Hotchpotch 18

Tags

banksias, beach, family, python, trees, wasp nest, water views

Banksias

Family

Nicolson Barker, rescue dog, with my daughter after his first attendance at obedience school

My son in his workplace in the rivers around Cairns: only one crocodile that I heard about

Bruce, our resident python, all new-skinned, on my deck!

Photos lurking on a card I obviously haven’t used since 2013

Son and son-in-law meet coincidentally at Gate 39 at Brisbane Airport

Around the streets

Trees

Coffee by the water

Beach miscellany

Odds and ends

Aragannu

Tags

Aragannu, memories, midden, shipwreck, trees

I often walk beside my past as I move around my part of the world. I drive down the dusty ribbed road through the bush to Aragannu in Mimosa Rocks National Park and memories swarm. Here, I saw my first grove of blueberry ash. Here, we were once the rowdiest campers, behaving as we’d hate anyone else to behave. Here I sat by a campfire with a friend who had just lost her son. Here I stumbled along a faint track in search of rainforest, under a prostrate figtree and past modern middens. Memories expand at the rocky beach and I remember my aunt spraining her ankle on such a beach when she was my age.

Things have changed since my last visit, quite a while ago now. There’s a well marked track and even a boardwalk. Join me as I walk in the momentary present. Next time I go there this visit too will be part of my memory.

Let’s park the car in one of the many empty parking bays, under entwined trunks and twisting branches.

The ramp leading up to the loo offers many vantage places for capturing rocks in symbiosis with trees …

… and more twisting branches

Then it’s time to head off along a leaf-surfaced and root obstructed track, past more contorted trees.

Occasionally, a tree stands straight and tall …

… but more often they have a lean on them.

The track turns and begins to climb, up rocksteps and over ankle-turning loose rocks, over a ridge and down to a camping area (only one tent). The track continues on and becomes a boardwalk leading out to the sea and passing a mound, grass growing over an Aboriginal shell-midden.

The beaches and coves are rocky – large round rocks or ovaloid rocks or curved-corner rectangular rocks …

… becoming larger as you head further north …

… where land artists have made good use of material at hand.

In the background are Mimosa Rocks, so named because PS Mimosa was wrecked on them in 1863 with the loss of two lives. The wreck is still there, protected from marauders by the 1976 Commonwealth Historic Shiprecks Act.

The National Arboretum: a taster

Tags

bonsai, food, National Arboretum, trees

If only politicians looked as far ahead as the planners of the National Arboretum! It’s early days yet, and I won’t be around to see groves of mature gingkos, or tulip trees, or Wollemi pines, or Californian palms. But I can see the beginnings: from the groves of Himalayan cedars and cork oaks planted in the 1920s which escaped the brutal bushfires of 2003, to more recent plantings, nearly a hundred forests of rare, endangered and symbolic species. The vision for this 250 hectares overlooking Canberra is 100 gardens and 100 groves of trees. While you wait to see the full vision realised there’s plenty to do. You can test your muscles mountain biking, walk your dog, ride your horse (and corral it while you have a coffee), get married (if you don’t mind a long engagement – bookings are two years in advance), listen to music in the amphitheatre, eat a classy lunch, see 360° views of Canberra nestled in its hills with the alps in the background, and of course enjoy horticultural and sculptural pleasures.

As you approach the shallow-domed building, you pass panels tracing the history of plant life on earth and I nod knowingly at Silurian, Carboniferous, Devonian, Pliocene. Inside, rafters of native timbers, prefabricated in Melbourne and transported to the site for assembly, overarch a cafe, a restaurant, exhibition space, a shop and numerous panels and trays about all things tree.

My favourite spot was a very attractive garden, amongst the first of 100 gardens, showcasing plants that don’t need much water, sponsored ironically (or responsibly) by the provider of Canberra’s water.

Some of the plants are under the cover of these attractive circular stencils-on-a-pole.

Two hilltops are home to dramatic sculptures.

“Wide brown land” actually sits on its hilltop sequentially, but I couldn’t get it all in one photo. The script is that of Dorothea Mackellar who wrote the iconic poem celebrating Australia which begins its paean of praise with I love a sunburnt country.

Just down the hill from the wide brown land is the grove of mature Himalayan cedars. This photo shows part of the grove, companioned with a bonsaied version of the same tree.

Which brings me to …

I’m not a big fan of bonsai, and even less of penjing with its kitschy little creatures. Why interfere with the perfection of a full-grown tree? Enthusiasts spend a lot of time manicuring and trimming, and the creators are designated “artists”. The shaping are always pleasing, and I suppose the art does enable you to see the tops of trees that are usually frustratingly invisible.

I celebrate a pleasant morning with a somewhat classier lunch than usual, avoiding kalamata olives and tomato soil, and feasting on goats cheese and puffed grain, followed by braised kangaroo and native plums. This is a fitting prelude to my first encounter with my 6-week-old great nephew, Samuel Victor.

Hotchpotch 10

Tags

flowers, rockpools, shells, trees

With this post, I say a very happy birthday to Tish, writer on the edge, who has given me so many pleasures with her posts – historical, geological, horticultural, botanical, African, stylistic and photographic pleasures – since, somehow, I found her in the blogosphere.

Hotchpotch 6

Tags

Bodalla, buildings, flowers, Melbourne, murals, Nowra, trees

Narooma shopping centre ((iPhone)

Geological anomaly: Billy’s Beach

Shells on whale-rocks at One Tree North (iPhone)

Camellias outside an old house in Bodalla

Spotted gums beside the highway in Bodalla

 

Bodalla: mountain view, old house, garage

Poinsettia, Bodalla

Old tree, Bodalla

Leaves, mud and flowers

Potato vine: my back yard

Sea country spirits https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/multimedia/sea-country-spirits/

View from a bird-hide in Melbourne Botanical Gardens

Fern unfurling

Last Melbourne mural

Nowra mural

 

Wordless walk: Swamp Trail

Tags

moss, Swamp Trail, trees

Wordless walk: Jemison’s Headland

Tags

banksia, boobialla, flowers, grass, reflections, swans, trees

More trees

Tags

scribbly gum moths, trees

To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.

 

I am not a “dweller in a wood”, but I am a walker in the bush, and to me too every tree has its voice and its feature. Casuarinas speak in the wind, almost like the murmur of human voices. The trunks of eucalypts creak against each other. Wattles choose to converse in heady perfume; bottlebrush in the multitudinous voices of parrots and honeyeaters.

 

Trunks split to reveal creams, russets, browns and blue, especially under the influence of rain

 

bulge out in intricate carbuncles

break into diagonal fissures, orange and grey

 

create patterns of sublime subtlety over their musculature

 

present designs like subdued Matisse cut outs

 

and tesselate.

 

Their roots break pavements and gather sun-mottles.

 

Their bark peels in rich strips

 

and they blush as they excoriate.

 

Brown, they lean over green foliage and water

 

Tall and silvery-skinned, they reach for the sky in the morning light.

 

They tell their history, not only in their precisely accurate rings of bark which record the quality of seasons as well as the passing of years, but also in fire scars

 

and the only-recently-deciphered tracks of moth larvae.

 

 

Moth larvae postscript: I mentioned these tracks in a previous post, unscientifically hidden in a haiku. My indefatigable friend, Prue, sent me links to some remarkable research by Dr Max Day, recently turned 100, and a number of other retired scientists. Dr Day's most recent paper was published when he was 97. The articles are well worth reading.

http://theconversation.com/unravelling-the-mystery-of-eucalypt-scribbles-11023

http://www.ecosmagazine.com/print/EC12497.htm

 

The quote at the beginning of this post is from Thomas Hardy's “Under the greenwood tree”

 

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Amplified

Tags

music, trees

Whenever I think “Enough blogging! I'll stop” I get one of Prue's emails and I realise I need to keep baiting the hook. She sends me wonderful responses to blog posts in the form of emails, which means I'm the only one to savour them. With her permission, I'll copy this lot into their own post so more people can enjoy her stories. They reveal her passion for music and trees.

 

The mallee flower is so tactile, I can almost hear it.

This reminds me of the time I took John Cage, American composer, and Merce Cunningham, dancer and 3 dancers from Merce’s New York dance troupe to the Australian Botanical Gardens here in Canberra to listen to bird song – their trip to the National Park in Sydney had them covered in leeches and they heard very few birds there. I promised no leeches, but plenty of birds, which there were, but we were all excited about listening to Banksia cones by softly running our fingers down them.

Hey! the rhythms this made were most exciting – for all of us.

The sound of the mallee flower is far more delicate and very soft, but it tingles the imagination somewhat, and the delicate perfume is more appealing than that I remember of the different banksias we explored.

The tree, well the tree made me homesick for the tree we had in our yard in Chifley. It was as big as your tree image and it took three men holding hands to circle its girth. One arborist reckoned it was between 300 and 400 years old. It was a yellow gum. We hung a bird feeder over one of the lowest branches – about 3.5 metres above the ground, and it was outside the kitchen window.

A seat belt was thrown over the branch, and secured, and a chain hung from it down to the bird feeder – about 2.5 meters from the ground. Parrots, particularly sulphur crested cockatoos, would climb down the chain, frontwards, backwards, upside down, downside up. The mob of them was quite patient, waiting their turn. This was comical enough and gave us hours of pleasure.

We’d put a circular margarine container inside the feeder, full of water. The smaller birds could get at it, but not the cockies. One of them succeeded, by standing on the edge of the feeder, tipping it so the water flowed out of the container, and towards the edge he/she was standing on. It then turned around and drank the water as it fell over the edge.

When we were about to sell the house, I had the tree heritage listed, which the National Parks mob were happy with.

It cost me $10,000 I used to boast, as the shonky real-estate agent deducted that amount from the sale price, as no owner would be able to cut it down.

It used to rain down onto the ground, gutters and roof twigs, leaves, gum nuts, and branches big enough to crack the roof tiles, but we kept a supply of new tiles under the house for this eventuality.

 

 

 

 

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Trees

Tags

Herman Hesse, trees

It's a while since I've paid tribute to trees. Flowers, yes. Rocks, yes. Assorted creatures, yes. But not trees. So here we go: spotted gums, swamp mahogany, iron bark, casuarina, scribbly gum, milk vine. There is poetry in the names, and homage beyond any I could pay in these words from Herman Hesse.

 

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.

 

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