This paper examines age as a parameter in colonial and recent science. It then recounts attempts to impose an ordered progression of age classes on the forests of Victoria and Queensland according to the classical principles of forestry transmuted through an imperial model.

After some years of absence, I found myself again active in the Australian conservation movement. A forest was to be razed, not far from where this is being written, for a relatively small yield of saw-planks…

Commercial agriculture in the dry interior of South Africa is heavily reliant upon irrigation water from the Orange River. Most of this vital water does not fall as rain on South African soil but as rain and snow in the mountains of Lesotho…

The issues discussed provide an interface between ‘green history’ and frameworks for sustainable development. An overview of groundwater exploitation is presented with case studies of low flows, the nitrate issue and salinisation of chalk aquifers.