Friday, October 19, 2012

Among the Trees...

To me, the landscape we grow in leaves an indelible mark of belonging. Charles Pearcy Mountford was an anthropologist and photographer whose body of work is imprinted on me. This volume was published in 1956 and features 30 Australian trees.
Above, Eucalyptus pauciflora, the Snow Gum, whose benign other-worldliness I felt, adrift in the Australian alps on otherwise agonising school camps.

This wonderfully craggy specimen is Hakea eyreana, the short-leafed corkwood, which inhabits "a country of blazing middays, of scorching winds and scanty rainfall". If we must endure, then we will.
This specimen, above, Eucalyptus maculosa, the red-spotted gum, comes from near where I live, growing "on the hillsides and stony ridges of the colder districts of Victoria and New South Wales".
This desert kurrajong ( Brachychiton gregorii ), appearing to stand in a Tuscan landscape perhaps, inhabits the "most inhospitable parts of Australia"...
...as these two do not, this gum and this wattle of unidentifiable origin, planted on my verge.
The mulga ( Acacia aneura ) is related to South Africa's acacias. Its seeds have long provided food for our original inhabitants. See how they fade into the air...be careful of tripping up into them and losing your feet!
This early Christmas beetle anchored his feet on the washing-line, having first bumbled through the air like a slow-time helicopter.
This Acacia Estrophiolata, Ironwood, is native to central Australia, and is as tough as nails. It is seen at its best at night, "when the camp-fire, lighting every leaf, twig and branch, makes it stand out in sharp contrast to the blackness of the desert night". Does anyone light camp-fires any more? Does anyone roam beyond their fence?
Another acacia, or wattle, Acacia sowdenii, the myall, grows best "in the country north-west of Spencer Gulf, in South Australia". Sculpted by the wind, by the air around it, chained to the dry earth, it sings, nonetheless...
as does this haggard soldier, full of rags and whistling, of nights over-slept, of a yearning for light, however costly. Casuarina stricta grows all over the place, as it needs to do, wherever there's a foothold.
The red stringybark, Eucalyptus macrorhyncha grows not far from me. On the hill behind this pair see the land I want to own.
Until then, this eucalypt on my verge sustains my hopes. This country will always remain untamed, I hope, not reduced to real estate.
It could not have been foreseen that a landscape that had survived quietly for an eternity could be overtaken by a new, self-centred world, one that judges all life according to monetary value. All respect is paid here to the Aboriginal man whose image has been copied here. If I were anyone anywhere else, it is like he I'd long to be, there, among the Xanthorrhoea, grass-trees.
The coastal banksia ( Banksia integrifolia ), named after the intrepid Sir Joseph Banks, grows close to home, here to me in Victoria, close to the sea. Like all our trees, it's robust but unexpectedly gentle.
So thankyou Charles Mountford, and thankyou Melbourne University Press, for taking me home and for letting a light shine on into the future, where there'll always be trees, and where I'll always be among them.

21 comments:

  1. Hello Faisal!
    Another wonderful book in your hands.
    I love the title "Tree portraits"

    Enjoy a lovely spring : )

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    1. Hi Demie,
      spring's amazing, after all the winter. As autumn must be for you, after the strong light of summer.
      You know, I always love trees.

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  2. Indeed. There must always be trees, Faisal and I too must always be amongst them (though my only snow gum has just been lacerated by deer. Flipping ingrates). Dave

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    1. You'll have to get a few more cool-climate gums, Dave, and some of our alpine plants ( we do do snow, you know. I'm sure you know. ) What the dickens are deer eating eucalypts for? No more sherry left out for them Christmas Eve, I can tell you.

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  3. Trees are metaphors for strength and beauty, for longevity, they are endowed with majesty. Trees are constant witnesses. A beautiful book. I too love trees. Thank you for sharing.

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    1. Hi Paul. Yes, trees watch the world go by. They offer refuge. They are obliged to keep standing when they may well want to lie down. For me, as a boy, they offered security and friendship, as they still do. Thankyou. It wouldn't be much of a world without them, without their canopies and their striving, would it?

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  4. Faisal, you nearly had me in tears between Mountford's words and photos, and your own. I'm in very hot Brisbane right now, having driven slowly from Sydney, and about to head out west tomorrow. Everywhere I've been, this wide brown land is hot and dry. Smoke from bush fires hangs over Ipswich and Brisbane, as it did on my own NSW Central Coast as I left home. But beautiful and magical, the land never loses its charm for me. I wish we were better land keepers than we seem to be.

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    1. Hi Carol. I hope your trip brings you many highlights. I've never been to Brisbane ( or anywhere else, for that matter ) but I hope it doesn't ever suffer the drought we recently went through.
      Our plants, so noble, aren't they, to keep surviving these awful conditions? And so many of them are so humble, so un-aggresive. I belong here, out among the tough lands, and am grateful for knowing them.

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  5. A most beautiful book! And post... What fantastic and strange trees you have over there.

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    1. Roger, yes, this book was considered one of the best dozen published in Australia in 1956.
      I like the strangeness. It's not so strange, after all. It's wild, our landscape, but it's also delicate.
      Thankyou for your comment.

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  6. Dear Faisal,
    The photography in this book is quite wonderful.
    Being a young immigrant from northern climes in the early 1970s, I used to think that Australian trees were boring. Boring colour. Boring shape. Boring boring boring. But my father taught me otherwise and it is through his love of nature and his affinity to it and all that it consists of, that I grew to understand and to love the differences in all trees, and why it is important that they should 'be'.
    I think that my acceptance of Australia's flora became part of my acceptance of Australia (read 'Victoria') as a place to call home after some years of rebelliousness but I guess that came out of not having wanted to be transplanted (like a tree) from one country to another in the first place!
    Looking at the pictures from your book, and reading your post, reminded me of all this!
    Kirk

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    1. Hello Kirk,
      I know what you mean. The strangeness of this country can be confronting as can adolescence be.
      For me, I've always loved the wildness, the lack of human intervention, but I've also loved what I've perceived as an incredible softness and vulnerability. Our marsupials, for example, are largely discreet creatures, non-aggressive, herbivorous.
      What isn't always acknowledged is Australia's fineness; every little corner of it has continued in a workable peace for thousands of years.

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  7. faisal, you appear to have the gift for finding book jewels! excellent book, and lovely post. australian trees are so different, and yet so similar to north america's.

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    1. Hi Velma. I wonder if it's the late domestication of our two countries that's left an imprint of their wildness? I don't know, but I do know you have some splendid and varied examples. Here, as I'm sure it is there, it's the light that makes such a difference.

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    2. especially in the edge seasons, spring and fall.

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  8. Hello Faisal:
    Yet again, you delight us with a most wonderful book. The photography is stunningly atmospheric and does speak of a time when Australia was untamed, wild and beautifully raw.

    And, always, there are connections. When we gardened in Herefordshire we were near neighbours to the Banks family whose house and garden was nearby. Descendants of the plant hunter, Joseph Banks, they gardened with similar passion and they had the most remarkable collection of trees.

    We never tire of saying that trees we believe to be the purest form of gardening. Indeed, if we were to garden again, it would be with trees...just trees....

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    1. Hello Jane and Lance,
      it's funny you should say that, because I'm really sick of gardening, at one level, and long to simply care-take a landscape of trees and grass.
      No more digging and planting and worrying and weeding. All I want is a view and all I want to do is wander in it.
      I'd love to see the Banks' garden - I'm sure there'd be specimens there dating way back.
      Fortunately, a great deal of our landscape remains wild, or near to wild, or unpopulated. I'll let you know when I own a bit of it!

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  9. that book looks beautiful. I'm sorry you're sick of gardening.. I have been feeling a bit flat lately, and realize I need to get out of the city and camp somewhere wild for a bit.

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    1. Well, it's not so bad, Catmint. It might be I just need to find a new approach. Like you, though, a change of scene might help!

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