A Tree is for Life

Story

“There’s something spiritual about a forest,” our guide says as she takes us deep into the forest to her favourite tree.“Our eyes are drawn upwards, like in a cathedral.” The Ficus, a strangler fig, reaches 20m up into the treetops, a sturdy tangle of roots that supplanted its host tree long ago. She secures a harness and we climb to a research platform high in the canopy where we sit and absorb our surrounds. Over 400 species of plants and animals live in this tree, creating their own ecosystem within the broader forest. This is why she loves trees and decided to make them her life’s work. A Tree is for Life weaves together stories of magnificent and magnanimous trees and our relationships with them, told by the people who love them, take care of them or stand up for them. We follow an Arborist assessing trees nominated for the register of significant trees to learn what makes a tree significant. We talk to organisers of online groups, like Big Tree Seekers, to discover the fascination people have with big trees. We visit some of the world’s tallest trees and hear from their keepers. We delve into the fundamentals of life, from the health benefits of forest bathing, to community tree planting in a city with high pollution and asthma. We visit a Dayak Longhouse in Borneo, the Forest City in Lizhou, and construction of the world’s tallest hybrid timber building in Sydney. We’ll rediscover just how much we rely on trees, which have fuelled civilisation with fire, food and shelter, through to medicines and music. We touch on forestry, talking to people along the chain, from forest to timber products. A guitar maker shows us the new timbers they’re trying out to replace endangered ebony and rosewood. We tour a new shopping centre to discover the histories of reclaimed timbers used in construction. We lay the seed for our viewers to think about their forest footprint. On the frontline of drought, fire and wild weather, we join citizen scientists monitoring trees dying from the drought, with a team replanting mangroves via drone after a cyclone, and with an indigenous community on a traditional burn. With traditional owners, we gain insight to their relationship with country, and the compound loss they experience with bushfires. Our spiritual journey continues, from Buddah’s Bodhi tree to a contemporary pagan forest dance, The concept of the Tree of Life or World Tree transcends geography and cultures. From the Church Forests of Ethiopia, to the Green Wall of Africa, and of China, people are planting millions of trees to push back against the deserts. In Queensland, an indigenous community carbon trades their traditional Savanah fire management, another is building a native timber forestry business. On Schools Tree Day, we join kids of all ages on their tree planting activities. We hear what they know about trees and forests and what they love about trees, because planting these trees today is for their tomorrow.