The Disappearing Mushrooms: Are they the Canary in the Climate Coal Mine?
Late autumn in Australia, and our land should be full of fungi. Instead, it’s gone quiet.
Where Are the Mushrooms?
We should be swimming in saffron milk caps here at Kookaburra Rise—just like this photo from 2023.
Saffron milk caps and slippery jacks collected from Kookaburra Rise in 2023.
We should have mushrooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Scrambled eggs and mushrooms. Mushroom risotto. Mushroom and pesto pasta. But this year? A lone family of inedible fly agarics and a few edible slippery jacks skulking around. Ric loves them. Me not so much.
Two years ago, we were flooded with saffrons. Giving them away (to those not spooked by the Erin Patterson ‘mushroom murder’ headlines), drying them, preserving them in jars like treasure. It was abundance. It was ritual. It was community.
Read about our 2023 mushroom extravaganza here: READ
We even blocked out two Sundays in May for foraging, pasta-making, and campfire dinners with friends. Both were cancelled because it’s too dry. Maybe late May. Maybe June. Maybe not at all.
Mushrooms Don’t Lie
Saffron milk caps grow in symbiosis with the ancient pine trees on our property. They need cool nights, moist soil and a quiet forest floor.
What we’ve had is unseasonal heat, barely any rain, bone-dry winds.
When mushrooms vanish, it’s not mere bad luck. It’s a warning. The underground mycelium—the vast, unseen web that sustains ecosystems—is stressed. They’re the canaries in the coal mine. They vanish before the collapse becomes visible. Before humans notice.
The fly agarics are pretty but inedible.
The Numbers Don’t Lie Either
In Red Hill, and across the Mornington Peninsula, the signs are stark. The first five months of 2025 brought only 51.8 mm of rain—80% less than average. It’s one of the driest starts to a year on record.
Our survival depends on rain tanks, while others rely on dams and bores. But when they run low—as they increasingly do—many residents end up calling the water trucks.
We’re lucky—we have 100,000 litres stored underground and another 46,000 above. But it’s maybe not enough to be lucky. Not anymore.
Building Resilience on the Ground
And so, we start to act. More gutters. More tanks. Smarter grey water systems. Swapping out thirsty European plants for drought-hardy bush foods and Indigenous species. Deep mulching. Ground covers. Less tilling, more compost. Windbreaks. Shade trees. Microclimates. Soil that can breathe and hold.
As we plan our new house, we’re thinking water-first. Passive solar. Fire-proof materials. Off-grid sewerage. Long-term sustainability over short-term ease.
And Most of All: Community
But none of this matters without people. Without neighbours. Without shared knowledge and dirty hands and unglamorous acts of collective care.
We don’t just need tanks and swales. We need a village. A net. A localised commons of resilience.
This isn’t just about mushrooms. Or weather. Or prepper panic. It’s about climate collapse—and what we do now, together, to stay rooted and ready.
First Write. Then Act.
I’m trying not to be too dramatic about it all.
But when the mushrooms vanish from the forest floor, it feels like the earth is whispering: Pay attention. Things are shifting.
So I write. Because writing is how I make sense of it. How I stay present. How I fight. First write. Then act. Often the other way around.
This is how we meet the crisis: not with despair, but with deliberate, local action.
One community at a time.
Carolyn Tate is an author, educator and community-builder who writes to advance the rights of women, nature and the environment. This Between Two Hills Substack publication is FREE and delivered bi-weekly. If you like what you read, please support her work by sharing it with a friend.