writer and photograher PETER GRANT
My sisters are chasing me. But I slip unseen around the corner of our house, and shinny up a gum tree. Perched in a fork, pressed against the main trunk, I pull a leafy branch in front of my face, an improvised invisibility cloak. As I peer through the leaves, breathing hard from my exertions, the dizzying scent of eucalyptus fills my lungs. I feel strangely safe, at home. Below I watch my sisters walk by. They haven’t seen me. I wonder, in hindsight, if that small childhood triumph helped start a life-long appreciation of gum trees.
During his 1836 visit to Australia, Charles Darwin referred to these trees as “the never-failing Eucalyptus family”. He didn’t mean it as a compliment. Rather he lamented their failure to drop their leaves, then bud afresh. He was far from alone in this attitude. Many early European visitors disparaged our trees.
Edward Curr (1824) saw “desolation and decay, rather than … life and verdure” in Van Diemen’s Land’s eucalypts. To him they were “unsightly … thinly clothed”, and blighted by “long, shaggy strips of dead bark”. Barron Field (1825) sneered at the aesthetic quality of eucalypts, wondering what an artist could do with the “one cold olive-green” of their foliage. Darwin too condemned their “peculiar pale green tint”.
Fellow Englishman, Henry Widowson (1828) thought that Van Diemen’s Land’s “trees and forests rather diminish than add to the beauty of the country, where they are thinly spread; the tops grow extremely ugly, and bear not the slightest resemblance to the worst of our oak and elm”.
From my writing desk, I look out on The Patch, a wedge of semi-wild woodland in the foothills of kunanyi. It’s full to bursting with eucalypts. As I look, I wonder whether those early European observers employed the same eyes as I do. Even in winter, the eucalypts I can see have an amazing range of colours and tones and shapes.
It’s cold and rainy, but I must go out for a closer look. I walk into a favourite stand of silver peppermints (Eucalyptus tenuiramis). A few months ago, these treetops rang with the endearingly rough caws of ravens – dozens of juveniles spending more than a week raucously sorting territories and future mates. But today the birds are silent. The only sound is the crunch of sticks, bark and leaves beneath my feet. I disturb a Bennett’s wallaby, but it quietly holds its ground, staring at me warily.
I decide to try and see these trees through old European spectacles. Where, I wonder, is a straight, vertical specimen of a peppermint? Can I find a tree that spreads its roots straight out and its trunk straight up? I look in vain. Not one of the hundreds of peppermints here plays by those rules. Instead, I find trees than curve and bend and droop and drop limbs and have scars and burn holes. In short, I find a messy forest.
As I stare at the mess, the trees seem to bend and sway, despite the still air, offering up a mind-clearing peppermint scent from their leaves. It’s time to remove those European “spectacles”. They’ve become more blinkers than glasses. And now I find my usual, loveable grove of peppermints; vibrantly wonky trees that look as though they’re dancing in the rain.
I think now about their English name. Peppermint fits okay: that scent is undeniable. But I puzzle over the silver part? Yes, some of the juvenile foliage can have a gun-metal look, as can the new seed capsules in spring. But today the rest of the foliage is a riot of lime, yellow, bottle green and deep blue-green. As for the curvaceously tilted trunks and their fickly stripping bark, where to start? When the bark has freshly fallen, parts of the trunk blush a modest gold that contrasts strongly with the irregular strips of grey, brown, black and taupe. Their swirl of colours twists and rises up the trunk like a pale fire: flame and smoke spiralling upwards.
That prefiguring of fire seems apt. Come the hotter months, when Edward Curr’s “shaggy strips of dead bark” are draped around the base of these trunks, that “messy” pile of tan and brown will join with the fallen leaves to function as an accelerant for any fire that comes along.
That’s the local version of “drop their leaves, then bud afresh”, a narrative that would have been familiar to Darwin et al. Except that here it’s fire that helps with the regeneration of the trees. It’s fire that will help crack open the seeds, and ash that will provide a bed in which the seeds can germinate. It’s a different paradigm, one in which “messiness” has its function, and the dropping of leaves and bark responds far more to particular conditions than to the name of the season.
Not meaning any disrespect to you Mr Darwin, but I do wonder – had you climbed a few gum trees on your visit here, had you breathed their scent deeply, whether you might have come a little under their spell. Perhaps then you might have seen them as not only “never-failing”, but also as rather marvellous.
Peter Grant lives in the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington with his wife. He worked with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service for 24 years as manager of interpretation and education. His passion for the natural world led him to write Habitat Garden (ABC Books) and found the Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. More of his writing can be seen at naturescribe.com.