I came upon 2 new Trees in Trees out looking for missing sheep this week. The first was a TinT twinset with a stand of unfamiliar small trees in between. Whitewood (Atalaya hemiglauca) has joined the exclusive guest list of native tree types living in old boxtrees. From most to least common we have […]
‘Hey Frankie’, I smiled at my Kamilaroi mate who had given up his Sunday bowls tournament to come out scartree hunting with me. Frankie waved as he eased himself out of his patchy purple “coon car” as he called it and closed the door carefully to prevent it falling off its hinges entirely. I had […]
Hi all, below is an email I sent to about 30 CMT contacts this week and have had 3 replies. My job is to bring these trees to public attention. It is for academics & aboriginals to discover the ‘how’ & ‘why’, as I only do the ‘show’. I am trying to create 2 new […]
Dear scartree fanciers Im putting out a request for photos of mature native Australian trees living inside any eucalypt and their GPS data or general whereabouts. I don’t mean strangler figs or supplejacks or vines of any kind, just your average wilga/whitewood/mulga/myall types that have taken up residence successfully in another living tree – […]
Sometimes you can be reading a book totally unconnected with your own concerns when a particular passage utterly undoes you. I’m reading Ruth Park’s autobiography – A fence around the cuckoo – about her New Zealand childhood. She is remembering some bushland in the Hauraki Gulf… “It was not for nothing that many races […]
The first Australian cultural cringe? The whole kerfuffle re Bruce Pascoe’s cultural identity seems to have got a lot of knickers knotted on the Net. This is the main reason I don’t do any social media, though I have thought of putting up some of my better photos on Instagram occasionally. Most of what […]
THEY BLOODY WELL LIKED THEM….. Mustering for lambmarking and shearing has brought me face to face with some old scartree friends and a startling introduction to a few new ones. I came across a dead double Ring with pointer in an area I know well but didn’t notice it before. The trees are all […]
Dr Judith Field UNSW school of Biological Earth & Environmental Sciences (BEES) Jude came out for a visit recently and we went on a 5 day scartree tour with all the bells and whistles. This paleo channel system and surrounding countryside aka Murramanaarr is a goldmine for Indigenous Archaeologists. We also visited Cuddie Springs […]
“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything”… William Shakespeare. It is not hard to find tongues in trees out here as there are so many old scartrees still standing. This land west of Walgett is unique […]
This goes with that goes with this goes with that ….The more bizarre the culturally modified tree the more curious I am. If you have stone axe marks (axtrax) on the heartwood or a ‘Ring’ in the main trunk you have a CMT. This remarkable example of a Whitewood tree (Atalaya hemiglauca) shown in […]