Ive found some remarkable trees since I last wrote that I really need to show you. If you are interested in Australia’s CMTs & have been following this website you may have noticed my enthusiasm for different categories have changed over the last 10 years. The big flashy in-your-face scars held me spellbound originally. After that I fell hard for the ring trees that indicate available water out here in the semi-arid interior of NthWest NSW – before anyone gets their knickers in a knot let me add that ringtrees have other meanings too. The reason they show the way to billabongs & wells out here is the simple fact that where there was water there was life and where there was life there was human society. Where there was society there was culture, ceremony, consultations, commemorations etc. so other explanations for ringtrees can coexist. While poking around the old Aboriginal camps for 5 years in about 150,000 acres of native scrub/ dry sclerophyll forests west of Walgett, I came across the first TinTs. Discovering a previously unknown & exceptionally skilled form of Indig. tree modification has been life changing for me even if the rest of the country dosent give a s**t.
Ive uploaded 1222 TinTs give or take since 2020 but now those 3 specialised archives are full. Even if you take out the TinTs with small/ tiny guests that MAY be naturally occurring you still have at least 1000 ‘anthropological’ or ‘deliberate’ epiphytes on my website. Hosting ‘scartrees’ uses around 20GB of space & atm the additional space needed is paid for by the Tech guy who runs the site – thanks Martin Gibson from northernbeacheswebsites. 10 years of CMTs will need to be mothballed somewhere as a database for future research. I was hoping NSW academics in this space would come forward but they are willfully blind re Aboriginal ethnobotany. With their ignorance & painfully progress restricting political correctness we will never even know how much we dont know. Researchers in this field are too scared to leave their coastal citadels of learning & will therefore never get their heads around the enormity of the ancestor’s knowledge. Unfortunately, this generation of Aboriginal leaders have accepted the modern dumbed down version of their culture too, like smoking ceremonies, welcome to country formalities etc and dont lobby for research either. We need a revolution in indigenous studies and a total closed mindset reset.
So if the boffins cant get work out how to get to from Sydney to Walgett to see the TinTs, they aren’t going to be interested in the trees below either. I have sent photos to Professor Paul Memmott who wrote ‘Gunyah, Goondie + Wurley: Aboriginal Architecture of Australia’ as his book doesn’t contain the living “Arbortecture” that’s found here. Ive found over the years academics only conduct research in places where the Indig. people still live a semi traditional life. They won’t travel to towns like Walgett because the Aboriginal community have been dispossessed for many generations and much knowledge lost. They don’t understand how much information is available from Katie Langloh Parker’s books, countless CMTs, artefacts & the direct descendants who listened to their oral history as told by their Elders. Hot dry climates preserve old trees & skin colour is not reliable indication of cultural awareness. “Blackfellas” come in all skin tones in modern Australia & it takes more than 175 years of colonisation to erase 40,000 years of knowledge out here.
The first series of pics go to the heart of the sedentary Vs nomadic debate & show that ‘yes’ the people had permanent housing/ shelters but ‘no’ they didn’t live there all the time. We’ve known for a while now that living manipulated trees often provided the framework for a shelter like a ridge pole on a tent. When you were back in the area you only needed to strip some bark/ branches off surrounding eucalypts & secure it to the living frame. This shelter below has 4 separate modifications on 2 adjacent wilga trees over an unknown period of time. Mod 1; wilga has been split at the base and the 2 trunks have grown slightly twisted & apart (highly unusual with wilga -Geijera parviflora)
Mod 2; the smaller of the trunks have split into 4 & one of these limbs has been tied back onto the bigger of the 2 original trunks for an extended period of time to make a ‘ring’. I assume you know how ringtrees are created but the use of a wilga is very uncommon. ‘Dheal’ is the tree sacred to the dead (see K.Langloh Parker – The Euahlayi tribe)
Mod 3; the adjacent wilga also has 2 trunks & the larger 1 has been incompletely felled acrosss the gap between the 2 wilgas. This wilga ridge pole is still alive but has died off at the end and the other smaller trunk has also recovered from being cut. The living wilga ridge pole does not pass thru the living wilga ring on the adjacent wilga
Mod 4; smaller branches have been cut on the wilga ringtree which may have happened at the same time as the ridge pole was cut. The cuts look similar & look like they were made with a tomahawk not a stone axe which also indicates a more recent time period.
The big old redgum beside the wilga shelter may have been a TinT at one time or more likely that dead shoot is just a failed branch. The usual ground covers are present – kidney weed (dichondra repens) & the winter apple ( Eremophila debilis ) – as well as the Parsonsia lanceolate vine which is typically coastal. The space inside the old redgum is heavily shaded with crisscrossing wilga branches & is shaped like a huge overturned stool. Manipulated wilgas or ‘dheal’ (the Nooganburrah word for wilga) are rare as these trees and associated with birth & death. The 2 coolabah ‘twisters’ near this camp are spirals that connect the earth to the skycamp which also suggest a dying place where you transitioned to “Bullimah, the great Byamee’s sky-camp”.
“The spirit from the grave carried with him the twigs of the sacred Dheal tree which were placed over and under his body; he follows his spirit relations, dropping these twigs as he goes along, leaving thus a trail that those who follow may see” ( The Euahlayi Tribe, by K. Langloh Parker)
From the sandhills to the Big warrambool now where Ive been finding some new ringtrees & TinTs as well as this crazy modification below. Why you would turn a branch into bent wooden trident is beyond my understanding but I suspect our friend the mysterious fungus may have something to do with it. I have seen this fungus on non- manipulated eucalypts but more often than not its living/ was living on a TinT , ringtree or a weird fork like this. Splitting trunks & branches was child’s play to the people here but the reasons behind it are lost. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on arches & rings you find forks & triangles …
