The Ancients
Andrew Darby
Discovering the world's oldest surviving trees in wild Tasmania
Click here to join our rewards scheme and earn points on this purchase!
Release Date: 04/03/2025
Discovering the world's oldest surviving trees in wild Tasmania
Prize-winning writer Andrew Darby explores Tasmania's ancient trees, some ten thousand years old, and the people protecting these living dinosaur-era survivors.
Deep in Tasmania's remote valleys and mountains grow trees whose direct ancestors lived with dinosaurs. Many are thousands of years old, some over ten millennia. Prize-winning nature writer Andrew Darby takes us on an island odyssey to discover these ancient survivors: the mysterious King's Lomatia, perhaps the oldest single tree alive; the primeval King Billy, Pencil and Huon pines with their stories of human admiration and destruction; and the majestic giant eucalypts. He shares tales of the scientists and nature-lovers who identified these ancients and now work to protect them from climate change and fire, offering hope for their future.