Not all aussie academics have low curiosity/ high PC type personalities. Some are genuinely helpful and break the bounds of their European style education. Most of my recent blogs have tended to be a bit gloomy re any chance of wider interest in the TinTs or CMTs in general so Ive decided to focus on the bright side. There are new papers out on Ringtrees & carved Boab trees & another called Arboreal Alterations: An Introduction to Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) in Australia., which “brings together papers examining recent research on CMTs from across Australia.” The authors (Sue O’Connor, Jane Balme, Ursula K. Frederick, Melissa Marshall) haven’t included the TinTs unfortunately but Jen Silcock’s paper was submitted around the same time so they may not of seen it. If the researchers from Canberra ANU & Armidale UNE can get flight funding to travel to Darwin & beyond they may also get petrol money to drive to Walgett one day?
There has also been a dendrology breakthrough closer to home in the Gwydir wetlands around Moree. An old coolabah with a diameter of 176 cm was dated as 566 yrs old using radiocarbon dating as well as pith samples. The problem with traditional drilled core sampling is that eucalypts hollow out over time with the oldest wood eaten by termites centuries ago. See link below,
The BFCs here are much bigger than that & older as there is less rainfall. The coolabah along the Ginghet at Ingalala would be twice that diameter & most of the others below are culturally modified as well. The look-out tree on the Barwon is a dead redgum but we have Bimble box & Black box bigger than 176 cm diameter too. The diameter of the biggest (TinT) bimblebox host is 137 cm & it has a big old wilga growing out of one branch! Just a further 3 hour drive west guys and you could have come face to face with some big mammas that make your “matriarch” look like a spindly teenage girl …
One of the original good guys who was free with botanical info was Paul Forster (Principal botanist Dr Paul Forster, B.Sc. (Hons.), M.Sc., D.Sc Department of Environment and Science Brisbane) Paul introduced me to Jen Silcock back in 2020 like this
Hey Jen,
I’ve had a lot of too and fro correspondence with Jane Pye, a grazier in the arid zone in northern NSW. They have a lot of old trees (usually with scars and near waterholes) that have old individuals of other species growing out of them. Local traditional owners say that these were deliberately planted. Jane desperately wants someone to come and properly document all of this, it is probably quite widespread and unrecognised. Any thoughts?
Going back through our emails I realise now that the lack of cultural knowledge about the TinTs is not unusual at all. Paul said in 2021
“You are lucky that the connection to elders that knew the significance of your trees was still in existence. So much of this cultural knowledge has been lost and reinvention is never going to be truly the same.”
Also
“The fact that there is an oral record of the practise also pretty much cements it into reality.”
Paul has 10 plants named after him and around 500 named by him as well as pages of publications to his credit. By ignoring the TinTs, academics involved with Aboriginal studies & Indigenous scholars are disrespecting both Allan Tighe & his ‘Uncle’/ mentor Reggie Murray. There will be limited access to the TinTs after 2026 & you guys will have no one to blame but yourselves.
Oops slipped back into negative territory there, so I will tell you about another good guy who is trying to identify the tree fungus here that I think is involved in establishing some guest trees inside their hosts. Dr Matt Barrett works as a mycologist/ taxonomist at JCU in Cairns. He is interested in the evolution and specialisation of plants and fungi & conducts “research into the systematics and ecology of fungi”. He has been trying to identify that fungus found around the old Aboriginal camps here and in some TinTs. Matt says
“The fungus is a species of Fulvifomes, which was my second guess. It belongs to a lineage that extends across northern and eastern Australia, predominantly on Eucalypts but also Acacia and Casuarina.”
Matt advises caution in applying that species name to forms on other host trees as he says there are a few similar species on Eucalypts & Acacia & Casuarina. This means the fungus found on some Needlewood trees here (Hakea leucoptera) may not be the same as those found on Coolabah or Box or Belah (Casuarina cristata). Below is a currant/ warrior bush in belah TinT in the middle of a farming paddock here that is a total pain in the arse to operate big machinery around. There is no current legislation to protect this non eucalypt TinT and Im out on a limb saving it but just look at the last photo… above the guest there is a fungal hole. This is how they inserted the guest into a solid host – email me when you get your heads around it & let there be proper recognition of the smartest ancestors on earth.
