Full summer west of Walgett is not the best time to be out scartree hunting but my mustering work lets me check on some special CMTs around the paddocks. Our average summer temp. is 35 C & we have been hovering in the low 40s a few times already. The early Dec. blog was about the stubble fires here but there were a few storms the next week thank God & conditions cooled down for Chrissy. We need rain now but none of my go to ‘Gods’ seem to be paying attention. I lost confidence in the Christian God as a child after listening to Leonard Teale sing “Holy Dan” (google the lyrics) .I only appeal to Baiame over life & death stuff so that leaves Huey who serves as the rain god in rural parts – Hey Huey – Send ‘er down mate!
I don’t know if Baiame was thought responsible for some of the multicentennial CMTs here but the ancestors who created them may have been long gone even before the whites arrived. The 3 in 1 tree is very, very old and less vulnerable to weather extremes as it lives along the paleochannel. Its proximity to the big old redgums suggests its roots access the underground water – effectively drought proofing the tree. Floods never reach these sandhills at all & the whole paleochannel is heavily timbered, so somewhat protected from ferocious wind. Wagyu & dorpers keep the native pastures/ buffel grass under control should lightning strike up a fire. Still, the one & only 3 in 1 tree (different guest species in different crotches) has recently lost its lower guest making it now just a plain boobialla TinT.
The Shrubby/ Mallee rice-flower was still thriving on the 27th of September when Russell Gawthorpe – Curiosity Mine – & Rebel Black visited. Russell may have some film archive of this tree but we have to wait until he puts his CMT video together to see.
Ive written about Pimelea microcephala & it’s role in traditional medicine before. It’s a relatively common shrub in the semi arid areas of NSW & Vic and is found here occasionally in BinTs (Bushes in Trees).
However Ive never seen one with such a thick woody trunk like this & suspect this Shrubby/ Mallee rice flower may have simply died of old age. Unlike rosewoods/ boonery guests that break off at the host junction & reshoot, I think the P.microcephala has gone for good. In a different Australia where traditional culture in the eastern states was respected & researched, botanists would be sampling & carbon dating this dead guest. Our NSW Universities & the ARC (Australian Research Council) have buried their heads in the quicksand of cultural misappropriation so they can ignore the TinTs. Indigenous persons of power – Politicians, Academics, Govt. bureaucrats, Land councils & Elders groups, have let them get away with this because they no longer try to understand or protect CMTs.
There is a subset of TinTs I may or may not? have talked about, I call TTTs (Trees Thru Trees). Probably self-explanatory and they are not always CMTs but have grown though their neighbours chasing the light. Bimblebox loves company & they are often surrounded by different scrub trees. Birds settle on the branches & poop out the seeds of the native scrub trees which germinate & grow in wet years. This is the conventional explanation for TinTs as well except the ‘theory’ cannot explain why TinTs are only found around old Aboriginal camps & along songlines. A highly published Honorary Research Fellow (UQ & UNE) has suggested that birds congregate around water holes where the camps were located to feed on spilt grain where the women were grinding bread – the more birds the more poop type hypothesis. I pointed out there are no substantial water holes around the Cumborah ridges & very little grass except rare patches of spinifex yet plenty of TinT clusters. This academic knows his desert well but not the semi-arid rangelands. He suggests –
“why dont you at least make GPS recordings of all the trees you know of and give the points to a responsible person who is a bit younger and can sit on them until the research tide turns and more funding/interested people emerge? I have no doubt its a great story, it just sounds like the time isnt quite right for it to emerge.”
Yes I have all the GPS recordings but many are on neighbouring properties whose owners don’t want these publicly available. The people who should be interested are not (descendants, Indig. studies academics, ethnobotanists etc.) so the ‘great’ TinT story will die of apathy & cultural neglect. SHAME
Wilga & box are friends from way back and Boonery & box are also very close but the TTT below has definitely had human intervention. Ive seen this TTT before and it will be in the archives somewhere but it needs another look. The rosewood has been threaded through the old box tree a long time ago & they have stayed together for a very long time. The rosewood/ boonery isnt living as a guest although it may be siphoning off some nutrients inside box trunk? Seriously, trees like these couldn’t be ignored in any other country but this one….
In my humble farmer’s opinion, the guests are dying because they aren’t as long-lived as their hosts. Boobialla’s don’t spring to mind as particularly enduring unlike like Rosewood & Currant bush, but this guy is still living its best life atop an ancient bimblebox while the downstairs guest has died.
The 3 in 1 tree was unique – indisputably undeniably anthropogenic yet unprotected because it doesn’t have a visible scar. Allan Tighe & I once watched an influential ‘Elder’ try to chow down on a hard unripe bumble fruit years ago & had a private laugh. The local black bureaucracies will do nothing about the TinTs because ignorance is bliss. ‘Cultural safety’ concerns are just a cover. If there was research funding available I think they would come on board but it’s a chicken/ egg situation. Is there no interest because there is no research money or no research $$$ because there is no interest? Groups like Eucalypt Australia & Australian Native Plants Society profess to love old eucalypts but don’t want to acknowledge the ‘mods’ on them in case someone gets offended. Indig. stockmen in eastern Australia are a threatened species now & dispossession from traditional lands almost complete. Plenty of Aboriginal people in rural Australia still but they don’t come out on the pastoral properties anymore. I believe the spirits of the ancestors still linger around these bizarre trees – call me flaky if you like but I think Baiame is still the boss of the bush, and these are his trees …
