CHRISTIAN PARADISE

Consistent with the theme of 'stewardship' of nature which was common throughout the interviews⁽¹²⁾, many people directly referred to nature and to the rainforest using Christian imagery. (This was most likely amongst the farmers and city-dwellers who I interviewed.) "Oh, nature is I suppose you could say what the good Lord gave us in the first instance, and asked us to protect it as much as possible, and not to destroy it willy-nilly." as Gordon MacDonald, a retired farmer explained. The rainforest itself was also described several times as a "cathedral", containing within that phrase the implications that it is a sacred place, a place of spiritual beauty, awe and worship.

Perhaps the strongest Christian images, however, were provided by Judy Simpson, a cane farmer's wife in her early 50's, who described the rainforest as a kind of Paradise Lost.

"Because they are so fertile and everything seems to be so perfect or balanced in my mind it does, I've always thought of when you're talking about garden of eden and christianity and that sort of thing, and I've always thought that that's what a rainforest envisages what paradise is, or would have been like."

It is worth noting here that this image of forest Paradise does not include contemporary humans. Tacey suggests that Euro-Australians living on the forested edges of the Australian continent are comfortable in this environment, projecting onto it a friendly image of the Australian 'bush' in which humans and nature peaceably co-exist. From the interviews which I conducted, however, it seems that the rainforest exists in the Australian psyche as a mythical 'other', much like the central desert country. In the past, dense rainforest was derogatively called 'the scrub', something to be destroyed in order for European human life to survive through farming⁽¹³⁾. This understanding of an antagonistic relationship between humans and nature appears to be retained. There is a contemporary recognition of this destruction, including a negative judgement of it, which thus casts the forest as Paradise being destroyed. Judy continued, in a concerned tone,

"But then again when I've read the damage that can be done in rainforest if those trees are destroyed, the sun has come through and it can't have the same benefit because the heat has got through which isn't meant to because the canopy is gone. You know? The whole balance is destroyed then."

An underlying message was that it is not really a "garden", to be manipulated by humans. The rainforest as Paradise is pure, unspoiled and to be protected. It is God's gift.

FOOTNOTES
(12) 'Stewardship' refers to feelings of responsibility to care for nature, deriving from our Judeo-Christian perspective of (hu)man's separation from and dominion over nature.
(13) See Len Webb's 'Beyond the forest' in L.J. Webb & J. Kikkawa's edited 'Australian Tropical Rainforests: Science, Values, Meaning' (1990, CSIRO)

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