Once Beneath a Tree

Sorry I’ve been away for a while. Took myself on another little holiday to Wallaroo earlier this month. This time felt empowered, a little more confident, optimistic about the prospects of more of these little jaunts. I caught up with a girlfriend I hadn’t seen for years. Her husband John and Warren were cousins and had more than a few daring adventures together as kids. John was a ‘tunnel rat’ during the Vietnam War and passed away a few years ago. Jen and I talked and laughed about some of the stories our boys had told us about their mischievous skylarking.

But today I feel a need to write about trees, as I dread the impending removal of some that were part of my childhood – the Bunya pines that have been growing in the Tanunda Recreation Park for close to a hundred years.

This place was a magical world when I was a kid – not just for me but every kid in town, at one time or another. We gravitated towards it – on our way home from school, or on weekends. It was shady and cool in summer, and even in winter, that delicious smell of pine after a rain, drew us there. In our harsh dry climate, to have this place, these carpets of soft sweet smelling needles to tread soundlessly across, to sit on while we ate our vegemite sandwiches and lie back on afterwards, was a gift beyond compare – a gift from the founding fathers of our town who had planted these gentle giants with a vision of what they would become, for us. I recently found this description of the Bunya Pine –

‘The Bunya Pine has been a sacred tree for indigenous Australians for a long time and an important source of food, timber and fibre. Indigenous Australians eat the nut of the tree both raw and cooked. Traditionally, the nuts were ground and made into a paste which was eaten directly or cooked in coals to make bread.’ –

from the website of the National Arboretum

We ate the nuts. We knew when they would be falling, and there were always a couple of rocks stashed for cracking them. They are truly magnificent trees. I still go to the park sometimes. I buy an Apex Bakery pasty (baked in a wood-fired oven), park beneath the trees, open my car door and lean out so as not to spill the flaky pastry all over me, and eat this little morsel whose recipe, over three generations – almost a hundred years – has not changed. Simple pleasures.

Now these beautiful protectors, these shelters from the rain and sun are disappearing – to make way for an extra sports field and car parks. You will be hard pressed to spot a kid roaming freely there anymore. Where we were running up and down the steps of the grandstand, swinging or balancing on the oval’s railing, creating our own made-up games in and around the sheep yards, swimming in the shaded pool (now also gone), there are now mainly adults being walked by their dogs, while revving, crunching, banging machinery cuts a cruel swathe through Nature .

I already feel embarrassed to call this a park. On Show Day, the stalls are in blazing sun. In March, people are hot. They sit under umbrellas to eat and drink where once they sat in the shade of glorious trees.

The definition of the word park includes descriptions such as ‘green’ and ‘scenic’. Without trees, our park will no longer be scenic. The Council has promised us new trees but how can they replace the grand old sentinels of our forefathers. And how long will the new ones take to acquire the grace and protection of the old?

I might be seen as an emotional tree hugger, resisting progress. I won’t be hugging them, or standing in front of bulldozers. But it will break my heart to see them go, and I’ll have to find somewhere else to eat my Apex pasty. The creek of my childhood wanderings perhaps.

I have an ancient River Redgum on my property. Familial ancestors settled here in 1889 and the tree was old then. Aborigines who lived along the Para River that flows past my property would have sat beneath it I’m sure.

I love the energy of trees, the stories they could tell if only they could speak. Like animals, especially dogs, they can tell us things without words. They have a life, a language if we stop to say hello and listen. Who has ever made love beneath a tree whose branches go right down to the ground, making a private place where a eucalyptus perfumed breeze may brush your naked body and make you feel as free as a bird – around you a hum of insects, the chatter of wrens or robins, a distant bleat of sheep?

Here is another of my poems – about a tree – written in 1977 –

Venerable eucalypt
Ancient beholder of this ever-changing landscape
Look down upon the one who gazes lovingly
upon your physiology
and who will ever probe
without remission
for your age old secrets

Non-conformist
Lawless labyrinth of limbs and bole
I perceive your primal verve

Will I grow as you
even sending limbs like tentacles
into the mulch of centuries
then out again to draw upon the seasons

Will I feel on me as you the winds of time
that tell impassioned anecdotes
and stir you to the bounds of brave resistance

Will I tolerate without complaint the chill of winter as you do
Will I know as you the sureness as you wait
and brace your gnarly shoulders to the wind

Will I hear the murmur of new birth within me
as you do when you throw seed

And will I ever stand so absolute with warmth as you
when migratory winds
and driving rains have done with your domain

Oh sapient stock
entrust me with your knowledge
and anyone who asks

You are still and you are wise
and left to God
not Man
will still be here long after me

To read more of my thoughts, stories, scribblings scroll down a little and click on ‘Previous’.

Until next time

Warmly

Sue