I counted and traced the tree rings and ran my fingers along the trammel lines of prostrate stone trunks, sensing the texture of bark. Some trunks ran like train tracks towards the sea, others veered off, criss-crossing at angles. This ancient forest now lay splayed between marine-jewelled rockpools filled with pockets of sand and barley-coloured Neptune's Necklace (Hormosira banksii), the native seaweed named after the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks who accompanied Captain Cook on his 1763 expedition to the Pacific aboard the HMS Endeavour.
