operating in Ku-ring- gai Chase and are made powerful through the actions and management practices of the NPWS employees.

The tension between differing conceptions of national parks is further complicated by the notion of recreation. Recreation has always been a part of national parks in Australia, yet the question of what counts as appropriate recreation in national parks is a contentious issue. The

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NPWS employees understand of national parks as places for certain types of recreation, primarily activities that allow visitors to connect with nature, including bushwalking, barbequing, picnicking, non-motorised water use, and so on. NPWS employees Angelina and

Cedric state:

Yep, ah, I think with facilities like Bobbin Head where its artificially manufactured landscape, I think picnicking, and you know barbequing and all that stuff I think it’s an appropriate use, I think bushwalking is an appropriate use, we’ve got one of the most scenic parks in Sydney, with some of the most beautiful spots, so I think that, you know its low impact, I think that’s more than appropriate, I think you know managed correctly like we were talking about, horse riding and mountain bike riding has a place, but it comes with a dollar investment, for maintenance and management, if those dollars become available I think they’re more than appropriate, and it’s about opening parks up for public use, it’s kind of been one of my bug bears on that, I own the parks cause I’m a tax payer, rate payer in New South Wales, so we should be kind of allowing as many uses as fit into it as we can, but it comes with a dollar investment (Angelina, NPWS employee, original emphasis). Ku-ring-gai is on the national heritage list, I think for its natural values, but obviously it’s got lots of really strong cultural values as well, but that’s why it was reserved, for its natural values, but … [it also has] really old fashioned recreational areas, how people used to like things in the 30s … All those pointy huts and that, and in fact that’s a filled in mangrove all that stuff down there, it would have just gone sheer down to the water and there would have been no area to actually picnic, so … [it’s a] very old recreational area (Hannah, NPWS employee).

The quotes suggest that certain activities obviously belong in the park. But there is a tension here, as it is clear that the NPWS employees do not see Ku-ring-gai Chase as a space where all types of activities can be done, in all locations of the park, and by large numbers of people. It is not necessarily the type of recreational activity, but the level of impact and the ability of NPWS employees to manage the activities that is important.

Cedric, a NPWS employee, argues that introducing new activities into national parks such as horse riding and mountain biking was called for by the new government:

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[This] will impact on resources because they take away park staff, who currently are already overworked, to give them different priorities which takes them away from what arguably is the most important which is treating weeds, preserving the park, there’s less of that. Often the NPWS employees personally feel like national parks are not spaces where certain

‘higher impact’ activities belong as they are not what a national park is about, which in their opinion are places for passive recreation that allow people to experience nature. However, as employees they also understand that the higher impact activities can be accommodated in the park, but it is a question of management. If these activities are allowed then they have to be managed properly. This pragmatic understanding of national parks as being spaces where activities can occur as long as there are controls in place to ensure that the impacts are minimised and the damages are repaired, again highlights a shift towards understanding the park as a service provider. It can therefore be argued that the NPWS employees perform multiple national parks. One is of national parks as special nature that people should treat properly to ensure its naturalness, and another is of national parks as spaces that provide humans with a number of services and where damages to nature can be restored or regenerated. What emerges from the NPWS employees’ struggles to ensure that recreational activities are conducted properly and managed to minimise impacts is another notion of national parks that sees them as spaces of special nature.

Some NPWS employees, however, described Ku-ring-gai Chase as not being big enough to contain wilderness areas. When asked about wilderness areas in Ku-ring-gai, Argus, a NPWS employee, stated:

In terms of real wilderness, no. There’s places hard to get to, but I wouldn’t call them wilderness … I think the thing is with Ku-ring-gai, you get phone calls from people who are lost, ‘walk up hill you’ll come to something, you’ll come to a road, yep, just keep walking up hill you’ll find something’, certainly no wilderness areas, I think the closest

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we’d get here in our patch here, is Marramarra National Park, it’d certainly have some more wilderness type areas, but again you walk for a day, you’ll get out of it, so no. He goes on to say:

What you want is for national parks, they need to be big and sustainable, you look at a lot of the US parks, they are big parks, they’re huge parks, and you’ve got that sustainability within it, when we’re trying to do this and protect the rest of the world from encroaching (Argus, NPWS employee, original emphasis). Like the volunteers, the NPWS employees still see the park as special nature, although its value goes beyond allowing visitors to experience nature and its scenic grandeur. As can be seen in the descriptions of the park, NPWS employees have a less romantic view of Ku-ring-gai Chase.

They put more emphasis on the conservation role that the park has, and the services that it provides. Ku-ring-gai acts as a corridor, linking several other natural areas, and thus provides a wide range of habitats and areas for flora and fauna to flourish, and Ku-ring-gai also provides humans with a number of services. Yet the employees still see the park as containing special native nature that people are able to access. The NPWS employees’ performances and understandings of the park therefore highlight the frictions between universal notions of national parks as put forward by the old and new paradigm (see Phillips 2003). The NPWS employees (and the legislation and policies that guide them) enact multiple universals – the park as scenic grandeur, as a provider of customer services including a space for recreation, as a provider of environmental services including flora and fauna conservation and a place of management and control. Multiple universals are therefore made active (rather than superseded) through the guiding legislation, politics and policies and the actions of NPWS employees.

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8.3 Engaging multiple natures I suggest that by looking at the NPWS employees’ performances of national parks, the sticky materiality of practical encounters can be seen. The NPWS employees grapple daily with multiple notions of what a national park is – pure nature, place for conservation, place for recreation, a service provider, a work place, a refuge – all of these ideas percolate through their performances and become practically effective in encounters. This chapter shows that universals are not perfectly enacted; instead, there is a stickiness to encounters as universals encounter mess on the ground. The employees’ performances highlight that (multiple) universal ideas of nature become ‘engaged’ as they ‘travel’ or are used in different locales.

Becoming engaged means that universals change yet also change spaces as they are enacted and put to work in specific locations. Universals then become practically effective as they are performed, yet as they do they become messy and different. Universals are influential in the performances of national park nature, yet they never reach their goal of universality.

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Chapter 9 Overgrown Aboriginal Country

The shift towards the new paradigm calls for protected areas, and therefore national parks, to be acknowledged as significant to Indigenous populations. Here the rights, needs and culture of Indigenous groups are recognised and incorporated into the protection and management of national parks. In Australia, Indigenous ideas of nature fundamentally differ from colonial notions of a separate and delimited nature. This chapter explores the ways in which these notions of nature come into being in Ku-ring-gai Chase, and how they become engaged and messy.

9.1 Differing ontologies As I have previously mentioned Australian national park management has been critiqued as holding onto Eurocentric principles of management that instil a tangible division between nature and culture and assume the superiority of humans over nonhumans and nature (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). Eurocentric ontologies assume there is a linear pattern to nature as it progresses from a pristine, wild state to one that contaminated by humans. These ontologies also assume that through practices of human management, separate areas of nature can be conserved or restored.

In opposition to western ideas of nature, Indigenous Australians see the land as animate and constantly changing, and as having its own rights and obligations (Palmer 2006: 39). Palmer states that:

Indigenous peoples’ relations with place and nonhuman nature are not merely expressions of deep-felt attachment to country or vestiges of a conservative, closed and parochial past, despite essentialist representations to the contrary. Rather, these relationships are central to the constitution of dynamic and engaged Indigenous

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polities, polities which assume ‘relations, flows and openendedness as their ontological ground’ (Palmer 2006: 37). Indigenous ontologies therefore do not comply with an essential or pure ‘nature’. Current practices of national park management are therefore concerned with Eurocentric understandings of managing human impacts in order to conserve or restore areas of pristine

‘nature’, rather than engaging with Indigenous ideas of the land as something that is animate, constantly changing and a mix of more-than-human, more-than-nonhuman relations (Palmer

2005).

Inside Kalkari there are a number of displays and signs that inform visitors of the Indigenous heritage of Ku-ring-gai Chase. Inside the centre there are two display cabinets (one of which can be seen in Figure 9-1) containing an axe, and a number of spears, clubs, shields and bark bowls, which were used for hunting, fighting, ceremonies and gathering and eating food. Next to these displays is a sign that states:

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park lies in the traditional lands of the Garigal and Terramerragal people. They were members of the Guringai nation whose lands extended south to Sydney Harbour and west to Lane Cove River. Preserved in the park are many of their sandstone engravings – part of one of the greatest concentrations of rock art on the world. Evidence of complex belief systems and rich cultural lives can be found in an extraordinary legacy of engravings, paintings and stone arrangements. The park holds special significance to Aboriginal people, both as evidence of the original occupants and for the education of their children.

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Figure 9-1 Indigenous axe and bark bowl, along with rock specimens in Kalkari (Source: Author, 25 January 2013)

Outside in the Kalkari grounds there is a steel sign that has only recently been installed. Unlike other signs in the park this one is brightly coloured and consists of three curved shapes that fit together (see Figure 9-2). The sign reads Welcome to Kalkari and Guringai Country, and describes the Aboriginal history of the area and gives some information about the cultural significance of the land for the Guringai people. It states that The national park has great cultural and spiritual importance for the Guringai people – both in its general landscape, and in the many Aboriginal sites found in the park. There is also an Indigenous engraving beside the sign, which we are told is a ‘replica’ of one found in the West Head area of the park. On the other side of the path there is a sign profiling the People of the Guringai Language Country and

169 giving some details of those Guringai who have been influential from 1770 until the present.

This sign describes the movements and stories of the Guringai people, highlighting their continued connection to the land.

Figure 9-2 Sign inside Kalkari grounds giving visitors information about the Guringai people, the Kalkari Discovery Trail and Ku-ring-gai Chase (Source: Author, 25 January 2013)

Despite this recognition of the significance of Ku-ring-gai Chase to the Guringai people, past and present, the way in which this is presented and enacted often reverts back to colonial assumptions of nature. As Griffiths states:

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Appreciation of Aboriginal manipulation of the environment is increasingly a factor in modern park management. But the old language and dismissive stereotypes still slip into the environmental handbook (Griffiths 1996: 265). Utilising phrases such as ‘untouched wilderness’, positioning Indigenous practices as

‘traditional’, and categorising and cataloguing flora and fauna in scientific terms, are all ways in which Eurocentric ontologies are performed or reinforced in park signage, documents and policies, and in the practices of volunteers and NPWS staff.

As I pointed out in Chapter 1, the history of Indigenous people in Ku-ring-gai Chase is not a pleasant one. The majority of the Guringai people were wiped out during early colonisation due to diseases introduced by Europeans, and as a result of conflicts over land. This history is hinted to by one of the signs in Kalkari:

Nothing could prepare the Guringai people for the havoc that the First Fleet would bring. By 1790 half the Guringai population had been wiped out by smallpox and by the 1840s most of the Guringai had disappeared from Pittwater. The volunteers at Kalkari often position the Indigenous heritage of the park as an indicator that the park hasn’t changed, or has remained in a relatively pristine state. The statement below from Helga, a Discovery Volunteer, highlights the volunteers’ understanding of Indigenous sites: [Ku-ring-gai Chase has] difficult to access areas, and that’s where you’re going to find the pristine stuff, even like there might be Aboriginal engravings that no one knows about yet, could be in those areas, in the pocketed areas so yeah, yeah I definitely think there’s pristine areas. In this way, Aboriginal occupation of the land is portrayed as a ‘natural’ process and Aboriginal alteration and management of the land is silenced. The presence of Indigenous artefacts is thought by the volunteers to represent the authenticity of the bush. Paradoxically, despite the obvious human involvement that went into creating the rock art, hidden and unknown engravings are used as an indication of the untouched wilderness that can be found in Ku-ring-

171 gai Chase. Waitt and Head (2002: 327) argue that ‘by erasing the presence of indigenous people as human and casting them as part of nature the myth creates a vast emptiness in which tourists can experience apparently pristine nature’.

The idea that the impacts of Indigenous people are natural is also perpetuated by a number of signs within Ku-ring-gai Chase that suggest the presence of Aboriginal sites is an indicator of the significance and authenticity of the nature in the park. There are signs that highlight the

Aboriginal connection to the land, Immerse yourself in Aboriginal culture with a Chase Alive

Discovery activity at West Head. A variety of engravings in the park have been preserved to show evidence of complex belief systems and rich cultural lives of the Aboriginal people of the land. By walking on the trails in the park people can: Follow the footsteps of the original inhabitants to an Aboriginal rock engraving site, featuring a mythical creature and several axe grinding grooves.

The signs suggest that by walking the trails in Ku-ring-gai Chase visitors will be able to gain insights into the Indigenous landscape as it existed prior to 1788. Similar to concepts of wilderness, these understandings of Ku-ring-gai Chase:

actively deny history, the remnants of human history are often physically removed, and any other changes to the land are ignored. We are led to believe that the landscape is exactly how it was many years ago (Griffiths 1996: 261). Understandings of Ku-ring-gai Chase perpetuate a Eurocentric vision of nature as it attempts to restore or preserve the landscape as the Europeans supposedly found it, which was, paradoxically, an Indigenous managed, manipulated and created land (Gammage 2011;

Griffiths 1996).

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Low (2003) highlights this paradox of ‘wilderness’ and further suggests that the very nature of these spaces requires human manipulation and management in order to maintain their

‘natural’ qualities. Management in the form of fires, and pest and weed removal is an essential part of ensuring the ‘naturalness’ of wilderness and as such is a ‘necessary contradiction’ (Low

2003: 44). These ideas of wilderness act to perpetuate human separation from nature and as such reinforce nature/culture dualisms. These ideas also do not take into consideration the fact that all ‘wilderness areas’ have been changed by Aborigines, early Europeans, climate change and modern human populations. Muecke (2006: 1) argues ‘most so-called wilderness in

Australia is overgrown Aboriginal country’.

9.2 Ku-ring-gai Chase as Country Beginning with the declaration of Australia as terra nullius, or land belonging to no one, there has been a history of denial of the connection of Aboriginal people to the land (Head 2000).

Although the terra nullius myth has been exposed and there has been a powerful shift towards the recognition of Indigenous connections to the land, Head (2000: 6) argues that the

‘complexity of the historical situation is commonly understated and the extent of the revolution is overstated’. The truth of this assertion can be seen in the ways in which there are slippages in terminology that revert to an external and definable nature, as I have previously shown. Despite this I argue that there are a number of ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase is being enacted as an Aboriginal landscape. Currently operating in Ku-ring-gai Chase are Aboriginal guided tours which seek to give visitors an insight into Ku-ring-gai Chase as an Aboriginal landscape. The following is a field diary excerpt from when I attended one of these guided tours:

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It was a warm and sunny first day of winter, as I pulled off West Head Road into the parking bay at the head of the Basin Trail [see Map 2]. Over the next few minutes the 9 other people attending the tour, and the two tour leaders (Alastor and James) joined me. Today we were going on a guided Aboriginal tour. When everyone had arrived, Alastor did a Welcome to Country and acknowledged the elders of the land past, present and future. James also acknowledged the elders, as he is not a Guringai descendant. Alastor told us the story of his ancestors living in the area, and how the majority of them were wiped out during the early European colonisation due to smallpox and syphilis. After the welcome we were all ‘ochred up’. Mixing up the pale grey ochre on a bark bowl (coolamon), James first put three dots on Alastor’s forehead, and a mark on the back of each of his hands. He then did the same for the rest of us. The dots on the forehead represented Aboriginal education. James mentioned that when they were growing up their education would come from the elders and would involve the three L’s – listening, learning and looking. So the dots on our forehead represented that today we were listening, learning and looking. The marks on our hands were so that we could touch the sites today. As James is not a descendant from the area he also marked his ankles, which he told us would allow him safe passage today, and stop him from entering places he shouldn’t. After everyone was ochred up, James grabbed two sticks which he told us had originally been one that had been cut to make two smaller ones. With one in each hand he stood at the track head and closed his eyes, after a while he suddenly hit the two sticks together above his head. Then without opening his eyes he turned 90 degrees and repeated the same thing. He did this two more times before opening his eyes and the tour started. We walked along the Basin Trail for about 300 metres during which Alastor told us stories of his great-grandmother who was one of the wives of Bungaree. Bungaree was an Aboriginal man from Broken Bay who played a key role in the colonisation of Sydney, often acting as mediator between Aboriginal people and early Europeans. He is also credited as the first person born in Australia to circumnavigate the country, which he did alongside Matthew Flinders. Alastor also told us how during early colonisation a lot of the Aboriginal middens were dug up and the shells were taken to a lime burner to make the lime for limestone buildings. We came across the entrance to the engraving sites which was the focus of the tour, the path was marked on either side by two large rocks, one of which read ‘Welcome to Guringai Country’ and the other had an outline of an engraving of a man [see Figure 9-3]. We were shown a map of Lambert Peninsular, which had over 1500 recorded Aboriginal sites marked on it which included women’s and men’s areas, engraving sites, artwork, gathering areas, middens, shelters, fire places and burial sites. James told us that all of the sites link up and show story lines and dreaming lines. And each was a teaching site and represented a different type of learning for different times of the year and different stages of life. He explained just as you moved to different

174 classrooms for different subjects, you would move among different sites to learn different things. The Guringai people have 6 seasons and as such each teaching sites would be visited several times a year and this would ensure their upkeep and the engravings would have been regrooved on a regular basis. Each site has directional markers of some kind which show the direction of other sites or particular animals. Markers often were shown by the direction hands were pointing. We walked into the engraving site and sat out the edges on wooden logs. We were told this was a teaching site and contained several different engravings that would be used to educate people on Dreamtime stories, the location of animals, and the consequences of being greedy or disrespecting laws. Before stepping over the logs into the site James and Alastor took their shoes off. The engravings at the site had recently been regrooved by the ‘Redfern boys’, as part of the Aboriginal Partnership Program. James and Alastor saw this as a good thing as engravings were put at risk by vegetation encroachment, lichen grown and exposure to the elements. The area was surrounded by casuarinas which had been trimmed back as part of the program. When dropped, casuarina needles release chemicals that bleach the sandstone. Natural weathering, sand, rain, heat and fire also cause damage to the engravings. While some lichen acts to seal and protect engravings, other fungal lichens cause damage as when they die they leave behind more exposed sandstone. James told us that lichen would not have been such a problem in the past as there would have been people at the sites constantly, walking over the rocks which would have prevented lichen growth. Sitting on the logs we began to hear stories of each of the engravings. There was one engraving of a young man – he had lines across his body, a belt made of hair and grasses, which indicated he had been initiated [see Figure 9-4]. Prior to initiation, which usually occurred around puberty, all children lived with the women and were taught how to ‘shop’ in the bush, how to find the right foods, and collect them in the correct manner so that they were edible and did not make them sick. Once initiated the boys were on their own and had to find their own food. James told us that there were many levels of initiation and he himself is about to undergo another stage. Another engraving was of another young man who had large swollen elbows. This man had done something wrong and had received a wack to each elbow as punishment. There were other engravings in the punishment section to show the consequences of being greedy and disrespecting laws. Moving along to the next section of engravings, we were all given a bottle of water. After taking our shoes off, to stop damage to the engravings we walked around the rock platform to try and find the hidden engravings in that area. Using the water to highlight the fish that we found, we walked around feeling the rock and engravings without hands and feet, feeling for peck marks and grooves and identifying birds, fish [see Figure 9-5], eels and even a penguin.

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After that the men in the group stayed behind while James took us to a nearby women’s area. We walked along a narrow trail, crouching as we went to avoid the low hanging grevillea limbs. We then came out into a rock outcrop looking out towards Terry Hills. There were a series of large rocks which James told us made up a women’s area. He was only allowed on the first rock [see Figure 9-6], but the rest of us rock hopped over where we found two ‘birthing baths’ [see Figure 9-7]. And we were told that under the rock we stood on were three ‘birthing caves’. James sat and watched us from the rock where the men would have waited for babies to be born. After that we scrambled back over the rocks to James and walked back to the teaching site (Field diary excerpt, 1 June 2013).

Figure 9-3 Entrance to the Aboriginal engraving site along the Basin Trail (Source: Author, 1 June 2013)

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Figure 9-4 Engraving of a man, the line across his Figure 9-5 Engraving of a fish (Source: Author, 1 stomach represents a belt made of grass and hair June 2013) indicating that this man has been initiated (Source:

Author, 1 June 2013)

Figure 9-6 View from the Aboriginal women’s area, James can be seen sitting on a rock in the distance in the area where men are allowed to be (Source: Author, 1 June 2013)

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Figure 9-7 One of the birthing baths in the women's area (Source: Author, 1 June 2013)

In a different way to the signage in the park, this story highlights a continued and current connection of Indigenous people to the Ku-ring-gai Chase landscape. The stories told during the guided tour suggest that people, animals, plants, spirits and land are all connected to make up Ku-ring-gai Chase, and as such there is no nature that is separate to culture, and no nature that is universal. The stories also highlight that practices and lore that directed the lives and understandings of Indigenous people prior to European colonisation still prevail and guide people’s actions and lives today. Not only was the site we went to a teaching site prior to

European colonisation, it continues to be a teaching site not just of Indigenous people, but also for others of various background who attend the guided tours.

I suggest that by ochring up, hearing stories, feeling engravings with bare feet and going to women’s areas, we actively performed Ku-ring-gai Chase differently. These practices brought into being Ku-ring-gai as Country:

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‘Country’ has many layers of meaning. It incorporates people, animals, plants, water and land. But Country is more than just people and things, it is also what connects them to each other and to multiple spiritual and symbolic realms. It relates to laws, custom, movement, song, knowledges, relationships, histories, presents, futures and spirits. Country can be talked to, it can itself communicate, feel and take action. Country for us is alive with story, Law, power and kinship relations that join not only people to each other but link people, ancestors, place, animals, rocks, plants, stories and songs within land and sea. So you see, knowledge about Country is important because it’s about how and where you fit in the world and how you connect to others and to place (Burarrwanga et al. 2013: 128).

9.3 Effective particularities Another way of revealing the frictions around the categorisation of universal protected areas is by examining the move to acknowledge the significance of protected areas to Indigenous populations. This shift recognises the past and present connection of Indigenous groups to protected areas and calls for them to have the option of being involved in the management of these spaces. Under the new paradigm, including notions of incorporating the rights, needs and cultures of Indigenous groups into the protection and management of protected areas seem like a straightforward step. However, this tends to universalise notions of nature and managing nature.

Ku-ring-gai Chase, therefore, is performed as multiple Indigenous landscapes that see it as

Indigenous homeland and country, a tourist attraction, a part of past history, an indicator of authenticity, and as an ongoing and emergent part of the park. Nature in Ku-ring-gai Chase is not fixed and can potentially be challenged or changed. Through being enacted in multiple ways, universal notions of nature, both colonial and Indigenous, become engaged – they land in and transform specific locations and are transformed in the process. This chapter demonstrates the importance to Indigenous people of ceremony, being on Country, dancing

179 and sharing stories as ways of performing their connection to Country and looking after

Country. So in some ways the Indigenous ontology is performed in Ku-ring-gai Chase. What this chapter has also shown is the role that histories play in the creation of Ku-ring-gai Chase – how people act, the information on signage and the stories told all have historical roots and materially impact on the park.

Rather than viewing Ku-ring-gai Chase purely within Eurocentric or Indigenous ontologies, this chapter has begun to explore the cracks in these universals to highlight the multiplicity, differences, tensions and stickiness of encounters through which universals are performed and become engaged. It is these types of local particularities that cause universal notions of nature to break down, but also become engaged or effective. The debates, contentions, bloodshed, ignorance and acknowledgements that are part of the history of Australian landscapes have not only shaped opinions and understandings but have also had material effects on the nature that is enacted.

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Chapter 10 Conclusion: Co-fabricating Ku-ring-gai Chase nature

The previous stories of categorisations, interpretive devices, volunteers, employees and

Indigenous connections have been used to explore the work that goes into creating Ku-ring-gai

Chase National Park. Part 2 aims to show that ‘universal claims do not actually make everything everywhere the same’ (Tsing 2005: 1), nor are they a description of how things are. Instead, universals ‘give grip’ to situations. I have aimed to show the ways in which universals become

‘engaged’, which acknowledges ‘the fact that to be effective they must enter the fray’ (Tsing

2005: 270). Therefore, this chapter has highlighted that universal notions of national park nature do not represent a homogenising force that erodes local difference. Instead, universals land in particular locations and become messy.

The international and national categories and laws concerning national parks conceptualise national parks as defined spaces of special nature that require human management in order to ensure their continuation. These spaces are spoken of in ways that position them as universally understandable, definable and classifiable. However, by looking at how these universals land in

Ku-ring-gai Chase we can begin to see the tensions, contradictions and frictions that go into performing national parks.

Chapter 6 suggested that the Kalkari Discovery Centre and the signage within Ku-ring-gai Chase perform a particular national park nature and condition a particular national park visitor. The interpretive devices in the park put forward Ku-ring-gai Chase nature as valued, uninhabited and spectacular. They also make this nature discoverable and knowable by providing park

181 visitors with a scientific analysis of the parks flora and fauna and by shaping what visitors see in the park as valuable and worth conserving.

The volunteers similarly see the park as containing special nature, although they enrol the park visitors to enact this specific nature more actively than the interpretive devices. The volunteers enact Ku-ring-gai Chase as rugged wilderness where only the most avid and hardy bushwalkers should venture. Through taking visitors on guided walks and chatting to them in Kalkari and the park, the volunteers endeavour to ensure that visitors behave properly, thus perpetuating national park nature as special wilderness. However, the unruly visitors who walk off track without being properly prepared, or who leave rubbish in the bush, disrupt this universal.

The tenuous nature of universals is further brought out by the NPWS employees who enact multiple visions of what a national park is. The NPWS employees and the legislation that guides them enact Ku-ring-gai Chase as a service provider for customers, as special nature, as a space for recreation and as a space where the activities of visitors needs to be properly managed.

However, as I show in Chapter 8, the performances of the different types of nature are not perfect representations of universals. Instead, multiple and partial universals permeate throughout Ku-ring-gai Chase and are given varying levels of purchase by the performances of

NPWS employees.

And finally in Chapter 9 I explore how Ku-ring-gai Chase can be enacted as Indigenous country.

Ku-ring-gai Chase is an important landscape for Indigenous people. My stories show some of the ways in which Indigenous ontologies become part of the Ku-ring-gai Chase landscape. In doing so, I have shed light on some of the cracks in the universal notions of what a national park is. Instead of suggesting that Ku-ring-gai Chase can be viewed within either a Eurocentric

182 or an Indigenous ideology, I suggest that through encounters, multiple tensions and natures emerge.

Part 2 has explored the meeting of the universals and the particulars or the ‘productive moments’ when universals come into encounters and are performed through various actors to co-fabricate a particular landscape as a national park. I argue that universals become sticky as they land on the ground and are performed. Drawing on Haraway (2008), I argue that it is this stickiness that causes difference to be produced and that as a result, universals, once they are engaged or performed, become different. I have argued that national parks do not represent universal notions. Instead, they are an uneasy mixture of disciplined bodies, disciplining legislation, labouring rangers, which are all co-fabricating national park nature in multiple and messy ways.

Universals which depict national parks as special nature, wilderness, providers of services, conservation sites, Indigenous country or spaces for recreation, do not materialise on their own. Instead, they are performed by other-than-human agencies and a lively earth (Whatmore

2006). My stories have begun to suggest that it is not just humans that are enrolled in the performances of nature – the park signage, the displays at Kalkari, the legislation and policies, and the Aboriginal sites and engravings all come to impact on the actions of park staff, visitors and volunteers, and on the reinforcement or rupture of specific natures.

There are a multitude of competing ideas of what is a national park, all of which are being performed in Ku-ring-gai Chase in different ways, and all of which bring different national park natures into existence. The previous chapters have begun to unravel the ideas put forward by the old and new paradigms for conceptualising national parks, and put them in contention with

183 each other. Ku-ring-gai Chase performs neither paradigm perfectly, but these conceptualisations are made active and become ‘engaged’ as they are enacted.

The practices of legislation, documents, signage, displays, volunteers, park visitors, NPWS employees and Indigenous people are simultaneously enacting a specific area of land into being as a national park. Taking these practices into consideration, the idea of a national park becomes messy, complex and problematic. There are frictions in these performances as some are given power while others are glossed over, and they are all impacting on the material performances of the park. Active performances are bringing a delineated space into being as a national park. What I have shown in Part 2 is how one particular patch (Ku-ring-gai Chase) of dispossessed nature gets made into, and is continually kept as, a national park. Part 3 now shifts to consider what this means for belonging in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

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Part 3: Frictions of belonging in Ku- ring-gai Chase

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Angophora costata and Xanthorrhoea, Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (Source: Author) Chapter 11 Introduction to Part 3

In Part 2, I revealed how a number of different actors envisioned national parks and how they put forward a range of notions of what is a national park and what belongs in a national park.

International and national categorisation and legislation of national parks highlight national parks as spaces of significance because they contain ‘outstanding’ or ‘unique’ nature that is set aside in order to protect natural and cultural values. National parks were also revealed as pedagogic spaces instructing citizens in how to behave in the bush and which plants and animals to value. For example, the signage within Ku-ring-gai Chase and the Kalkari Discovery

Centre positions national parks as spaces where visitors can learn about the natural environment through being immersed in nature. The volunteers who work in Ku-ring-gai Chase see national parks as being a ‘treasure’ and an area of special nature whose ‘essence’ has been preserved since colonisation. According to the volunteers, national parks are a ‘gift’ that people are lucky to have access to; the volunteers work hard to enact national parks as spaces of well-behaved visitor bodies, which respect and cherish nature. Finally, the NPWS staff members see national parks as spaces of native biodiversity that are in need of protection and that should be free from pests and weeds, and where the actions and activities of ‘customers’ should be managed properly to ensure the health of the ecosystem.

Ideas of national parks in the legislation, policy documents, signage and visitors centre, and put forward by the volunteers and NPWS employees, are all grounded in human assumptions of belonging, and judgements about what is ‘best’ for the environment. The decisions made about belonging create a set of tensions that are expressed in management actions that select

186 or prioritise certain plants and animals over others. But as I have shown in Part 2, belonging is also connected to human-nonhuman relations with the park.

The concept of national parks as spaces containing special native nature that is worth conserving resonates throughout all of these ideas. Nativeness here is equated to naturalness, or belonging in national parks (Instone 2010). This may seem self-evident, but as the following chapters will show, belonging is more complex and nuanced than we might expect. What counts as national park nature and how we delineate nativeness are not as obvious as they first seem. To explore the messy and entangled notions of belonging and nativeness, Part 3 presents three encounters in which ideas of native species as belonging in national parks are played out in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. I look at frictions around belonging and how the notions of belonging, especially belonging in national park nature, shape the park and what goes on in it in particular ways. I tell three stories, about kangaroos, rabbits and trees, to show the complicated dynamics, the frictions and the tensions, that arise in the performances of national park belonging. In telling these stories I develop an understanding of belonging as relational, more-than-human and messy.

11.1 Contesting belonging In a colonial society like Australia, belonging is a contested and complex issue as Indigenous and colonial notions rub up against each other and percolate through society and park management practices with varying levels of impact. As such the distinction between belonging and not belonging in a national park is highly contested. National parks are seen as spaces of native nature, and therefore spaces where native plants and animals belong (Gager and

Conacher 2001). Yet the ways in which native nature is delineated has come under increased

187 criticism, and according to Head (2012: 168) the distinction between native nature and non- native nature ‘dissolves under empirical scrutiny’. However, the notion of native nature is an important one as it underpins national park management in a way which ensures the integrity of the space as a national park.

Warren states that:

[n]ative species are those which have autocolonized an area since a selected time in the past … and alien species are those which have been introduced by humans, intentionally or otherwise (Warren 2007: 428). Making this separation between native and non-native, or alien, is one of the founding principles upon which conservation operates. And the creation of national parks has been revealed as essential to national and international conservation strategies (Dudley, 2008: vii).

The National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (NSW) states ‘[t]he purpose of reserving land as a national park is to identify, protect and conserve areas containing outstanding or representative ecosystems, natural or cultural features or landscapes or phenomena’ (NP&W

Act 1974, Section 30E). Conservation is understood as a process of enhancing the naturalness of an area through cleansing it of the ‘unnatural’ species deemed not to belong. The management practices that ensure the conservation of nature within national parks actively champion native species as the height of ‘nature’ or ‘naturalness’, and therefore render alien species, as invasive exploiters who destroy nature (Warren 2007: 437).

Theorists (see Head and Muir 2004; Trigger et al. 2008 and Head 2012) have put forward a number of ways of conceptualising the delineation between native and non-native or alien.

This chapter now turns to explore the ways in which concepts of nativeness are understood as providing a temporal and spatial boundary, a human categorisation and a level of either

188 suitability or damage caused. I also highlight the tensions, overlaps and contradictions inherent within these ideas as a way of disrupting universal notions of native nature as belonging in national parks.

For some, ideas of belonging in national parks and nativeness stem from a spatial and temporal boundary. This can be seen in Warren’s (2007: 428) definition of natives as plants and animals that are imagined to be in a particular area at a particular historic time. Most frequently within

Australian society this temporal boundary is 1788, or the time when Europeans colonised the country. Species in Australia at the time of European colonisation are therefore rendered native, or natural, and any species entering the country on or after 1788 are understood as alien or non-native species. In this sense ‘1788 is not only a temporal horizon of significance, although it is that. Rather it is also inscribed in space, or in space/times of belonging and of nature’ (Head 2012: 173). The 1788 boundary is not only one of the most recent time scales across the globe for determining nativeness, but is also critiqued as ignoring or making

‘natural’ thousands of years of trade and environmental alteration by Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation (Head 2012). By emptying out the Australian landscape of its Indigenous inhabitants, the 1788 boundary creates a symbolic national identity and bestows specific plants and animals with nationality – they belong to the nation (Head and Muir 2004; Trigger et al.

2008). Notions of a 1788 boundary of nativeness therefore naturalise specific plants and animals that were imagined to be in a particular place at a particular time, and through doing so render all other concepts of nativeness invisible.

However, Head (2012) argues that nativeness in Australia is not a natural or self-evident thing; instead, it is a ‘particular construction’ that tells us more about human created divisions

189 between humans and nonhuman nature than it does about the innate characteristics of nativeness. What needs to be reiterated here is that delineations of natural/unnatural, native/alien, in place/out of place are an entirely human way of making sense of the world; the natural world does not categorise itself according to these dichotomies (Bowker and Star 1999;

Cronon 1995b). Warren’s (2007) definitions of native and alien can be understood as constructing a distinct ‘ontological separation’ between human and nonhuman. For example, the creation of alien species is understood as a direct result of the wrong type of human interference (Warren 2007; Head 2012). This suggests that the title of ‘native’ is revocable, as the role of humans in the relocation of species can render them and any subsequent populations non-native, yet the title of ‘non-native’ is seen as permanent. Therefore, it is not necessarily an inherent quality of the species that renders them native or non-native. Rather, the distinction is based around a human-created ‘temporal boundary between before and after, and a conceptual boundary around humans’ (Head 2012: 168). Thinking about nativeness not as an innate characteristic, but rather a human classification raises questions around the usefulness of this delineation for environmental management.

In light of this critique, ideas of ‘natives’ as belonging in national parks are often justified using assumptions that ‘natives’ are more ‘natural’ and therefore ‘best adapted’. Ideas of native and alien as positioned within scientific studies often equate ‘“nativeness” with “naturalness”, where naturalness is figured as harmony with the natural environment’ (Instone 2010: 103).

But as Warren (2007: 437) notes this argument ‘rests on myth not biology’. Speaking of plants,

Instone (2010: 103) argues ‘[s]uch optimism was built on the ecological nativism imaginary that if a plant is in its “proper place” then it will flourish and look after itself’. However it can be argued that:

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‘[n]atives’ are only the plants that happen to arrive first and be able to flourish … while their capacity for flourishing only indicates a status as ‘better than’ others available, not as optimal or globally ‘best suited’ (Head 2012: 170).

Instone’s (2010) study of native grasses in an urban park in Melbourne, Australia, illustrates that native grasses are not necessarily better suited to Australian park environments and often require more attention, chemicals and management than introduced grasses. Instead ‘natives’ can be understood as simply the ones there first (Warren 2007), or in the case of Australia, the ones that were present at the time of colonisation and were noticed by the first Europeans

(Head 2012).

Connected to the notion of natives as being in harmony with nature is the understanding of alien species as being environmentally destructive. Non-native species are often demonised as invasive and destructive and assumed to be a major threat to biodiversity (Head and Muir

2004). Warren (2007: 429) reinforces this view and argues that the conservation paradigm

‘rests partly … on the stark fact that invasive alien species frequently wreak economic and ecological devastation’. However ideas of nativeness as determined by the damaged caused by species, are brought into question by the ‘new ecology’ which suggest that human interference with the natural world does not necessarily result in the destruction of ecosystem equilibrium, as ecosystems are always in a state of flux. Instead of causing harm to the environment, Head

(2012) argues that studies now show that the introduction of new species into environments can effectively increase biodiversity.

Ideas of native species being best adapted, and the 1788 boundary, rest on views about spatial boundaries in which natives are considered to be those plants and animals which are ‘in the

191 right place’. Talking of the difference between constructions of native and alien, Head and Muir state:

Alienness – or its converse nativeness – refers to its presumed belonging in a certain space. Invasives take over, but they may take over places in which they belong. Aliens are in the wrong place but they are not necessarily taking over (Head and Muir 2004: 199).

Understanding belonging in national parks as being directly connected to nativeness is therefore not a straightforward concept. There are multiple ways in which nativeness can be constituted using boundaries around pre- and post-1788, human and natural relations, and being in or out of place. However, ideas of native, alien, invasive, pest and weed create a set of tensions around what species belong in national park. If these divisions are not straightforward, then what consequences does this have for how park management happens?

11.2 Shaping park management Notions of belonging shape national park management. Management plans outline which plant and animal species should be there, which ones are prioritised, which ones shouldn’t be there and how to remove them. Management plans are based on ideas of delineating native from alien, and ways to ensure the naturalness or nativeness of the environment by removing the alien or unnatural. However, as I have just mentioned, these categorisations are contested and complex.

In Australia there have been intense debates surrounding the categorisation of native and alien. The debates pivot around 1788, the first year of European colonisation, as representing a temporal boundary which is used to distinguish between native and alien. Here, species known to reside in the country at the time of colonisation are considered to be native, and

192 thus to belong in national parks, and others are designated non-native or alien. These categorisations are essential in shaping parks and park management in Australia. The first two stories I tell look at two animals which are seen to belong irrefutably on either side of this divide – the Eastern Grey Kangaroo, an iconic (pre-1788) native Australian animal, and the rabbit, an introduced (post-1788) pest species. I look at how these species are thought about and managed in Ku-ring-gai Chase to highlight a number of paradoxes and frictions within the native/alien delineation. I demonstrate the ways in which kangaroos and rabbits do not fit neatly within the native/alien divide but instead are entangled in sticky engagements of friction.

My stories of the kangaroos and rabbits draw out another way of thinking about belonging in national parks. I suggest that belonging can be understood through Clark’s notion of bioinvasion and Low’s notion of new nature. Clark’s and Low’s concepts suggest that there is no inherent pure nature, and as such a disruption to nature, such as the presence of invasive species or human impacts, does not necessarily mean the ‘end of nature’. Instead, we can examine the ways in which nature and belonging are messy, multiple and more-than-human.

As a way of taking this further I present a relational story of how belonging can materialise the park in particular ways and create particular natures. This involves a move away from understanding belonging in terms of native/non-native, in place/out of place and pre/post

1788 dualisms. I argue that belonging creates the park, rather than suggesting that belonging delineates what should or shouldn’t be in the park.

My third story takes up these themes and teases out the frictions around the performances of belonging in national parks by exploring how belonging is shaped within moments of individual

193 encounter with Angophora Costata (angophora). I highlight the inclusions and exclusions that are part of people’s stories of belonging. Here, the role of other-than-human actors in shaping belonging is highlighted, and the performances of belonging and of relations are explored. But more than this, I examine how encounters shape belonging and the ways in which belonging becomes a belonging-with through encounters. The aim of my tree stories is to show that we can think about belonging as performative and as something that is actively brought into being through encounters of friction.

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Chapter 12 Kangaroos at Kalkari

National parks are spaces that have long been associated with wild, iconic and native species, but they are also spaces where humans can experience this ‘nature’ (see Part 2). In this chapter, through examining the management and understandings of kangaroos in Ku-ring-gai

Chase National Park, I argue that native nature doesn’t necessarily belong in national parks.

Kangaroos are an iconic Australian animal that should belong in national parks. However I show that this is not always the case. I do not aim to uncover a ‘better’ or ‘new’ way of understanding what should or should not belong; instead I seek to tease out the nuanced ways in which belonging happens on the ground in national parks, and the ways in which we can understand belonging as multiple, fluid and impossible to pin down. By adopting a performative lens I show that belonging is constantly brought into being through the actions and interactions of more-than-human, more-than-nonhuman actors. As belonging is not static, it can potentially be altered or changed. Applying this to belonging in national parks means that there can be no straightforward link between what belongs and ideas of nativeness.

I follow the stories, understandings and movements of twelve Eastern Grey Kangaroos that are enclosed within a fence in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The kangaroos in this story illustrate a number of frictions and they mess up ideas of belonging. The twelve kangaroos are at once tame and wild, native yet not endemic, an attraction and a danger. And despite human delineations, the kangaroos themselves move against these parables to create their own belonging. The story that follows tells of an awkward engagement in which native, culture and kangaroos become blurred and the kangaroos that I thought were native turn out not to belong.

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12.1 Fence as a ‘zone of awkward engagement’? Expressions such as a ‘sense of belonging’ or ‘feeling of belonging’ often go hand in hand with describing how/why things belong. As Wright (2014: 1) states ‘[b]elonging is a puzzling term. It is at once a feeling, a sense and a set of practices’. I start this story by describing a ‘sense’ of a messy or uneasy belonging. The Kalkari Discovery Centre located in Ku-ring-gai Chase contains a fenced outdoor area. I start at this fence (see Figure 12-1) as it poses a number of questions – why is it there, why is it needed, what is it keeping in, what is it keeping out? The fence is a structural boundary that separates zones or spaces within the park. The fence raises questions about belonging as it represents a physical delineation between what belongs inside the fence and what belongs outside it. The fence also hints at a lurking tension between national parks as wild spaces of nature, and as spaces that require human management to ensure this wildness.

The fence then represents a ‘sense’ of boundary where there are different ‘belongings’ across the divide.

Figure 12-1 Kalkari fence (Source: Author, 25 January 2013)

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Within the fence is the Kalkari Discovery Trail, a 1.6 kilometre loop track that weaves through an example of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park ‘native environment’, past a number of signs and displays, as well as a lookout, pond and small dam. The area also contains an array of wildlife that are contained within the fence, or who are able to move in and out of the confines

(see Figure 6-3). The Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park Plan of Management gives the following description of the Kalkari grounds:

The grounds of Kalkari are also progressively being upgraded. Areas are being replanted with native species and the tracks and information signs are being upgraded. The fence around the grounds will be retained as it protects animals from predation by feral animals and from the risk of being killed on the road. The animals within the fence currently consist of kangaroos, swamp wallabies and emus, while native birds are attracted by feed trays (NPWS 2002: 38).

Since the Plan of Management (POM) was written in 2003 the emus have been removed from the Kalkari site. Although I never saw any, the volunteers at Kalkari told me that occasionally injured swamp wallabies are released into the Kalkari grounds. However, due to their size they can escape under or through the fence. The fenced area contains twelve Eastern Grey

Kangaroos that, because they are larger than the swamp wallabies, cannot escape through the three-meter tall barbed wire capped fence (see Figure 12-2). The twelve kangaroos are therefore permanent residents and are exhibits at the Kalkari site.

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Figure 12-2 Eastern Grey Kangaroo (taken in the Kalkari grounds) and Swamp Wallaby (taken in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park) (Source: Author, 31 January 2013 and 1 September 2012, respectively)

The fence is perplexing as it goes against the idea of national parks as being wild spaces where wildlife roam free in their ‘natural’ habitat. As Rita explains:

But I don’t know if there’s any the other discovery areas we’ve [her husband and herself] been to in any other part of the world where their discovery park is, ah fenced off, they’re usually just in the park, aren’t they? ... You don’t expect that you’re going to find a little, fenced off area (Rita, Discovery Volunteer).

The fence marks a division of belonging and disrupts ideas of national parks as wild spaces of untamed nature. It can be understood within Tsing’s (2005: xi) notion of ‘zones of awkward engagement, where words mean something different across a divide’. The fenced area at

Kalkari can be seen as a ‘zone’ that draws together both human and nonhuman actors into an

‘awkward engagement’ through which belonging is altered, changed and performed. The fence not only delineates what is in and out of place, but also draws different actors into productive encounters, and in this way it creates different belongings. The fence then does not simply reveal belonging; it actively produces it and is productive in enacting awkward belongings. As

Instone states: Back at the fence we can understand a different relation than that of division and dualism, instead considering the fence as enacting an encounter, a space of

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conjunction and the possibility of a sideways movement across and along. From this perspective, other forms of connectivity more attuned to uncertainty, context, situation and multiplicity, more open to earthly others and lively encounters, may serve us better (Instone 2010: 110).

The fence actively separates its contents from the rest of the park, thus signifying a material boundary of different belongings on either side of the fence. Head and Muir’s (2006) study of

Australian suburban backyards and Instone’s (2010) study of native grasses in Royal Park in

Melbourne, also see the fence as a physical and symbolic boundary delineating where certain species of plants belong. However, as Instone (2010: 97) states, ‘[f]ar from being stationary and fixed, the fence is a dynamic space of contestation and interaction that activates all manner of work’. The fenced area therefore can be considered as enacting a zone of awkward engagement as it actively creates an uneasy sense of belonging. With the kangaroos on one side of the fence and the rest of the park on the other, the fence constructs ideas about the kangaroos and the national park and the relationship between them. If we consider the ‘work’ that the fence does then a number of questions, contradictions and uneasy frictions come to light. What is the reason for the fence? And more specifically, why are the kangaroos inside it?

Is the fence there because of the kangaroos, or are the kangaroos there because of the fence?

The following section explores the work of the fence as it draws together a number of actors into a zone of awkward engagement where kangaroos are native and non-native, wild and tame and belong and don’t belong. I trace the contradictions, stories and frictions that emerge from exploring how divisions and delineations of belonging are reinforced, disintegrate, slip or are changed as we enter the fenced kangaroo zone.

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12.2 Native nature belongs? One of the first things I noticed when I started volunteering at Kalkari was the popularity of the kangaroos. Every day without fail there would be discussions between the volunteers about the kangaroos, walks to find the kangaroos, and visitor upon visitor asking about where they were hiding, and how could they see them (see Figure 12-3). The following is a field diary excerpt from a ‘normal’ day at Kalkari:

Today two mothers and their small children came in, ‘we are here to see the kangaroos’, one of the mothers explained to Reginald [the volunteer on duty]. Reginald told them that ‘the kangaroos can usually be found down near the dam at the back’. Soon after they had left to walk the track another group of people with small children walked in. One man explained that the others were new in the country and he wanted to show them some kangaroos, the young children in the group were particularly excited about this prospect. Again Reginald told them to have a walk around the trail and keep an eye out for the kangaroos that could usually be found around the dam. He warned them though that ‘the kangaroos often like to hide, so you will have to look very carefully if you want to see them’ ... Another family with small children came in later that afternoon and straight away asked ‘where are the kangaroos today?’, clearly they have been here before, Reginald got out the A4 print out of the Discovery Trail map and showed the family exactly where the kangaroos had been sighted earlier that morning (Field diary excerpt, 22 November 2012)

Alongside developing an appreciation for their popularity and status as a major attraction and drawcard for the park, I also learnt from the volunteers that these kangaroos were ‘not native’.

This iconic Australian animal that clearly attracted the attention of so many park visitors was evidently outside of its ‘natural habitat’ and therefore did not belong.

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Figure 12-3 Kangaroos hiding in Kalkari bush (Source: Author 25 March 2013)

Seen by the Australian Government as a ‘national icon’ (Department of Foreign Affairs and

Trade [DFAT] 2012) and used in many Australian tourism campaigns (see Figure 12-4) kangaroos can be likened to Lorimer’s notion of ‘flagship species’, or species that:

need not necessarily be vital for the continued survival of the ecosystems they inhabit. Nor do they have to be objectively assessed as threatened. Instead, they are the highly visible icons of conservation that are most likely to trigger sympathy, awareness, and (most importantly) resources from rich Western patrons (Lorimer 2007: 923). Flagship species are also seen to have charisma, which is often ‘encompassed by adjectives such as “cute”, “cuddly”, “fierce”, or “dangerous”’ (Lorimer 2007: 918). The charisma of the kangaroos at Kalkari is clear in their ability to attract visitors to the park on a daily basis. The most frequent visitors were families with young children and international tourists, all of whom were delighted to be able to see kangaroos. As Rita and Helga explain:

I think a lot of people with little kids like to come to give the kids a little respite from cabin fever and things, … then a lot of people bring their international visitors to try

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and see kangaroos if you’ve got them, yeah sometimes … they are often hiding (Helga, Discovery Volunteer).

[A] lot of people bring their overseas visitors here, say someone has just come from Japan or Germany, they’ve just arrived, they’re trying to get over jetlag, they often come in the afternoon for two hours to see the bush and the kangaroos, hopefully (Rita, Discovery Volunteer).

Figure 12-4 Australian tourism advertisement and Tourism Australia logo both featuring the kangaroo (Source: Tourism Australia, www.tourism.australia.com 2014, Permission to copy and communicate these works has been granted by Tourism Australia).

One of the key roles of Ku-ring-gai Chase as identified in Part 2, is to provide people with a place to experience nature, and in this sense the kangaroos belong, as they attract people to the park. The visitors, especially international tourists, see kangaroos as an iconic ‘native’

‘Australian’ animal that obviously belongs in an Australian national park. Here the kangaroos are given nationality; they are understood to have a national identity and to belong in and to the nation (Head and Muir 2004). However, the fence containing these kangaroos disrupts this belonging as it physically keeps them in place, whilst also rendering them out of place. In addition, kangaroos move against this idea by hiding, and as such are a reluctant attraction.

The actions of the kangaroos can therefore be attributed to a performance of their own belonging, a concept that I will return to later.

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The classification of the kangaroos at Kalkari as not belonging is also reinforced by a number of people involved in the management of the park. Charlie (Discovery Volunteer) stated ‘they’re obviously not endemic to that area, so I would prefer to see wallabies, rather than kangaroos maybe’. Nicolas, an Advisory Committee member, stated:

I’m no expert on it, my understanding of the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo is they’re smaller, they’re obviously smaller … [and] they like to get around through undergrowth, whereas kangaroos like to graze on open plains, so in that sense, they probably would not have been native to this region. The rocky and steep Ku-ring-gai Chase environment is therefore a contributing factor in the belonging status of these kangaroos. The materiality of the park and the kangaroo bodies are active in the performance of belonging. Work on materiality acts to challenge the idea that agency is a solely human characteristic. Instead, nonhumans are capable of exercising agency

(Bakker and Bridge 2006). The involvement of other-than-human agents within the performance of belonging highlights that surprising results can occur, and the performance of belonging can happen in surprising and unexpected ways (see Bakker and Bridge 2006). The actions of visitors, volunteers and kangaroos, along with the presence of the fence, disrupt the belonging of the kangaroos, and delineations of nativeness are brought into question.

12.3 Quasi-natural: How native is native? Head (2012) argues that nativeness is not pre-given, nor is it an inherent quality of a species.

Instead, nativeness can be seen as a cultural perspective that is based on human notions of belonging (see Head 2012). Ideas of belonging are always situated within temporal and spatial contexts and as such are not universal or permanent but are dependent on a particular time and place for their meaning. In Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park the Plan of Management

203 defines Eastern Grey Kangaroos as non-native to the park due to a temporal 100-year boundary. When speaking about Kalkari the Plan of Management (POM) states:

Wallabies are still present in the [Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park] area but kangaroos … have not been present for over 100 years. It is proposed that the non-indigenous species will be progressively removed from Kalkari and it will contain only species which historically occur locally and do not require intensive management (NPWS 2002: 38).

Because Eastern Grey Kangaroos have not been found in large numbers within the park or the surrounding area recently, they are deemed not to belong. Kangaroos are therefore seen as locally non-native. This 100-year boundary is unlike other common delineations of nativeness which rely on the colonisation of the country by the British in 1788 for conceptualisations of native and non-native (Head and Muir 2004). Speaking specifically about plants, Instone (2010:

96) states that the notion of ‘local nativeness contends that only plants that occurred in a particular area prior to European settlement were considered to belong in that place’. This boundary of 100 years therefore raises the following questions: What happened in the 100 or so years between colonisation (1788) and this ‘new’ temporal 100 year boundary? Were kangaroos in the Ku-ring-gai Chase area during this time? And why has 1788 not been used as a boundary of nativeness for the kangaroos, but has for the rest of the park?

However, kangaroos are not mentioned within the pest strategy for Ku-ring-gai Chase (Metro

North East NPWS Regional Pest Strategy), suggesting that although the Eastern Grey Kangaroo is seen as not belonging and non-native, it is not a pest or a potential pest. Assumed within this understanding of the kangaroos is the idea that the kangaroos are there due to human influence, and this human influence renders them non-native. This reinforces Head’s (2012) idea that nativeness in Australia is not a self-evident thing. Instead, it is a ‘particular

204 construction’ that tells us more about assumed human-created divisions between humans and nonhuman nature than it does about the innate characteristics of nativeness. Ideas of human action rendering species as non-native reinforce a distinct ontological separation between humans and nonhumans (Head 2012).

The description of the Kalkari kangaroos in the POM also highlights the assumption that native species, or species that were present in the park 100 years ago, obviously require less management. The idea that natives in their proper place will flourish, as they are the best adapted, rests on the flawed assumption that nature is in a harmonious state (Head 2012;

Instone 2010). Ideas of ‘new ecology’, however, argue that the environment is inherently unstable and is created through constant and chaotic fluctuations (Scoones 1999; Zimmerer

1994). Instone’s study of native grasses similarly brings into question the notion that ‘native grasses are better suited to Australian park environments, that they are more natural and therefore need less attention and artificial chemicals, and so on’ (Instone 2010: 107). Instead,

‘natives’ can be understood as simply being the ones that were there first (Head 2012; Warren

2007).

In contrast to this delineation, Colin, a Traditional Owner/Custodian of the park, told me that the Eastern Grey Kangaroos are native to the Sydney area, including the area of Ku-ring-gai

Chase National Park. He said:

The 1930s was probably the worst period of human occupation for the national park, and that was because there were so many people living there who had lost everything [due to the Great Depression], Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, so they were living in every cave and every alcove. A lot of little huts were built. He went on to say that because of this occupation, and the hunting and eating of certain species that accompanied it, a lot species are now rare in the area, including Eastern Grey

205 kangaroos. When I mentioned that some people didn’t like the kangaroos being at Kalkari as they are not considered native to the area, Colin responded:

Well they sure are native. That’s a big phobia that I hear all the time … we lived in the park and we used to catch kangaroos and wallabies … Eastern Greys were up along the top ridge area, and there certainly were … wild Eastern Greys, and even at Hornsby, I remember my uncle shooting an Eastern Grey, about 200 metres away from Hornsby train station in 1960 … So there were Eastern Greys all the way along there. So that’s a phobia.

Colin further complicates the belonging status of the kangaroos. He emphasises that the intense human occupation of the park area during the 1930s caused a dramatic reduction in their numbers. In this sense human interference is the reason for the removal of kangaroos from the park area, rather than the reason that they are there. If Eastern Greys are native to the Ku-ring-gai Chase area, does this mean that the 12 kangaroos in Kalkari belong in the park, but not in the captive environment of the Kalkari grounds?

In this light, I propose that the belonging of the kangaroos at Kalkari can be understood within the framework of friction. The seemingly straightforward notion of national parks as spaces where native nature belongs becomes messy when it lands in Ku-ring-gai Chase, and specifically when it lands within the Kalkari fence. The recent 100-year delineation actively renders the kangaroos as non-native and thus not belonging in the national park. However, these ideas break down if we take on a new ecology and performative notions of the environment and belonging. Colin’s story further complicates this belonging as he understands kangaroos to be native.

Colin’s story suggests that human interference caused the kangaroos to disappear from the park area, yet this has not removed their belonging. Colin then offers another view of the

206 belonging of kangaroos that does not rest on strict delineations of the ‘100 year boundary’, as the management documents suggest. Even though Eastern Grey Kangaroos are not found elsewhere in the park, this does not mean that they are non-native; they may simply be missing from a place where they belong. In contrast to Colin, the volunteers and park staff suggest that human interference is the reason the kangaroos do not belong outside the fence.

They argue that the specific histories of these kangaroos and their connection to humans have rendered them as not belonging.

12.4 Wilderness, wild spaces and re-wilding As previously argued, national parks are often understood as spaces of ‘real’ nature, where people can ‘escape’ the city and experience the untamed vitality the natural world has to offer.

As Suchet states:

national parks are often presented as exemplars of nature in all its glory, unspoilt and pristine. Rendered invisible in this discourse are management mechanisms such as roads, fences, constructed water points, wildlife counts, reintroduced animals, culling quotas, feral animal baits and tourist infrastructure, as well as experiences of interaction and dispossessions (Suchet 2002: 147-48). It follows then that national parks are spaces where wildlife belongs. The kangaroos at Kalkari and the cage that surrounds them are rendered invisible as they disrupt these ideas by removing their ‘wildness’. However I argue that we can think differently about these kangaroos by removing the divide between wild and tame, domestic or captive. Suchet argues that:

[i]n wildlife management discourses, the notion of wild is rarely addressed. Rather, the boundaries between what is wild and what is domesticated are taken for granted or defined arbitrarily prior to any discussion of analysis (Suchet 2002: 146)

The 12 Eastern Grey Kangaroos have not always been at Kalkari. The exact reason for their presence, or date of their arrival is not mentioned in the promotional or management

207 materials concerning Ku-ring-gai Chase. It is mentioned that the Kalkari site was originally established in the 1950s as a koala sanctuary and small zoo, and around 1970 (after the introduction of the NPWS as the management body in 1967) Kalkari was:

redesigned as an area to display animals of the Hawkesbury Sandstone region. The zoo cages were removed, the enclosures made as inconspicuous and large as possible, birds attracted to the area by means of ponds and feed trays, and a visitor centre and interpretive display were constructed (NPWS 2002: 38) It is not explained whether the kangaroos were introduced as part of the ‘Hawkesbury sandstone animal displays’. A number of the volunteers, while not exactly sure of the origins of the kangaroos, were under the impression that they were brought up in captivity, or were in

Kalkari to be rehabilitated after injury. Charlie states:

I know that some of the kangaroos … have been put there because they’re being rehabilitated maybe after injury or something and they’re getting them used to being with animals again instead of people (Charlie, Discovery Volunteer).

A number of volunteers and staff members also argued that these kangaroos were originally from a wildlife sanctuary called ‘Waratah Park’ that was located on the outskirts of Ku-ring-gai

Chase. As NPWS employee, Lavender states:

As far as I’m aware a lot of them, or all of them came from the old Waratah Park site … [Waratah Park] used to be an old, wildlife park out near St Ives Showground so around there.

Waratah Park was the filming location and home of the Australian television show Skippy the

Bush Kangaroo during the 1960s (see Figure 12-5). Although the exact heritage of the kangaroos is not known it is generally accepted that they have spent most or all of their lives in captivity. And because of this captive upbringing many of the volunteers and NPWS employees see the kangaroos as ‘more or less tame-ish’ (Cedric, NPWS employee). As Lily, a NPWS

208 employee, states: “and hence why it was like well we can’t just let them go because they’ve never lived in the wild”.

Their captive past positions the kangaroos as not belonging in the park, but their ‘tame’ status means they belong within the fenced area of Kalkari where they can be protected from outside, wild predators and diseases. Lily’s statement highlights the notion that just like non- native, the category of tame or non-wild, is also irrevocable (see Head 2012).

Figure 12-5 Popular Australian television series, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, filmed in the 1960s (Source: ABC Shop shop.abc.net.au 2014, Permission to copy and communicate this work has been granted by Endemol Shine International Ltd.)

Frank (Discovery volunteer) is aware of the contestations around caging the kangaroos and states that the captivity of the kangaroos is something that goes against what national parks are for, yet their presence is beneficial:

It is a bit of a contentious thing, I mean national parks don’t operate animal enclosures or zoos, yet they’ve done that in a sense here, although it’s fairly friendly to the animals, but it certainly does bring people here, it’s one of the few places in Northern Sydney that you can go and see kangaroos.

The kangaroos therefore do not belong in the park as they are not ‘wild’. Similar to the native/alien debate, where the process of human relocation renders species alien (see Head

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2012), the raising of the kangaroos and their placement into human care ‘de-wilds’ them.

Removing their ‘wildness’ also renders them out-of-place in a national park. Frank’s idea that national parks should not contain animal enclosures, draws out the question of whether it is the kangaroos that do not belong, or the fence.

In contrast to the park staff and volunteers, the visitors who came to Kalkari, especially international tourists, often consider these kangaroos as wild and potentially dangerous. This point is illustrated in the following excerpt from my field notes whilst volunteering at Kalkari.

Around 2 pm a group of five international tourists came into Kalkari, they were from Germany and became excited when Susan [volunteer at Kalkari] told them they might be able to see kangaroos if they went for a walk around the trail. One of the ladies however came up and asked me ‘are the kangaroos in a cage?’, I then explained that they were in a fenced area, yet there was no fence between the kangaroos and the walking trail. She gave me an alarmed look, and said ‘aren’t they dangerous? (Field diary excerpt, 19 December 2012).

Depending on the human viewpoint the kangaroos are both captive, and almost tame, yet they are still considered wild animals with the capacity to be a danger or threat. Cedric, a NPWS employee, describes them as being in their ‘sort-of natural habitat’. The volunteers perpetuate this friction and reinforce the idea that the kangaroos are ‘wild’. As Rita (Discovery Volunteer) argues, ‘I don’t think we are interfering with their lives’, while Charlie (Discovery Volunteer) states ‘they have some space to hop around and they can be themselves to a large extent’. The kangaroos are simultaneously understood as belonging within the fenced Kalkari area by some, as that is where captive animals belong and as ‘wild’ animals representing Australian nature to visitors.

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The visitors to Kalkari saw them as belonging there and as native to the park, and despite often thinking differently the volunteers would never tell them otherwise. The hard-and-fast scientific definitions of native and alien are therefore not necessarily at work here. Instead, cultural perspectives and individual opinions on the value of the kangaroos influence their belonging in Ku-ring-gai Chase. The NPWS employees and volunteers are not necessarily attempting to create a dualistic construction of the belonging of kangaroos, and instead they recognised the complications around these caged animals. They therefore unwittingly enact multiple kangaroo belongings. The kangaroos can be thought about as being ‘sort-of’ native or belonging, and so the kangaroos have an educational role to play.

12.5 Managing emotional belonging Despite not being in their native habitat, the kangaroos are seen as having an educational benefit. It is assumed because they are allowed to get up close to them, people will develop an appreciation of the kangaroos and conservation in general. The kangaroos help to create an emotional response or appeal for visitors. As Charlie (Discovery Volunteer) states:

People can see the kangaroos, and it is an opportunity to talk about them too, there’s a conservation aspect too, because they’re there you can talk about them, particularly with overseas visitors, the fact is that kangaroos are not endangered by any means but on the other hand we’ve lost some habitat and that sort of thing, they can be or they could be, … yeah I have mixed feelings I think, they do attract people, how do you replace that? Show them, we can have a stuffed kangaroo, it’s not quite the same, we can have a coin operated one for children to sit on, we can show them films about kangaroos, no. There is an attraction to having live animals there. Charlie unsettles the assumption that because the kangaroos are not endemic they have no place within the national park: as he argues, the educational benefits and the attraction of having ‘live’ animals cannot be fabricated in other ways. The kangaroos therefore have a role to play at Kalkari in educating people on the importance of conserving species and national

211 parks. Bill, a Guringai descendent and NPWS Advisory Committee, states that the educational role of the kangaroos is particularly important for children:

As long as they’re [the kangaroos] being looked after and we’re teaching young people about the environment, and the bush, that’s a good thing, and we need that sort of thing, hands on … so that’s teaching kids about the environment, which I think’s good, make them appreciate, so it’s sort of, they’re sacrificial animals to teach people.

Bill therefore acknowledges the tensions around caging these animals, but suggest that the

‘sacrificing’ of these 12 kangaroos is seen as having benefits that outweigh the negatives of having them in captivity. The idea of sacrificial animals suggests they are being used to educate the public on the importance of conserving kangaroos, and ‘nature’ in general, however it is at the expense of the welfare of these animals. But through allowing people to ‘get up close’ to these kangaroos, visitors will learn an appreciation for them and nature, and will therefore seek to conserve it. Therefore, the kangaroos at Kalkari do not belong in the cage, but it is a compromise as they help protect other ‘real’ populations of Eastern Grey Kangaroos, and other species of native plants and animals. Belonging therefore cannot be brought down to inherent qualities in species; instead belonging is about compromise and human relations and conceptions of what is valuable.

Frictions related to the sacrificing of a group of kangaroos for the ‘greater good’ of the species therefore are entangled in the Kalkari cage. The statements by the volunteers can also be seen to link the belonging of the kangaroos to human relations and emotions as the reason given for claims that the kangaroos belong is that they can attract and educate people. Similarly, Wright

(2014) points to the emotional aspect of belonging. Wright points out that people can have a

‘sense’ or ‘feeling’ of belonging:

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In understanding belonging as a sense or feeling, relationality is thus central, as is the work belonging-as-emotion does in creating or giving meaning to individual subjectivities and collectives (Wright 2014: 8). Therefore, there is an emotional component that influences the belonging of these kangaroos

(see Wright 2014). Rita (Discovery Volunteer) when asked about how she felt about the kangaroos, exclaimed:

I love to have kangaroos here … the people who come just love to see some kangaroos ’cause they’ll come back most of the time, they’ll look at all the bush, they’ll look at the lookouts, and they’ll come back and say we didn’t see anything, and what they mean is they didn’t see an animal jumping through the bush (original emphasis).

Rita highlights another point: that often after visitors returned from walking around the Kalkari trail and one of the volunteers asked them what they saw, the visitors would respond with a description of their kangaroo sighting or say, ‘we didn’t see anything’. The kangaroos therefore do not just belong in the Kalkari grounds; they are the reason for it being there and the reason why people go walking along the trail.

Although not mentioned in the management documents, it is common knowledge among the volunteers and many park staff that the kangaroos were neutered several years ago so that the population did not have a chance to increase. As Frank (Discovery Volunteer) states:

it’s not terribly overt, but the strategy is to eventually remove them I think, ’cause they’ve sterilised them and cut the numbers as well. There will be people who will be sorry when that happens.

Neutering the kangaroos acts to reinforce the idea that the kangaroos do not belong and highlights the complex ways in which the kangaroos’ lives are entangled with humans. Human medical intervention has altered the physicality of the kangaroo bodies and placed a temporal injunction on their presence. This highlights the frictions around the belonging status of the

213 kangaroos, as the park managers do not want to deal with the political implications of overtly culling or removing them. As Nicolas, a NPWS Advisory Committee member, states, ‘I could also imagine the headlines in the Sunday paper, “there’s been a report of national parks culling kangaroos’’’. The killing of the kangaroos would cause an emotional outcry and opposition from the community on ethical grounds. By neutering the kangaroos (somewhat) secretly, the park managers have saved themselves the embarrassment and confrontation of outwardly removing the kangaroos or marking them as not belonging. Instead, Frank and Bill’s statements can be understood as acknowledging that the kangaroos can be understood as currently holding a pseudo-belonging status in the park. Their physical bodies have been altered by humans, which is assumed to remove their ‘wildness’ and effectively renders them non-native and not belonging in the national park (Suchet 2002). However, this has been done in such a way their ‘out-of-place-ness’ is hidden (Head and Muir 2004). Therefore, by looking at the ways in which the kangaroos, as an emotionally appealing species, are managed, we can see the frictions in their belonging as it emerges as a particular construction (Head 2012). The nativeness of the kangaroos is not self-evident but one that is intertwined with human understandings and boundaries around native and alien, in place and out of place, human interference in the physiology of kangaroo bodies and the emotional belonging that follows.

12.6 More-than-human belongings The kangaroos have been neutered, fenced in, gawked at, loved, relocated and left be. What happens, though, if we think about the kangaroos as nonhuman agents and sentient beings?

Bill, a Guringai descendent and member of the NPWS Advisory Committee, also put forward the idea that Eastern Grey Kangaroos belong in the park:

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Bill. We’ve got a pistol club right on the edge of Ku-ring-gai Chase [see Map 2], up at St Ives, and everyone said ‘oh the guns going off will scare the animals’. There is more animals around that pistol club than there is in the whole park, it’s amazing! I was there the other day putting up a metal structure for them, I was driving down the driveway, kangaroos everywhere! Apparently when they’re shooting, kangaroos will hop down onto the range so they’ve got to stop, while they’re shooting … Well [it’s] partly because of the grass, ’cause there’s good grass there.

Sarah. So they obviously don’t mind the noise?

Bill. Nar, the noise doesn’t bother them at all. One of the guys that was out there the other day said there was 17 roos in the driveway as you’re driving in, and do you see that anywhere else in the national park?

Sarah. So are these Eastern Greys?

Bill. Yeah, yeah, pretty healthy, good looking roos too, so we’ve got these people saying [the pistol club] is no good for the park. Well, give me a better argument, because there’s more animals there, than they’ve got anywhere else.

Bill’s story also brings into question ideas of where Eastern Grey Kangaroos belong, as they have established their habitat in an area that humans would have considered unfit. Kangaroo are making their own choices and resisting human delineations of their belonging. The belonging status of kangaroos is therefore not something that is completely within human control. Philo and Wilbert (2000) suggest that in cases where animals take up spaces that result in their being labelled as out of place by humans, it is the animals that use their ‘agency’ to transgress and resist these human created boundaries. They argue:

It might be said that in doing so the animals begin to forge their own ‘other spaces’, countering the proper places stipulated for them by humans, thus creating their own ‘beastly places’ reflective of their own ‘beastly’ ways, ends, doings, joys and sufferings (Philo and Wilbert 2000: 14).

This reinforces Low’s (2002) argument that nature does not always want to remain separate from us. And the desire of species to be in ‘human’ areas does not necessarily remove their

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‘naturalness’. The survival of some species is now irrevocably linked with humans and they could perish if humans left. By taking on a disruptive view of nature we can understand the kangaroos as shaping their own more-than-human belonging that does not rely on human dualisms (Cronon 1995a).

During my fieldwork I attempted to encounter the twelve Kalkari kangaroos as another way of understanding the role they play in Ku-ring-gai Chase, and how their belonging is negotiated. I set out into the Kalkari grounds on various occasions to stage encounters with the kangaroos, in order to learn about and observe them. The following are two excerpts from my field diary when occasions when I attempted to encounter the kangaroos.

Encountering the Kangaroos, day one:

Today is the first time that I am going out into the Kalkari ground to actively encounter or follow the kangaroos. It is a hot sunny day, so leaving the Kalkari centre I head straight down the back of the fenced areas where I know the kangaroos spend a lot of their time. I walk the Discovery Trail until I get to the back dam and continue around the dam and off the established trail to the fence line. Usually to see the kangaroos I just follow the trail as you can usually just see them through the grey dead vegetation, but today I thought I would follow the fence line down to where they usually hide, to get a closer look. Slowly and as quietly as I could I make my way down the fence line, but the kangaroos hear me before I realise that I am close to them. As I approach I can hear the thuds of them jumping off in the broken branches and dry leaf litter, the only glimpses I get are of blurred grey movements between the trees [see Figure 12-6 for an example of the Kalkari bush environment that camouflages the grey fur of the Eastern Grey Kangaroo]. So changing strategy I go back to the path and walk towards the direction of the thuds. Walking off the track is too noisy and they jump off before I have a chance to see them. Or maybe it is that the kangaroos know the appropriate place for humans, and I was not in it. This is the first time that I have intentionally set out to follow the kangaroos at Kalkari, and I think they know it. Every time I get close they jump off in the opposite direction, they never let me get too close [see Figure 12-7]. I followed them to the feeding area, where the trees are thinner. They are not fooled by my tree impression, they all watch me intensely. Their ears prick up and they stand up straight on their hind legs. They all stay very still until I get too close then they all jump off, in quick bursts. They all move together, one will start then they gradually

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all follow in a line. I sit down around 20 metres away from the group, after a few minutes one seems to relax a little and stop staring at me, but only for a second before his head whips back up to stare at me again. He does not think of me as a tree or rock, but is wary of me. I feel like an annoyance to them. At one stage I am sitting quite close to a couple of them although I do not realise until they bounce off (Field diary excerpt, 25 March 2013).

Figure 12-6 The Kalkari bush where the kangaroos usually hide amongst the casuarinas (Source: Author, 25 March 2013)

Figure 12-7 Kalkari Kangaroos bouncing away as I try to ‘encounter’ them (Source: Author, 25 March 2013)

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The next day I again attempted to encounter the kangaroos but I used a different technique:

Encountering the kangaroos, day two:

Today I am trying a less annoying and invasive method of encountering the kangaroos at Kalkari, I wander down the trail till I find them but today I sit down on the trail a long way from them to take notes, there are a lot of trees obscuring the view between us. They are basically invisible to me, but as I sit and watch I notice the odd flick of the ear or scratch of the belly. These flickers of grey movement are the only way of seeing the kangaroos and counting how many are out there watching me. They seem calmer today. At some stage I got up and changed spots to keep out of the ever moving sun, I must have startled two of them as they made a quick jump, then were still again. They know where I am but do not jump off as they did yesterday. Every now and again a couple will move further away from me, just a couple of bounces at a time. For their size they do not make a lot of noise when bouncing through the leaf litter (Field diary excerpt, 26 March 2013)

The kangaroos have been around humans for the majority of their lives, possibly being raised in a wildlife park, and now in Kalkari, yet it is clear from their reaction to me when I walked off the path and closer to them that their history does not mean that they are completely comfortable with close human contact. My encounters reveal another aspect of the belonging of kangaroos: that they have their own notions of belonging. Their calmer nature during the second day of my encounter suggests that they have a concept of the areas in which humans belong, or areas where they are used to or comfortable with human presence. They were much more content when I kept to the paths, kept my distance and didn’t linger too long watching them. If I walked off track they would quickly move well away from me. The kangaroos therefore bring their own notions of belonging into the complex mix of establishing nature in Kalkari grounds and the park in general.

Belonging, then, is not just a human construction; it is negotiated in and through awkward engagements. My uneasy encounter with the kangaroos and the surprising encounters with

218 the shooters at the pistol club illustrate that nativeness, belonging and wildness are performed within relational more-than-human engagements.

12.7 Uneasy belongings The story of the kangaroos shows the frictions in straightforward notions of belonging.

Equating belonging in a national park with nativeness breaks down as a useful delineation between what is in and out of place when we land in the kangaroo pen at Kalkari. This iconic

Australian animal is deemed non-native within planning documents due to a 100-year temporal boundary. The kangaroos are also seen as not belonging in the park due to their captive upbringing, but are ‘in place’ within the fenced pen. This idea that the human interference in their lives has caused them to be out of their ‘natural’ habitat is contradicted by those that argue that the kangaroos are only missing from the park due to human culling. The kangaroos are also used to represent Australian wildlife to visitors and to teach them about the value of conservation. And to further complicate this issue, the kangaroos themselves actively defy human delineations and establish their own belongings.

The static belonging status of the kangaroos is at times reinforced by workers and volunteers in the park. However, these human actors in the park are often entangled in performances that mess up the desire for a clear distinction between the belonging or not belonging of the kangaroos. Those involved in the management of the park are aware of the tensions around caging the kangaroo, especially given their location in a national park, but rationalise this situation as beneficial for visitors and education purposes. They are also aware of the complexities of classifying the kangaroos as native, not endemic, wild or captive. By hiding their

‘out-of-place-ness’ to visitors and highlighting their wildness and Australian native status, those

219 involved in park management enact both the belonging and not belonging of these kangaroos in multiple and contrasting ways. Therefore the human actors in park management can be understood as grappling with the frictions of belonging where the kangaroos can neither be seen as fully belonging or not belonging in Ku-ring-gai Chase, rather their context, history and performances mean they have messy, partial and multiple belongings.

The fenced area at Kalkari can therefore be seen as a ‘zone of awkward engagement’. The fence is a physical boundary representing a change in belonging. However, as fences are not something that you expect within national park, it draws out an uneasy sense of belonging.

This fence draws together a number of actors into moments of friction where uneasy, awkward and messy relationship between the kangaroos, the park, park staff, volunteers and visitors constantly enact multiple practices of ‘being in place’. Notions of national parks as spaces of native wild species fall apart when we enter the Kalkari fence to find kangaroos that are native and non-native, tame and wild, an attraction and a danger, and both in place and out of place.

If multiple awkward belonging are created through encounters, and nativeness cannot be straightforwardly equated to belonging in national parks, where does this leave pest species? I now turn to the story of rabbits in Ku-ring-gai Chase to highlight the nuanced ways in which the belonging (or not belonging) of pest species is negotiated.

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Chapter 13 Rabbits on the edge

Possibly more steadfast than ideas of native nature belonging in national parks are ideas that pest animals, invasives and alien species do not belong. Pests are destructive; they are seen as smelly, dirty and unhygienic; they compete with our prized natives for food and habitat. They invade our homes, cities and parklands, spreading diseases, contaminating spaces and causing damage. Pests are seen as ‘unwanted visitors’ (Magnum Pest Control n.d.) and constitutes ‘any plant or animal which has a harmful effect on humans, their food or their living conditions’

(Department of Health and Aging 2010: 169). Pests are also a major problem in Australian national parks, as the Minister for the Environment’s Message in the Protecting Our Parks from

Pests and Weeds document states:

Our national parks represent some of our most valued areas of public land: they protect native plants and animals, conserve natural beauty, they offer many opportunities for recreation and enjoyment, and they preserve sites of cultural significance.

Around the world, there is a growing realisation that properly protecting our natural and cultural heritage values involves not just creating reserves, but also actively managing them in a way that is open to ongoing evaluation and refinement.

Properly managing and controlling introduced pest species is a crucial part of this process. Feral animals and weeds are one of the most significant threats to biodiversity conservation in NSW. They can also have substantial impacts on agriculture as well as Aboriginal and historic sites.

Managing and reducing the impact of pest species is therefore a fundamental goal of the NSW Government (NPWS 2006b: 3).

As the Minister’s statement makes clear, protecting national parks is predicated on the assumption of a decisive distinction between valued and unwanted species. It presents the identification of feral species and weeds as straightforwardly evident, and their control through

221 management as unquestionably ‘good’. However, my intention in this chapter is to explore the belonging or not belonging of alien species through the lens of Clark’s (2003) concept of bioinvasion. Expanding on my discussion of bioinvasion in Chapter 2, I argue that the ‘striking out’ of species for a new life in another place can be viewed as a feral friction through which nature is co-fabricated. Following Clark (2003), I utilise the lens of performativity to suggest that the ability of plants and animals to adapt and thrive in new spaces can be understood as the continuation of natural processes, rather than the end of a pure ‘nature’. Similar to the previous chapter, I examine the ways in which the pest category can be rethought as a relational practice. I do this through investigating the history and management around one

‘invasive pest’ in Ku-ring-gai Chase, the rabbit (see Figure 13-1). For contextual purposes I will first introduce the history of rabbits in Australia and the ways in which they are thought about and portrayed in management policies and documents. I then burrow deeper to explore the ways in which rabbits are managed on the ground in Ku-ring-gai Chase. I aim to show how rabbits and their management in Ku-ring-gai Chase befuddle universal notions of pest animals as holding no place in national parks. I look at the feral frictions that emerge when we think differently about concepts of nativeness and naturalness.

Figure 13-1 European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus (Source: feral.org.au, Rabbit Factsheet RABFS1, June 2011 Permission to copy and communicate this work has been granted by Invasive Animals CRC)

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13.1 Creating the demon rabbit: History of rabbits in Australia European rabbits (see Figure 13-1) were first introduced to Australia during colonisation in

1788. And since then have become one of Australia’s most abundant and widespread vertebrate pests (Lapidge et al. 2004). Rabbits were originally introduced into the Sydney area during early colonisation as domestic animals, yet they did not spread. However, after 24 wild rabbits were released for hunting purposes in Victoria in 1859, feral populations began to spread throughout the country with numbers multiplying into the millions (CSIRO 2011). By

1886 rabbit populations had reached the New South Wales-Queensland border, and in the 60 years that followed ‘rabbits invaded 4 million square kilometres of Australia, making it one of the fastest colonising mammals anywhere in the world’ (see Figure 13-2) (NPWS 2005). It is estimated that by the 1920s there were 10 billion wild rabbits living in Australia, and although today numbers have decreased due to management techniques, rabbits can still be found in most habitats across the continent (Rabbit Free Australia 2014).

Figure 13-2 Rabbits in plague proportions in 1938 (Source: National Archives of Australia. NAA: A1200, L44186.)

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Rabbits now hold a very negative position within Australian societies. Rabbits are seen as causing damage to residential, sporting, recreational and public spaces such as cemeteries, golf courses and parks, and areas of cultural or Aboriginal significance. Through their burrowing and grazing, rabbits are seen to cause damage to the land itself, the structural integrity of buildings and facilities, the environment, underground water pipes and electrical cables. They are also seen to diminish aesthetic and recreational values (NPWS 2012a; Lapidge et al. 2012a). The social, economic and environmental damage caused by rabbits throughout their history in

Australia has led to them being demonised. They are generally labelled as pests, ferals, out of control, invasive, destructive, environmental vandals (Animal Control Technologies Australia

(ACTA) 2013), and competitors, in plague proportions. Therefore, despite the ability of rabbits to ‘strike out for a new life in the wild’ (Clark 2003: 164), they are delineated as a feral species that don’t belong in Australia.

Due to the status of national parks as representing special native nature, rabbits are positioned as not belonging due to the damage they cause to the ‘natural’ environment. Through the damage their grazing causes, rabbits are believed to threaten ecological communities and to have an impact on the health and composition of these communities (Lapidge et al. 2012b). In certain areas rabbits are also known to occupy the habitat of, and thus displace, ground dwelling native fauna. For Ku-ring-gai Chase in particular management plans suggest that the

Long-nosed Bandicoot has been displaced by rabbits, and the endangered Southern Brown

Bandicoot may be affected by rabbits, either now or in the future (Parker 2012). Today rabbits have been declared as pests in all states and territories across Australia and it is a legislative requirement that all public and private landowners take action to manage population numbers on their land (Lapidge et al. 2012b).

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The categorisation of rabbits as non-native, feral pests and the environmental damage they cause have led to them being seen as not-belonging in national parks, and as requiring active management. The NPWS Pest Management Fact Sheet states:

About 23 million hectares of NSW is free of feral rabbits, with around 2 million hectares of this area in national parks. This means that NSW national parks have relatively more areas free from feral rabbits than other land tenures (NPWS 2005: 1).

Maintaining national parks as ‘rabbit free’ spaces is seen as important for limiting rabbit populations across the country. The government statement above positions the removal of rabbits from national parks as a self-evident role of park management that is essential to ensuring the value of parks. And as such all national parks in NSW have strategies in place to manage, monitor and/or control rabbit populations.

The Metro North East Region NPWS Regional Pest Management Strategy 2012-2015 (RPMS)

(NPWS 2012a) is the main strategy that determines the priorities for pest management in Ku- ring-gai Chase. The plan suggests that because rabbits are located on park boundaries, effective control is more likely with collaboration from neighbours, and where this collaboration is not possible rabbit control becomes a low priority. Rabbit control within Ku- ring-gai Chase therefore is coordinated through the Urban Feral Animal Action Group Sydney

North (UFAAG) which encompasses a number of land management agencies including local councils, NPWS, Forest NSW, Taronga Zoo and the Cumberland Livestock Health and Pest

Authority. The UFAAG developed the Rabbit Management Plan 2013-2017 (RMP), which sets out an implementation plan for rabbit control in northern Sydney. This plan positions rabbits as a ‘major issue in many of the local government areas in the Sydney North Region’ (Parker 2012:

1).

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Despite the contentions around pest species, the management of rabbits in Ku-ring-gai Chase is unquestionably linked with the removal and killing of rabbits. Within the RPMS and RMP the removal of rabbits is positioned as primarily an environmental issue of protecting ecological communities and the habitats of natives. Rabbit control under NPWS is ‘prioritised at sites that contain significant assets (such as threatened species recovery plans and regional pest strategies) that are susceptible to rabbit impacts’ (Parker 2012: 4). Through rabbit control measures including 1080 baiting, pindone baiting, trapping, shooting, habitat destruction, fumigation, exclusion fencing and the release of biological control measures including

Myxomatosis and RHDV, the plan aims to reduce the agricultural, environmental and urban impacts of rabbits. Rabbit removal is therefore portrayed as a straightforward process that is needed to bring the national park back to a more natural state. However, by drawing on Clark’s

(2003) concept of bioinvasion, seemingly straightforward ideas about rabbit removal are brought into question. Firstly, the process of rabbit control can be seen as based on human constructions of what is ‘natural’ and valuable. And secondly, following Clark (2003) there can be no guarantee that the removal of rabbits will produce a more natural environment, as both host and invader are altered within these encounters.

If both the environment and invading species are changed in the process of ‘striking out’, then we cannot fully understand the effect that the removal of rabbits will have, just as we cannot fully understand the effects of the introduction of rabbits on the nonhuman environments they have encountered. Although the detrimental impacts of rabbits cannot be denied, this may not be the whole story. If we think about the ways in which nature is performed through encounters of dissonant bodies, rather than the rupture of nature, then a different story comes to life, one that is less fixed, more surprising and messier. This chapter now investigates the

226 ways in which human and nonhuman actors come together to co-fabricate rabbit management in Ku-ring-gai Chase to highlight that there is more going on in the performance of pest/alien categories than a temporal boundary and notions of damage.

13.2 Co-fabricating the pest category Understanding ‘nature’ as disruptive and performative challenges the idea that the management of national parks is a logical process of improving the environment through mitigating human impacts that destroy ‘nature’. The following explores my experiences of rabbit management in Ku-ring-gai Chase and the inconsistencies that made me question the notion of the rabbit as demon and the assumption that rabbit removal is straightforward and necessary for the health of the park.

In mid-February 2013 I attended one of the UFAAG meetings at Middle Head Sydney Harbour

National Park. During this meeting the UFAAG members coordinated the release of the RHDV.

RHDV (Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease Virus) also known as RCD (Rabbit Calicivirus Disease).

RHDV is a highly contagious and fatal disease that is used to control populations of wild rabbits.

It is effective on both wild and domestic rabbits, but not hares, cottontails and other native and non-native species. The meeting suggested that in order to be effective in controlling rabbits across northern Sydney, RHDV must be released across a number of locations at the same time. The disease is quite unstable and is sensitive to weather conditions at the time of its release, so this process gives the disease the best chance of being spread among populations. The process of releasing the disease includes two initial free-feeds of carrots and one feed of carrots laced with RHDV. Here, we can start to see the ways in which rabbit management draws together a number of human and other-than-human actors as the

227 weather, rabbits, NPWS staff, residents, baits, previous rainfall, and so on, all come together to impact on the process of rabbit control.

I participated in both the free-feeds and RHDV feed during late March 2013 on the outskirts of

Ku-ring-gai Chase and neighbouring Garigal National Park. The free-feeds involved using a mattock to scratch up some soil in the selected areas and placing chopped carrots in the holes.

The process is repeated for the RHDV feed with laced carrots (see Figure 13-3). The scent of freshly turned soil is meant to attract rabbits. The free-feeds were done twice during the days prior to the release of the laced carrots in order to attract rabbits to the site and to determine the amount of laced carrot that would be required. Free-feeding can also be used to assess if there are any non-target animals that may potentially be attracted to the site, as although they will not be affected by the disease they may impact on the amount of baited carrot available to the rabbits. The feeds were done at dusk to correspond with the rabbits’ main feeding time, and then at dawn the sites were visited again and the amount of carrot left was recorded and the excess removed.

Figure 13-3 Laying a trail of RHDV-laced carrots (Source: Author, 25 March 2013)

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Power (2007: 217) argues that there is an ‘affective dimension’ to human-animal encounters that can lead to the creation of a ‘pest’. She argues that a number of animals (including beetles, snails, mosquitoes and rats) have the ability to cause fear and disgust among humans who encounter them. Human emotional responses and aversions to these animals are active in the creation and reinforcement of human categorisations of pests. Following Haraway’s (2003:

6) insistence that ‘beings do not pre-exist their relatings’, I argue that human-animal encounters are relational, continual, never-ending processes that can co-fabricate pests. ‘Pest’ is therefore not a static category; it can be performed in different ways, as can be seen in the following excerpt from my field diary:

I arrived at the Forrestville Office [NPWS Area Office for Garigal National Park and the eastern side of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park] at 6 pm. As I was driving towards the office, just off the suburban house lined street, not five metres from the ‘Garigal National Park’ sign, there were four rabbits sitting in the middle of the dirt road. Three brown rabbits and one large black rabbit stared at the car before hopping off into the scrub. When I went inside I asked Tom, the NPWS employee who I was there to meet, if rabbits were a large problem in the area. ‘So you met the welcoming committee did you?’ he replied. He told me ‘that group of rabbits is always hanging around the office’, and he hopes ‘we don’t get the big black one’ when we bait. He seemed to have attachment to that particular rabbit. Tom then told me a story about another rabbit that he grew attached too. He had caught a rabbit one day and had it in a bag ready to kill it through sudden impact (swinging the bag down onto a rock), but the bag happened to have a small slit in the bottom of it so as Tom swung the bag he said it looked like a cartoon, the rabbit flew out of the slit in the bag, summersaulted in the air and landed in front him. The rabbit then stared at him for a couple of seconds before bouncing off into the bush. The same rabbit hung around the office for several weeks after that, but Tom said he ‘just let that one be after that, he deserved to live’. After that we left to do the first free-feeding (Field diary excerpt, 21 March 2013).

Contrary to Power (2007), Tom’s story shows a shift from an aversion and fear response to one of affection and almost admiration for rabbits. Tom’s story highlights that the affective

229 dimensions of human-animal encounters can not only alter how people understand pests, but how they interact with and perceive them.

The pest category and the insistence in the management documents that rabbits be removed, enrols the park managers into being killers. Haraway (2008) argues that certain animals are made ‘killable’ as their species are understood as exploitable. This is particularly the case with laboratory animals such as mice (see Birke et al. 2004) and guineapigs (see Haraway 2008) which are seen as ‘sacrificial’ lab-artefacts, data or tools (Birke et al. 2004). It can then be argued that the pest category similarly renders rabbits as ‘killable’. But as Tom’s story highlights, the ‘pest’ category is not so straightforward and there is more going on in the production of pests.

When Tom and I conducted the first free-feed, we went around to the boot of the car where there was a large plastic tub full of ordinary (not laced) carrots. However, when we opened the lid to the tub an awful smell wafted out. Even though the carrots had been refrigerated they had gone mouldy. The carrots, which were originally cut into small pieces, had turned into a pungent chunky stew. Using a two litre plastic jug I scoped out the carrots; the thought of using gloves occurred to me too late. That evening I went home with my hands and fingernails stained orange, carrots mushed into my pants and reeking of rotten carrots.

The next morning before the sun had fully risen, Tom and I set out to the sites where we had placed the carrots the evening before. At one site we had placed the carrots in two rows, one on either rise of the trial. The carrots were nearly completely gone from one row, but hardly touched on the other side. Tom and I joked that the rabbits must have become drunk from the fermented carrots and were unable to hop across the trail. Here again we can see a different

230 affective dimension of managing and killing rabbits. The rabbits here are not demonised, but rather our interactions and encounters are active in developing our perceptions.

Rabbits, and invasive pests in general, are understood as causing damage. As I mentioned earlier there is no shortage of statistics to show that rabbits cause economic and environmental damage. Therefore it would follow that reasons for the removal of rabbits would be to counteract these impacts. However during the first free-feed evening, I asked Tom about the damage that the rabbits caused and why they were being baited. He stated that it was more of a public relations issue than an environmental one. As rabbits are usually found around the urban fringes of the park, it is the surrounding residents who make complaints to the NPWS about the rabbits. Rabbits destroy people’s gardens and cause problems in turfed areas such as golf courses and sporting fields. Also, it is a common assertion that ‘[r]abbits do not belong in Australia’ (Rabbit Free Australia 2014) and thus Tom explained that often residents feel it is their duty to report rabbit sightings and populations. This is especially the case for national parks which are considered to be places of nature, where feral animals should not be. One of the reasons for the culling of rabbits is therefore to ensure that local resident populations are happy. Therefore, it may not necessarily be the destructive effects on native species that creates the need for rabbit management, but rather public perceptions and the history of the rabbits in Australia that depict the rabbit as a ‘killable’ pest that needs removal.

The 1788 boundary for delineating rabbits as ‘killable’ pests can also be understood as instilling a colonial construction of belonging. Palmer’s (2007) study of Kakadu National Park investigates the multiple ways in which ‘feral’ animals such as horses, buffalo, cattle and pigs, are understood by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. She argues that Indigenous people

231 look at these animals as being part of the modern history of the area, and therefore as important to their social history. She states:

Rather than viewing these introduced animals as an unnatural addition to the landscape, Aboriginal people in Kakadu position these animals as in country through a history of interaction and co-existence in which these animals have come to ‘belong’ to the landscape. Whilst Aboriginal people also wish to manage the negative impacts these introduced animals may have on the environment, they do not share the purist environmental approach which sees these animals as having no place in the Park’s ‘natural’ landscape (Palmer 2007:258-259).

Belonging then, can be understood within Indigenous perceptions as relational and as something that develops over time and has a history. Non-Indigenous people, on the other hand, tend to see these animals as ‘mongrelising our environment’ (Palmer 2007: 259), and as not fitting with ideas of pristine nature that the park is meant to represent. Rabbits in Ku-ring- gai Chase therefore enact a colonial belonging where they are portrayed as self-evidently not belonging in this ‘natural’ space. The volunteers reinforced this idea, as they did not mention rabbits to me, except to say ‘of course they didn’t belong’. The not belonging of rabbits goes unquestioned and hence reinforces colonial the trope that true nature is 1788 nature.

In addition to the problem that I explored in the previous chapter around making natural the

1788 landscape, this threshold for delineating native and alien species is also problematic in that it removes the agency of the rabbits. The ability of the rabbits to adapt and improvise to new surroundings is seen as a biological, self-evident response, rather than the coming together of multiple human and other-than-human actors to co-fabricate the situation.

As I mentioned earlier, European rabbits are known to compete with native animals for food and shelter (Lapidge et al. 2004). This characteristic helped the colonisation process, as rabbits

232 were able to make use of existing burrow structures and food sources. Not only this, but the land cleared for farming also increased the food sources available to rabbits (Lapidge et al.

2012a). Rabbits graze on native and introduced vegetation, but prefer ‘soft, short, succulent plants such as grasses and herbs’ (Feral.org.au 2011). As such they prefer to live in areas of low vegetation, like grasslands or farmed lands, and areas where there is shelter such as blackberries, fallen logs and patches of scrub.

It is interesting that rabbits prefer grassland, and areas of low vegetation, rather than the rugged, rocky sclerophyll forests of Ku-ring-gai Chase. Therefore, in and around Ku-ring-gai

Chase rabbits are often found in greatest numbers in the more ‘humanised’ zones of the park – the picnic areas, and on the park fringes including urban parks, schools, sporting ground and residential gardens that border the park. These fringe areas, where the park meets the urban, are constantly being maintained in ways that unintentionally attract rabbits. Processes such as gardening, turning up fresh dirt, mowing lawns and planting vegetables and herbs not only draw rabbits to these spaces but ensure adequate food and habitats for them. As the availability of food impacts on the breeding cycles of rabbits, these human practices ensure that the populations of rabbits around Ku-ring-gai Chase can breed continuously throughout the year, as they always have access to ample food sources (Feral.org.au 2011). This can be connected to Low’s (2002) ideas of new nature, where he argues that nature is not ‘out-there’, but is all around us and something we are constantly interacting, engaging and living with.

Here, the rabbits benefit from the ‘destruction’ of certain landscapes (bushland), and the creation of new grasslands, and we should not necessarily condemn this as unnatural.

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13.3 Feral frictions Clark argues:

the introduction of a species – or a cultural trait – from a distant territory is less an absolute rupture with an essential nature than an intensification of a potential for making and remaking territories that inheres deep in the working of the world (Clark 2003: 178). Territories are constantly being remade, however the introduction of species into new environments increases (or makes different) the already continual creation/recreation processes. Thinking about rabbits as performing bioinvasion highlights the frictions of belonging. The sticky materiality and the more-than-human agencies enact multiple belongings. Helped along by human desires for lawns and gardens, rabbits have established their own belonging on the fringes of Ku-ring-gai Chase. Through looking at the performances or the constant creation and recreation of worlds, we can see the rabbits at Ku-ring-gai Chase as enacting their own new nature. Understanding the performances of other-than-human actors in creating new natures illustrates the frictions of belonging, as multiple belongings are created through sticky material and more-than-human engagements. I therefore argue that the introduction of a ‘new’ or ‘alien’ species is a source of friction. These frictions are surprising, wild and yet still contain a hint of civility as their affective nature shows. I therefore argue that like the rabbits that were once domesticated, yet have now turned wild, the frictions that they engender are also ‘feral’. These feral frictions highlight the inadequacy of universal notions of pests as environmentally detrimental and requiring removal.

This does not necessarily mean that rabbit management is not required; rather, it changes the way we think about rabbits and the effects that they have on environments, and that the environment has on them. Drawing on a performative view of bioinvasion this chapter has highlighted contentions around the notion of the rabbit as a demonised pest category and the

234 assumption that rabbit management is straightforward and environmentally ‘good’. Taking this approach also leads us to the following questions: Which rabbit populations are detrimental?

What would happen if they were totally removed? Would native animals slip back into their old habitats? What is the reason for their management? I return to questions of management in

Part 4, but first I take this messy notion of belonging further to explore the ways in which human-tree relations are enacted within affective encounters.

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Chapter 14 Belonging-with angophora

The previous two chapters messed with the native/alien debate and the assumed notion that native nature should belong in national parks. Through looking at the ways in which kangaroos and rabbits do not fit neatly into the native/alien debate I highlighted the frictions and paradoxes surrounding belonging in national parks. By looking at the messy belongings in Ku- ring-gai Chase I suggested that we could consider belonging to be a performative process that is actively co-fabricated by human and other-than-human actors. This figures belonging as a relational process that is not an innate ‘quality’ or ‘essence’, but rather is continually constructed or performed in moments of encounter. This final chapter of Part 3 changes the focus to ask questions about how we can think about belonging differently, and how belonging becomes a belonging-with through encounter. To do this I explore three encounters, or stories of belonging with Angophora costata, and how belonging is performed in these moments.

To explore the performativity of human-nonhuman belonging, I follow Wright (2014: 3) to conceptualise ‘belonging as an emergent co-becoming’. She states:

Yet belonging is not just made up of things – it also makes things, makes humans and communities and places … these are entities that come together in relational ways, that define and configure what it means to belong (and not belong) as they define and configure themselves. Things (or people or places) do not pre-exist in static ways – their belongings are made through their coming together (Wright 2014: 3). I take these ideas further by focusing on the ‘sticky materiality of [the] practical encounters’

(Tsing 2005: 1) that produce belonging, and in doing so I suggest that encounters that co- constitute belonging can be seen as a source of ‘friction’ through which difference is produced.

I focus on the way in which other-than-human actors, materialities and practices ‘give grip’ to

236 aspirations of belonging and how the sticky materiality of belonging produces national park nature (Tsing 2005: 1).

14.1 Finding a large bumpy tree with pink bark During the early stages of my research I had a conversation with Colin, a Traditional Owner of the Ku-ring-gai Chase area, who told me that I should pay attention to the Angophora costata, as it is a sacred tree for the Guringai Aboriginal people. He said the Angophora costata

(angophora) are connected to women’s beliefs and as the park falls within matrilineal lands they hold great spiritual significance.

Having little knowledge of angophora trees or what focusing on them would lend to a project on park management, I set off into the park looking for a ‘large bumpy tree with pink bark’. At first I found the angophora hard to find. Is that bark pink, or orange? Should I be looking for large bumps, or small ones? That tree has a grey trunk, but sections look pink? Walking along the trails in the park, there were so many similar, yet strikingly different trees, shrubs, reeds, grasses, flowers, and vines that all seemed to meld together. The abundance and variety was initially so overwhelming it seemed as if there were limitless vegetation forms jumbled together everywhere I looked.

I then began to seek out more information about the angophora species. Angophora were often mentioned on websites, management documents and information sheets relating to Ku- ring-gai Chase. Also known as the Sydney Red Gum, or the Smooth Barked Apple, the angophora is the ‘most famous of the Sydney sandstone trees’, according to the NSW

Government website (NPWS 2012b). The angophora is characteristic of the Hawkesbury sandstone and is remarkable in its ability to establish itself on steep rocky slopes, with little to

237 no surface soil. The roots of these trees work their way into the cracks and crevices of sandstone rocks and entwine themselves with rocky ledges for moisture, nutrients and support

(Baglin and Mullins 1968). The Australian National Botanical Gardens describes the angophora as a: [L]arge, wide, spreading tree growing to a height of between 15 and 25 m. … The timber is rather brittle. In nature the butts of fallen limbs form callused bumps on the trunk and add to the gnarled appearance ... The leaves are dark green, lance-shaped, 6- 16 cm long and 2-3 cm wide. They are borne opposite each other on the stem. The flowers are white and very showy, being produced in large bunches on terminal corymbs or short panicles. The individual flowers are about 2 cm wide with five tooth- like sepals, five larger semi-circular petals, and a large number of long stamens. The seed capsules are goblet shaped, 2 cm long and as wide, often with fairly prominent ribs (ANBG 2014).

There were many other descriptions in ‘fact sheets’ and on websites that were in a similar vein and discussed the leaf composition, the general appearance of the trees and where they could be found. However I could not find any information that connected them to the spiritual significance that Colin pointed to.

As I spent more time in the park, the angophora began to jump out at me. I became familiar with the types of areas in the park where they were found and the types of vegetation that were found near. I learned to identify them by their leaf composition and of course the distinctive lumps and bumps of various sizes that covered their branches and trunk. I watched the angophora shed their bark during late spring and summer, revealing a rich orange bark that turns pink then grey as the year progresses. Even the young trees have knotted and gnarled branches that seem to twist out every other way than up. Many of the trunks have sap oozing out like blood or red glass and patches that look like they have been stained with rust.

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In addition to paying attention to the angophora I began asking people about them and collecting stories. During my time talking to volunteers and NPWS staff and being in the park, the angophora kept coming up in conversations and grabbing my attention. However, the more I found out about them, the more they became an enigma. I became perplexed on the belonging status of the trees and more specifically what about them made them belong in Ku- ring-gai Chase National Park – was it the cultural significance they hold for the Indigenous people of the area, was it their native status, was it their unique appearance? Below I tell a number of stories that I collected about the angophora (see Figure 14-1) and how their belongings are co-fabricated within relational, more-than-human encounters (Wright 2014). It was through these stories and walking through Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park that, to paraphrase Tsing (2005: xi), I learned to see the angophora differently.

Figure 14-1 Angophora Costata taken in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (Source: Author, 2 September 2013)

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14.2 Charlie

Material belongings One cold and rainy day in April 2013, I went bushwalking with Charlie, one of the Discovery

Volunteers. We met up at Cowan Station and walked down a section of the Great North Walk

(also known as the Jerusalem Bay Track as can be seen in Figure 14-2) that leads to Jerusalem

Bay (see Figure 14-2 and Map 2). Around one kilometre into the trail we walked past an angophora tree that was pushing its way onto the path. The rain had made the bark shine, especially the blood red sap that dripped down one side. My fascination with these trees made me pause and take notice. Charlie pointed it out but said, ‘I want to show you a superb one’. So we continued along the wet path, pausing every now and again to pull the odd leech off my ankles and prevent the hopeful ones from wriggling into my shoe.

Figure 14-2 Charlie walking along the Jerusalem Bay Track (Source: Author, 3 April 2013)

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Towards the bottom of the escarpment close to Jerusalem Bay we came across the angophora that Charlie wanted to talk about (see Figure 14-3). This tree was over a metre wide and

Charlie guessed it to be around 250 years old. I was inclined to agree. It was not the size of the tree that indicated its age, but its weathered and gnarled body that was covered in what I thought could have been described as the tree equivalents of skin growths, boils and warts

(see Figure 14-4). Not a section of this tree was smooth; every inch was covered in dimples and lumps, large and small. These bumps were irregular and swelled out randomly across the trunk.

Patches of the tree were slick with shiny blood red sap that added to the gruesome appearance of the tree that made it look like it belonged on a battlefield and not in a national park. ‘Isn’t it lovely’ exclaimed Charlie when we got up close. ‘Do you know what causes the lumps on it?’ he asked me. ‘They are a reaction to an insect attack, and just like we would have a scar on our skin, the bark grows over to protect it, But’ he said ‘the Aboriginal people of the area also have another explanation for the bumps. When the women would go walking every day with their children, they would tell the children that if they misbehaved they would be put inside the tree like that, and then the children would behave so they didn’t become another lump in the angophora’.

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Figure 14-3 The angophora along the Jerusalem Bay Figure 14-4 Gruesome appearance of the Jerusalem Track (Source: Author, 3 April 2013) Bay Track angophora (Source: Author, 3 April 2013)

Charlie also showed me two photos of which included angophora tree: a black and white one taken during the 1920s of a man, George Rhodes, standing in front of the tree, and one taken in 2007 of Rhode’s daughter, her son and his son. The three generations of Rhodes walked the trail that George had originally pushed through the bush, and had their photo taken at this tree.

Standing looking at this angophora, Charlie told me that George Rhodes lived at Jerusalem Bay from around 1880 to 1940. The track that we walked that day from Cowan Station to Jerusalem

Bay was created by Rhodes to provide access to his house, boatshed and weekenders that he built on the bay. Charlie also told me that the track is not the only evidence that reveals the influence of George Rhodes on the landscape. Cowan railway station also hints towards the past occupation of the land. Cowan station looks physically different to other stations that were built around the same time. Despite being built in the late 1880s the platform at Cowan station is on stilts and shelters are made of weatherboard (see Figure 14-5), unlike others of

242 the time, which are made of brick and built on solid foundations (OEH 2014b). Charlie told me that this temporary appearance is because it was never intended as a permanent station.

Instead, it was built because Rhodes convinced the railway department during the 1880s to build the station so that he, his family and visitors to the weekenders could have access to the trains.

Figure 14-5 Cowan Station highlighting its temporary appearance (Source: Author, 14 November 2015)

Rhodes built two houses at Jerusalem Bay (the first of which burnt down), a boatshed, and several weekenders, complete with tennis court. All of these structures have since been removed, although some evidence of them still remains including concrete foundations. There is also a lone palm tree that stands at the bay looking down to where the boat ramp used to be

(see Figure 14-6). Charlie showed me a photo of Rhode’s wife planting this palm as a sapling in

1922. Ninety years later, the palm stands around 25 metres high. The Ku-ring-gai Chase

243 management and historical documents do not mention when or why the structures were removed, however Barty, a Discovery volunteer told me that ‘it’s a shame that national parks have this, this thing against buildings in the national park’. He went on to say that many structures in the park that indicate its colonial history have been removed or are hidden from the park visitors.

Figure 14-6 Jerusalem Bay and the palm tree that was planted by Rhode’s wife in 1920 (Source: Author, 3 April 2013)

In a similar way, Griffiths (1996) suggests that artefacts of history can be removed from a place to create the illusion of a natural landscape. Griffiths’ (1996) studied Langwarrin Flora and

Fauna Reserve in Victoria. This reserve was originally a military camp created in 1886 but since then has been regenerated and is now an established conservation area of large forests, but its history it seldom mentioned. According to Griffiths, that is because the:

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history carried unwelcome and contradictory messages for a flora and fauna reserve: that this bushland had been ‘disturbed’, that much of the site of this ‘original remnant vegetation’ had been previously cleared, and that abused bushland could regenerate so quickly (Griffiths 1996: 255).

The history of the site is seen to devalue the nativeness and specialness of the bushland. As such Griffiths (1996) argues that often remnants of history are removed from spaces to give the impression that the spaces are ‘pure’ or natural. He also argues that this vision of ‘natural’ is Eurocentric and in the case of the area he studied, the aim was to render invisible the landscape’s Indigenous history and occupants. In a similar way then, it can be suggested that the removal of Rhodes’ structures at Jerusalem Bay was an attempt to create a more ‘natural’ looking park.

Charlie said that he likes to tell stories like that because they put people into history, and ‘you need to think about the people behind developments in history – and Rhodes was one of them’. This story of Rhodes and his influence on the park and station could have been told when we walked past the station and Charlie said ‘look at how the station is on stilts? I’ll tell you about that later’ or when we were walking along the trail and there were obvious incisions in the sandstone that I later found were cut by Rhodes for drainage purposes. Instead, Charlie chose the angophora as the place to tell the story of George Rhodes and the stories of angophora bumps.

Charlie’s and my stories of the angophora highlight the emotional attachments that arise in human-tree encounters. Encountering the angophoras on the trail created feelings of curiosity, affection, excitement, awe and confusion. They made both Charlie and me pause and take

245 notice, they incited questions and stories, and in doing so the trees were active in practices of belonging. But more than this, the trees were dominant in shaping encounters.

Wright (2014) argues that emotions and emotional attachments are active in constituting belonging. Whilst on the walk Charlie told me ‘that humans share 90% of their DNA with trees’.

He therefore suggested that ‘we should give our cousins a hug, as it makes you feel good’. The physical shape of the tree makes them ‘huggable’; they are not flat or pointy and are more person-like than other trees due to their lumps and bumps. Charlie therefore suggests that hugging angophoras can trigger emotions of kinship, affection and awe in people. The materiality and affective qualities of encountering angophora are therefore active in their belonging. As Wright states:

Attention to practice, then, is very useful in highlighting the way that belonging is continually (re)made and (re)constituted, and how it is performed in messy, negotiated and material ways. Belonging, it follows, is affective and material, and actively produces both people and place (Wright 2014: 10).

In a similar way to the rabbits, the affective qualities of angophora are active in producing their belonging. Belonging, then, has an affective dimension and is ‘actively created through the practices of a wide range of human and other-than-human agents, including animals, places, emotions, things and flows’ (Wright 2014: 2).

The materiality of the trees can also be seen as active in creating their belonging. Barad (2003:

827) offers a ‘posthumanist materialist’ account of performativity which ‘challenges the positioning of materiality as either a given or a mere effect of human agency’. She argues to

‘figure matter as merely an end product rather than an active force in future materializations, is to cheat matter out of the fullness of its capacity’ (Barad 2003: 810). The material world,

246 therefore, is given the power to impact on and become a part of the encounters that co- fabricate belonging. The specific materiality of spaces, objects and bodies can be seen as acting as a source of friction, as they influence how encounters unfold and the different belongings that are produced. The material assemblage therefore makes certain natures possible and not others. The materiality of the angophora – its size, its lumps, its twisted limbs, and blood red sap – therefore can be seen as enacting a particular belonging, through shaping practices and encounters.

The history of the angophora in the park and its connection to the histories of people also enact a particular belonging. The space surrounding this angophora was a good place to tell stories, but the tree itself was also a part of these stories. In the case of the photograph the angophora acts as a constant, a link to the past that outlives humans. The angophora also stands witness to Indigenous women walking past with misbehaving children, and of early

Europeans ‘taming’ and developing the land. For Charlie the angophora is a place to tell stories of the past, and the (relatively) unchanging nature of the angophora tree implies it belongs in the park. Linking back to notions of 1788 as representing a boundary of belonging, this angophora is understood as a special tree that belongs due to its size and gnarled appearance which indicate that it is older than European colonisation and was part of Indigenous culture pre-1788. The materiality of angophora and their affective qualities, therefore give grip to encounters that constitute belonging. The belonging of these trees is therefore enacted within these more-than-human encounters.

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14.3 Colin

Emergent co-becomings The historical significance and ‘specialness’ of the angophora tree are also exemplified in

Colin’s story, although Colin’s story evokes more than just a material belonging. He emphasises the spiritual belonging of angophora. This is the story that Colin, a Traditional

Owner/Custodian of the Ku-ring-gai Chase land, told me about the ‘beautiful big red tree that is

[his] ceremonial tree’:

Now there’s a young lady in England who recently fell pregnant because, she underwent IVF [in vitro fertilisation] and failed. And she fell pregnant because a certain Aboriginal man did a ceremony on an angophora tree, which is a birthing tree, up in America Bay … But you see the angophora is, the angophora does two things … when a woman is pregnant to get the soul of the child she will sit on the base root, you know how they have really big ones, and the women will sit on those roots, and some of the trees are so polished from the women sitting on them, it’s amazing. And what happens is the soul of the child comes from the heavens into the leaves of the tree, comes down through the branches into the trunk of the tree and then comes up into the womb. So we know that sexual engagement with a male gives you a body of a child, but the soul of the child must come from a higher being, it fits into where Christianity comes from doesn’t it? We’ve been doing this for a hundred odd thousand years. When you die, if you ever look at an angophora, a few of them have horizontal branches, or near horizontal branches, that’s because Biamie, that’s our creator, loves to sit in the angophoras, and that’s why the branches grow flat, so when you die, the first night you actually build a ledge there in the angophora. Then you leave the body in there in the night and the soul of the person goes back into the tree, and goes up through the branches and into the leaves, and goes off into heaven in the darkness of night. And the next day you bring the body down and you cremate them. And the soul’s already left the body. So … soul… we have a different word for it, but the angophora is a such an important tree and even the angophora, if you look at it, you’ll quite often find an angophora that bleeds, has the red., and how do you link that to women? Menstrual cycles. And if you look at the lumps on the angophora they’re called koomers and a women’s breast is called a koomer, so they’re the women’s breast. So the angophora is a female and the only time we ever cut an angophora is we will go to an angophora and we will cut out weapons, our killing weapons will come from the angophora because angophora gives us life and if we want to make a killing boomerang or a killing stick for battle, we will take it from the root of the angophora.

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And the women tell us which one we can take. So we actually take … it’s a red wood its lovely and hard, and it forms a magnificent … and the only other one we take is the iron bark, we take the iron bark… and once again the iron bark it bleeds and it has the blood of the women in the soul of the tree, we take it from the root of it too. But the angophora is linked to birth, it’s linked to death and um it provides us with the possum with the bat, the fruit bat, with the birds … it gives us so much. It’s a teller of seasons, when the angophora blossoms we know the mullet are on the run, you know there are so many things about the angophora, it’s really important for us (Colin, Traditional Owner/Custodian)

Colin’s idea of belonging can be seen as an ‘emergent co-becoming’, where ‘belonging is not just made up of thing – it also makes things’ (Wright 2014: 3). Belonging here is better described through the notion of ‘Country’. Rose states:

[c]ountry is multidimensional: it consists of people, animals, plants, Dreamings, underground, earth, soils, minerals and waters, surface water, and air. There is sea country and land country; in some areas people talk about sky country. Country has origins and a future; it exists both in and through time. Humans were created for each country, and human groups hold the view that they are an extremely important part of the life of their country … All living things are held to have an interest in the life of the country because their own life is dependent on the life of their country. This interdependence leads to another fundamental proposition: those who destroy their country destroy themselves (Rose 2004: 153)

Belonging to country, then, becomes a belonging-with country. As Wright (2014: 13) states,

‘Country and all its beings become together. The belonging of all beings is thus generated through their ontological co-emergence’. Angophora, then, are not only active in the performance of belonging, but we can also understand that the encounters that produce belonging also produce nature and Ku-ring-gai Chase. Belonging can therefore be seen as

‘humans and more-than-humans creating place, and place creating us’ (Wright 2014: 13).

In Colin’s story the angophora hold great spiritual significance; they are connected to birth and death. They also indicate seasonal changes and when certain food sources are available. The

249 tree is also able to give life in ways that are unexplainable by modern science, as the story of the lady who could not conceive through IVF suggests. Angophora and people are both constituted by these relations. As Indigenous philosopher Mary Graham (2008: 182) states

‘[t]he land, and how we treat it, is what determines our humanness … [A]ll meaning comes from land’. If we take the ontological understanding that there is no pre-existing world to which people and trees can belong, then relations with angophora are entangled in processes of becoming-human and becoming-tree. The human-angophora relations in Colin’s story then can be understood as enacting a co-belonging and co-becoming.

Unlike the belonging of rabbits in Chapter 13, which was based on boundaries and definitions of pests, Colin’s story of belonging is relationally enacted in encounters and does not rely on human-created dualisms as the basis for boundaries of belongings. Angophora can be seen as people, as they contain and transport the souls of people, and they are connected to life and death. They are not simply a ‘tree’ but a combination of spirits, people, trees, weapons, wood, seasons, blood and food.

Speaking of the Yolngu people in Northern Australia Graham states: Wherever the Creator Beings travelled, they left tracks or some kind of evidence of themselves. These tracks determined the identity of the people. In other words, every Aboriginal person has a part of the essence of one of the original creative spirits who formed the Australian landscape. Therefore each person has a character of custodianship empowering them and making them responsible for renewing that part of the flora and its fauna (Graham 2008: 183). These relations and the actors that constitute them give grip to notions of belonging and enact them in multiple ways. This highlights the frictions of belonging as dualistic notions of belonging/not belonging are replaced with relational messy practices. The next section turns

250 to my own stories of encountering the angophora to further explore the ways in which belonging emerges and is constituted in more-than-human, affective and messy practices.

14.4 Sarah

More-than-human performances of belonging Another way that I attempted to learn about and understand the angophora was by paying attention to them whilst walking through the park and staging encounters with them. I found a cluster of angophora not far along a walking trail off Bobbin Head. I would return to this cluster regularly to ‘hang out’ with and encounter the angophora. The following is an account of one of those times.

I walked up the Gibberagong track, along the mangrove boardwalk, past the sign ‘More? You want more?’ and continued up the track where I could ‘explor[e] samples of forests and rainforest communities in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park’. Up through the large sandstone boulders that remind me of ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’, (hoping that I don’t disappear and can find my way home). Up on top of the ridge I make a quick stop down a wallaby trail to look at the view of Cowan Creek looking back over Bobbin Head, trees obscure most of the view of the picnic area but the paved section at the beginning of the Gibberagong trail is clearly visible.

It is a nice clear day in mid-March 2013, up on top of the ridge the breeze is strong but the sun is warm on the rocks. Moving back from the sunny rock outcrop and back onto the trail, I am searching for an angophora to ‘encounter’, with no actual idea of what that will involve, but finding a suitable partner seems to be the first step.

I think I will sit underneath one and see what I can learn. I spot a nice big one just off the track and went over to investigate. There was a worn track to this tree which was easily a metre and a half wide and over 20 metres tall, the track was not very established, but had recently been trampled. Ok now where to sit? Despite it being autumn the remains of its summer-time shed could be clearly seen around the base of the trunk. Large strips, flakes and small splinters of pink, orange and grey bark and profuse amounts of leaf litter, cover the ground at the base of the tree [see Figure 14-7]. The thought of sitting was a little concerning due to the threat of things that creep, crawl, slither, sting and bite.

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Moving on, I walked further until I found another angophora on the very edge of the trail [see Figure 14-8]. It had large exposed roots that flowed over the rocks that bordered the trail. Its trunk jutted out at an angle perfect for climbing, if you didn’t mind the steep cliff that plummeted down to the sandy creek below. I can easily see 10 meters of the trail in either direction so I decide it is safe to sit and listen, without being snuck up on by other people walking. I sit on the tree roots and lean up against the trunk, looking up at the sky and canopy and watching the leaves falling from the trees in the breeze. I do this for a few minutes before a gum nut hits me square on the forehead bringing me back to earth.

This tree is peppered with dead or dying limbs, along with new bright green growth. Flies keep walking along my sunglass lenses. Ants constantly run up and down the trunk and roots. The roots of the tree and the first meter or so of the trunk have a shine to them, they seem to be well worn from people sitting on them. What was that Colin said about women sitting on angophora roots? Maybe I should sit on the rock just in case.

The roots of the tree reach out to the middle of the path, and it seems like the track has been constructed around them. Sandstone rocks have been cut into long stairs to make the track easier to walk and rocks have been placed along the edge of the trail, but the tree roots move past and break these barriers. For the size of the tree it has very few leaves on it, it has an extensive branch system but only the top fine branches have leaves. There are also new leaves and very small new growth branches that have cropped up along the branches at random intervals.

For the size of the tree it is growing in an astoundingly small amount of top soil, and on a very steep cliff face. From where I sit I can see the large spread of its roots for many metres, as it plunges them into tiny crevices and cracks in the sandstone, and twisting them around rocks in order to acquire the nutrients and support needed. As the afternoon presses on, more bugs and mozzies start harassing me and frustrate me into leaving (Field diary excerpt, 19 March 2013).

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Figure 14-7 Angophora after shedding its bark (Source: Author, 19 March 2013)

Figure 14-8 The angophora I encountered along the Gibberagong Trail (Source: Author, 19 March 2013)

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Another way I attempted to stage encounters with angophora was through the technique of

Dadarri. As I mentioned in Chapter 3, Dadirri is a practice of deep listening which allows for different ways of knowing and being. It is about being respectful and patient, and learning through encounter (Brearley et al. 2008). I utilised the practice of Dadirri with the angophora not only as a way of learning from and listening to the stories of the angophora trees, but also as a way of acknowledging the colonial aspects of the park and my tree encounters. The angophoras are on and part of Indigenous land, and many of them were in the park long before

European colonisation. While in the presence of angophora I practised Dadirri – I focused on my surroundings, I took my time, I learnt about the trees and the places they were located, I listened to the stories they told, and in doing so I attempted to become open to multiple knowledges of the angophora. The following is a field diary excerpt from one attempt at encountering the angophora through Dadirri. This encounter happened on the same ridge top as my previous story, but was conducted on a different ledge surrounded by different trees.

Sitting with the angophora reminds me that my work is a collaboration of human and nonhuman participants. Angophoras tell me stories of survival, of hardship, of adaptation, of new life and dead limbs. All angophoras regardless of their size seem to have dead limbs still attached, they must take a while to fall off. Small limbs, large limbs.

I am sitting on a rock platform looking out over Cowan Creek [see Figure 14-9]. The leaves falling from the trees show me that there is a breeze further up in the canopy, these leaves are noisy as they fall and sound like footsteps as they hit the ground.

The angophora next to me has a forked trunk; one fork extends up and becomes a dark brown colour, still with its flaky bark attached. The other fork continues up and changes into a dead limb – there is no obvious point between dead and alive [see Figure 14-10].

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There are dead trees around me, completely grey and black, with no leaves or signs of new life. I can’t help but think that this tree will outlast my lifetime and remain in this spot for a long time.

There is a small yet tall angophora in front of me. It has a pink dimpled trunk, yet the underside of its twisted branches are a rusty orange colour, in the parches of orange you can see lighter pink drip marks as if the rain washes the rust from the wood, turning it to clean pink.

I notice a grey gum in front of me – it has dead limbs as well and forms the same raised bumps at the point of meeting the trunk. Why do the angophora end up so bumpy and twisted, but not the grey gum? Maybe there are naughty children in there?

Birds are very noisy, constant whip cracking in the background.

The dead tree I see has twisted limbs and two small bumps, this makes me think this tree was an angophora. If it was an angophora then maybe the bumps are not part of the internal trunk of the tree that remains after fire, possibly the children are released once the tree dies [see Figure 14-11].

The green angophora leaves have a sweeter, grassy smell, almost something edible, compared to the gum leaf. The dried brown angophora leaves have a weaker scent, more earthy.

I think the angophora fascinates me for the questions it poses: why are its branches twisted? Trees are meant to grow straight up towards the sun, why then in some cases do the angophora branches and trunks grow out, down, diagonally and backwards? Why are the lumps there? How can such a big tree grow on that steep slope? How can they regrow after fire, or after they are hit by lightning, or are knocked down? (Field diary excerpt, 31 June 2013).

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Figure 14-9 View over Cowan Creek where I conducted Dadirri (Source: Author, 31 June 2013)

Figure 14-10 Angophora with forked trunk, Figure 14-11 Dead angophora still with crooked featuring one living trunk (left side) and the other branches but no lumps (Source: Author, 31 June (right side) turning to a dead limb (Source: Author, 2013) 31 June 2013)

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Clark states: many of the ‘environmental’ problems that researchers and practitioners now find themselves confronting pull in very different directions from the concern with the vulnerability of biological life in the face of advancing human agency. There are pressing issues in which what is most alarming is life’s exuberance; its unregenerate capacity to multiply, transform and mobilize itself; its proclivity to turn up in forms we didn’t anticipate, at sites we don’t want it, in numbers we can’t deal with (Clark 2010: 33). My stories about the angophora highlight that encounters of belonging do not just produce the belonging or not belonging of angophora; there is more going on here. The encounters are not just between trees and people, and nor are they just encounters between present material human and nonhuman bodies – rather, there are also immaterial knowledges, forces and emotions and other human and nonhuman bodies and objects that come to act upon the encounter and belonging. The multiple interactions, between my body, rock ledges, tree roots, insects, falling gum nuts, knowledges, sunshine, spirits, awareness, past experiences, bark, and many more, all came together within specific material moments to co-fabricate belonging. My encounters also highlight that belonging is not a singular practice or encounter, and there is no one encounter through which belonging is created. There is more going on in these encounters

– knowledges are co-fabricated, beings are enacted, materials are shaped, identities are created, things are destroyed, histories are utilised. My encounters with the angophora therefore highlight the messiness of belonging-with.

Through the encounters that co-constitute belonging, place, nature and the park are also enacted. Space can therefore be argued to be performative, as it is wrapped up in the assemblage of bodies and objects that enable performances (Gregson and Rose 2000). The deeply connected nature between humans, nonhumans, objects, things and spaces that produce performances mean that these things cannot be easily distinguished; they are stitched

257 together and impact on each other in complex and surprising ways (Gregson and Rose 2000).

Therefore, nature does not exist without the performances of human and nonhuman participants. Gregson and Rose state: this multiplicity in turn implies that the possibilities for slippage, subversion, disruption, and critical reworking of power through practice are messier, fuzzier, and just far more unpredictable than current theoretical arguments – including Butler’s – pointing to the citationality of discourse and power begin to suggest (Gregson and Rose 2000: 446)

My angophora encounters hint towards the messy and entangled nature of belonging.

Belonging cannot be brought down to a single characteristic, or a set of desirable traits.

Instead, there are too many things that go into creating belonging than we can realistically comprehend and report on. No dualistic notions of belonging or not belonging, native or alien are created. Instead, relations are enacted and communications are shared.

Much of the previous research done on the agency of nonhumans has used animals to explore the relationship between nature and society. Cloke and Jones (2003) however argue that trees are capable of possessing agency and even intentionality. They argue that trees can have an influence over the feel and form of an area. The trees’ growth, height, shape, colour and seasonality all have an influence on their surroundings. The presence of trees, especially in urban areas such as parks and gardens, can be intrinsically valued by individuals. In the tree- lined Victoria Square in Bristol, some of the older trees are often propped up or reinforced because they are seen as holding value and as being part of the space and are therefore considered as worthy of being cared for. Another example of the value given to these trees can be seen during a time when the Bristol area was experiencing a severe drought. During this drought several residents carried water to one particular tree in the square that was seen to be particularly vulnerable. These examples show that trees are often seen as having their own

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‘individual identity’ (Cloke and Jones, 2003). This demonstrates that the agency of trees can influence the performances of humans and other nonhumans. The trees in Victoria Square also shape the form and character of the square (Cloke and Jones 2003). When looking at the multiple worlds and multiple agencies of a space, it is important to realise that these spaces are not static; they are formed through networks of interactions and encounters and are constantly being shaped and reshaped (Cloke and Jones 2003). My encounters therefore highlight the agency of the angophora in shaping the park and my knowledges of them.

The sense of trees as individuals resonates with Hall’s claims for the personhood of plants.

Here, persons are those with whom we interact, with varying degrees of reciprocity. Plants are living beings that have the ability to communicate in their own different ways. As M. Hall states: Personhood is a crucial, all pervading concept – for as persons, plants are recognized as volitional, intelligent, relational, perceptive, and communicative beings. Living in a world underpinned by the plant kingdom, the existence of plant persons is incredibly important for discussions of interspecies ethics (Hall, M. 2011: 100). By thinking about angophora as persons, we can think differently about my encounters with them. Rather than just enabling me to learn about angophora, my encounters allowed particular angophora to communicate with me. The angophora communicate with me as well as others in the park – their blackened trunks tell stories of fires, the shedding of their bark indicates the coming of summer, and as one NPWS employee told me the presence of angophoras tells Indigenous people they are entering a women’s area. The tree communications in my encounters can be understood as practices of learning to see the angophora differently.

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My stories of angophora therefore highlight the messy and emergent practices through which belonging is constituted. Belonging is enacted, altered and reinforced through more-than- human, affective and messy practices. Through encountering these trees I learned to see the frictions in their belongings, the multiple persons, encounters, humans, other-than-humans, and understandings that come together to co-fabricate belonging. My encounters with angophora involved expanding my understanding and exploring different ways of knowing these trees, and so now when I look at the angophora I don’t just see a lumpy tree with pink bark; I look at them as being a strange more-than-nonhuman collection of communicative beings that can tell and hear stories.

14.5 Belonging surprises Through encountering the angophora, my understanding of them shifted. What started as a native tree became a multiple being, that I could not completely understand (Howitt and

Suchet-Pearson 2006). Although the previous stories reveal the angophora to belong in Ku- ring-gai Chase, they all do so in very different ways. The fact sheets suggest the angophora belong as it is a native species, while Charlie’s story suggests that the angophoras belonging is connected to the age of the trees and their connection to the past use of the park. Colin, however, highlights the significance of the angophora to many aspects of Indigenous life, in both the past and present. And then finally, in my encounters with the angophora, the angophora made their belonging felt through the presence of the trees and their incorporation and entanglement with the park landscape. As Wright (2014:1 4) states: ‘[b]elonging is a term that resonates. Ambiguous, exclusionary, reductionist, open, expansive, tentative, enduring, hopeful, caring, in place, with place, as place – belonging surprises’. The belonging of these trees is therefore enacted in ways that remove dualistic notions of native and alien, colonial

260 and Indigenous, belonging and not belonging. Instead, they are revealed by relational practices that co-fabricate place, trees and persons in messy ways.

Belonging, then, is not a human only category: Food, organisms, trees, music, markets, hair and dance all actively co-constitute belonging. Rather than a background they actively co-produce feelings of belonging, they sculpt and participate in practices and performances of belonging, and they materialize belonging in, through and with place (Wright 2014: 12). In this sense, belonging can be seen as a source of friction as it actively draws together a number of actors into disproportionate encounters that rub against each other and produce difference (Tsing 2005). Rubbing up against ideas, ontologies and concepts of angophora belonging is affective and generative. The angophora trees do not simply have agency, but can be seen as taking a principal role in provoking relations and encounters. As my experiences with the angophora on the Gibberagong Trail suggest, encounters are not one sided, and nor do they contain just two parties. Belonging becomes a belonging-with as it is created through relational, performative and more-than-human encounter (Wright 2014). The fear of being bitten or stung by creatures hiding in fallen bark, the sun and warmth, the actions of people who came before me of sitting on and polishing the roots, the location of the trees and trails, and the stories and encounters I had already experienced, all came together to produce what the angophora is and how it helps produce Ku-ring-gai Chase. Colin’s and Charlie’s stories highlight not only that angophoras are more-than-trees, as they can also contain people and spirit ancestors, but also that people may be part angophora as the tree is essential to giving the soul to a person.

In this way the angophora can be understood as inciting a particular type of belonging friction.

This friction is different, for example, from the friction associated with rabbits and kangaroos

261 where belonging centred on dualisms of native/non-native and killing or controlling took precedence. The friction of the native–alien dualism created an exclusionary belonging in which species were either in or out. In the case of the angophora, there is an affective, emotional and encompassing friction that enacts an inclusionary belonging, providing an avenue for people and other-than-human bodies to become-with the park.

Universal ideas of trees as being a passive part ‘of’ the landscape, rather than being ‘in’ the landscape actively deny the creative presence of trees (Hitchings and Jones 2004). However, through exploring the ways in which the belonging of trees is enacted by humans and other- than-human actors, these universals are broken down and become messy. Trees are given agency in their own belonging, and become persons in the landscape (Hall, M. 2011; Hitchins and Jones 2004). Stories of angophora encounters reveal a number of frictions that move around and are at work in creating the belonging status of angophora. The angophora I encountered messed up ideas of human and nonhuman, scientific and spiritual, nature and culture, as they brought all of these together in encounters of friction where ideas rub against each other, produce new knowledges and draw in new actors that have the ability to produce surprising and complex results. These frictions bring into question what is a national park, what is nature in a national park, and what natures belong in national parks.

The stories of the angophora bring into question ideas of belonging in Australian national parks. In addition the angophora stories also highlight questions around how this belonging is managed. If belonging is not a straightforward concept that equates to nativeness, then how do park managers make decisions regarding what species should or should not be allowed in

Ku-ring-gai Chase?

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Chapter 15 Conclusion: Multiple Belongings

Tsing (2005) argues that ideas of friction remind us that place, space, context and the materiality of situations and engagements are important. The materiality, context, and human and nonhuman actors mean that things turn out differently in different spaces. This section has looked at the ways in which belonging in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is more nuanced than often assumed and often turns out differently than expected when it enacted through more- than-human engagements. Universal notions of native/alien, belonging/not-belonging, humans/nonhumans are broken down as dissonant actors enact multiple, and often conflicting, belongings. The material and more-than-human qualities of these moments of friction mean that humans can never have full knowledge, predict results, or control encounters (Bakker and Bridge 2006; Tsing 2005). Surprising, conflicting, awkward and partial belongings are therefore constantly being enacted.

My stories of kangaroos, rabbits and trees illustrate that in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park there is no one delineation of belonging – there is no one temporal boundary, no threshold of damage and no static notion of being in place that constitutes belonging in the park. Instead, I argue that dualistic delineations fall apart and are given grip as they are played out in more- than-human encounters. The kangaroos enact a zone of awkward engagement where there are underlying tensions between native and non-native, captive and wild, and attraction and danger. All of these contentions meet at the fenced kangaroo area to enact a friction of belonging that is awkward and uneasy. Similarly, our responses to rabbits become messy as we consider the affective and emotional belongings that are constituted within practices of management. My stories of rabbits illustrate that while rabbits are demonised as invasive

263 pests, there are emotional relations that develop through managing and killing rabbits that cast them in an affectionate light. The belonging of rabbits is negotiated in an affective friction in which emotions and histories give grip to rabbit encounters and performances of belonging.

Notions of nativeness as determining belonging become messy as they are enacted in Ku-ring- gai Chase National Park in sticky rabbit- and kangaroo-encounters.

My angophora stories move away from the dualistic dimensions of belonging and instead depict belonging as relational and emergent. Instead of looking at how angophora belong or don’t belong, my stories highlight how encounters, tales, trees, insects, bark, spirits, histories, animals and persons all come to meet in ways that rub up against each other to enact belongings. All of these partners ‘become together’; they are all active and shift encounters in surprising ways. And as such belonging becomes a ‘belonging-with’. This relational friction enacts a co-emergence of bodies, trees, spaces and ontologically multiple beings.

Encounters that enact belonging are ‘sticky’ and always have the potential to surprise. The co- fabrication of belonging and the co-emergence of actors, partners and persons through sticky encounters illustrates that belonging is not a human-only construction. Rethinking belonging in this way also raises a number of questions for park management. If there is no clear delineation between what is in or out, then how are national park spaces managed? If we take seriously more-than-human agency and the understanding that plants and animals are active in enacting spaces and their belonging, then how do management plans get written and put into practice? Part 4 does the work of exploring these questions. It examines the management of an unnatural beast and a beastly nature to rethink national park management practices as more- than-human and inhuman friction.

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Part 4: Frictions of how management happens in Ku-ring-gai Chase

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Shrub sprouting after fire and a bull ant, Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (Source: Author) Chapter 16 Introduction to Part 4

In Part 3, I unsettled ideas of belonging in national parks and specifically the idea that native nature belongs in these spaces. I argued that universal notions of belonging in national parks as being directly connected to ideas of nativeness break down and became messy on the ground.

Through looking at the ways in which the belonging of kangaroos, a native Australian animal, and rabbits, a problematic pest species, were more nuanced and less dualistic than assumed, I began to think differently about belonging. I suggested a new, more subtle, way of thinking about belonging by looking at the ways in which belonging was enacted through encounters with trees. I suggested that belonging is not predetermined but rather is enacted within ‘sticky engagements’ of friction where dissonant actors come together and surprising results are produced. More than this, I suggested that we can begin to think about belonging as a more- than-human achievement in which human and nonhuman actors are active in producing multiple belongings.

Earlier, in Part 2, I showed how universal notions of national parks as spaces of special native nature become effective as they are enacted within Ku-ring-gai Chase. Here, what constitutes a national park is constantly being negotiated in particular localities and by multiple human and other-than-human actors. I argued that this could be described as ‘entering the fray’ (Tsing

2005: 270), where universal notions of national parks as spaces of native nature do not disappear but are made powerful, or become ‘engaged’, as they are enacted within Ku-ring-gai

Chase.

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Rethinking belonging as performative, messy and more-than-human brings into question ideas of park management as comprising human-initiated practices that reduce the negative impacts of humans to ensure the continuation of the natural. As I will show in Part 4, assumptions of park management suggest that it is a set of human practices that are based on scientific objectivity and that it is an inherently good process that will produce a set of desired results that are good for both humans and nature. However, if we begin to see the division between human and nonhuman, native and non-native, and nature and culture as being broken down and reformed in messy more-than-human performances, then the assumptions about management are brought into question.

If categorisations and understandings of national parks and concepts of belonging in national parks are more active and less ‘universal’ than first thought, then this opens up a number of questions for how management happens in parks – if there is no defined division between what is native and what is alien, and what is natural and what is cultural, then how are decisions to be made regarding what management practices should be implemented and what results are desired? If what constitutes a national park is constantly being altered and changed, then what is the point of managing them? How do park managers and management documents account for the actions of other-than-human actors that can alter belonging and park spaces in strange and unexpected ways? How do we know what species should be removed? What results will be produced through human action? In short, if belonging in national parks, and the creation of park spaces, are not completely human constructions or within human control, then how should park management be carried out in ways that still ensure the integrity of the spaces as national parks?

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Management documents, policies and laws position management as an obvious and necessary part of national parks and as a practice of removing the bad and protecting the good. These documents, policies and laws also suggest that there is a clear progression from a natural ecosystem to a disturbed human-altered landscape and that these changes can be counteracted through proper human practices of management that are informed by scientific understandings. It is these assumptions – namely that human practices can reverse damage and that western science can show us the right way to do things – that I seek to question in this section. To do this I examine two case studies, around managing horse bodies and fire in Ku- ring-gai Chase National Park to see how park management happens and what park management does.

16.1 Parks need management

Previously in Chapter 2 and in Part 2 I made the case that national parks are defined as spaces that require management. The establishment of the first national parks and other protected areas went hand in hand with the notion that these spaces of special nature required protection from the harmful effects of humans and encroaching human settlements. As such, it was assumed that national parks and protected areas required ‘beneficial’ human interference in the way of management, in order to ensure the integrity of these natural spaces. Protected areas including national parks are categorised on a national and international level based on their management requirements (see Chapter 5 for more information on these categorisations). Categorisation and legislation, then, are not enough to ensure the continuation of these spaces. Instead, management is an essential part of the establishment

268 and daily operations of national parks and other protected areas (Alpin and Batten 2004;

Bryant and Wilson 1998; Worboys et al. 2005).

In Australia, national parks are managed under state government legislation. For New South

Wales the guiding legalisation is the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (NSW). One of the driving principles of this act is that all national parks require a plan of management. The Plan of

Management for Ku-ring-gai Chase opens with the following overall strategies for park management: - [To] protect the national park and nature reserves from detrimental impacts of fire, weeds, feral animals, pollution, erosion and visitor use impacts through direct control and remediation works and through education of park visitors, stakeholders and neighbours; - [To] protect the outstanding scenic values of the national park when viewed from both within and outside the park; - [To] maintain and promote selected sites and facilities within the national park which can cope with the high levels of visitor use; - [And to] limit facilities to existing developed areas of the national park or park boundaries where possible, rather than further dissecting the park with new developments (NPWS 2002: 9).

Notions of human control and active intervention are entrenched throughout these objectives.

Park management is seen as an unquestionably ‘good’ process in which specialised technical knowledges are used to intervene in and control the environment. The management dogma is nicely summed up by Aplin and Batten:

Given the often serious negative impacts of human activities, it is now generally accepted that virtually all sectors of our environment need to be managed in the best possible way, taking into account the needs and views of all concerned. Management offers the best chance of allowing all to live in a way that avoids environmental damage and promotes cooperation, avoiding conflict over environmental justice issues. Neither the environment nor stakeholders should be privileged, but treated as interdependent, each with the other (Aplin and Batten 2004: 356).

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Management, then, is not only portrayed as necessary, but also as the best way of minimising environmental damage (Bakker and Bridge 2006). Management is traditionally understood as a process, or a set of processes, that aim at achieving specific goals (Worboys et al. 2005). Bryant and Wilson (1998: 323) argue that traditional ideas of ‘environmental management [see it] as a process in which state-affiliated “experts” trained in western positivist science apply their

“expertise” to the attempted resolution of selected environmental problems’. Here, the notion that environmental problems can be ‘solved’ through technocratic actions goes unquestioned and the agency of nonhumans and the broader political, social and economic forces that impact on park management are ignored. Instead, the management of natural resources and protected areas involves organising, coordinating and controlling both human and technical resources to generate a certain type of environment, or ‘nature’. Inherent in these notions of management is the assumption that through gathering sufficient scientific data and information, human managers can improve the state of the environment and ensure its

‘naturalness’. Destructive human impacts can therefore be counteracted through seemingly beneficial human impacts of management (Worboys et al. 2005). The value of parks is seen primarily in human terms and is directly linked to the ability of management to produce a desirable and ‘natural’ looking environment.

16.2 Questioning management ontologies Straightforward ideas of management have come under increased critique by those who suggest that management needs to consider the disruptive and constantly changing impacts of both humans and nonhumans (see Bakker and Bridge 2006; Head 2000; Howitt and Suchet-

Pearson 2006; and Lorimer 2010). Conservation studies are still plagued with ideas of the natural sciences – of strict divisions between what is natural and not, what is human and what

270 is nonhuman. Ideas of relational, more-than-human performances therefore have not been used to address issues of conservation, the role that it plays and the effects that it has (Lorimer

2010).

Protected area management is seen as a valuable undertaking that seeks out ‘unnatural’ aspects of the park and determines ways to remove or correct them. This idea has been criticised as it views ‘nature’ as a straightforward concept that is easily recognisable (Lorimer

2010; Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). Universal notions of what belongs in national parks and what a national park is are problematic as they act to perpetuate certain ideas of what constitutes ‘nature’ and how it should look, while also suggesting that protected areas across the globe are similar in how they can be managed and understood. My stories of rabbits and kangaroos suggested that what is ‘natural’ and what belongs in a national park are not straightforward. By standardising park management and utilising static notions of what belongs, the in-between, messy and changing ‘belongings’ that do not fit neatly into categories are ignored.

In Australia the colonial legacy, the history of Indigenous land management practices and the history of denying those practices further complicate park management. It has been suggested that current Australian management practices do not take seriously Indigenous connections to the land and Indigenous understandings of management practices. Griffiths (1996: 265) argues that in Australia ‘[a]ppreciation of Aboriginal manipulation of the environment is increasingly a factor in modern park management. But the old language and dismissive stereotypes still slip into the environmental handbook’. As such Australian park management is still seen to be dominated by colonial notions or ‘buried epistemologies’ (Head 2000; Willems-Braun 1997).

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One ‘dismissive stereotype’ that percolates through park management is the notion of what constitutes knowledge. In the management documents, policies and legislation of Ku-ring-gai

Chase knowledge is understood as something that is scientific, something that can be found through proper experimentation, evaluation and analysis. As Alpin and Batten (2004: 356) state, ‘environmental management is as much about managing competing goals as it is about managing environmental processes and conditions. It is thus extremely important to have sound, comprehensive information.’ It follows that in order to preserve and conserve nature we need to understand it. Management requires practices such as systematic recordings, in- depth studies, databasing, assessing and mapping of activities and features of the park such as the location and abundance of plant and animals, fire, management activities and visitor use.

Management knowledges are therefore centred on quantitative and scientific studies and on analysis which acts to naturalise western scientific knowledge as an obvious source of management practices and understanding.

Howitt and Suchet-Pearson (2006) reinforce notions that park management is still saturated in western scientific knowledge. This follows the discussion in Chapter 2 which argued that management practices are ontologically ‘Eurocentric’ in that they instil a separation between nature and culture, and the superiority of humans over nature. Eurocentric notions of management emphasise development and conservation as unproblematic concepts that are self-evident ‘good’ thing for both people and the environment. However, Howitt and Suchet-

Pearson argue: In the context of indigenous Australian experience, we argue that the discourses and practices of both development and conservation reflect highly problematic assumptions about relationships between people, and between people and their surroundings, which are rooted in Eurocentric ontologies, and that failure to challenge

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these assumptions risks reimposing colonial power relations on groups who make different sense of the world (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006: 323). Therefore Indigenous ways of knowing the world as animate, relational, nurturing and a reciprocal mix of humans, nonhumans, bodies, spirits and stories are not accounted for in

Australian national park management practices (Palmer 2005).

The Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park Plan of Management (POM) outlines management as occurring through processes of monitoring, conservation, signage, structures, gates, barriers, regeneration, interference, prevention, preservation, exclusion, maintenance and design.

Management processes revolve around the idea of control, and more particularly human control, in order to ensure the ‘naturalness’ of the park. These ideas can be seen as situated in

Eurocentric ontologies which suggest that not only can humans control the actions and behaviours of humans and nonhumans in the park, but that they can do so in a way that will produce a desired outcome. These ideas are ideologically inconsistent within Indigenous understandings of land, nature and humans as relationally bound. According to Indigenous understandings, humans are understood as part of the land and do not aim control or exploit it

(Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). Non-Eurocentric ways of knowing, including Indigenous ontologies, are ignored within practices of management and the universal legitimacy of scientific management is reinforced (Gammage 2011; Langton 1998).

Active participation of Indigenous management ontologies in Australian protected area management would need accommodate difference and ambiguity in current understandings to allow for the distinctiveness of Indigenous concepts of ‘nature’ as cultural landscapes and of their relationships with the land (Head 2000). Not only do ideas of difference need to be acknowledged in management policies and strategies, but they also need to have an impact on

273 the day-to-day practices of natural resource management (Palmer 2006). It is argued that this is not currently the case, although Indigenous people are recognised as stakeholders under the terms and conditions of Eurocentric management. For example Indigenous involvement in management of protected areas is often ‘contingent on their acceptance of the existing hegemonic system of technocratic natural resource management’ (Palmer 2006: 37).

Indigenous ways of thinking about and managing the land are therefore not taken seriously.

Howitt and Suchet-Pearson (2006: 326) argue that situated and contextual knowledges can be used to challenge ideas of universal and Eurocentric management. As knowledge itself can be understood as performative, how and where knowledge is created is important (Howitt and

Suchet-Pearson 2006). It is not a process of replacing one universal with another, through privileging Indigenous knowledges. Rather, we need to challenge current ideas and explore the hidden invisible knowledges of management. We need to recognise the importance of management as a situated engagement. This means that any understandings and interactions need to be based on contextualised and relevant knowledges and terms of reference (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). Howitt and Suchet-Pearson (2006: 328) therefore argue that our

‘concepts need to be rethought. They need to be reconceptualised, indigenized and interrogated continually for deeply embedded colonizing effects’. In the next section I argue that the notion of situated engagements of management can be usefully combined with Tsing’s notion of friction as sticky engagement to describe management practices as sticky situated engagements.

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16.3 Sticky situated management As I have shown there is a critique of scientific management and what management says it is doing that can be made on paper, but questions still remain about how these situated engagements will play out on the ground. Ideas of scientific management and management as situated engagement both see humans as those initiating and impacting on management.

Leading from the last section on belonging, I argue that by viewing management as situated engagement we become open to the performative effects of management. Not only this, but management practices become vulnerable to the disruptions, mess and surprises of other- than-human actors. Part 4 aims to pull the critique of rational scientific management in a messy, more-than-human direction. To do this I will look at how Howitt and Suchet-Pearson’s

(2006) ‘situated engagements’ of management happen on the ground. Instead of arguing for the concept of management to be rethought as a situated engagement, I look at the ways in which management actually happens in ‘sticky situated engagements’.

Sticky situated engagements suggest that management draws together multiple actors into engagements of messy-comings-together that are relational and productive, and that rely on material, more-than-human, more-than-nonhuman practicalities. Understanding park management in this way is not an easy move as it means opening up to ideas that management may not be an entirely human process and may not be within human control.

This reinforces the co-fabrication of nature through generative encounters. Ideas of rational, scientific management in which human actions can counteract detrimental impacts in national parks break down and become muddled when put into practice as they encounter other actors and local materialities.

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In Part 4, I focus on the ways in which human and other-than-human actors come to impact on and mess up management practices in Ku-ring-gai Chase and cause universal notions to warp and stray from their envisioned purpose and became deviant. I start with a story of managing horse bodies in Ku-ring-gai Chase to begin to unravel ideas of park management as conducted through practices of logical, rational decision-making. I look at the more-than-human agencies, the horse bodies, the prized threatened species, human emotions and histories, to show how rational decision-making is both reinforced and spectacularly broken down in the act of park management. Engaging with management on the ground also brings to light the ways in which universal notions are dragged through practices of management, dismissed at times, championed at others and skewed in multiple and messy ways that produce park management.

I then move on to a story of fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase – how fire is managed in the park, and how the park is managed through fire. My story of fire suggests that park management cannot be seen as completely scientific or within human control. By looking at fire as a management tool, as something that comes about without human intervention, as something that requires management, and as something that alters the park and the activities of humans and nonhumans in the park, I aim to position park management as a more-than-human process that has the ability to take us to surprising locations. In this sense I prompt a view of park management that turns out differently in different spaces due to the abrasion of inhuman forces.

In Part 4 I aim to explore the ways in which scientific management becomes warped and bent due to the fluctuations, actions and actors in Ku-ring-gai Chase, and I aim to explore how

276 human control is unsettled by human, other-than-human and inhuman actors. The involvement of these actors means that the processes, planning, organisation and rational decision-making of park management are shifted in surprising ways.

In the next two chapters there are a number of frictions that spark up as notions of universal management, land on the ground and become messy. Universal notions of management as scientific and rational and humans as superior and separate from nature, rub up against horse bodies and inhuman fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase and become unstable as they are enacted in the

‘grip of encounter’ (Tsing 2005: 1). Following on from Tsing (2005), I argue that the specific actors in these unequal encounters mean that things will always turn out differently to our expectations.

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Chapter 17 Managing horse bodies

In this chapter I explore the ways in which the planning and decision-making involved in the management of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park become messy or ‘enter the fray’ (Tsing 2005:

27). Drawing on my previous argument that scientific management is already enrolled in more- than-human, more-than-rational encounters, I suggest that instead of disappearing, scientific knowledges are put to work in different ways that see them as actors (but not sole actors) in producing national parks. To illustrate this I consider the events that unfolded following a policy change which allowed increased horse riding access in Ku-ring-gai Chase. I examine the management of horse riding and horse bodies to illustrate the ways in which deliberative practices and planning become cracked, shattered, stuck together and remade in messy and unequal ways in the co-fabrication of national park management.

17.1 A new policy and establishing rational planning In Chapter 8 I outlined how a change of state government in New South Wales (NSW) in 2011 brought about a number of policy changes that directly related to the role of national parks, how they are managed and how the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is structured and run. Prior to being elected the Liberal Party, led at the time by Barry O’Farrell, made arrangements with NSW and Australia-wide horse riding groups and associations by way of a

Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This MoU stated that if elected the Liberal

Government would seek ‘to provide more horse riding opportunities in national parks’ across the state (NPWS 2012c: 5). In 2012 this was initiated by way of the ‘Strategic Direction for

Horse Riding in NSW National Parks’ policy. The policy called for NPWS to improve horse riding

278 opportunities in selected parks across the state, including Ku-ring-gai Chase. The Strategic

Directions Policy: outlines a process for providing horse riding opportunities in eight identified priority regions of NSW. It provides for work plans to be developed in each of the priority regions, in consultation with local horse riding representatives, to outline the priority horse riding opportunities to be provided in the region over the following two to three years (NPWS 2012c: 1).

The ‘Strategic Directions for Horse Riding’ policy called for NPWS staff members in priority areas, one of which was Ku-ring-gai Chase, to hold workshops with their local horse riding groups to develop a work plan that would identify existing tracks or trails within the park that would be opened up for horse riding, and whether any new trails within the park should be constructed. The workshops were not aimed at discussing if horse riding opportunities would be increased in selected national parks, but how.

NPWS employees in the Ku-ring-gai Chase area put a lot of work into preparing for the workshop. Many potential (and existing illegal) horse trails were walked and assessed for their suitability, potential management issues and for what work would be required to get them to an appropriate standard. Resource and cost estimates were calculated. Meetings were held. I attended one such meeting of NPWS employees a couple of days prior to the workshop. During the meeting every detail of the workshop was discussed from how to deal with potential conflicts, whether NPWS staff would be in uniform or not, the agenda for the day, and the overall goals of the workshop. Throughout this meeting much of the conversation centred on pre-empting what the horse riders would ask for in terms of tracks and trails, what insights, questions or opinions they would raise, and what the appropriate responses from the NPWS employees would be. Overall, the aim of the meeting and the work that the NPWS employees

279 had already done, was to ensure that the NPWS employees had sufficient information regarding trails, costs, management requirements and overall goals so that they were as prepared as possible for the workshop. It was assumed that preparing, analysing, assessing and planning would ensure that the workshop ran as smoothly as possible. Planning here is understood as a rational and logical process of ensuring ‘good’ management practices.

In addition to being knowledgeable about the trails and likely questions or demands the horse riders would raise, there was also an established plan for the workshop schedule that would enable the best outcomes. Through allocating time for both horse riders and the NPWS employees to raise issues and put forward ideas, and by working collaboratively to develop a set of goals, the workshop was designed to build trust. The workshop was planned so that small groups consisting of both NPWS employees and horse riding group members would work together to establish a set of values that the horse riders were looking for in the tracks or trails.

It was expected that these values would then guide the choice of tracks and trails that would be developed for horse riding. It was also important to the NPWS employees that the workshop was based on positivity and that the horse riders understood that the NPWS was committed to providing horse riders with quality riding opportunities. The workshop was therefore planned out so that relationships were fostered in such a way as to ensure the creation of a work plan that benefited both the horse riders and NPWS employees. Planning, establishing values and working collaboratively are seen here as rational and logical ways of making decisions and ensuring good outcomes.

Planning here is seen as an unquestioned linear process of thinking about the desired goal and working out how to achieve it. It is understood as a fundamental strategic tool used to achieve

280 goals and good outcomes (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). Howitt and Suchet-Pearson

(2006), however, argue that by not questioning the role of planning in environmental management, non-Eurocentric ways of thinking and being-in-place are constituted as ‘irrational and illegitimate’ (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006: 329). They suggest that planning is an ontologically Eurocentric and linear process in which a

future is envisioned, one which is open to deliberate human intervention. Achieving that preferred future involves prioritizing becoming, moving forward, achieving and goal-setting. It requires planning (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006: 329). I argue that the Eurocentric ontologies of planning and rational decision-making become

‘situated’ and ‘engaged’ when they are enacted in Ku-ring-gai Chase. They become situated as they are influenced by contextual specificities, and engaged as they are changed through their travels, and in doing so, they become practically effective.

17.2 Contentions around horses Horse riding in Australian national parks has had a long and contentious history. And as such the introduction of the Strategic Direction Policy was a controversial move as it represents a push to increase certain recreational opportunities and is seen by some to be at the expense of environmental conservation. Horses were important in the early development of colonial

Australia and were brought into the country by the first Europeans in 1788. As stated by

Newsome et al:

The vision of the early stockman on horseback who grappled with adverse conditions and danger has become part of the Australian bush image and this is now marketed internationally with potential visitors sold the opportunity to become part of the legend … horseback tourism has become part of the Australian bush image with the horse seen as being an integral part of the Australian landscape (Newsome et al. 2002: 55).

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The significance of horse riding to the cultural heritage of the country is also reinforced in the

Strategic Direction Policy as it states:

Horse riding in national parks provides an opportunity for horse riders to experience and appreciate the state’s wonderful natural environments. Horse riding also has significant heritage value for many horse riders and horse riding on historical trails in national parks provides for the maintenance of these cultural traditions (NPWS 2012c: 1).

The belief that horse riding in national parks is important for cultural traditions and for allowing people to experience the ‘wonderful natural environment’, is grounded in the idea that by riding horses through national parks people will develop a greater understanding of the park and conservation in general. As stated in the Minister’s foreword of the Strategic

Directions Policy:

The strategy balances recreational opportunities which can lead to a greater understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of our wonderful national parks while ensuring the unique values of our parks remain protected. Risks to park values will be managed through careful planning and best practice adaptive management. Impacts to areas of high environmental sensitivity will be avoided (NPWS 2012c, Minister’s Foreword).

Although horse riding is seen as connecting to the colonial heritage of the country and as a way of allowing people to enjoy the bush, horse riding is also understood to be detrimental to national parks and the environment. Horses are seen as non-native, domestic animals that trample the Australian bush and therefore do not belong in Australian national parks. As Helga, a Discovery Volunteer, states:

No, okay, horse riders I’m not a fan, ’cause they’re not okay, they’re not a native animal, and the hooves do damage [to] the tracks and then you’ve got the issues with their droppings … they cut up the tracks severely so then you’ve got to maintain them, and we‘ve got enough farm land for horses to go on. Horses belong on race tracks and on farms and there’s plenty of that, they don’t need to come to national parks, so I do

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get angry about horses … So yeah no, not a fan for opening up for horses … But I wouldn’t want anything that brings in an unnatural animal to the area like horse riding, I’m going to put the big no to that (emphasis added). The non-native or ‘unnatural’ status of horses and the damage they cause therefore conceptualises them as not belonging in national parks. Horse riding is seen as causing environmental damage through trampling vegetation and soil compaction leading to increased runoff and erosion, and through increased weed invasion from seeds brought in on hooves and in droppings. To compound these environmental issues Australian soils have a very low resilience and are fragile and nutrient poor (Landsberg et al. 2001; Newsome et al. 2002). The

Australian case is also unique in that no hoofed animals are considered native, as none are known to have evolved on the continent (Newsome et al. 2002). Horse riding is therefore a controversial issue as it is seen by some to degrade the value of national parks. National parks are understood here as spaces of native nature and as such, the presence of this ‘unnatural’ beast goes against what national parks stand for (Gager and Conacher 2001; Head 2000).

However through speaking to a number of NPWS employees and volunteers, another view of horses emerged. Many acknowledged that horses do cause environmental damage, but suggested that horses can be allowed in national parks as long as their impacts were properly managed.

We can certainly provide [horse riding] facilities, and we can certainly manage those facilities but it comes at a dollar value, … unfortunately because we live in Sydney, demand for space, demand for green space, demand for tracks and trails is huge, so look I don’t think it’s an undoable or an unsurmountable ask, I just think some thought needs to go into the process of how we manage it and how we maintain it and how we sustain it for long term benefit for the environment as well as horse riders and all the other users (Angelina, NPWS employee, emphasis added). I don’t think I should be as against it [horse riding] as I am, but I’m entirely against it, I don’t think its compatible with nature conservation, but I know that there’s a

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reasonable argument that the damage done to the trails is not as bad as people say and if it’s managed properly, it’s getting more, so the counter argument is that it’s getting people to enjoy the parks, and promoting the park… yeah I don’t like big horse floats, and massive four-wheel drives blocking you know national parks or poo, well I don’t actually find it that offensive, horse poo, I just think that they’re likely to introduce pathogens, but people tell me that the science says no, it doesn’t really, so any road verge has got a high incidence of weeds, so that’s just the way it is so the horse aren’t doing, anyway …. But I need to be open to them spreading the word that parks are good and bringing in money, or whatever it is but, I’d prefer to have no horses anywhere, that’s a little extreme [laughs] (Cedric, NPWS employee, emphasis added). I’m not in favour of horse riding in the bush, to a great extent, I find it irritating when I’m on a walk … where horse riding is allowed, and that’s fine ah but … I do find it a bit disconcerting to be walking along either having a horse coming thundering past or a horse depositing droppings all over the path and when you look at them you’ll see they’re all full of weeds, that’s how weeds are brought into the park, and I see the result of that. I can see what’s happening and in those areas where there have been horses, but you know the reality is people have horses and they want to ride them somewhere, so there again there’s got to be a compromise …. but when it comes to things, horse riding may be more than bike riding it is, in terms of bringing in feral plants, into these pristine areas, so I prefer not to see it in pristine areas. If it can be confined to certain areas that’s fine, but yeah look, very difficult things to manage (Charlie, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added).

Horses are incompatible with native nature, yet if managed properly, in a scientific way, then the damage can be minimised. Angelina, Cedric and Charlie’s statements suggest that western scientific knowledge trumps their personal opinions and experience and it is the management of horses that is crucial to their belonging and being in national parks, rather than their nativeness. In this way Angelina, Cedric and Charlie unsettle traditional narratives of horses as culturally significant to national parks and environmental narratives of horses as not native and therefore incompatible in national park spaces. Instead, through recognising the importance of management they are acknowledging that these delineations are not static, and rather than the presence of horses as being based on an innate characteristic of the horses, their belonging

284 in the space is contingent on management practices. Lee (Discovery Volunteer) reinforces this belief in scientific management by stating: Noise, pollution in national parks … no, not a good thing … yeah I think horseback is going to be a good enhancement, and scientifically it would have things that they would have to manage like everyone’s got to carry horse poo bag, because of contamination risks, but if they can work that in Terry Hills and there’s no scientific risk, well okay. Colin, however, puts forward another argument for why horses in national parks should be properly managed:

It’s an occupational health and safety issue, if the horses don’t get to a trot, and you can’t tell me that someone with a beautiful big open trail they’re not gonna let their horses go for a trot. If the horses don’t trot, there’s a chance there won’t be erosion, there’s a chance there won’t be occupational health and safety issues, but I can see young kids, you know with spilt heads and broken bones, and I can see bushwalkers getting knocked down by horses. I can see, if you put horses in, motorbikes are gonna follow ’cause they will just follow and go through the gates, or over…. You can’t keep them out. And they’re opening up … But national parks have gotta be open to land use management and look I think horses can be used, but then again you’ve gotta have the man power and the budget to provide the trail upkeep, and two things that national parks don’t have is money for man power and any sort of budget, ’cause their budget gets smaller and smaller all the time, by the state government (Colin, Traditional Owner/Custodian). Again management is important for horse riding and in seen as an essential process for ensuring ‘good outcomes’ (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). The NPWS, Advisory Committee members and volunteers interviewed reinforce the idea that horses will cause damage, yet by putting certain restrictions and measures in place their impacts can be properly managed to ensure the integrity of the park. Therefore horse bodies are considered manageable.

Contentions around horse riding – horse riding as connecting to the colonial heritage of the country, horse riding as environmentally detrimental, and horse riding as manageable – therefore highlight the ways in which park management has a number of ingrained Eurocentric

285 ontologies (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). Managing properly is equated to managing

‘scientifically’ and as such other ways of thinking about nature are ignored. In this sense, superior humans are able to understand and intervene in and conserve a separate ‘nature’.

Colin’s view, however, suggests that the safety of visitors is also important. From these ideas comes the view that horses are ‘manageable’; that is, it is believed that through specific human interventions – planning, regulation, bush regeneration, control and maintenance – the domestic horse body can become compatible with wild nature.

However, I want to move on to question the idea that management is a rational and scientific process that can produce desired results. I aim to highlight the un-manageability of horse bodies through looking at how they are managed on the ground. To do this I look at the workshop that resulted from the implementation of the ‘Strategic Directions for Horse Riding’ policy that was aimed towards establishing how horse riding access would be increased in national parks.

The following account is based on events that unfolded at the initial workshop between the

NPWS staff of the Ku-ring-gai Chase region and local horse riding groups. This workshop took place on February 9, 2013 and involved nine members of horse riding groups, six NPWS staff members, one convenor and one observing researcher. They came together to discuss the issues of how to increase horse riding access in Ku-ring-gai Chase and surrounding parks.

Despite the lengths that NPWS went to, to ensure this workshop was a process of rational decision-making where ideas and issues would be discussed and solutions would be determined, during the workshop there were a number of moments where human and other- than-human actors, not all of which were present at the workshop came together with

286 surprising results. I now trace these ruptures to highlight the sticky situated engagements that enact practices of management.

17.3 Impact of previous negotiations The contentions around horse riding that I discussed earlier impacted on the workshop. Past encounters and negotiations between the horse riding groups and the NPWS saw the horse riders blamed for increased weed growth in the park and during that time, horses had not been permitted on certain trails. Due to the political pressures placed on the NPWS after the change of NSW government, the workshop was very much aimed at moving beyond those past negative relationships and was understood to mark the beginning of new positive partnership.

How the workshop was organised and the conversations that occurred give an indication of the political and historical impacts on management practices. The call for the workshop and increasing horse riding access was not a decision based on scientific and rational understandings of what is best for the Ku-ring-gai Chase environment; instead this was a politically driven change that aimed to rectify past relationships and encounters.

Over a decade ago there was ‘a fairly ugly set of negotiations’ (Hannah, NPWS employee) between the NPWS and local horse riding groups of northern Sydney (Hannah, NPWS employee; Bill, NPWS Advisory Committee Member). At some stage in the past there were a great number of trails open to horse riding in Ku-ring-gai Chase and surrounding parks.

However, around 20 years ago many tracks were closed off and horse riding groups petitioned for certain tracks to be reopened. As Hannah (NPWS employee) notes:

[NPWS] told them they had to pay for an REF [Review of Environmental Factors], they did a REF with the expectation that they would then be able to use the track, the REF

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recommended that they didn’t use the track and we said ‘okay you don’t use the track’, but there was a lot more to-ing and fro-ing than that. During this time there was an opinion within the wider conservation community that horses didn’t belong in national parks, due to the environmental impacts such as weeds and erosion.

As Angelina (NPWS employee) states:

But there was a definite mindset back then that horses were the enemy and horses were going to be excluded from parks, and there was really, really bad vibes between national parks and the horse riding community.

The previous negative negotiations were mentioned repeatedly in the workshop; however this was done in a way to acknowledge that things have changed and horses were no longer seen as ‘the enemy’. As Angelina states: ‘I think that meeting did go a long way to say you know, philosophy has changed, science has changed, we can work on the tracks and trails to make this work, and I think that came across in the meeting’. However it was acknowledged that previous negativity hadn’t been completely forgotten by the horse riders:

A lot of them are the same, they’re quite happy to acknowledge that there has been a change in feeling, and I guess, there is good will on the table, and that we are keen to provide helpful solutions, there is one of two of them who are still very resentful, very distrustful of the process (Angelina, NPWS employee). But the meeting I think went very well in terms of us conveying yes we are serious about implementing greater opportunities and I think they did hear us on that, I guess the issue now is for us to deliver on that (Cormac, NPWS employee).

The workshop, then, was not only aimed at producing a practical outcome, in the form of a work plan, but also an emotional one where relationships and good emotional ties between people were developed. Rather than understanding management practices as based purely on scientific knowledge, we can see the ways in which management practices become situated as they are shaped by historical encounters, emotional legacies and the present political climate. I

288 now look further into the way in which not just recent history, but also colonial histories were made active in the workshop, to highlight the stickiness of situated knowledge.

17.4 Colonial heritage History was also brought into the meeting due to the link between horse riding and the colonial heritage of the country. Riding horses through the Australian bush is embedded with romantic notions and links to the early colonial days of the country when ideas of what it means to be ‘Australian’, and what constituted ‘nature’ or the ‘Australian’ bush, were developed (see Head 2012; and Head and Muir 2004). Seeing horse riding as an important part of experiencing and being in national parks and the ‘Australian bush’, suggests that colonial understandings of what belongs in parks still prevail within national park management.

The history of horse riding in Australia was also used during the workshop as a justification for what tracks in Ku-ring-gai Chase should be opened up. Throughout the meeting the horse riders would state that a certain track should be opened up for horse riding because it had been used in this way in the past. In this way a very specific history of the park was taken into consideration – one that focuses on the idyllic notions of past horse riding in the park – ignoring any problems with this previous land use (see Griffiths 1996). It also acts to ignore any changes that may have occurred between this idyllic past and the present that may have caused the park, or the tracks, to no longer be suitable for horse riding.

In these ways, history and heritage were drawn into the management decisions and were made active partners in the workshop. This reinforces my previous argument that the colonial heritage of Australia is deeply embedded in the management of landscape and how environments are understood, and this heritage percolates through management practices in

289 complicated and unpredictable ways (see Willems-Braun 1997). Management of national parks then, is not a universal thing but rather is deeply embedded with ‘memory’ and heritage which are active in influencing the types of issues that are brought up and the decisions that are made.

However, these memories are never true representations of past events. Instead, they are selective and have been manipulated, idolised, demonised, forgotten and altered as they move across time. This supports Tsing’s (2005:13) argument that we need to focus on the ways in which knowledges move or travel, rather than on seeking ‘truths’. Tsing (2005) argues that knowledges, including universal knowledges, are constantly on the move and as such are constantly being altered and changed due to their encounters with localities and other knowledges (Tsing 2005: 8). History, locality and knowledges are therefore sticky actors in engagements of management practices – they get in the way of and mess up universal scientific knowledges. More than just impacting on the workshop itself and on discussions that occurred, these sticky actors also helped create and rupture rational decision-making during the workshop.

17.5 Creating and rupturing rationality As I mentioned earlier the workshop was designed to represent ‘best practice’ in terms of collaboration and generating outcomes. Despite the planning that was done by the NPWS staff,

I argue that the presence of other-than-human actors created a stickiness that caused the workshop to shift in unexpected ways. I argue that the materiality of actors and the park altered the workshop in ways that both reinforced and ruptured the rational decision-making of the workshop.

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The workshop involved discussions of the work – the physical changes to the park – that would have to be done to make tracks suitable for horses. Horses have different bodies to humans and as such altering a track to make it suitable for horse riding when it was previously designed for bushwalking requires a number of changes. Firstly, any stairs along the tracks would have to be a certain length, width and height in order to accommodate horse bodies (see Figure

17-1). The tracks themselves would have to be a certain width to allow room for two horses to pass each other, or alternatively there would need to be regular passing bays. The tracks would also have to be constructed from certain materials that were soft enough so they didn’t damage the horses hooves’ but stable enough to ensure they did not wash away in rain after increased soil compaction caused by the hooves. The vegetation along the track would need to be cleared to a higher level than necessary for a walking track, to accommodate the height of horses and riders (this can be seen in Figure 17-1). Also, as horses can be easily spooked, trails needed to be designed to allow adequate vision. The construction of tracks for horses also calls for certain infrastructure including signs notifying others of the presence of horses, hitching posts, barriers and parking areas that can accommodate horse floats.

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Figure 17-1 Trail in Rho-Ker Reserve (on the outskirts of Ku-ring-gai Chase, see Map 2), that was upgraded to accommodate horses. This photo highlights the long and shallow stairs needed to accommodate horse bodies (Source: Author, 13 November 2015)

Horse bodies can therefore be seen as exercising agency as they are active in altering not only the way in which the workshop was carried out, but also the work plan that was created and the material changes that would have to be made to the tracks and trails. The decisions made during the workshop were therefore grounded in the materiality of the horse body and the park. I suggest that through discussing the requirements and limitations of horse bodies and the tracks, rationality was established in the workshop. Consideration of the horses reinforced the deliberative and logical nature of the workshop that the NPWS employees were aiming for.

Another way in which this rationality was established was through the collaboration to develop a set of values. About half way through the workshop, participants were formed into small

292 groups and told to identify the values that the horse riders were looking for in terms of riding opportunities and the trails in the parks. The groups consisted of both NPWS employees and horse riders, who conferred to produce a set of five values that they wanted to see applied to the tracks and trails in the park. We then came together as a large group to create five prioritised values that represented the entire group’s perspective on the desirable aspects of horse riding opportunities.

These values were intended to guide the development of a work plan. As such it was expected that towards the end of the workshop when discussions turned to the work plan, the prioritised values would be used to determine which tracks or trails would be opened or created. Tracks or trails that fulfilled one or more of the five values would then be prioritised over those that didn’t. This process of sharing ideas and identifying prioritised values was a strategy used by the NPWS employees to establish a rational, values-based decision-making process. In this way participation, planning and prioritising were used to ensure good management outcomes.

One of the main values that emerged in this process was safety, especially the safety of children. The horse riding groups suggested that more horse riding tracks were needed that connected certain areas such as the pony clubs and showground which are on the outskirts of

Ku-ring-gai Chase, so that horse riders, especially children, could travel between these areas through the park, rather than along busy roads. Other values identified included access, connectivity, variety of tracks and trails, and appreciation of cultural and natural heritage.

Despite the intentions of the NPWS staff that these values would be used to prioritise which tracks would be opened, the events that took place after the values were established muddled

293 the logic and rationality of the decision-making process. These events were precipitated by the appearance of maps. After the values were established, maps of Ku-ring-gai Chase and surrounding areas were laid out on the table and discussion turned to which trails would be opened up or created. Before the maps were brought out discussion about opening trails was largely hypothetical and abstract, and little was mentioned about specific trails or the exact number of trails that would be opened. However, the presence of the maps changed the dynamics and feel of the workshop. Discussion became a lot more intense and heated, smaller and louder conversations broke out as individual horse riders became more involved and forcefully pushed for the specific tracks that they wanted. People got out of their chairs, moved around, pushed against each other to squeeze around the table to get a better look at the maps. Horse riders engaged the parks staff directly and began quizzing them on the possibility of getting this track or that track opened and how long this would take.

It was also during this stage in the workshop that the values that had been established earlier were abandoned and ideas of priorities changed. As Lavender (NPWS employee) explains:

I think initially national parks had an idea of how many trails to offer, and within that meeting ... the horse riders had in their mind a lot more trails that they wanted and believed should be included, so when we were in the meeting and highlighting priorities it was clear there was a need for clarification to say what the priority was and what the timeline was, because I think they got merged and people were like ‘that’s a high priority and we want it right now’ but you can’t do that you have to say this is a must have, this is a preferred and obviously some of them are bigger than others like obviously opening up a new track requires more environmental assessment and negotiations to enable it, so I don’t think that was clear, it wasn’t made clear, especially at the end, where it was probably what everyone wanted to talk about, we had a really limited time frame, and even though we went over by an hour or whatever, people still were keen to stay because there was people staying back an hour after, and then national parks staff had a bit of a debrief, at the end of that … in their eyes they want to be able to ride, so gimme, gimme, gimme, and one thing that I think outsiders don’t appreciate is they just see the government being really slow but

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there are so many policies and procedures that need to have their boxes ticked before you can go ahead with things, that it can be very, very slow, so it’s frustrating for them, ‘cause they can see this isn’t happening, nothing’s happening, but it is happening, with a lot of procedures that need to be ticked and people to sign off (original emphasis). Lavender is therefore aware of the complexities of management and the red tape procedures that go along with management. The meeting and resulting decisions are therefore not just the result of the collaboration that day, but other procedures and policies in place that the NPWS employees have to follow.

When maps were introduced, the values of access and the safety of children were replaced with questions of how long it would take to get a particular track ready. The horse riders became predominantly concerned with getting as many tracks as they could get in the quickest time frame possible. Personal ideas of which tracks should be opened drove the decision- making process and seemed to override the rationality that has been initially set up through discussion of horse bodies and values. Speaking of process of identifying values Hannah (NPWS employee) stated:

It didn’t connect to what happened with the maps … so that’s where it unravelled a bit … it was kids in a lolly shop, I want, I want, I want! And when we finally came down and said ‘what are your priorities’ they said, ‘how quickly can we get the tracks, we want as many tracks as we can as fast as we can’ and I went ‘whoa, whatever happened to the kids’ safety, what about connectivity?’, nah it was just gimme, gimme, gimme.

While both Lavender and Hannah acknowledge a change in the behaviour at the meeting, I argue that the material presence of the maps also altered the rationality of the workshop. The materiality of the maps ‘both invokes the importance of the tangible world of things in constructing social reality and draws attention to the meanings that attach to the surfaces of commodities’ (Bakker and Bridge 2006: 12). The lines and text on the map, the different shades of green and grey, and the trails that were marked, and more importantly those that were

295 missing, brought the agency of the material landscape into the workshop and were reminders to the horse riders of the park, of tracks and trails, but also the personal histories and experiences they had of them. As Bakker and Bridge (2006) state, a focus on the material:

is more than just a call for a heterogeneously populated world: it is also an acknowledgement that the ‘things’ (commodities, bodies, biophysical processes) that make a difference in the way social relations unfold are not pregiven substrates that variably enable and constrain social action, but are themselves historical products of material, representational and symbolic practices (Bakker and Bridge 2006: 18). The presence of the maps and the chaos that resulted can be seen as illustrating the sticky situatedness of encounters of management. The maps and the park they represented actively grounded or situated the knowledges that were created and actively ruptured the workshop’s rationality.

One of the NPWS employees told me that the intended outcome of the workshop was a list of around 15 tracks. NPWS would then be able to prioritise and create or open as many tracks on that list as their budget allowed them. However, by the end of the day there was a list of 26 tracks. Of the 26, a number of these tracks had not been mentioned previously in any of submissions that the horse riding groups had made to national parks, and several went directly through ecologically endangered communities (EECs) or through areas known to contain threatened species. As Hannah (NPWS employee) states:

Look I, how it went, I had two completely opposite about how it went and the first was straight afterwards and for the next 24 hours, and then afterwards I changed my mind. So I’ll tell you straight afterwards I was completely gutted. I just thought it was terrible, which is an interesting perspective given the whole meeting went really well, right up until the pointy end of it where we started getting into pulling out you know names of tracks, I felt like there was this complete misunderstanding … I said … ‘I want a list of about 15 tracks from 1 to 15 that I can draw a line across when I get to how much money we’ve got to spend on tracks and say well we can do the first 10 of your list,’ and instead … it turned into a free-for-all … then suddenly it was thousands of tracks all over it and we ended up with a list of 26 and I was really stressed because I thought

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that they had actually understood, the horse riders, that we were giving them everything they said, and then there was this total disconnect between year 1 and year 2, 3, or priority 1 or priority 2 or 3. … I just went home and I was completely gutted. I felt dreadful I couldn’t even talk to anyone for a whole day, I just argh. Then I started thinking about it and working my way through it and you know we couldn’t give them all that stuff anyway and when I read the minutes I realised that we said on at least three different occasions during the meeting, ‘this will be limited by, we can’t necessarily give you this, we have to go through process’, we’d said all this sort of yeah conditional things, I think they heard that and then when I started writing out the plan, I just knocked off the tracks here, there and everywhere for reasons that had either come up since or were really obvious that we couldn’t give them that track, so they, even when I was standing there and they said ‘oh we want the saltwater track’ and I said ‘oh you can’t because it goes down into an endangered ecological community’, and they said ‘no but we really want it, it’s a really good track’, and they still, so I just went ‘no, wipe that off, we told them at the time, they just didn’t want to hear it’, and there was another track like that where one of the horse riders kept saying ‘Bibbenluke, I want Bibbenluke’, and I said ‘well I can’t give you Bibbenluke ‘cause it’s really steep and we can’t afford to maintain it’, blah, blah, blah, ‘no but it’s a really good track’, so I went ‘right it’s off, it’s out of there’, and then I went back to [another NPWS employee] and he said ‘this track and that track I don’t maintain them for fire and I can’t afford, I can barely afford to maintain all of our fire tracks for actual fire which is a really important part of what we do, let alone I can’t spend money on tracks that are only for horse riding so I went that one’s out, that one’s out,’ so I culled it from 26 down to 12, no 16 I think it got to (original emphasis). It is clear then that Hannah, along with other NPWS employees do not see management as a straightforward process based purely on scientific and rational best practice. Instead, emotions, histories, politics and encounters are important. And often management is about compromising with outside parties and working with the resources at hand to create new versions of ‘good’ management.

The introduction of the maps into the management encounter of the workshop therefore drastically altered the space from a rationalised deliberative process of discussing appropriate values and the practical issues of how tracks would need to be changed to accommodate horse

297 bodies, to a chaotic and messy process of ‘I want this track’, or ‘how quickly can I have that track’. The rupture of rationality and the ensuing commotion led Hannah to despair:

This is the second-oldest park in Australia and one of the oldest parks in the world, and I felt like it had custodians for more than a hundred years and, in the role of custodian I just felt I’d opened the flood gates to the ravening hordes [laughs], I just went home and cried, I just felt so bad. The above assertions highlight how the workshop rationality shifted and became messy and emotionally charged.

The horse bodies, maps and the process of creating values all became actors in the workshop. I argue that through focusing on the materiality of these engagements, we can see the stickiness of practices of management. The deliberative process of management encounters friction as it

‘enters the fray’ and is brought into contact with more-than-human agencies. The stickiness of these more-than-human agencies can be seen in their ability to shift rationality into a messy, emotional and chaotic engagement where management is enacted and results are not guaranteed.

17.6 Road block Along with the unexpected events that were brought on by the unveiling of the maps, threatened and endangered species also became an influencing factor in management decisions, but not in ways that would be expected. The discussions about what tracks and trails would be opened or created for horse riding virtually ignored threatened and endangered species and there was no consideration of how the expansion or construction of trails would interfere with the health or conservation of these species. Instead of concern for the species themselves, there were concerns that the presence of threatened and endangered species

298 would result in excessive red tape, rigmarole and processes that would act to delay the creation or opening of the specific tracks or trails.

NPWS legislation states that the location and abundance of threatened and endangered plant and animal species or communities should be recorded and logged in databases. This information is then used to guide management decisions, including any proposed infrastructure construction, such as changing a track to a horse riding trail. The legislation also requires a review and assessment process to ensure that minimal or no harm is caused to endangered species.

During the workshop the environment was not necessarily mentioned ‘except to say that it was pleasant to ride through’ (Hannah, NPWS employee). Tracks that could potentially run through areas that were home to threatened and endangered species were often dismissed because the processes involved in assessing, reviewing and testing these areas were deemed too difficult and were understood as taking too long. These tracks were therefore often labelled as low priorities or abandoned altogether, as the horse riders seemed more interested in getting as many tracks as they could as quickly as possible.

Although not present at the workshop, the threatened or endangered species impacted on the encounter of management and the decisions that were made in surprising ways that saw them as a roadblock rather than a virtue of the park. Not only this, but the concept that nature and threatened species can be categorised and mapped is suggestive of the ways in which scientific knowledges are utilised within management. This again reinforces Howitt and Suchet-

Pearson’s (2006) argument that Eurocentric ontologies of prioritising some species over others are still prevalent in national park management (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006).

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Although the discussion of the horse bodies and desirable values for horse riding opportunities set up a form of rationality to the workshop and reinforced ideas of logical decision-making practices, these notions were ruptured when the appearance of the maps shifted discussion to individual tracks. The presence of the maps also brought the materiality of the tracks and the park into discussions in strange and unexpected ways that saw threatened and endangered species positioned as a hindrance rather than a virtue. This pits the two universal notions about national parks – as spaces to access recreation and spaces for the protection of nature – against each other and demonstrates a friction and contradiction at the heart of answers to the question, ‘What is a national park?’

When we look at the ways in which engagements of management happen, it becomes clear that there are more than just human bodies impacting on the results. Hinchliffe et al.’s (2005) belief that nonhumans are active in the process of knowledge production can be used to conceptualise the management decisions made during this workshop as a more-than-human collaboration. These more-than-human collaborators also mean that humans can never have perfect knowledge of the ‘goings-on’ and as such the outcomes always have the potential to surprise.

Through looking at the ways in which management happens on the ground, we can begin to notice the mixed-up, messy ways in which human control is broken down by other-than-human actors. The process of management drew together multiple actors – NPWS staff, horse riding groups, horse bodies, steps, trails, maps, scenery, threatened species, policies, histories, memories, and more – into sticky situated engagements where results were co-fabricated by these more-than-human agencies in unequal and surprising ways.

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17.7 Disrupting rationality By examining the process of introducing a new policy into the NPWS we can see that management is not always based on best practice. Instead the introduction of the policy to increase horse riding was politically and historically laden. The workshop that resulted from this change was composed of a number of more-than-human moments of encounter that came together to influence the management decisions that were produced. The workshop was designed to utilise good decision-making processes through enabling discussion, establishing values and priorities and utilising the knowledges of the individual horse riders and national parks staff present to create quality management decisions that would be beneficial to both the horse riding community and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. However, the human and other-than-human agents who were not necessarily present in the workshop but who came to act upon it, greatly altered the space and influenced the decision-making process in strange, unequal and messy ways.

This chapter has also revealed that NPWS employees are often entangled in practices of grappling with the contradiction between their scientific training and the situations in which they find themselves. They are aware of the dissonance between the ontology of scientific management set out in policies and the possibility of putting this into practice in park spaces where things get in the way and the science becomes distorted by politics, histories and contexts. For example, they are aware of the complexities of park management, the need to compromise with horse riders, ensure activities are managed and of the processes and red tape involved in these practices. The NPWS employees are also aware of their own emotional attachment to the park and personal opinions on horse riding (whether good or bad), yet they also understand that national park are not spaces that can be completely shut off from people.

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Instead they utilise these personal feelings, along with scientific knowledge to create restrictions and justify management decisions. In this way they are constantly trying to enact what they see as good management given the situation at hand. They are under no misapprehension that what they are doing is entirely scientific or based on what is best for the environment, instead they struggle to balance the claims of the horse riders, the needs of the park, and the pressures of the polices in ways that produce the ‘best’ results without ‘opening the flood gates’. Management for them then is not straightforward but a messy process of at times making do, and a constant struggle to justify their own ideas and ideals of national parks.

Therefore, despite attempts to establish the park management as rational and logical, the other-than-human actors – the history, memory, horse bodies, threatened species and maps – all drew the workshop into a chaotic and surprising direction. The tracks, place and the material environment all mattered and influenced management decisions. Rather than suggesting that park management is unhinged, I instead suggest that rationality and irrationality both have roles to play in the performances of management. The unruly frictions that the maps generated, the rational discussions of horse bodies, the emotional and political endeavours of horse riders and park staff, the practices of negotiation and partnership, all acted to situate and make sticky the encounter of management. Through this process scientific knowledges become engaged – they become ‘charged and changed’ by their sticky surrounds

(Tsing 2005: 8). Management is therefore not a scientifically objective and rational process, but rather one that involves a co-fabrication of situated knowledges and actions to produce nature and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. I now move to further explore the unruly nature of park management through looking at how fire and fire management become sticky, engaged and inhuman.

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Chapter 18 Managing fire, managing with fire and managing for fire

Having argued that park management is fraught with more-than-human grit, I now move ‘to push through this zone of inter-mixity of human and nonhumans and press on into regions where we are absent’ (Clark 2010: xvii original emphasis). This chapter develops another way of thinking about management as a process of ‘inhuman’ frictions. I look at the inhuman nature of fire management as a way of exposing how scientific knowledges become sticky, situated and open to being pulled in multiple conflicting ways when we look at park management on the ground. I look at how scientific knowledge of fire is both given purchase and refused purchase in practices of management, and how human control sparks up, only to disappear again. Fire, which is quite literally a product of friction, will also be considered as a source of friction that calls human, other-than-human and inhuman bodies and forces into encounters of management that utilise, defy, alter and construct ideas of scientific management.

Australia is a ‘pyrophytic land, a continent in which fire is as much a part of life as sunshine, drought and animals that bite’ (Clark 2011: 163). Fire has shaped the history of landscape creation and management in Australia, with Indigenous Australians using fire as their ‘chief ally’ in the management of the landscape (Gammage 2012: 2). Indigenous use of fire was ‘no haphazard mosaic making, but a planned, precise, fine-grained local caring’ (Gammage 2012:

2). It was not simply an ecological practice; rather, it was part of their responsibility to country

(Clark 2011: 173-174). During colonisation, ‘about 70 per cent of Australia’s plants need[ed] or tolerate[d] fire’ and being able to identify which ‘plants welcome[d] fire, and when and how much, was critical to managing land’ (Gammage 2012: 1). The NPWS web page states that the

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‘vast areas of forests and grasslands, [in] south-eastern Australia … [make it] one of the world's most bushfire-prone areas’ (NPWS 2014b). Therefore, the management of national parks in

NSW, and the survival of plants and animals within parks, are deeply connected to fire and fire management.

Fire is an inevitable part of national parks. All Australian national parks have a system for managing, controlling, using and preventing fires. In addition to being unavoidable, fire also presents a number of problems, dangers and opportunities. The position of fire in national parks is not straightforward. Fire is a management tool, yet requires management; it is a hindrance and assistance to management; it represents destruction and new life; it is human caused and natural; it can be controlled, yet always has the potential to become out of control.

These dualistic ideas are often used to describe fire, yet I want to show how fire does not neatly fit into these categories. Instead, context, circumstances, other agencies and the material nature of the situation all impact on how fire comes to be, and the results it produces.

I do this as a way of illuminating how knowledges of fire and fire management become sticky and situated in Ku-ring-gai Chase. This chapter looks at the ways in which fire is managed in Ku- ring-gai Chase, but also how the park is managed through fire. I will first investigate how fire is presented in the documents that attempt to guide its management, before turning to look at how fire management happens in Ku-ring-gai Chase on an everyday basis.

18.1 Fire Management through documents The Ku-ring-gai Chase Plan of Management (POM) gives the following introduction to fire management within the park:

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The management of fires within natural areas is a complex and often controversial issue. The achievement of many of the objectives of management for the park depends to a large degree on careful and well considered fire management planning. Fire has been an important factor influencing the environment of the national park and nature reserves for thousands of years. Fire is regarded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service as a natural process, one of the established physical factors of the Australian environment to which native plants and animals have become adapted. The correct management of fire is essential to avoid extinction of native plants and animals. The natural fire regime of the national park and nature reserves is unknown. It is believed that Aboriginal people burnt sections of the ridges within the Sydney area frequently (about every 1-5 years) while the hillslopes and valleys would have burnt less frequently (Conroy, 1996). (NPWS 2002: 32-33, emphasis added).

The above statement positions fire as an essential yet controversial part of the management of the park. Fire management, and finding the right fire regime, are seen as important to managing flora and fauna; to ensuring visitor and resident safety; and to protecting European and Aboriginal cultural heritage sites and artefacts. The POM sets out that proper process, planning and assessment are essential for fire management within the park. The complex and complicated nature of fire managements also means that it requires its own more detailed management plan within the regional Fire Management Strategy (FMS). The FMS sets out strategies that will be used by the NPWS to manage fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase from 2006 till

2010 (although this plan was still operational in 2014 at the time of writing). The primary objectives of the strategy are:

- Protect life, property and community assets from the adverse impacts of fire - Develop and implement cooperative and coordinated fire management arrangements with other fire authorities, reserve neighbours and the community - Manage fire regimes within reserves to conserve and enhance natural and cultural heritage values

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- Protect Aboriginal sites known to exist within NSW and historic places and culturally significant features known to exist within reserves from damage by fire - Assist other fire agencies, land management authorities and landholders in developing fire management practices to conserve natural and cultural heritage across the landscape (NPWS 2006c: 1).

These objectives and the POM state that the primary role of fire management strategies is to reduce the risk of bushfire to assets in and around the park, which include human life, infrastructure, and buildings, in addition to natural, cultural and Indigenous heritage. What is also clear is that fire management extends beyond the boundaries of the park and the NPWS.

Not only are other land and fire management agencies involved in the management of fire within Ku-ring-gai Chase, but the NPWS is involved in fire management outside of the parks and reserves they manage.

Inherent within both the FMS and the POM is the idea that fire within national parks is inevitable. The FMS states ‘[b]ushfires do and will continue to occur in the reserves owing to the combination of vegetation, climate, unplanned human-caused ignitions and occasional lightning strikes’ (NPWS 2006c: 6). The POM notes that the majority of fires in Ku-ring-gai

Chase are the result of ‘arson or the dumping or burning of cars’ (NPWS 2002: 34) with

‘[l]ightning strikes … the only natural cause of ignitions … contribut[ing] to fewer than 1% of recorded ignitions’ (NPWS 2006c: 13). The FMS states that ‘it is not possible to implement strategies and controls for all assets and values every year in all locations’ (NPWS 2006c: 13).

Therefore, bushfire risk management strategies are about prioritising which assets are most at risk.

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The main ways in which the strategies are put in place are through bushfire prevention, bushfire suppression and prescribed burning. Bushfire prevention involves educating community members, especially surrounding residents and business owners, on the importance of fire awareness, the dangers of fires and ways of reducing the risk of fires starting accidentally from abandoned cooking fires or from operations associated with business properties. Prevention also involves the maintenance of fire trails and regular monitoring of the park and storm activity (NPWS 2002; NPWS 2006c). Bushfire suppression involves the activities that take place once a bushfire starts, to control and extinguish the blaze. Fire suppression involves ensuring that firefighting operations are carried out according to guidelines and policies that ensure minimal impact to the environment and the maximum safety of fire fighters and the community (NPWS 2006c: 15).

Prescribed burning is described as ‘the controlled use of fire under specified environmental and weather conditions to a predetermined area with the aim of reducing fire risk under adverse conditions’ (NPWS 2006c: 15). The park is divided into sections based on fire containment lines such as creeks, roads, park boundaries and trails. Each of these sections is then zoned based on broad land management objectives. These zones are then given an

‘assessment interval’, which is a guide, in years, for how often the area should be burnt. A zone’s assessment interval is based not just on its zone type but also its fire history, location in relation to assets, strategic value, fuel accumulation rates, known and modelled fire behaviour in the area and its ecological requirements (NPWS 2006c: 15-16).

The hazard reduction burn program is a strategic program of prescribed burns that is based on a number of factors that generally focus on reducing the probability of large-scale bushfires.

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This is done through prioritising high risk and strategic areas and burning in a mosaic pattern where there is a patchwork of different burn levels to limit the spread of fire across zones, and also to allow flora and fauna to escape and then recolonise recently burnt areas (NPWS 2006c:

17-18). Prescribed burns are also organised around seasons and levels of fuel moisture. Fuel moisture levels are usually most suitable for burns around late summer to early autumn and spring. During winter moisture levels are too high for proper burning, and burns cannot be conducted during the fire danger period in summer. Aspect and topographic position also influence the levels of fuel moisture and when certain units can be burnt (NPWS 2006c: 18).

Hazard reduction or prescribed burns are therefore highly planned and organised around the seasons, weather and ground conditions, and if circumstances are not ideal then the burn does not go ahead. As Lily told me, hazard reduction burns are:

very, very dependent on the weather, so earlier on, early autumn they were hoping to get quite a few [hazard reduction burns] done but we had quite a bit of rain, so it was just impossible (Lily, NPWS employee, original emphasis). In addition it is interesting to note that ideal conditions for the ignition and spread of a wildfire are not compatible with hazard reduction burns. Hazard reduction burns will be postponed or cancelled if it is too dry and hot, especially if there are strong winds, as in these conditions fire would be likely to flourish and containment may be difficult. The circumstances deemed inappropriate for some fires also invite other fires to thrive.

In addition, each prescribed burn is subject to environmental review and assessment of the site prior to burning, and more generally, the NPWS is required to carry out an assessment of the

‘cumulative effects of hazard reduction regimes on populations and communities within the landscape’ (NPWS 2006c: 18). A number of factors go into this planning process. Cedric, an

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NPWS employee, talked to me of the importance of having accurate geographic information system (GIS) maps that show the history of fires and burns in the area, and a number of other important factors such as the location of infrastructure, Indigenous sites, threatened flora and fauna and other assets, as well as the topography of the land. When asked about the impact of threatened species in regards to prescribed burns, Lily (NPWS employee) stated:

Yeah, yeah definitely, and that’s all part of the planning and process, so when you are doing your REF [Review of Environmental Factors] and all of that sort of thing has to be considered and so for example if there is a koala colony in this area then you have to be [aware of that] and instructions have to be made for how that [is to be] managed. In a hazard reduction, either that will involve putting a control line through a different section to block out that area so yeah, and that’s the same with plants as well. It is suggested that through these processes, fire management and control can be improved and thus fire can be used more effectively and efficiently to create the park in a way that fulfils human needs of ensuring the safety of humans and their assets, and fulfils the ecological burn requirements of the flora and fauna in the park. Through establishing a correct fire management regime fire can be used and controlled to create a desired landscape within Ku- ring-gai Chase.

Fire management documents and strategies assume there is a ‘proper’ way to manage fire, and that humans can carry out a number of steps to ‘properly’ manage fire. Through careful planning, assessment, implementation, execution, reporting, databasing and mapping, fire in

Ku-ring-gai Chase can be properly suppressed, controlled and utilised to produce (or maintain) the correct type of park. Under the strategies, fire management is understood as a scientific endeavour that can be analysed and predicted through scientific means. However, if we begin to think about the ‘situated engagement’ through which fire and fire management are

309 produced, then ideas of ‘proper management’ become blurry as we become open to the variety of agents acting upon the situation.

18.2 Understanding fire The belief that humans can understand and control fire is grounded in Eurocentric ontologies where humans are not only separate to nature, but also superior to nature (Howitt and Suchet-

Pearson 2006). This superiority allows for an objective scientific analysis of ‘nature’ and the ability to intervene in ways that will produce desired results. However, this objectivity and the ability of scientific knowledges to comprehend, prevent and predict fire has come under increased criticism. Fire is now understood to surpass the limits of human knowledge and always has the capacity to take us by surprise. I argue that within our ‘intrinsically restless planet’ (Clark 2010: 7) knowledges of fire and fire management can be rethought as sticky situated engagements where nothing is stable and where human, other-than-human and inhuman actors come together with varying degrees of purchase to engage universal knowledges.

The idea that humans can model, estimate and prepare for fire and the effects of fire is associated with the notion that the history of fire will impact on future fires. Therefore by knowing, understanding, mapping and logging fires, estimates can be made about how future fires will behave and what results they will have. In addition, previous fires are assumed to give insights into the current fire needs of the landscape. This suggests that the previous fire regime is the ‘natural’ fire regime. It also suggests that humans have the ability to assess certain areas, based on the current conditions and previous fires and make relatively accurate claims for the current needs of the area.

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Pyne however argues that:

fire takes its character from its context. It is what its circumstances make it. Those circumstances are largely biotic, pruned by considerations of terrain and weather, and increasingly, they are cultural (Pyne 2012: 199). A fire can be seen as being the result of a number of circumstances, contexts, materials and actors that rub against each other in a particular place. These factors determine the effects, characteristics and path of the fire (Miller and Davidson-Hunt 2010).

If one accepts Miller and Davidson-Hunt’s (2010: 402) argument that ‘the range of actors who exhibit agency in shaping the environment exceeds that of human actors’, then ideas of controlling fire through scientific knowledges are brought into question. Human knowledges of fire are also brought into question as humans are not the only ones acting upon and influencing fire, and as such they can never have a full understanding of it. The belief that ‘fire ecology has never made it as a laboratory science’ further reinforces this idea (Clark 2010:

175). As Clark argues:

Fire is a recalcitrant object of lab science because every fire season is different and every fire is unique. Each new season and each individual burning brings together its own combination of weather, topography, ignition and, most importantly, available fuel. Fuel loads themselves are the outcome of an intricate interplay of soil and climate; of insects, diseases and organic decomposers; of storms and other weather events; and of the fires that have gone before … Because the conditions under which fire occurs are constantly changing, fire too is essentially changeable (Clark 2010: 175). This muddles the idea of national parks as being managed based on scientific facts and results.

If fire does not sit well within a scientific study, then what is used to determine when to burn, how much to burn, what to do with a wildfire and so on? Working with fire therefore takes a certain amount of guesswork and risk-taking; fire needs to be worked and played with, rather than controlled and suppressed (Clark 2010). Universal knowledges of managing fire therefore become engaged as they are put to work on the ground. Rather than arguing that we can

311 utilise different knowledges of fire, I suggest that the process of managing fire requires the use of situated knowledges.

Indigenous use and manipulation of fire for thousands of years prior to European colonisation is used as evidence of the inevitability or ‘naturalness’ of fire and is used to justify current fire management practices. This renders Indigenous use of fire as ‘natural’ and good. However,

Miller and Davidson-Hunt (2010: 401) suggest that the Indigenous people of north-west

Ontario (Canada), the Pikangikum First Nation, understand fire as an agent in creating landscapes and creating order in landscapes. Cultural landscapes are therefore not just human created spaces, but can be understood as co-fabricated through more-than-human engagements (Miller and Davidson-Hunt 2010). Verran (2002) similarly argues that Australian

Indigenous fire regimes are enacted through ‘collective memory’ and are relationally bound to the health of the land, plants, animals, people and country. This reinforces Langton’s (1998: 53) argument that there is a co-dependent relationship between humans and nonhumans that resulted from this long history of burning practices. The resulting spaces are therefore co- fabricated through these practices and the more-than-human relationships that constitute them.

The highest priority for fire management, and the main reason for it, is to protect – to protect assets from destruction, protect native flora and fauna from extinction, and protect natural and cultural values of the park from disappearing. However, protecting native flora and fauna and natural and cultural values is not a straightforward matter as some plants, animals and assets require fire for their protection while other require the prevention of fire. The presence or absence of fire is therefore important in the protection of the park. Clark (2010: 170-171)

312 states that bushfires are often considered ‘abnormal’, and something that should be avoided.

However, drawing on Pyne (2012), preventing fire can be counterproductive. Fire prevention leads to an increase in fuel, which will eventually lead to a large, highly combustible biomass.

Fire, then, is not only inevitable, but prevention actually leads to hotter and higher intensity fires that are generally more destructive (Clark 2010; Pyne 2012). Fire produces conditions that are favourable to more fire, and in this sense we can think about fire as having an agency as it has the ability to change landscapes in ways that ensure the presence of future fires.

Although fire management is positioned as something that is highly regulated, purposeful, strategic and planned, the inhuman and unruly nature of fire creates a stickiness that means that there is more going on than humans can account for. Fire management is highly reliant on the idea that there is in fact a set of logical procedures that will enable fires to be properly managed, but given that our ‘planet is capable of taking us by surprise’ (Clark 2010: x), what actually happens when these knowledges, actors and process are put into practice? If fire defies prevention and scientific study, then what does this mean for how it is managed on the ground? How does fire as an agent call together other actors into sticky situated engagements?

What knowledges are put to work? And what does this jumble of things, knowledges, actors, forces and bodies produce? The following explores how sticky actors ‘give grip’ to fire and fire management in Ku-ring-gai Chase.

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18.3 Indifferent fire Although fire can be initiated and somewhat influenced by humans, it can never be entirely human. Clark affirms:

It is not just that the tiniest input can spark a massive, runaway event, but that the event itself is utterly indifferent as to whether its trigger is anthropogenic or natural; a careless cigarette or a fork of lightning (Clark 2010: 170). Fire, then, has a particular agency that is separate from humans. It is the inhuman, recalcitrant nature of fire that positions it as particularly interesting and problematic for management. The following story of fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase looks at the ways in which fire defies human control and prediction, is indifferent, is both a disruption and assistance to management, and presents a danger and a chance for revival.

Whilst I was volunteering at Kalkari Discovery Centre from December 2012 to February 2013, the effects of fire and extreme fire conditions were apparent over several days of hot weather.

It is generally accepted that the weather can impact on the daily activities and performances of humans and nonhumans such as animals, plants, soil and so on. In a space such as Ku-ring-gai

Chase, torrential downpours can cause the sandstone soils to become waterlogged, muddy and unstable; strong winds can cause branches to snap or trees to fall; and the suns’ rays can leave the vegetation dry and brittle. The weather has the ability to make animals seek sun, shelter or a mate, bring them out of hibernation, or cause them to become more active. Humans too are affected, as they get goose bumps, sweat, go inside or move in a different way. Wind, rain, storms, fire and temperature can have a drastic impact on the ways in which human and nonhuman actors in the Ku-ring-gai Chase move and act. My volunteering during January 2013 in particular reinforced the ways in which extreme temperatures, fire, and threat of fire altered

314 activities and spaces and gave grip to a variety of human, other-than-human and inhuman actors.

On Thursday January 17, 2013, I undertook a shift at Kalkari with two other volunteers. It was a warm sunny day, with temperatures reaching 30 degrees Celsius. Although temperatures were not high enough to cause concern, there was a lot of discussion between the volunteers and the NPWS staff passing through Kalkari about the extreme conditions expected. The weather forecast predicted temperatures would reach around 40 degrees the next day, so discussion around the Kalkari desk centred on what this would mean for the park and those on duty at

Kalkari, and whether the park and/or Kalkari would be closed.

The conditions that Thursday, and the threat of the next day’s extremes, caused the conversations around Kalkari desk to be constantly drawn back to the previous weekend

(January 12 and 13, 2013) when all the national parks in NSW, including Ku-ring-gai Chase, were closed to the public. Consecutive days of extremely hot weather across the state, accompanied by strong winds, meant that in several areas fire conditions were classified as

‘severe’, ‘extreme’ or ‘catastrophic’, which is the highest level of fire danger rating (Budd,

Holland and Klein 2013). According to the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) catastrophic fire danger rating indicates that potential:

[f]ires will likely be uncontrollable, unpredictable and very fast moving with highly aggressive flames extending high above tree tops and buildings. Thousands of embers will be violently blown into and around homes causing other fires to start and spread quickly up to 20km ahead of the main fire (RFS 2009). Due to these conditions the NPWS called for the closure of all parks and reserves across the state for January 12 and 13, 2013 (Coonabarabran Property Owners Alliance 2014). At this time the RFS, NSW Fire Brigade and NPWS were already fighting around 100 blazes across the state,

315 a number of which were out of control (Holland and Marcus 2013). The complete state-wide closure of national parks in NSW was an unprecedented event (Ockenden 2013). For Ku-ring- gai Chase this meant the closure of all picnic areas, walking tracks and roads, and campers at

The Basin camping ground were asked to evacuate due to the threat of fire. The threat of fire and the conditions across the state therefore had a huge impact on the actions of NPWS staff members who were in charge of closing the park and the public who were stopped from entering the park, or asked to leave. Lily (NPWS employee) stated that during these times of closing the park:

You really just spend the whole day just patrolling the park, and just really making sure that everyone’s behaving, well no one is allowed in but that can often, [laughs], so yeah patrolling the park, and making sure that no one has snuck in and that everything is really quiet.

Whilst I was at Kalkari on Thursday January 17, the volunteers were constantly checking the

RFS and NPWS websites for updates on possible park closures or any other precautions which needed to be taken to prepare for the next day. These websites were also used to access information on other fires burning across the state, especially one burning in the

Warrenbungle National Park. This was an exceptionally large fire that, at the time, was raging out of control across the majority of the national park and posing a constant threat to the township of Coonabarabran. Later in the afternoon of the 17th one of the NPWS employees advised the volunteers that a total fire ban had been declared across the state for the following day as fire conditions had been upgraded from ‘high’ to ‘severe’. The weather conditions and fires burning across the state altered the conversations and mood of the Kalkari volunteers that day.

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Due to other major fires that were raging across the country, mainly in NSW and Victoria, the majority of the NPWS staff for the Ku-ring-gai Chase area, including rangers, managers, office staff and field staff, had been scattered around the country to help with these situations. There were therefore only two rangers left to manage the Ku-ring-gai Chase area, so if a fire did break out they would be ‘screwed’, as one employee put it.

I returned to Kalkari the next day, Friday January 18 2013, and the weather was as extreme as had been predicted. Temperatures were pushing 30 degrees by 9 am. Driving into the park and through the main park gates just before 9 am, there was no indication of any partial park closure or the fire ban, although this had been advertised on the freeway road signs on the drive from Newcastle to Sydney. However, soon after arriving at Kalkari the rangers informed the volunteers that due to the total fire ban and the forecast temperatures, all the walking tracks in the park were to be closed to the public. The picnic area and camping grounds however were to remain open. NPWS employees began staffing the entrance gates and large signs were placed at all road entrances to the park notifying visitors of the dangers and track closures (see Figure 18-1).

Figure 18-1 Entrance to Ku-ring-gai Chase with signs warning visitors of the total fire ban and the closure of the walking tracks (Source: Author, 18 January 2013)

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The closure of the walking tracks also led to discussions of what that meant for the Kalkari

Discovery Trail. The 1.6 kilometre trail within the Kalkari fenced area is a concrete footpath, with a small additional loop consisting of a wide dirt path (see Figure 6-3). Throughout the day there were decreased numbers of visitors to the centre, which could be safely attributed to the heat and the partial park closure. However, earlier in the morning a few visitors came through

Kalkari and went walking around the Discovery Trail. Temperatures were over 30 degrees

Celsius at this stage, yet despite the closure of all tracks in the park, the volunteers saw no reason to stop them. As I mentioned in Chapter 12 the fence around this trail signals a difference in belonging and separates its contents from the rest of the park. Similarly, in this case the fence is imagined as offering a safe environment that is not subject to the same dangers as other walking tracks. The fire danger and the threat to humans were considered to be reduced due to the track’s close proximity to the visitors’ centre, and because of its material construction, length, and the fenced nature of the area.

Around 11 am with temperatures reaching 35 degrees Celsius, I went walking around the

Discovery Trail. The change in atmosphere from the many other times I had walked the track, was dramatic. Despite there being no fires in the area, the bush smelt warm, like slightly burnt wood. Activity around the track was much quieter – there was the odd rustle of cracked leaves from a snake or lizard moving as I approached, but the birdlife was completely silent. The resident black snake, who I had been told lived in an old log by the pond but who I’d never seen, was out sunning itself and became particularly interested in me as I walked off the track to get a better look. It is not just the fire conditions that impact on nonhumans. The presence of fire also causes nonhumans to act differently. Lily (NPWS employee) explained:

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Well around fire, well definitely you see them [animals] running, you see them confused, so for example, they are running from the fire but then they get confused and start running towards the fire or into the fire, like the wallabies and that sort of thing, the birds definitely go very quiet, after the fire though you get a lot of the raptors come in looking for food … the things that I notice are the birds are always really quiet and you do see things like wallabies, and reptiles, so the lace monitors, possums running, and that’s probably, yeah they are probably the main things I notice in the fauna during fire. That afternoon temperatures across the region hit record highs of 45 degrees Celsius across greater Sydney, with temperatures peaking at 46.4 degrees Celsius at Sydney Airport and the western suburbs. Temperatures and wind strength exceeded those forecasted and during the day the RFS released a warning stating that in light of these conditions, much of the state had been upgraded from ‘severe’ to ‘extreme’ (RFS 2013). Later that evening a southerly change hit the Sydney area, bringing thunderstorms, cooler temperatures and rain. A particularly intense thunderstorm hit the Ku-ring-gai Chase area in the early evening. A resulting lightning strike ignited a fire which burnt on the Lambert Peninsula in the Pittwater area of Ku-ring-gai Chase near Towlers Bay for the next week, burning an area of 500 hectares (see Map 2 and Figure

18-2).

Figure 18-2 Fire burning along West Head Road, near Towlers Bay Trail (Source: Ben Shepherd, NSW Rural Fire Service, Permission to copy and communicate this work has been granted by NSW Rural Fire Service).

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Lily (NPWS employee) recalls her experience as one of the few NPWS staff members in Ku-ring- gai Chase at the time of the fire:

Lily: That second day [January 18 2013] when there was the Towlers Bay wildfire, the weather forecast wasn’t as extreme as it actually got to, but when it was 38 degrees and it was only 10 o’clock in the morning, we kind of went ‘alright this is going to be more than a 35 degree day,’ [laughs] so we had to go out and close the park again and we were really on call the whole day just waiting and I think it was 6 o’clock in the afternoon a thunderstorm was kind of coming through, and we got a report of a smoke sighting out at West Head, and then and there it was classified as an emergency, everyone available went out to the fire, and it got declared as an incident then and there, and though when we got there it was at the point where there was nothing we could do, it was huge, and so we had, we just had people patrolling it and keeping an eye on it for the evening, well overnight and then we put crews and helicopters in the next day Sarah. So at that stage the park was already closed? Lily. The park was already closed, it was a lightning strike, that caused the ignition, and thank god we had closed the park, because the fire crossed the West Head Road [see Map 2], and if there was anyone on the eastern end of West Head Road, they would have been trapped, so I am really glad that we made that decision. She went on to say:

It’s when the BOM [Bureau of Meteorology] site becomes your best friend, you know you’re constantly checking [the situation], and quite often there’s a thunderstorm looming at the end of the day, so constantly checking the radar, where are we at, you know then we’ve got lightning strike information so where’s the lightning strike been happening, often we’ll have a helicopter up in the air just checking if a thunderstorm has gone through for any smoke sightings and anything like that (original emphasis). Lily then, does not suggest that fire management is a straightforward process based on scientific facts, but one that involves working with the fire and current context and landscape, and altering practices to suit.

Griffiths argues that ‘[o]ver millennia in Australia, Aboriginal people used tame fire to confine feral fires. “Fires of choice”, as historian Stephen Pyne put it, “replaced fires of chance”’

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(Griffiths 2012: 11). Pyne also argues that fire may be humans’ initial form of domestication, and argues that:

[fire’s] importance for people is obvious, recorded endlessly in fire myths: fire made humanity what it is, fire lofted people above their cringing status as hapless scroungers to the top of the food chain. All people have fire, and only people. All our existence humanity has, in fact, enjoyed a species monopoly over fire’s manipulation. Equally, humans have projected fire well beyond the spaces and times allotted by nature. Fire now thrives in places that are otherwise too wet or too dry, or lack ignition (Pyne 2012: 199). However, the presence and influence of other-than-human actors in the ignition, control and manipulation of fire, mean that fire and fire management are not simply human; they involve a range of other-than-human actors. Fire itself can be seen as an actor that:

while not living, fire is a creation of the living world, and shares many of life’s traits. Life creates and sustains fire’s existence: life supplies the oxygen it breathes, life furnishes the fuels that feed it, and life, in the hands of people, overwhelmingly applies the ignition that sparks it into existence (Pyne 2012: 199).

The indifference of fire, and its ability to free itself from human control, highlights the problems in defining and managing fire through scientific knowledges. Universal knowledges do not allow for the sticky situatedness of engagements – the temperatures and winds that exceed forecasts, the black snake sunning itself, the oblivious visitors who walk the trails in extreme conditions, the lightning strikes and the fire that jumps the boundary lines.

Considering that fire itself is an actor in its own management, the production of situated fire knowledges disrupts notions that fire can be properly managed and that fire can be used to protect flora, fauna and park assets.

When you begin to unpack why the tracks in Ku-ring-gai had to be closed, it can be seen that a number of different other-than-human factors came together to influence this situation.

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Factors such as previous rainfall, humidity levels, air temperatures, wind strength and direction, ground conditions, topography of the land, vegetation types, forecast storms and location of the tracks and picnic areas are all active in the creation of an increased fire prone space. The history of the area, including previous burns and clearing of vegetation, will also have an impact on the fire’s ability to light and burn. The possibility of fire and the decision about whether sections of the park or the park in its entirety should be closed are therefore contingent on a number of more-than-human engagements that are situated and enact different results. However, human actors are in no way separate from these engagements as they are influenced by and influence these factors. The perceptions and understandings of individuals charged with decisions regarding the closure of the park, or areas of the park, are greatly influenced by more-than-human forces. I therefore argue that the processes of managing for fire – closing walking tracks and the park, educating visitors and ensuring their safety – are enacted within more-than-human sticky engagements where knowledges are produced.

In the previous story the ability of the fire to ignite and leap the road, choosing its own path, highlights the agency of the fire. As Clark states:

Because the elements that come together to make a fire are constantly changing, often in inherently unpredictable ways, free-range burning never ceases to be experimental, and by the same token never ceases to be risky. Wherever it is deployed, human fire, like any fire, retains its capacity to be less or more or other than what is required (Clark 2010: 187-188). Fire, however, is not alone; it is a co-fabrication of topography, extreme heat, the work of the

NPWS staff to steer it in a particular direction, the leaf litter and so on. The actors offer a stickiness that creates an awkward engagement through which fire is ignited, managed, ignored and corralled. This stickiness of events also brings forth the question of whether fire

322 can ever be completely domesticated, as the engagement of human, other-than-human and inhuman actors will cause asymmetric outcomes. There is always the potential for fire to defy expectations and attempts at control. As Pyne states, there is always a chance ‘the domesticated may turn rabid’ (Pyne 2012: 200). Ideas of domestic or tame fire also suggest a difference between human initiated and ‘natural’ fires. The following section explores how the fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase acted as both a hindrance and an opportunity for park management.

18.4 Fire as hindrance and opportunity Fire is generally understood through dualistic terms – natural/human caused, beneficial/dangerous, controlled/out-of-control, devastating/cleansing, hot/cold, good/bad.

Pyne reinforces this as he states:

In this way the saga of fire resembles that of species. In its loved forms – tamed, a tool, a servant, a companion – it has thrived. In its unloved forms – wild, fickle, a dangerous trickster – it has been driven away; in many settings banished into exile. In industrial societies it has vanished from quotidian life (Pyne 2012: 200). Within these dualistic ideas of fire and fire management, how a fire starts is seen as key to which side of the divide it sits on. Especially within national park management, whether a fire is started by lightning, an arson attack or as a hazard reduction burn, will determine whether it behaves as a ‘dangerous trickster’ or a ‘tame servant’. The dangerous trickster has the ability to have devastating effects on the environment and assets that national park fire management strives to protect, while the tame servant is rejuvenating and aids the regeneration of vegetation and provides food and shelter for the park’s special wildlife. A number of the volunteers and NPWS employees at Ku-ring-gai Chase similarly see fire and the importance of its ignition in this way:

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Even if you don’t catch them in the act, it’s quite obvious if it is an arson attack or not, just often by where it’s being lit, the current weather, so and I hate to say it but often school holidays [laughs] as well (Lily, NPWS employee) I guess the worse problem would be the person who deliberately lights a fire that would probably be our worse problem wouldn’t it? I can’t think of anything worse than that (Rita, Discovery Volunteer) Yeah you know people dropping matches and starting fires, is certainly something that where a small bit of negligence can have a catastrophic impact (Neville, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added) Now this latest fire that went through [in January 2013], has cleared a lot of that land, and that’s nature doing its thing. That fire was started by lightning … so that’s nature. Cleansing itself for regenerating the plants, which will now, all the green shoots will start to come out and it regenerates (Barty, Discovery Volunteer, emphasis added) You know it’s the same with fires, you know we’re not so bad here, but places like Wollemi National Park, as soon as there’s a smoke sighting we go in and put it out, then we spend thousands of dollars a year or two later to go in and burn the place, just let it burn. Okay, you’ve got property protection to do and things like that, but why go in and put it out in the middle of nowhere, when it’s caused by lightning, just let it burn and have your control lines where it does come out, it’s what nature wants to do, different from arson and things like that, but when it’s a naturally occurring, a lightning strike or something like that, why are we doing all this stuff, what is the purpose behind it? (Argus, NPWS employee, emphasis added). These statements show the importance of ignition source to humans, but they ignore the agency of fire and its indifference to its own ignition. However, I argue that by following the activities that occurred after the January 2013 fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase, we can unravel these dualisms and rethink fire as messy, multiple and relational. I suggest that fire never sits neatly within these definitions and delineations, and instead is given grip when it encounters local specificities.

Barty’s claim that the January fire in Ku-ring-gai Chase was just ‘nature doing its thing’, suggests that the fire was not only beneficial for the environment but also completely devoid of human interference. However Oliver, a NPWS employee who was elsewhere in the state

324 fighting fires at the time, talked about how the fire was managed, corralled and put to work by the NPWS employees. He reveals that the NPWS used the wildfire to burn an entire fire management zone where they had planned to conduct a hazard reduction burn in the near future. Talking of the fire he says:

Oliver. My understanding is it was a lightning strike, fairly gusty, took off one side of the road, started on the other side of the road, ah then got into a burn and they, ah West Head [getting out the map on the FMS] so we had proposed a hazard reduction block here, the lightning strike there, and then it jumped the road and got into here, and now, and then they, I think they had a bit of rain which dampened it off, and then it went dry, it was meant to rain through the week but it went dry and it started to flare up and the winds came up the rain was a little bit later than what was predicted so it took a bit more out in here, but essentially out through here and a bit in there. Sarah. So did they increase the fire at any stage? Oliver. Yeah they were back burning around using the trails, and that’s pretty standard and that’s preferable for us in some ways to, as I said because of the fire management it is preferable for us to take that block treated, and say well that part of the mosaic is done, and most of this was last burnt in ‘94 so it’s not, it’s sort of over its minimum regime so from that point of view it’s easier to do that. Talking about wildfires in parks, Oliver states:

So generally speaking now we try and hold these sort of blocks, essentially what they call control lines which is what the tracks, trails, creeks are to break it up for fire management, but when we get a wildfire, what we try and do is get them to take out the entire block, so if there is a fire in here [pointing to an area on a map] once it gets over a certain size, what is preferable is rather that it burn say just that part of the block, we like them to try and burn the whole part of the block so that it’s, otherwise you’ll end up with the fact that oh this block is half burnt so say it was due to be burnt in five years’ time, well now you’ve got half of it burnt so you can’t burn it again, and that makes it really awkward trying to do a burn around here.

The wildfire then acted as an opportunity for management. The ‘naturalness’ of the wildfire is brought into question as we uncover the work that the NPWS staff did in utilising the fire. In addition, Oliver’s assertion of how the wildfire was left and encouraged to burn, highlights the importance of the abstract boundaries which partly determine what gets burnt. Boundaries

325 established by humans play a role in how fire is dealt with. As I argued earlier, fire management strategies are problematic as they assume scientific knowledge to be universal. I suggest that instead of disappearing completely, universals of fire management are put to work on the ground. Although fire is indifferent to its origins and ignores human created boundaries or zones, the way that humans act can be seen to reinforce scientific universals.

Through human involvement and reinforcing notions of boundaries, good management practices and human control, the line between human and inhuman fire, between wild and tame become blurred, yet engaged or practically effective. ‘Nature doing its thing’ soon shifts to human and nonhumans enacting scientific management practices.

As I mentioned earlier, the strategies for fire management in Ku-ring-gai Chase are primarily aimed at reducing and preventing wildfire (human induced or natural), often through using controlled fires lit by humans to reduce fuel levels and regenerate the bush. Therefore, despite the assertion that wildfires are cleansing for the environment, they are also understood by the

POM and FMS as potentially highly dangerous. Fire management strategies therefore position fire as something that requires management. Oliver’s statements, however, put forward the idea that fire can also be used as a management tool. Oliver highlights that the NPWS employees often utilise ‘wild’ fire to complete their management tasks. These human managers of the park are therefore aware that the fire is neither human nor natural, and that they have to learn with the fire and use it how they can, yet they are never fully in control. Fire can also open up a number of other opportunities that would not otherwise be available.

Charlie, a volunteer, talks about the January 2013 fire as being an opportunity to learn and teach the public about the stages of regeneration after fire:

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The fire that occurred recently, over the last few months in January, out on the Peninsular, it affected one of the tracks that I walk down in the year, it’s the Towlers Bay track down to Pittwater YHA [see Map 2], and I’m taking a wildflower walk down in September, and I haven’t yet had a chance to go out and look at the damage, and to watch it regenerating, it’s going to be fascinating by September. I hope, there’ll be a lot to see and talk about because it will be regenerating nicely, but I want to go and see it as it is now so I can go and tell people how it’s been through those stages.

Fire can also allow for a number of management practices that may not have been possible otherwise. For example the January fire offered an opportunity to assess a number of

Aboriginal sites in the area that had been burnt. As the area was previously too dense to allow access, the fire allowed me and several NPWS employees to easily locate and asses the sites in the area. The following is a field diary excerpt from that day:

About 10 am I drove up to Topham Track trailhead where I was to meet with some NPWS staff. The area had been completely burnt in the January fire around a month ago. The majority of trees had blackened trunks and branches and only a few leaves at the top. There were a few grass trees starting to sprout and other small green shoots on the trees [see Figure 18-3]. Today I was going to tag along to a day of bush regeneration as part of the park’s Aboriginal Partnership Program. The aim of the day was to get a bus load of teenage Indigenous boys out to the West Head area to do some bush regeneration around the Aboriginal rock art and engraving sites. We were going to clear out the engravings sites to protect them, as when excessive leaf litter piles onto the sites it can cause them to erode at a faster rate and can encourage plant life to grow on them. Clearing these areas of leaf litter also helps protect them from future fires burning the site which, if intense enough, can crack the rock. However, when the NPWS staff arrived they informed me that the day had actually been cancelled as a number of the boys couldn’t make it. But they had decided to just head out themselves. No one was too concerned about this as the catering for the day had already been organised so there was more food for the rest of us. After a morning tea of sandwiches, brownies and cokes, we set off down the Topham Track [see Map 2]. I was excited as this was a track that I hadn’t been down before so I thought it would be a good opportunity to see a new track. However when we left we only went along the track for 10 metres before we went straight into the blackened bush on what was apparently a 'track' but I couldn't see it [see Figure 18-4].

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We then bashed through the bush for a couple of hundred metres till we came to a cave shelter. One of the NPWS employees told me that caves/shelters are naturally protected from fires as the concave causes an air pocket so it does not burn, however as this cave wasn't very deep it was damaged during the fire which caused some of the rock to break off [see Figure 18-5]. Today we were going to assess the condition of the different engraving sites since the area has just been burnt. Before the bush was burnt it was too dense to get through. The NPWS staff members were telling me that before you could not see a foot in front of you. The next few hours we spent walking in the hot sun through forests of blackened trunks and branches. At each site, the engravings would be sprayed down with water (one of the parks guys was carrying a 20 litre water pack on his back, that would normally be used for firefighting) so that we could all see them properly and to clear away any leaf litter. Each engraving and rock art site was logged into the GPS and would be put into a database later on. By the end of the day each of us was unrecognisable, covered head to toe in ash and charcoal [see Figure 18-6] (Field diary excerpt, 20 February 2013).

Figure 18-3 Grass tree (Xanthorrhoea) beginning to regenerate after the Towlers Bay fire (Source: Author, 20 February 2013)

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Figure 18-4 Walking through the blackened bush near Topham Track (Source: Author, 20 February 2013)

Figure 18-5 Cave containing Aboriginal rock art that Figure 18-6 My ash covered hand after bush bashing was damaged in the Towlers Bay fire. The photo through the burnt bush around Topham Track shows how the heat of the fire has caused sections (Source: Author, 20 February 2013) of rock to fall from the roof of the cave, as can be seen by the lighter sections towards the top of the photo (Source: Author, 20 February 2013)

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Fire therefore acts as an opportunity for some management practices such as locating, mapping and assessing Aboriginal engravings, yet it also detrimentally impacted on the park by destroying Aboriginal rock art. Therefore, there is a blurry line between nature cleansing itself and nature being completely altered. Colin, a Traditional Owner/Custodian of the park, argues that there have been too many large, intense hot fires in Ku-ring-gai Chase since its designation that have caused a drastic change in the type and structure of vegetation. As he says:

Colin. The management of the park hasn’t been all that good, yeah the wild fires up there, you know you go through some parts of the park there and you can’t walk through ‘cause of the undergrowth, and then when the fire goes through, it’s so rugged and there’s no fire trails really, and it’s basically a matter of hot fires all the time. Sarah. So the fires that they are conducting now, you were saying that they are not as frequent as they need to be? Colin. Yeah, not as frequent and not as … Sarah. Controlled? Colin. Yeah, a controlled fire should be a cold fire. And they really need to get out there and do a patch quilt. And that’s how we used to burn. So we used to farm the kangaroo and the emu that lived in the area, by having patches of green grass all the time. So when you’d burn, you’d actually burn away all of the undergrowth and there would be large grassy areas under the trees and you’d have an open forest. And there’d be the ability to build up the soils. But with the hot fire, the hot fire goes through, now like a wild bushfire and everything dies, and the soils get washed away. But with a cold fire, you know, there is only about 12 inches maybe 18 inches high of burning and it just goes through. And when I used to work for the national parks [NPWS], we used to actually go out on dewy nights ’cause that way we knew the fire, you know it wouldn’t have a good chance of getting away. And we’d burn in just little patches and you’d go back, and this is in Kosciuszko, I never got the chance to work up here, and you’d go back in 12 months’ time and the ecosystem around these little patches was amazing and that’s exactly what we did in all of these areas. But down in Kosciusko we would burn these little, say an acre at a time, and there’d be kangaroos there, there’d be a mob of kangaroos, ‘cause we have several patches, and they’d just eat the grass out there and then move onto the next one. But then the ecosystem had different birds that go chasing the insects, or chasing the grass seed, ah and that was really interesting how different birds would come into the area that hadn’t been seen

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there for years and the same would happen here, you know. And when you burn out you’d get things like the wild raspberry, they come back, so you know, you’d get ground cover, that’s disappeared because that needs fire to rejuvenate. ‘Cause it can’t grow if there’s heaps of junky weeds above the top of it. And then the weeds down there, there are just so many weeds. Whenever you’ve got the big patches of weeds, along Coal and Candle Creek, or up Cowan [Creek], you’re guaranteed that there’s been activity there before, you know European activity, whether it be a logging station or something else. Cause the guys were bringing seed in on their boots, or it was for food for their horses, um a lot of the noxious weeds, the um prickles and the … oh what’s that stuff from Ireland and England, the Scottish thistle, that’s what I am thinking of. Yeah the Scottish thistle and all those horrible things and Patterson’s curse and ah all those other little weeds, ah morning glory. You can usually trace it back to where there have been horses there. And horses were used right through the park for logging and also for cattle. They used to run cattle through there, would you believe it or not. This is reinforced by Clark (2010: 172) who contends that ‘[b]y accelerating the circulation of nutrients, flames can jolt an ecosystem to new levels of productivity and stimulate biological diversification’. Colin goes on to talk about how the fire management practices have altered the reptile populations in the park:

And you know diamond python, god it [Ku-ring-gai Chase] used to be full of diamond pythons, king browns, red bellies, people tell me it’s full of tiger snakes, I can never remember seeing a tiger snake in the park, or though other people have told me they’re there but I’ve never seen one, and if I’d had I didn’t realise what it was. But full of red bellies you know. Yellow bellies, seen a lot of yellow belly black snakes, beautiful green tree snakes, see the fire kills them off, the wild fires, that’s why it’s gotta be a controlled fire. You can imagine this area when it was managed properly and you’d just burn off an acre or just a headland at a time and then you’d have a beautiful green picnic in winter time. Yeah you’d burn it off at the end of summer, or the very start of summer, like spring. You’d get the spring rains and then you’d get the germination. And do a cold fire, when there’s plenty of dew around at night time, so it’s not gonna burn very high or hot. And you’d just burn off a little patch and ah yeah you’d have these beautiful areas. And now those areas, first of all they get taken over by bracken, then they get taken over by small shrubs, wattles and other things, then they’d get taken over by weeds, or they’d get taken over by weeds in the first place if there’s no bracken roots in the area. There used to be different ferns like bracken, they’re like a cross between a bracken and a tree fern but we used to eat the roots of those. They were beautiful they were starchy, they were sorta your tuber, yeah your tuber food.

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Colin’s call to increase the number of low intensity fires is characteristic of Indigenous mosaic burning which utilises ‘small-scale fires, distributed patchily in time and space’ (Legge et al.

2011). Colin is not necessarily calling for the management of the park to completely revert to

Indigenous practices of managing fire, but he does argue that the type of fires that are currently being used are having a drastic impact on the vegetation and wildlife in the park. This is based on the view that large and intense fires breed more fire (Clark 2010; Pyne 2012). In

Australia fire brings life back to vegetation, yet very different vegetation will return or colonise an area after a high intensity burn compared to a low intensity one. The irony is that often the vegetation that comes after a high intensity fire is more fire prone, and will more readily invite fire than the vegetation that sprouts after a low intensity burn. Fire then can be seen as an active agent that ensures its own continuation through altering the landscape to be more prone to fire.

However, it can be argued that due to the changing nature of the park particularly the increasing numbers of people who visit it and the increased infrastructure it contains, these types of burns are not feasible. Oliver, a NPWS employee, talks about Aboriginal involvement in fire management and the difficulties of conducting traditional Aboriginal burning practices:

At the moment, no, they [local Aboriginal people] do have the opportunity to be involved through the BFMCs [Bushfire Management Committees], and the Aboriginal Lands Council owns some of the lands around, in the area, but do we have specific Aboriginal representation here in fire management? I suppose indirectly via the rangers, we have Aboriginal rangers so indirectly by them but generally not specifically involved, here, as far as the fire management goes, that’s primarily their opportunity here is via the BFMCs where they can be involved, which is, it’s not like the Northern Territory where they have traditional burning and all of that going on up there, but that’s different landscape to what’s here, so if you go back in time, then there was none of the assets here, so they would do burning for, maybe for specific reasons, maybe just camp fire, but different, you know if a lightning strike starts a fire, it just runs until it runs, and if they might have had their own system of back burning I don’t

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know so it’s a different thing now, where you really, in some ways couldn’t take that approach, because there’s assets everywhere and that’s just, I mean assets, just as simple as a road, the loss in revenue for example if the F3 [major freeway, now the M1] was shut from a fire would be huge, so, yeah well, it’s just different though, they would just pick up and move to another area, if it get burnt out its inconvenient and you didn’t have all the assets there necessarily, different, I mean they had different assets you know what I mean?

Oliver is aware that while Indigenous practice may be the most beneficial for the environment, this type of fire management is not feasible within current safety procedures and policies that park managers have to adhere to. Given the park’s urban location these issues mean that park managers have to deal with the situation when it comes to fire management and create a balance between the needs of the environment, the requirements of the policies and the protection of human and nonhuman assets. It has also been argued that lighting lots of small, lower intensity fires, in keeping with Oliver’s suggestion, is impractical in due to the location and number of assets in the park. This view is reinforced by Howitt and Suchet-Pearson who argue:

While we critique the idea of ontological privilege being accorded to arrangements that conform to Eurocentric parameters, we also strongly suggest that it is equally inappropriate to displace one set of universal propositions with another, indigenized version of universality or a romanticizing of the local as a way to return to some naïve vision of what things ‘once were’ (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006: 324).

It is therefore not as issue of prioritising one form of universal knowledge over another; instead, I argue that through focusing on how fire and fire management defies dualistic categorisation we can see how knowledges become situated and universals become engaged through park management. Universal notions of fire, be they Eurocentric or Indigenous, are made active as they are put into practice. They do not fulfil their desire for universality, but instead rub up against the local specificities – the histories, topography, rainfall, lightning, rock

333 art, ash and new sprouts – and become sticky. Through this process fire messes with dualism and notions of management as being a purely scientific endeavour.

18.5 Inhuman friction Fire is a management tool, something that requires management, a danger, something that destroys and brings new life, is unpredictable and something that can be tamed or controlled.

Scientific management techniques – including establishing fire management zones, creating databases, assessing sites and classifying weather conditions – are not practices of universal science but are situated activities that are active in fire engagements. Scientific knowledges are both given and refused purchase as they are enacted and become engaged.

However, fire is a more-than-human achievement, and the ability of the actors involved to completely shift fire and fire management away from human control cannot be underestimated. Despite the work of management, fire can defy human control and categorisation. The conditions that produce a fire can never be completely understood by humans as they are not the only actors involved (Bakker and Bridge 2006). Fire behaviour cannot be predicted or recreated – wind strength and direction, past rainfall, soil type, vegetation cover, leaf litter levels, location of infrastructure, roads, bodies of water and grasslands, location of ignitions, temperature, humidity, aspect, topography and nonhuman actions, are all active in determining the spread, intensity and outcomes of fire. Other-than- human actors give grip to engagements of fire with varying degrees of impact. Fire then can be understood as an inhuman friction that alters landscapes, behaviours and knowledges.

The human managers of the park are not oblivious to this messy, more-than-human, inhuman nature of fire and fire management. Although there was a tendency to distinguish between

334 natural and anthropogenic initiated fire, the humans involved in park management recognise that fire management requires situated knowledges and an ‘on-the ground’ learning and adaptation to the current circumstances. These human managers also acknowledged that although current fire management strategies may not be ‘best’ for the environment, the amount of assets in the park and the popularity of the park for visitors, mean that it is not practical to use other fire regimes such as those called for by Indigenous management practices in Ku-ring-gai Chase. To further complicate matters, fire management has to fit within the more structured ideas expressed in the fire management strategies and policies. The human managers therefore recognise the messy and complex nature of fire management in a park such as Ku-ring-gai Chase, they therefore acknowledge that fire has inhuman qualities that leave it outside of complete human control, and as such has to be worked with and learnt from, rather than stringently managed through scientific methods.

As an inhuman friction, fire and fire management become actors in their own right. Fire takes its lead from circumstance and is active in its own path. Fire ensures its future through leaving behind more fire-prone areas. As Griffiths (2012: 4) states ‘[f]ire, like flood, tends to revisit the same places. Vegetation, topography and climate conspire to invite it back, no matter what humans do’. What is important to note is the complex, relational, multifaceted nature of fire and fire management. Humans cannot presume to understand or predict fire. Instead, these knowledges need to be understood as incomplete and situated. Low exemplifies this complex and fragile nature, when he states:

In many parts of Australia today trees are dying and we need to know why. The immediate causes may be koalas, possums, insects, mistletoe or diseases, but the story is always more complicated than that. A forest is a complex web of checks and balances. You cannot remove some of its parts – be they dingoes, trees or fires – or reduce it to fragments, and expect the same laws to prevail. A small reserve is not a

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forest in miniature, it answers to different rules, That’s a key point to keep in mind as we grapple with all the animals, plants and diseases killing our trees (Low 2002: 245). Managing, manipulating and altering fire and firescapes have been occurring in Australia, including the Ku-ring-gai Chase area, for tens of thousands of years, and as such they have become part of the ‘complex web’ of the national park. I therefore suggest that rather than viewing fire management in dualistic, scientific terms, we need to acknowledge the great web of sticky actors and situated knowledges that give grip to fire management.

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Chapter 19 Conclusion: Rethinking management

My stories of managing fire and horse bodies disrupt ideas of national park management as a straightforward process of using scientific or expert knowledge to produce good outcomes for both the environment and humans. Instead, through looking at how park management happens in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park I have aimed to highlight the frictions of management – the conflicting knowledges that are put together, used and forgotten, the other-than-human bodies who steer things in different directions and the inhuman natures who surprise and modify. In doing so, I have questioned the notion that humans can manage national parks properly through scientific means. Instead I suggest that management is a more- than-human co-fabrication, where humans are not always in control.

I call for understanding national park management as a process of sticky situated engagement.

The sticky situatedness of management practices draws together a number of other-than- human, human and inhuman actors into messy encounters. These encounters are relational and generative – they perform national park management and spaces yet often not in the way humans intended. These actors provide ‘grit’ for park management and through doing so shift encounters in strange, unequal and new ways.

This is not to say that the human managers working with and in the park are oblivious to the messiness of management. Instead, I argue that they are actors in the co-fabrication of these sticky engagements. Part 4 has shown that the human managers of the park are often

‘knowing’ in their own unsettling of universal assumptions of national park management.

Through acknowledging that they need to work with and learn from fire and compromise with

337 horse riders, these human managers are actively co-constructing messy realities where national parks are not spaces that can always be scientifically known and managed. Instead, the human managers are aware that national park management is more a process of grappling with multiple and competing issues in ways that comply with regulatory policies and processes while also satisfying what they see as ‘good management’. Creating this balance is not always easy and compromise is necessary, the human managers of the park are therefore enfolded in the messy and partial frictions of management where universal notions of national parks as scientifically managed are put to work, ignored and partially implemented.

If we think about management as a more-than-human achievement involving, for example, fire and horses as actors, then we get a different idea of what management is and how it works in different sorts of ways to make the park. Universal notions of management break down through a focus on other-than-human actors and how these actors become enrolled in how decisions get made, how practices are carried out and the results that are produced. However, understanding the frictions of national park management is not necessarily about throwing away universals, and suggesting that possibilities are endless; friction is about opening up, but also limiting engagements. As Tsing suggests:

Speaking of friction is a reminder of the importance of interaction in defining movement, cultural form, and agency. Friction is not just about slowing things down. Friction is required to keep global power in motion. It shows us (as one advertising jingle put it) where rubber meets the road. Roads are a good image for conceptualizing how friction works: Roads create pathways that make motion easier and more efficient, but in doing so they limit where we go. The ease of travel they facilitate is also a structure of confinement. Friction inflects historical trajectories, enabling, excluding, and particularizing (Tsing 2005: 6). Sticky situated engagements recognise the vulnerability of knowledges to becoming engaged or situated. As universal knowledges of management are enacted, they rub up against the

338 abrasive other-than-human, human and inhuman actors such that the knowledges themselves, and encounters the actors experience, are made different. The fragile nature of knowledges does not mean that they disappear completely; instead, they are made ‘practically effective’ as they become situated (Tsing 2005: 8). Through their journey to becoming situated, universals are ‘charged and changed’ and materially impact on the park (Tsing 2005: 8).

Therefore, it is not a case of finding a new universal, or removing universals altogether. Rather,

I suggest that we need to acknowledge the limits of universals, but also their power. Universal knowledges are enacted, made effective, dismissed, ignored, utilised and changed as they are put into practice through park management. Management can be rethought as a process of sticky situated engagements where ‘knowledge grows through multiple layers of collaboration’

(Tsing 2005: 155).

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Conclusion

IUCN World Parks Congress 2014

They provide childhood wonder, adventure and habitat for some of the world’s most threatened species, food and water, health solutions for humanity and natural defences against climate change. They support thriving, sustainable communities and businesses and give us unique insights into the beginning of time and our cultural heritage. Protected areas – Inspiring solutions (IUCN World Parks Congress 2014 December 2013).

During the writing of this thesis, Sydney was preparing to host the 2014 International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Parks Congress, ‘a landmark global forum on protected areas’ (IUCN 2014b). The above quote is from one of the promotional videos for the

Congress. The Congress puts forward a strong message – protected areas are valuable and are in need of continual human protection, awareness and solutions. The Congress theme ‘Parks, people, planet: inspiring solutions’ clearly sums up the purpose of the Congress; through sharing knowledge and innovation people can provide solutions that will help maintain healthy and sustainable protected areas that will in turn ensure the health of the planet and it’s human populations.

The Parks Congress positions parks as the solution for health, food and water for the world’s populations. Protected areas are presented by the Congress as providing health solutions as they offer people a space to exercise in a clean and healthy environment. As a promotional video from the Congress states: Imagine a new medicine that helps fight cancer and diabetes, one that also provides fresh air and clean water. It’s not a pill – it’s a park! Half of the 100 most prescribed

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drugs come from nature. A jog in the park reduces the risk of heart disease, a leading cause of death. Protected areas help keep us fit and healthy (It’s not a pill – it’s a park! October 2014). Protected areas are also positioned as providing a sustainable food source: Imagine a source of balanced nutrition for millions of people around the world. It’s not a sushi bar – it’s the sea! Seafood is one of the leading sources of protein consumed by humans. Less than three per cent of the world’s oceans are protected, and many global fisheries will be depleted within a generation unless we act now. Protected areas keep our oceans alive and us well nourished (It’s not a sushi bar – it’s the sea! October 2014). And more than this the Congress suggests that these spaces are a source of clean, fresh water for the world’s populations: Imagine a water treatment plant that has neither pipes nor people in lab coats and yet provides fresh air and clean water virtually for free. It’s not a pipe – it’s a pond! Wetlands and forests purify drinking water saving money and local wildlife. One in three of the world’s 100 largest cities take their drinking water from protected areas. Protected areas help quench our thirst (It’s not a pipe – it’s a pond! October 2014).

Increasingly parks are being promoted as important for people – our health, nourishment and thirst are met through protected areas. The Congress therefore exemplifies an intensified shift towards understanding protected areas across the globe as spaces that can deliver a variety of benefits to humans, flora and fauna. Protected areas are positioned as preserving ‘life-essential ecosystem services, ecosystem processes, and other life support systems’ of our earth, whilst also offering humans the opportunity for an ‘interrelationship with nature’ and protecting areas of ‘special spiritual and cultural significance’ (Worboys et al 2005: xli).

The purpose of the Congress to ‘present, discuss and create approaches for conservation and development, to address the gap in the conservation and sustainable development agenda’ highlights another prominent feature of protected areas – they are not created and left to be, they require, and are sustained through, human management (IUCN 2014b). Protected areas

342 therefore are understood as definable natural spaces that, if managed correctly, will provide a number of conservation benefits to humans and ensure the continuation of the Earth’s biodiversity (NPA 2013c).

The Congress also highlights the importance placed on international collaboration to ensure the protection of special areas. By developing strategies and ‘inspiring solutions’ to conservation issues on an international level, the Congress does not just position protected areas as global objects, but their management too is seen as being internationally organised.

This emphasises the importance placed on international consistency for how protected areas are managed, understood, categorised and organised.

The Congress was held in Sydney over eight days in November 2014. It involved over 6000 people from over 170 countries who came together, not simply to discuss the future of protected areas and their management, but to collaborate in a number of ‘inspiring ways of addressing the challenges facing the planet’ (IUCN 2014c: 1). The Congress recognised that although a number of improvements have been made in the previous years since the last

Congress in Durham 2003, nature conservation and protected areas are in increasing danger from the impacts of human consumption, industrial activity and population growth. These dangers are imminent and as the Congress states ‘[t]here is no time to lose’ (IUCN 2014c: 1).

As a way forward the Congress produced a number of ‘inspiring solutions’, all of which speak directly to the ideals put forward by the promotional videos – that global issues of climate change, world hunger and thirst, obesity and heart disease, and the deteriorating health of flora and fauna can all be solved through the designation and effective management of protected areas (IUCN 2014d; IUCN 2014e; IUCN 2014f). Such solutions included establishing

343 protected areas in ‘the right places’ to ensure the protection of biodiversity, especially endangered species (IUCN 2014d: 2). The key to success of designations was seen to be based on efficient and ‘evidence-based’ management and the continual monitoring of outcomes and impacts (IUCN 2014d: 1). The Congress suggests ‘nature is essential to human health and wellbeing’ and ‘we cannot afford to delay taking action’ in its protection (IUCN 2014e: 1). Solutions to protecting nature therefore must integrate human health with environmental health.

Developing policies, building capacity, ensuring sustainable development and strengthening connections between governments, Indigenous people and communities groups, are all ways in which the goals of the Congress will be met.

The Congress therefore highlights that global ideals of protected areas are not being questioned or rethought; rather they are being reinforced and expanded and now come armed with new concepts of ecosystem services. More than ever protected areas are being put to work for human benefits, with less and less recognition of local particularities and the ability of other-than-human actors to shift the balance of power. The message put forward by the World

Parks Congress assumes a particular configuration of nature and human-nature relations.

Protected areas are not only seen as globally significant, but globally recognisable and definable. They contain special nature that is important for the health of the planet’s natural ecosystems but also the human populations. And they require human management in order to ensure their continuation and naturalness.

I argue that the ideals of nature, parks and management promoted by the Congress justify my contribution to rethinking and making messy the role of national parks and their management.

What the Congress’s ideals ignore are the questions of how global ideas of protected areas and

344 global ideas of national parks come to fruition on the ground in places like Ku-ring-gai Chase.

How does the codification of a national park shape space, humans and nonhumans in a specific place? What sorts of frictions are engendered when universal ideas and the contingencies of the local are brought together to be shaped into a national park? These are the questions that I have explored within this thesis. In the following I tie together the threads that I teased out in my case studies and stories, and make the case that adopting a disruptive concept of nature is a useful way of rethinking national parks and the work that park management does in co- fabricating nature.

I opened this thesis with me driving into Ku-ring-gai Chase and becoming perplexed about the dramatic change in scenery as I moved from the suburban landscape of northern Sydney, to the dense bushland of the Ku-ring-gai Chase escarpment and then being plunged into the orderly pleasure ground of Bobbin Head. Through utilising the history of Ku-ring-gai Chase and a number of stories of my first encounters with the park, its management and its human and nonhuman inhabitants, I developed an uneasy sense of Ku-ring-gai Chase, one that brought into question the role and meaning of a national park, its management and nature. These stories set the foundation for this thesis by bringing into question the very ideals by which national parks are understood, used and managed.

By way of coming to terms with the messy and conflicting understandings of Ku-ring-gai Chase I used a performative, more-than-human theoretical perspective. In Chapter 2 I argued that by reconceptualising nature as being enacted by more-than-human, more-than-nonhuman bodies, objects and forces, we can question universal ideals of nature. Drawing on a shift in human geography that reconceptualises nature as emerging through specific, material and

345 more-than-human encounters, I argued that changes to nature in national parks can be reconceptualised not as the end of nature but the continuation of already occurring processes of nature (Clark 2003). This then brings about a number of challenges for how we conceptualise park management and universal notions of national parks and nature. In response I deployed Anna Tsing’s (2005) notion of friction as a way of acknowledging that universals are both given and refused power as they are enacted in specific locations. Parts 2-4 of the thesis examined how the concept of friction can be utilised to rethink what is a national park, what belongs in a national park and how park management happens.

In Part 2, I developed an understanding of universal notions of national parks that figured them as performative and entangled in the practices that create Ku-ring-gai Chase. However, I argue that while universals are made active and effective, they can never fulfil their aim of universality. Instead universals are disrupted through engagements with the particular. I used the performances of a number of actors to highlight the ways in which Ku-ring-gai Chase is enacted in multiple ways – as grandeur scenic nature, wild wilderness for avid bushwalker to traverse, a safe space to encounter and learn about the Australian bush, a link to the country’s history, space for conserving unique flora and fauna, and as important for Indigenous practices of Country. In doing so I highlighted the way in which tensions emerge as multiple universal notions of national parks are put to work, ignored, shifted, reinforced or unsettled through more-than-human performances. Universals then are performative, rather than descriptive and become ‘engaged’ or practically effective as they are enacted in particular spaces. By reconceptualising the power of universals and recognising their vulnerability to being changed and adapted, we can think differently about the work that categories and legislation that define national parks do.

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In Part 3 I opened up the notion of belonging in national parks and shifted it away from dualistic notions of nativeness or naturalness. I explored how rabbits and kangaroos were encountered, managed and understood in Ku-ring-gai Chase to highlight that notions of belonging in a national park are more nuanced than first thought. I develop the understanding of belonging as being enacted in encounters such that belonging in a national park becomes

‘belonging-with’. Belonging then is not a human category, but is more-than-human, relational and constantly changing yet never fully formed. Therefore there can be no one characteristic, no one delineation of belonging, instead surprising, partial, uneasy and multiple belongings are constantly being enacted in national parks. By rethinking how species belong-with the park we can account for the affective and blurry boundaries that were previously ignored or silenced within doctrines of management and strict ideas of nativeness. This concept could also be useful for recognising the changes that occur as a species enters or leaves a place, the connections that develop and the symbiotic relations that are altered.

Part 4 called for a new way of understanding the work that park management does. Although management is often critiqued as needing to accommodate for situated knowledges I argue that management is already occurring in messy, more-than-human relations that I call ‘sticky situated engagements’. Acknowledging this involves rethinking management as never completely being in human control as there are other-than-human and inhuman actors shaping how decisions get made, how activities are carried out and the results that are produced.

Through unruly frictions scientific knowledges, rational decision-making and park management become engaged and effective. I argue that acknowledging the way in which management happens through sticky situated engagements allows us to realise the performative effect that management has on enacting and co-fabricating national parks. This thesis has therefore

347 argued that national parks and their management can be rethought outside of universal doctrines and dualism.

Useful conceptual tools Low states: The one thing worth saying about nature in all the confusion is that a lot more change is going on that we might like. Nature never was timeless. The changes we see today are often positive, as when birds adapt to cities and small bats claim mines. These shifts can’t be written off as ‘unnatural’, as if nature would rather go back to nature. But once we embrace the idea of change, of progress in nature, we undermine prevailing conservation goals, which so often emphasise preservation of the past. The national park, cornerstone of conservation, is all too often portrayed as a timeless place where Australia remains in its original state. If only that were true! (Low 2002: 307).

This is exactly the problem – national parks need to be recognised as spaces of change, and spaces that do not represent an idealised vision of a past nature, yet by doing so we compromise the very value of the parks themselves. This is not an easy path to traverse. We need to at once recognise that nature could be left to be – let the rabbits strike out and create a new life for themselves on the verge of national parks, let the waratah grow next to car fumes – but we also need to recognise that much of nature is now inextricably linked to us.

Whether it is for habitat, food, or the removal of predators, many species that we label as pests, weeds, natives or endangered rely on humans. My point then is not that we need create a new understanding of nature and national parks, but that we need to become open to accepting that these are relationships that involve many partners and actors and a constant struggle for power. National parks matter as they offer a ground upon which to figure this out, for humans and nonhumans to encounter each other and shape their own futures. I therefore

348 argue that the moves that I make in this thesis are useful for coming to terms with a world that is not just human and is full of surprises.

This research did not aim to solve any problems, instead I hope it adds another tale to the growing awareness of the power of other-than-human actors, and the importance of considering how they shape spaces and practices, including national parks and management.

Rather than revealing a new ‘universal’ through which national parks and their management should be viewed, I hope this thesis has offered a number of conceptual tools that can be adapted by practitioners, park managers, theorists and human geographers to rethink how parks and other spaces are brought into being.

This thesis also highlighted that the human managers of the park are not always invested in universalistic and dualistic narratives. Instead they are constantly grappling with multiple and conflicting notions of what a national park is or should be; what activities, flora or fauna should be allowed; and how all of these aspects of the park are managed on a day to day basis. Even though the human managers of the park often articulated issues in dualistic ways (such as the suggestion that pest species should be removed from the park), their practices on the ground can be understood as grappling with multiple histories, politics, humans, nonhumans and contexts that mess up dualistic thinking. I suggest that this was at times due to the dissonance between the park managers’ ontology and their belief that the park can be scientifically managed, and practices where other park frictions get in the way and mess up dualistic ontologies. This is in line with Braverman’s (2015: 47) suggestion that ‘conservation biologists are often dualistic in their philosophy and holistic in their practice’ and Barker’s (2008: 1611) recognition that often that practices of biosecurity are often much ‘more mobile, flexible,

349 complex and decentred than … critical discourses allow for’. I therefore see one of the benefits of this thesis as allowing the human managers of the park a language through which they can articulate the difficulties they face on a daily basis.

In a way, my concept of ‘engaged witnessing’ that I developed in Chapter 3 can become more than just a methodology for conducting research. It can be utilised as a mindset or a way of doing park management and being in the park. As I proposed in Chapter 3, engaged witnessing is about coming to terms with a world that we cannot always understand, yet one to which we are inextricably linked and constantly encountering. It is about being aware of the other-than- human actors with which we interact and the shifts in the balance of power and action that will always accompany these encounters. Utilising engaged witnessing as a way of being in and managing national parks is not about prescribing activities, but recognising the importance of local particularities – the human and nonhuman actors, Indigenous histories and colonial legacies – for how multiple ideals of nature and national parks come to fruition in particular spaces. Engaged witnessing allows the frictions in universal notions of national parks, nature and park management to become visible, not as representing the ‘end of nature’, or the national park ideal, but as processes of change that offer continuity with the past.

More than this, I argue that my notion of ‘engaged witnessing’ is a useful conceptual tool for researching more-than-human relations and the performances of space. Engaged witnessing acknowledges that ambiguity, multiplicity and confusion need to be embraced, rather than ignored, and as such there are no guarantees with this type of research. Undoubtedly, adopting engaged witnessing will create more questions than it answers. Its lack of answers and stability can be frustrating. Yet the purpose is not to settle things and put them in stone.

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Instead I argue that the value of this type of ‘being in the field’, or ‘being in the park’ is that it opens up possibilities and opens up minds to those surprising, uneasy and messy processes that are happening in national parks and other spaces. It acts as a guideline for more-than- human research and a way of doing, rather than a description of how things should be done.

In this work I have focused on the activities and paradigms of managing Ku-ring-gai Chase, rather than the actions of park visitors, tourism operators, communities groups and other agencies. These groups were by no means absent as a project on park management cannot ignore the horse riders lobbying for change or the visitors who flock by the hundreds to Bobbin

Head. However a specific focus on the entire range of actors within the park was outside of the scope of one thesis and a number of human geographers have already explored how these actors enact nature. For example, Waitt and Cook (2007) explore the ways in which performances of ecotourism and disciplining bodies and minds reinforce dualistic visions of humans and nature. The project then builds on this body of literature and explores the creation of a different type of space through a different set of performances.

In saying this I have not exhausted the knowledge that can be gained from studying management practices in national parks, very far from it. I have merely scratched the surface.

Yet as I detail in Chapter 3, it was never my intention to develop a conclusive argument for how national park spaces are enacted, or even how Ku-ring-gai Chase is performed. And further, this thesis does not represent a ‘true’ vision of everything I witnessed. What I have offered is a story of how I came to terms with a mess of actions, practices, slippages and fuzz, all of which shaped me and this project in unexpected and strange ways. This thesis then offers another

351 tale to the growing awareness of the performative capacity of other-than-human actors and the power (and limitations) of assumptions, paradigms and dualisms.

Following my discussion in Part 4, this thesis has argued that management is already occurring through sticky situated engagement. But what is needed now is an acknowledgement of this and the role it plays in the everyday actions of park managers. As I have argued the actions, encounters and engagements of human and nonhuman actors in the park create and recreate the park on a daily basis. It is therefore important to acknowledge what is actually happening in parks across the globe and how universal notions are being put to work, ignored or shifted.

Park managers, visitors, stakeholders and customers are dealing with these complications and negotiating uneasy ground on a day-to-day basis. So by rethinking national parks outside of all- encompassing universals, we are able to uncover the work that humans and nonhumans do in enacting park spaces.

I argue that the conceptualisation of national parks as being enacted through co-fabricated frictions is a useful tool for recognising the work that park management actually does. This thesis has explored a number of encounters within Ku-ring-gai Chase as a way of highlighting that park management is not a passive process of restoring and maintaining a separate

‘nature’. Instead park management is a set of practices that brings together dissonant more- than-human bodies, objects and forces into productive encounters that co-fabricate national parks. I argue that this thesis has merit in giving a voice to the mess of national parks – the stories, affections, slippages, surprises and meetings that shape space and action yet are often overlooked and undervalued. And in doing so I hope it opens up possibilities for broadening the scope of research into parks and their management.

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I do not suggest that national parks need to be rethought as emerging through co-fabricated frictions, but rather I suggest that through utilising Tsing’s concept of ‘friction’, and combining it with a performative, more-than-human focus, we can explore the complicated and messy ways in which national parks are currently being co-fabricated on the ground. And the concept of ‘co-fabricated frictions’ acts as a way of describing the tensions, hardships and surprises that are faced by park managers on a daily basis. In doing so I have also built on Tsing’s concept of

‘friction’ and explored the usefulness of this metaphor for understanding how spaces are performed in co-fabricated encounters.

I have used Tsing’s concept of ‘friction’ as a tool for describing how universal notions of what is a national park, what belonging in a national park means and how park management happens.

Friction has been a useful concept for delving into the messy, surprising and unequal results that emerge from encounters. Universal ideas become effective as they are put to work in national parks, and although they are never completely universal, they do not disappear completely. It is therefore important to acknowledge how national parks are thought about as this will impact on how they are created. And it is for this very reason that we cannot simply let go of all notions of nature and protecting flora and fauna.

This thesis has begun to uncover a new way of thinking about national parks, one that does not revert to dualistic or universal archetypes. I do not argue that effort needs to be put into creating a new way of thinking about all protected areas, or national parks. Instead I argue that we need to open our eyes to the relational, material and more-than-human engagements that enact what a national park is.

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On the outskirts of northern Sydney Ku-ring-gai Chase sits on the frontline of urban development. Sydney is not only Australia’s most densely populated environment, its sprawl is unmatched in Australia. Yet Ku-ring-gai Chase stands as a reminder of a past landscape and a history of change. It is a place where relationships develop and fall apart, where ideals are realised and shattered, where negotiations happen and power is shifted. And rather than encasing pure wilderness, this is where the value of Ku-ring-gai Chase lies – in its continuity with the past and the possibilities it offers for the future.

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Appendix

Details of Approved Research Design This project was subject to a full review (National Ethics Application Form [NEAF]) by the University of Newcastle Human Research Ethics Committee and was approved on July 18, 2012. The following gives details of the research design and the procedures in place to ensure compliance with ethics approval. After the project was granted approval a formal invitation was sent to the (acting) Chief Executive Officer of the Parks and Wildlife Group (the division of the NSW Government that at the time controlled the NPWS) to seek approval for the project and to be able to approach employees of both the Parks and Wildlife Group and NPWS to be involved in the project. It was originally expected that I would interview 2-5 Parks and Wildlife Group employees, 10-20 NPWS employees, 5-10 Indigenous people involved in the management of the park, 5-10 volunteers involved in the management of the park, 2-5 members of other organisations involved in the management of the park and 5-10 publically known individuals who are connected to Ku-ring-gai Chase. I also planned to conduct ‘work experience’ with the NPWS employees, volunteer in the park and undertake participant observation in the park. However, during my initial contact with the Parks and Wildlife Group it was made clear that in order to conduct research in Ku-ring-gai Chase National park, including interviewing employees and conducting work experience, I did not require the approval of the Parks and Wildlife Group, rather I needed to speak directly to the Regional Manager of the Metro North East NPWS branch. After contacting the Regional Manager I was able to set up a meeting with them along with the two Area Managers who are involved in the day-to-day management of Ku-ring- gai Chase and surrounding parks. During this meeting I was able to tell them about the project and how the NPWS could be involved and the likely benefits of this. After the meeting I was granted organisational approval to conduct my research and begin recruiting NPWS employees. In order to recruit participants the Regional Manager circulated emails that informed the NPWS employees of my research and invited them to participate by agreeing to an interview or allowing me to conduct work experience with them for a day. The Regional Manager was also able to give me the contact details of the Volunteer Coordinator (a NPWS employee). I was able to set up a meeting with the Volunteer Coordinator and inform them about the project and how the volunteers could become involved. During this meeting I also underwent a volunteer induction, which involved learning about the park, the expectations of a volunteer and the role of the volunteers. The Volunteer Coordinator also circulated an email to the volunteers informing them of my presence at the centre, information about my project and a letter inviting them to participate in an interview.

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After this initial contact and negotiation with NPWS I began volunteering at the Kalkari Discovery Centre and conducting work experience with the NPWS employees. Through spending time with those involved in the daily management of the park and the invitations to participate that were circulated by the Regional Manager and the Volunteer Coordinator I was able to recruit participants for interviews. I ended up interviewing 8 NPWS employees, 8 volunteers, 1 traditional owner and 2 members of the Advisory Committee (another group who were identified as important by the NPWS employees). I also made several attempts to contact the Metropolitan Aboriginal Lands Council to see if they would be willing to participate in interview, but unfortunately they did not respond. After organisational consent was granted I was also put in contact with a NPWS employee who was able to organise a number days’ work experience for me over a period of about a month. However, as I spent time in the park and became familiar with the NPWS employees others invited me to spend the day with them. I ended up conducting around 120 hours of work experience with the NPWS over a 4 month period. Also at this time I was able to join the volunteer group in the park and conduct around 100 hours of volunteering over a 7 month period. From the time that ethical approval was granted I also undertook my own participant observation in Ku-ring-gai Chase. This involved spending time in the park connecting with the landscape, flora, and animals, walking the tracks, participating in the ‘normal’ activities in order to gain an understanding of the park, how it is managed and how it functions on a daily basis. Over a period of 12 months I conducted around 150 hours of participant observation. During the project an ethics variation was submitted and approved that allowed me to change the way the participants were identified in the final thesis. Originally, participants consented to being identified via their position in relation to the management of the park (NPWS employee, NPWS volunteer, etc.). However, after considering how the thesis would be written I requested participants’ consent to being identified by a pseudonym, rather than just their title. All participants consented to this change and as such are identified in this thesis by their role in the park and a pseudonym. The analysis of participant observation data, documents and interview material were conducted through the process of manual coding. This coding was driven by Law’s (2004: 109) idea of finding ‘patterns’ in the ‘noise’ and thus aimed to identify themes, patterns, connections and relationships within the data that provided specific clues to how humans and nonhumans perform the landscape. The data collected from participant observation (including volunteering and work experience) was in the form of notes, transcribed personal voice recordings, sketches and photographs of what I observed and experienced. Any sketches or photographs were accompanied by detailed annotations explaining their meaning. These annotations along with field notes, interview transcripts and documents were analysed through the process of manual hand coding.

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Details of Interviews Conducted Interviewees Location of Interviews / Total Interviewees Discovery Volunteers

Lee Kalkari Discovery Centre – Kids table Neville Kalkari grounds Barty Kalkari Discovery Centre – Kids table Helga Kalkari Discovery Centre – desk Frank Kalkari Discovery Centre – desk Rita Kalkari Discovery Centre – desk Molly Bobbin Head Picnic Ground and walking the Gibberagong trail Charlie Cowan station (Jerusalem Bay trailhead) and Pie in the Sky Café Total No. Volunteers: 8 NPWS Employee

Oliver NPWS Regional Office meeting room (Ku-ring-gai Chase) Hannah Driving around Ku-ring-gai Chase and in NPWS Regional Office Angelina Employee’s office (Ku-ring-gai Chase) Cormac Employee’s office (Ku-ring-gai Chase) Cedric NPWS Regional Office meeting room (Ku-ring-gai Chase) Argus Employee’s Office (Ku-ring-gai Chase) Lily NPWS Area Office tea room (Garigal National Park) Lavender Walking along trail in Ku-ring-gai Chase Total NPWS Employees: 8 Advisory Committee Members

Nicolas Bobbin Inn Café, Bobbin Head Bill Café in Hornsby Total Advisory Committee Members: 2 Traditional Owner/Custodian

Colin University of Newcastle Total Traditional Owner/Custodians: 1 Total Interviewees: 19

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Indicative Interview Topics - Personal relationship to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park o What is your role in the park/why do you go to the park o Relevant history of going to the park o Connection to the park, i.e. what is your connection to the park o Why/when did you first become interested in the park - Position within Discovery Volunteers/NPWS/Advisory Committee o History of involvement with the organisation/in the park o Role they play in the organisation o Understandings of the role that the organisation plays in relation to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. - Experiences of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park o Reasons for visiting the park o Experiences whilst working in the park o Experiences when visiting the park for other reasons o Feelings towards the park - Experiences of park management o Role that the individual and organisation plays in park management o Role of park management o Understandings of what is involved in park management o Understandings of policies/ regulations and their role in park management o Human and nonhuman causes of management - ‘Nature’ in the park o Understandings of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ in the park o What activities belong/do not belong in the park o Changes to what is ‘natural’ - Challenges to management/the continuation of the park o Understandings of challenges that are affecting the park o Human and nonhuman impacts affecting the park o Human and nonhuman forces impacting on management results - History of the park o Understandings of history of the park and its importance to the management of the park

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Details of Documents and Interpretative Devices Analysed Throughout this research I analysed a number of documents and interpretative devices (signage, displays etc.).

Documents and texts included: - Ku-ring-gai Chase Plan of Management - Fire Management Strategies - Bobbin Head Masterplan - Media releases from the NSW Government, NPWS, Rural Fire Service, etc. - NPWS, horse riding groups and associations, tourist, and bushwalking websites - Historic documents relating to Ku-ring-gai Chase

Interpretative devices included: - Tourism signage in picnic areas and at the beginning of tracks and trails - Signage and displays in the Kalkari Discovery Centre and grounds

Details of Fieldwork

Participant Observation

From July 2012 to July 2013 I conducted approximately 150 hours of participant observation in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

Noteworthy activities: - Guided bushwalk with Discovery Volunteers to Resolute Beach - Guided Aboriginal tour - Walking numerous tracks and trails in Ku-ring-gai Chase - Following lyrebird and lace monitor around Bobbin Head - Photographing flora and fauna - Searching along tracks for waratah during spring when it is known to bloom - Catching the ferry from the Basin around to Mackerel Bay - Picnicking at Bobbin Head

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Volunteering

From November 2012 to May 2013 I conducted approximately 100 hours of volunteering at the Kalkari Discovery Centre.

Noteworthy activities: - Sighting Lyrebirds and a diamond python - Walking around Discovery Trail with visitors and volunteers - Feeding Kangaroos and birds - Reading through books and pamphlets at the centre which had information on the flora and fauna of the area, the history of the park, track and trail walk throughs and so on. - Analysing the signs and displays within the centre and the Kalkari grounds - Watching the kangaroos, lace monitor and birdlife

Work Experience

From February 2013 to May 2013 I conducted approximately 120 hours of work experience with National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) in Ku-ring-gai Chase and surrounding parks.

Noteworthy activities: - Attending meetings and workshops with NPWS employees and stakeholder groups - Conducting routine duties with field staff including maintenance works, tree lopping and planting shrubs - Aboriginal rock art assessment - Assessment of trails, including potential trails for horse riding and illegal mountain bike trails - Bush regeneration - Fox and rabbit baiting - Bandicoot monitoring

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Figure 12.4 Australian tourism advertisement and Tourism Australia

Thank you for providing the extra information below. Please find a download link to our logo on our website: http://www.tourism.australia.com/campaigns/tnla/campaign-logo.aspx Regards Laura

Laura Crino Visual Assets Coordinator| Consumer Marketing | Tourism Australia

T: +61 2 9361 1338 | F: +61 2 9361 1838 | E: [email protected] Level 29, 420 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000 GPO Box 2721, Sydney NSW 1006 Australia Consumer: australia.com | twitter.com/SeeAustralia | facebook.com/SeeAustralia Corporate: tourism.australia.com | twitter.com/TourismAus

Image Gallery: images.australia.com | Video Gallery: video.australia.com Please consider the environment before printing this email.

Dear Sarah Bell, Your order for images from Tourism Australia Image Gallery has been approved. To complete or pay for your order, please log in to the site, go to the Orders page and click on the relevant order number. On this page you can click the download link or the 'Pay for this order' button at the bottom of the page. When you placed your order you agreed to abide by the Agreement for Use of the Tourism Australia Image Gallery (refer to http://images.australia.com/site/terms.me for full agreement). This applies to all still imagery. Please familiarise yourself with these terms as any misuse of items may be considered by TA to be a breach of this Agreement and legal action may be taken. If you have any problems accessing your order, contact the [/site/helpdesk.me]Help Desk. Regards Tourism Australia Image Gallery http://images.australia.com Item No.: 140748 Title: WA; Esperance; Format: Large high res A4 300dpi RGB Price: $0.00 Mandatory credit: Tourism Australia

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Figure 12.5 Popular Australian television series, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo

Hi Sarah, Yes this is fine to use. Could you please include the following copyright line: Courtesy of Endemol Shine International Ltd. Kind wishes, Mary Mary Pettigrove Post Sales Support Director Endemol Shine International Tel: +442082224237 (direct) Mob: +447715077727 Skype: marypettigrove Shepherds Building Central, Charecroft Way, London, W14 0EE +448703331700

Figure 13.1 European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus

Hi Sarah, That’s fine to use the image – I have attached a file in case you need it. Please just credit it as ‘Invasive Animals CRC’.

Good luck with your thesis! Regards, Keryn ______Keryn Lapidge Communications Officer: PestSmart & Digital Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre An Australian Government Cooperative Research Centre P: 0414 600 878 / (08) 7225 2452 E: [email protected] W: http://www.invasiveanimals.com http://www.pestsmart.org.au 10am-3pm Monday to Thursday

Figure 13.2 Rabbits in plague proportions in the 1950s

This photograph comes from the collection of the National Archives of Australia. It should be cited as NAA: A1200, L44186.

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You may save or print this image for research and study. If you wish to use it for any other purpose you must contact the National Archives of Australia to request permission.

Figure 18.2 Fire burning along West Head Road, near Towlers Bay Trail

Hi Sarah, You are welcome to use the photo as below, with a photo credit to Ben Shepherd, NSW Rural Fire Service. Kind regards, Natalie Sanders | Media Officer | Media Services NSW RURAL FIRE SERVICE

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