Attenborough at 100.

David Attenborough turned 100 last week, which produced the usual civic response in Australia: orchestras in Sydney, conservation breakfasts in Brisbane, and politicians standing beside laminated koalas while speaking gravely about stewardship. Somewhere on the Sunshine Coast a housing estate called “Attenborough Green” was almost certainly approved during the commemorative period, although perhaps not intentionally.

The country remains deeply attached to Attenborough in the way people often become attached to someone who spent sixty years explaining, in calm reassuring tones, what they were in the process of destroying. His voice accompanied childhoods, Sunday evenings, school documentaries and the slow disappearance of things with habitats.

Coochin Creek, meanwhile, is no longer merely “under pressure”, which is the sort of phrase environmental reports use shortly before the excavators arrive. The latest proposal promises a nature-based entertainment precinct capable of hosting 35,000 people beside the Ramsar-listed Pumicestone Passage, because nothing says ecological sensitivity quite like a temporary VIP beer garden with shuttle buses.

Attenborough himself has always spoken with the air of a man trying not to embarrass humanity in front of the birds. Even now, at 100, he remains curiously polite about the fact that much of modern environmental policy consists of unveiling logos beside excavators. Australia has spent the week treating Attenborough less as a broadcaster than a sort of secular environmental saint, wheeled out annually to bless developments whose environmental impact statements appear to have been written while one of his documentaries played silently in the background. One suspects Attenborough did not spend a century whispering about fragile ecosystems so that Queensland could eventually build a Coachella beside one.

On the Sunshine Coast the choreography has become familiar enough to feel almost heritage-listed. A row of mature trees disappears. A development promises “green corridors”. Someone mentions biodiversity. A koala is photographed looking faintly betrayed. The fence lines move forward another few metres. Then comes the interpretive signage explaining what used to live there.

Australia, naturally, still likes to think of itself as unusually outdoorsy. We advertise reef shots to the world while discussing koala populations in the tone normally reserved for discontinued menu items. The country names spiders after Attenborough while steadily reducing the amount of available spider habitat.

There is something almost touching in the national determination to celebrate the man while ignoring the material of the message. A hundred years old, and still narrating politely over footage of a species meeting a bulldozer somewhere behind a temporary acoustic barrier.

The remarkable thing about Attenborough is not merely that he reached 100, but that his warnings have become so culturally beloved while remaining almost entirely optional.

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The views expressed are those of the correspondent. Factual claims draw on publicly available sources.