The Cabbage Tree Palm (Livistona australis) is the most common palm throughout the Illawarra. They are fan palms, instantly recognisable even in their different forms throughout South-East Asia. There are about 20 different species of Livistona palms in Australia.
Some grow in rainforest, but others can grow almost anywhere, even in otherwise desert areas, if they have a good supply of ground water.
Livistona australis extends from Queensland to Victoria. The Cabbage Tree Palm is significant in Aboriginal culture. In the Illawarra, it was called “Dharawal”, also the name of the local language. New growth from the top of the tree could be cooked or eaten raw and the heart of the trunk could be cooked as a medicine to ease a sore throat. Its leaves were used for shelter and its fibres for string, rope and fishing lines.
Some may wonder why there are more Cabbage Tree Palms in the Illawarra than the area’s other native palm, the Bangalow Palm (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana). The answer is that the Cabbage Tree palm has a huge capacity to survive even the fiercest fires, sprouting green shoots out of the top of their blackened trucks within weeks. Bangalows die in bushfires, as I discovered in the 2020 fires.
Cabbage Tree Palms proliferate through the Royal National Park, but the only Bangalows you will find are in dense rainforest that has never been burned for a long time.
