Review: 'The Ancients' by Andrew Darby

Andrew Darby reveals himself as an explorer, adventurer, artist, activist and detective. 'The Ancients' is more than a botany textbook; a narrative about "deep time" written by a man who found himself acutely aware of his own mortality.

Darby suffered a stage-four cancer diagnosis in 2017 and pursued his "second life" with a passion to seek out the oldest living things on the planet—Tasmania's paleo-endemic trees.

Darby treats these trees not as resources, but as survivors with distinct personalities.

The King’s Lomatia, a genetic miracle. This single plant has been cloning itself for over 43,000 years and is effectively one individual that has lived since the Pleistocene.The Huon Pine or the "Water Tree" can live for 3,000 years, smelling of cedar and history, surviving loggers and floods.The Fagus, Australia’s only winter-deciduous tree turns the mountainsides gold in a brief, spectacular "turning of the fagus."The Vibe Tower, a 60-meter-tall giant eucalyptus Darby famously climbed, providing a "buttock-clenching" perspective on the canopy.

Darby highlights the tension between permanence and fragility. Organisms that have lived through ice ages and coexisted with dinosaurs, now threatened by climate-change and dry-lightning fires.

His prose is "lyrically elegant", vibrant, as a veteran journalist, immersing the reader in the soul and spirituality of the forests.  A celebration of Tasmania’s unique biodiversity and a warning that these "living monuments" stand on the brink.

A book for anyone who wants to slow down and understand what it means to live on a "Gondwanan" timescale. A narrative for anyone who finds peace in the silence of a rainforest.