Where'd Those Tree's Go?

I was living in Alexandra Headlands on the Sunshine Coast. It’s a beautiful place but as far as headlands go, not much of a headland. I was lucky enough to be living right on the beachfront. Literally walk out the door, run the gauntlet that is crossing the main road called Alexandra Parade and then wambam, ocean.

Alexandra Headland is really just a hill beside the ocean. Half of the hill has eroded away and you end up getting the best of both worlds. A beautiful green grassy hill with a thick, scrub covered steep slope down to rock pools and sand at low tide. You can walk around the ‘headland’ from south to north and vice versa although that route becomes a little precarious at high tide.

On the other side of the hill, to the south, is the suburb of Mooloolaba. You can walk there in about 10-20 minutes, depending on your need for haste. Strolling over the hill is very pleasant. Mooloolaba is a touristy kind of area. Lots of restaurants and cafes and retail stores along this wanna-be Gold Coast type esplanade. It has a nice beach but its more often than not chocka block full of people that make the beach an unpleasant experience, and if there’s any kind of swell the waves don’t exactly play nice and it becomes a ‘confident swimmers only’ kind of situation. All of this in contrast to Alexandra Headlands with its beautiful hillside of old beachy apartment blocks and small beach with fantastic waves.

On more than one occasion, my friends and I wandered over the hill for an excursion in the holiday makers playground of Mooloolaba. There’s a bunch of bars over there, all of them vying for the attention of tourists and locals alike. One battleground is the age old ‘happy hour’, with each different bar offering a selection of beverages at a discounted rate for 1-2 hours, usually between 4-6pm. Its up to the patrons to decide which bar gets their service based on individual tastes and the preferences of their social circle. Some groups go to that bar, others go to one over there, another bar ‘round the corner is where you’ll find that other crew.

Happy Hours have been around for a long time and the term can refer to all manner of things, depending on the point of time in you choose. The modern day term, that sparks excitement in the hearts of afternoon-swig-lovers all over the world, is widely believed to have originated in the U.S Navy. In early 1913 a group of supportive wives and mothers, called the ‘Happy Hour Social’, organised ‘semi-weekly smokers’ onboard the USS Arkansas. Back in those days, ‘smokers’ was a term used to describe informal gatherings for men. The Happy Hour Social ladies semi-weekly smokers onboard the ship were such a hit that by June, 1913, the crew of the Arkansas had taken to calling their regular piss-ups ‘happy hour’, and for good reason too. Happy hour entertainment ranged from live music and dancing girls, all the way to bare-knuckle boxing and wrestling, and by the end of World War 1 the entire U.S Navy had jumped onboard.. heh.

Gone are the days of sipping a cheap beer in the sun and watching a couple of keen young lads punch each other in the face.. well, mostly gone. Depends on your local I guess. Around Mooloolaba there’s only one place where you could get that kind of action and its not even guaranteed, and most certainly not for the general entertainment of patrons. The only reason that’d be happening is because someone spoke to someone else’s missus, or stole someone’s lighter, and any attempt to egg the pub-gladiators on would most likely end up with someone’s missus punching you in the face.

Myself and my friends would frequent a spot aptly named ‘Good Bar’, for their 4-6pm happy hour. We had all done our research of the happy hour’s on offer and determined that the outdoor seating coupled with drink selection at this particular venue gave us the best value for money. Drinks were $5 each for two hours. A $5 beer sure is great but don’t for one second think that meant that we didn’t spend some money. In truth we, along with the vast majority of fellow customers, would abuse those two hours, rolling out of there usually around 6:30pm and leaving behind a table completely covered in awkward piles of empty glasses. The floor staff could barely clear the table quick enough and there was almost always a vacant seat due to someone being at the bar ordering another round. It’s a strange feeling getting home at 7pm completely trashed, only three hours after leaving home completely sober, but it did have its benefits. Early start, early finish. Even if you had to be up at 6am the next day, so long as you stopped for the trusted alcohol sponge that are kebabs on your way home, there was a good chance you’d have skipped the worst of the hangover.

Across the street from this bar was a large open air carpark. There was space for roughly 250-300 cars with some greenery around the edges, in the form of garden beds and small little tree’s that the council likes to plant. And then there was the mango tree’s. Two of them, one on either side of a small driveway allowing access to the carpark. They weren’t the type of mango tree’s that produce the type of mango’s we all love to slurp away at until our faces are covered with mango on a hot summers day. They were the other type, huge tree’s with beautiful big canopies bearing fruit treasured by the wildlife population but not so much by the humans. Typical council right? Why not plant the other type of mango? Sure most of the locals would be racing down there and beating each other with sticks just to score themselves a free mango when they were in season but lets not forget the happy hours of old and their bare-knuckle boxing! Who wouldn’t want to sip a $5 beer in the sun while watching a few eager, mango loving locals fight each other for a sticky face?

Anyway, one day we wandered over the hill for our regular catch up with the bar-keeps and upon arrival, let out a collective cry of dismay. That cry of dismay quickly turned into a collective slandering of our local council which then turned into a collective slandering of state and federal governments over their apparent complete disregard for the environmental crisis facing the entire planet. The mango tree’s were gone, and with them the birds and bee’s and bats and possums. Not only that but the air quality in that particular corner of Mooloolaba would have taken a significant hit. All that was left of the tree’s was a couple of massive stumps, each one being at least 1.5m in diameter. In the days to follow it became apparent that the carpark was getting a makeover. In fact, the carpark was being demolished to make way for a brand new, multi-story carpark, capable of holding a shit tonne more cars but incapable of providing appropriate food and shelter for the various different species of wildlife in the area. The new carpark also didn’t include a couple of huge mango tree’s doing their best to mitigate some of the damage caused by our cars and buses and planes and ships. It was a difficult time for all of us. The original carpark meant that the bar’s tiny outdoor seating area, just a few meters away, didn’t feel so small. The open air nature of the carpark meant that there was no tall structure blocking the valuable afternoon sun. Beautiful sunshine that would make the leaves of the mango trees glitter as the sun made its descent and sent rays of light through their immense canopies. It was clear to us that our favourite bar for reckless weekday shenanigans would never be the same.

Its confusing sometimes, looking at the way the government goes about building what it believes to be a comfortable environment for us all to live in. Sure we get great infrastructure and fancy new estates to live in but at what cost? The estates aren’t even that good. The number of trees that disappear so that two thousand people can live within farting range of each other is ridiculous. Instead of tree’s there’s now two thousand peoples combined farts, doing exactly the opposite to the trees. Cutting down trees is counterproductive in the pursuit of creating comfortable public, residential and recreational spaces for the population to enjoy.

Mango tree’s in particular have come to be known as ‘super trees’. In organic mango farming operations in Mexico, the trees actually sequester more carbon dioxide than they omit. Researchers added up all the emissions released in the growing, harvesting and shipping of the mangos, from farmer to retailer, and found that the trees were sequestering more carbon dioxide than all of those emissions combined. One research group on a farm in Sinaloa found that their tree’s sequestered two and a half times more carbon dioxide than was emitted in the entire growing, harvesting, processing and shipping process. Mango trees aren’t just carbon neutral, they’re carbon negative!

But yeh sure, chop that shit down. Even if they did replant the same trees elsewhere to make up for it, it would take decades for the replacement trees to absorb the same amount of carbon. Did I say ‘confusing’ or ‘infuriating’??

So with global warming now a household term, and the polar ice caps melting faster than that old bloke you see most mornings on his mobility scooter, why on earth would the council decide it’s a good idea to knock down a couple of Co2 guzzling, friendly giants in order to make way for a bunch more Co2 belching cars? Sure, its a holiday destination, but so what if people have to leave their car behind for a holiday there? There’s plenty of Co2 belching buses getting around, not to mention the literal, twenty eight million ubers and taxis. And even then, unless it was absolutely bucketing rain, why would you get in a car or bus? Walk! Breathe the beautiful ocean air! All that big carpark is going to do is encourage people to leave the busy city and drive up to Mooloolaba for the day. There’s no less than 58 kilometres of glorious Sunshine Coast beaches! Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting out on the weekend and exploring this beautiful country but after living in the area for a number of years, I’ve come to seriously dislike the tourist population. They don’t explore. They all flock to the same spot. They litter, they clog up footpaths and roads with their lack of common sense and direction and at the end of their stay there’s undoubtedly some whinging about how the beach was too sandy or they couldn’t see any whales even though it’s the middle of bloody summer. If the council wanted to be helpful, they could have relocated a few saltwater croc’s to Mooloolaba beach. Thanks to global warming it’s most likely warm enough for them and it wouldn’t have been long before the council realised they actually had no need for a new multistory carpark, and they could have left the mango tree’s to continue sequestering carbon dioxide in peace while we continued sequestering cheap beer at our favourite happy hour.

In all seriousness though, I do not for one second envy the decision makers. I am well aware that providing infrastructure for a population means making some hard decision’s, but so often bad decisions are made and there seems to be no decisions made in an effort to fix them. We keep getting dragged further and further down the rabbit hole by those we elected to keep us out of rabbit holes. All I can say is if, for some reason, I all of sudden became a decision maker… I’d be planting mango trees.