Barrambin’s oldest trees measured time in centuries. The Brisbane Olympics 2032 measure it in years, for an event lasting days. Yet, those trees were destroyed in minutes. Their destruction exposes an uncomfortable question: why does an imagined Olympic legacy take precedence over the centuries-old legacies we inherited?
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On 23 July 2026, Brisbane 2032 organisers unveiled a public countdown clock in Queen Street Mall. Six years to go. The clock gives physical form to the temporal logic increasingly governing the Brisbane 2032 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games: as the deadline approaches, the countdown is an imposing visual reminder that we need to “get on with it” – a phrase seemingly competing with “adult crime, adult time” for the Queensland Government’s favourite slogan.
Fourteen days later, on 6 August, the chainsaws moved into Victoria Park/Barrambin. Over three days, more than 200 trees were destroyed, including 10 pre-settlement trees estimated to be more than 200 years old. Among them was “Albert”, a small-fruited grey gum (Eucalyptus propinqua) with a trunk almost two metres across.
He was estimated to be 594 years old. Albert may have germinated around 1432. His large hollow, itself likely requiring more than two centuries to form, provided habitat for wildlife. Rainbow lorikeets, cockatoos and galahs frequented his branches.
There was also “Henry”, a large-leaved spotted gum (Corymbia henryi) estimated at 365 years old. By the time British colonisation reached the Brisbane region in 1824, Henry was already more than 160 years old. People had walked, rested and camped beneath him for generations. More recently, the Barrambin Djar camp gathered in his shade.
The timing of their felling poses unanswered questions. Clearing commenced while legal processes under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 (Cth) remain underway: three Section 10 applications seeking protection for Barrambin are before the federal Environment Minister Senator Murray Watt.
Clearing commenced while the final stadium plans remained unfinished. GIICA chief executive Simon Crooks said on 2 June that only around 10 per cent of the design work has been completed. And clearing commenced before public consultation on the stadium masterplan was completed. In fact, consultation – or what is better termed “engagement theatre” – had begun only three days prior.
He was estimated to be 594 years old. Albert may have germinated around 1432. His large hollow, itself likely requiring more than two centuries to form, provided habitat for wildlife. Rainbow lorikeets, cockatoos and galahs frequented his branches.
Other fundamentals remain unsettled, too. The recently released “Victoria Park Precinct Legacy Plan” is still a draft, dominated by artists’ impressions. Questions remain over crowd safety and transport, including the role of Ekka Station and concerns raised by the IOC and Queensland Police.
Despite many unanswered questions, the irreversible destruction of Barrambin has begun.
There is something deeply discordant about this ordering of priorities. Design can change. Transport plans can change. Governments can change. Stadiums can be redesigned, rebuilt or abandoned. But a tree that began growing almost six centuries ago cannot be reinstated once the chainsaw shudders to a halt.
How, then, does such hasty environmental destruction acquire the appearance of reasonableness? I found it both illuminating yet disturbing to dig deeper into two ecological assessments of Barrambin, prepared several years apart by the same environmental consultancy. While the landscape barely moved, the story told about its ecological value certainly did.
Same park, different story
Three years separate two strikingly different ecological accounts of Victoria Park/Barrambin. What makes the comparison especially revealing is their common authorship. In July 2023, an ecological consultancy prepared a Targeted Ecological Assessment Report to support Brisbane City Council’s transformation of the former golf course into a metropolitan park organised around restoration, rewilding and habitat connectivity.
In March 2026, the same consultancy prepared the Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) Report for the proposed Brisbane Stadium and National Aquatic Centre. The reports serve different clients, statutory purposes and assessment boundaries, so their conclusions cannot simply be treated as contradictory scientific findings. However, read alongside one another, their descriptions show how remarkably different ecological meanings can be produced from many of the same characteristics of the same place.
In the earlier assessment, Barrambin’s biodiversity is exceptional precisely because it persists within an intensely urbanised landscape. Its “key biodiversity values” are described as:
“unusual in the context of the highly urbanised setting, including the maturity and age of the canopy trees many of which contain hollows and pre-date the earliest available aerial photography.” (2023, p 93)
The report identifies squirrel gliders, microbats, bush stone-curlews, brown goshawks, boobook owls and flying foxes, concluding:
“These are species (with the exception of the flying foxes) characteristic of less urbanised settings and their presence in Victoria Park / Barrambin is entirely as a result of suitable habitat which should be retained and enhanced through the Master Plan.” (2023, p 93)
By 2026, the ecological significance attributed to this urban habitat has contracted considerably. The MNES report instead describes:
“… an inner-city open space, where remaining native ecological values are either planted or support urban-adapted species habituated to this highly urbanised space. However, this is the extent of such value, and its siting within such a perpetually disturbed space should not be overlooked when considering ecological matters (or lack thereof) on site.” (2026, p 107)
The contrast is particularly stark because urbanisation itself changes argumentative function. In 2023, the persistence of species characteristic of “less urbanised settings” makes Barrambin ecologically unusual and its habitat worthy of protection. In 2026, urbanisation and habituation delimit what ecological value remains.
A similar reversal occurs around connectivity. The earlier assessment acknowledged that Barrambin was poorly connected to surrounding habitat. This condition, however, generated an imperative for ecological repair:
“It is understood the Master Plan will significantly improve habitat connectivity onsite, with the aim to re-establish species through rewilding.” (2023, p 93)
The 2026 report again identifies fragmentation, but now its meaning is quite different:
“The site is functionally isolated from any expanse of meaningful habitat, being fully enclosed within a dense matrix of urban land uses.” (2026, p 107)
It subsequently intensifies this characterisation, stating that:
“Victoria Park/Barrambin is entirely severed from any meaningful vegetation …” (2026, p 107)
The ecological condition is broadly recognisable across both accounts: an inner-city habitat fragmented by roads, rail infrastructure and surrounding development. What changes is the planning consequence drawn from it. Fragmentation once established the need to reconnect habitat; it now helps establish the limited significance of habitat that might be disturbed.
Historical disturbance undergoes the same transformation. The 2023 Connected Habitats Strategy explicitly situated restoration against the effects of urbanisation, observing that urban open spaces are increasingly recognised as biodiversity refuges and ecological stepping-stones. Barrambin consequently offered:
“… great strategic potential to identify and protect existing habitats, consolidate and re-establish urban habitat …” (2023, p 11)
Most importantly:
“Unlike other urban development processes, redevelopment of Victoria Park / Barrambin, as identified by the Vision, has the expressed desire to revitalise ecosystems and restored habitats to draw wildlife back to the city and enrich connections with nature.” (2023, p 11)
“Brisbane City Council is committed to protecting and enhancing almost 64 hectares of green space for future generations through the Victoria Park Barrambin Vision with revegetated forests, native bushland pockets and restored waterholes will be reflective of the Site’s original landscapes.” (2023, p 12)
In 2026, the site’s succession of previous uses – “from municipal tip to military base to golf course” – instead contributes to its description as a “perpetually disturbed space” (2026, p 107). Has history changed? I think not. What has changed is its argumentative significance. Earlier disturbance provides the rationale for restoration. Later, accumulated disturbance helps diminish the apparent consequence of further intervention.
Most consequentially, the role assigned to ecological expertise itself changes. The 2023 report insists:
“Biodiversity planning is often a secondary consideration in shaping urban development pattern and form. This has not been the case with the Victoria Park/Barrambin Redevelopment Master Plan. Recognition of the importance and incorporation of existing ecological knowledge into the Master Plan has ensured that biodiversity considerations have shaped the spatial and land use arrangements within Victoria Park/Barrambin.” (2023, p 11)
Here, ecology precedes and constrains design: biodiversity sensitivity helps determine where development should occur. The 2026 MNES assessment operates in a different sequence. With the stadium and aquatic centre constituting the Proposed Action under assessment, ecological expertise evaluates whether their effects cross the statutory threshold of significance. Its conclusion is categorical:
“… the Proposed Action will not result in a significant impact on any MNES.” (2026, p 107)
The significance of this comparison extends well beyond an inconsistency between two environmental reports. Barrambin remains fragmented, historically disturbed and embedded within an intensely urban landscape throughout both assessments.
But those conditions are made to perform almost opposite planning work.
In 2023, Barrambin is disturbed, therefore restore it; in 2026, Barrambin is disturbed, therefore further development can be rendered ecologically non-significant. What becomes visible as valuable habitat in one planning regime can become legible as compromised, replaceable or insignificant in another.
Earlier disturbance provides the rationale for restoration. Later, accumulated disturbance helps diminish the apparent consequence of further intervention.
This shifting ecological visibility also raises a larger question. If planning can reorder the significance of ecological relationships as development priorities change, it can also reorder their significance across time. What already exists is diminished; what is promised becomes vivid. And nowhere is that temporal sleight of hand more apparent than in the language of Olympic “legacy.”
Legacy is also inherited
The reports illustrate what researchers call the politics of visibility. Planning never presents a place in its entirety. Reports, maps, classifications, renders and statistics bring certain qualities into focus while pushing others towards the background.
A hollow-bearing tree can appear as habitat, an ecological asset and part of a future rewilding strategy; under another planning imperative, the same landscape becomes fragmented, disturbed and of limited ecological significance. Neither description needs to be fabricated. Power lies partly in deciding which description matters.
The same process operates across time. Olympic planning renders one future extraordinarily visible: the new stadium, the crowds, the spectacle, the promised economic benefits and, above all, the promised “legacy.”
Meanwhile, the legacies already present can become strangely difficult to see. Our research on Olympic sustainability has found that purpose-built infrastructure frequently fails to deliver the durable, versatile use promised when it was conceived.
But those conditions are made to perform almost opposite planning work.
Consider the temporal absurdity unfolding within four kilometres of Barrambin. The Gabba underwent a major staged redevelopment beginning in 1993. Barely three decades later, it has been deemed to be approaching the end of its useful life and is now marked for demolition. Yet, at Barrambin we destroyed trees that had survived for centuries to make way for another brand-new stadium promoted as a “long-term Olympic legacy.”
Other Olympic cities demonstrate that obsolescence is hardly inevitable. Los Angeles will stage its 2028 Games using the Memorial Coliseum, opened in 1923 and already an Olympic venue in 1932 and 1984. Brisbane proposes to demolish a stadium substantially rebuilt within living memory while clearing living infrastructure that began growing centuries before Brisbane existed.
We need to rethink what legacy means.
In our work on designing a City of Good Ancestors with Adjunct Professor. Mary Graham, we draw on the Aboriginal philosophical concept of a “custodial ethic”: each generation inherits places, relationships, and responsibilities from those before it, holds them temporarily, and passes something onwards. Being a good ancestor requires a sense of proportion. It requires us to recognise how brief our own tenure is within the much longer life of a place.
Olympic legacy discourse tends to face only forwards. It asks what we will build for future generations. Barrambin demands that we also look backwards and ask what previous generations left in our care.
The Olympic countdown clock will reach zero on 23 July 2032. The Games will come and go. Governments will change. Stadiums will eventually become obsolete.
Albert and Henry should still have been growing.
