The history of Illawarra since European colonisation is one of profound disturbance, affecting First Nations peoples and the plants and animals they lived with and cared for. I see this every time I walk on the escarpment, where it's clear that most of the vegetation is still recovering from selective and then wholesale clearing.

The stunning rainforest tree White Beech (Gmelina leichhardtii) was particularly affected. This massive tree has been reduced to less than 100 mature individuals across the entire Illawarra area, dispersed widely between Royal National Park in the north and Berry in the south. So it's worth knowing about this majestic giant in case you run across it around the place. 

White Beech generally grows on the escarpment, in subtropical rainforest that is long undisturbed by fire or land clearing.

There are mature specimens around, including just off the Escarpment Management Track in Corrimal, and high up the escarpment in Thirroul. The tree in Corrimal can actually be seen from the coastal plain, because of its distinctive pale green foliage, grey-white trunk and very tall form.

Here's a picture taken a few years back by local photographer Anthony Wardle.

White Beech is often easiest spotted by the presence of its stunning large purple fruit on the rainforest floor. They are large (up to 2.5cm across) and often numerous beneath a fruiting tree. 

This tree also has stunning white and purple flowers, though these are often invisible because they're so high up in the canopy! Still, here's an appreciation pic. 

The natural history of White Beech in this area is not well known. It was considered a high-quality timber tree by Europeans, but was not reported on as much as the Red Cedar (Toona ciliata), suggesting that it was not present locally in such high numbers. And it is much slower than Red Cedar to recover across the region, for various reasons, but probably because its large bulky fruit are not so easily dispersed around the place as the air-borne seeds of the Red Cedar. Here's hoping it recovers eventually.