CONSERVATION
Credit: Bob Brown Foundation
TYTO, THE TREESITTER What’s it like spending months at a time up in a tree in order to save it from destruction? Words FIONA HOWIE
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hen I meet Tyto, she has been living in a myrtle tree in takayna/Tarkine for 71 days. That’s over 1,700 hours. During that time, she has been bored exactly once. “I was complaining, like, “Olive, I am feeling bored!” Tyto jokes. “That happened somewhere near the beginning, for three hours, and it didn’t appear again.” takayna/Tarkine is a vast wild area, a rarity in a world where nature has increasingly been diminished and fragmented into remnant pockets. Gleaming white shores punctuated by dark jagged rocks are buffeted by the Roaring Forties (next landfall is Argentina). Rivers, darkened by tannin, wind gently through primeval forest. Cultural living sites, rock carvings and buttongrass plains mark the palawa people’s long custodianship of these lands. It’s a place that makes you feel small in space and time. Despite all this, it is not a protected area. Which explains why Tyto is in a tree. Tyto, or Viola Barnes, has a kind face framed by greying curls, and a warm and frequent smile. She wears round spectacles. It’s a sunny summer’s day (in a place which averages around 211 rain days a year), and while I wear a T-shirt down below, Viola is rugged up in many layers. “Ernie! Just saying the name makes me smile,” she exclaims after I introduce my newborn, snuggled into his carrier. This is a woman who has sold her home, leaving behind her
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much loved community in North Queensland, to make a stand for these ancient forests. The myrtle she sits in is centuries old– perhaps a sapling in the time of the Scientific Revolution. “You think probably I’m a little off the planet. Before I climbed up the first time, I was like “Hey, is it alright if I climb up?” And I asked, “Look, could you reveal your name to me?” And this name, Staghorn—vroom!–stuck in my head. I’m very drawn to Staghorn. He is very much like a friend to me.” Tyto was no stranger to treesitting before this vigil, with the odd stint here and there. “Did you plan to come up for so long?” I ask. “No way! I thought, let’s see how it goes.” A former tree sit occurred in a giant eucalypt at a nearby clearfell. “They were fierce–very much like, yep, ready to defend! This feels very different, like being embraced and welcomed and part of it. It is very, very special.” Tyto first arrived in takayna/Tarkine four years ago, after hearing about it at the Cygnet Folk Festival. She was immediately hooked. After three years of flying backwards and forwards to the forest, Tyto decided to trust her instincts, leaving behind her friends and home. “It [flying] was not good for the environment either. I had to follow my heart.” She even lived in her car for eight months, driving from action to action. On my last visit, this still-threatened area was inaccessible, barred by a boom gate owned by the mining company MMG. At
