Interesting things have happened since I last wrote but a 2 hour stroll among the redgums at Dongon plains more than a week ago now was a game changer. I was actually a bit disappointed at first only seeing only one double dead TinT among the paleochannel CMTs but then came across the most ancient redgum ringtree imaginable. Going back to the homestead for breakfast I dropped in on a big old box tree at the dog kennels I’d spied earlier. To my delight, not only was there a wilga growing out of the trunk but the trunk was itself an epicormic shoot of a much older box tree. There is no gap at the junction between host & guest so the wilga has maxxed out its periphery constraint. Ive seen much bigger wilga guests but think this one is older than it looks given its semi-shaded situation. Nowhere near as old as the bimblebox host – could be a millennial (actual age not generation). This mismatch in ages where the host may be 10 times older than its guest is possible because the original trunk has gone.
Back home at Gingie, some of the CMTs I’ve seen lately are so outlandish they defy logic. The places where Im finding them upends my previous theories of Aboriginal camps and water availability. It seems as if complex CMTs can exist well away from where you would expect because the goolahgools are storing water. These places are like invisible oasis between sandhill wells & warrambools – filled with mods so extreme & whimsical that you need to see them to believe its possible. When I say invisible I mean to us now, not to the people of the time. Many goolahgools are also ringtrees or have a giveaway shape. The vast majority are whitewoods but there are also clusters of leopardwood goolahgools too. Leopardwood timber is much harder so I expect they lasted longer before rotting out. I knew there were goolahgools along the songlines but there are also many more growing in the red sodic soils of scrublands.
Priscilla was out again the other day with Ross Wissing – PhD Candidate, School of Architecture & Built Environment, Deakin University. A happy coincidence with them both coming on the same day & having much in common. Priscilla & Sandra & Jen are all keen to walk the paleochannel at Dongon plains with me if we can find a time that suits us all. Im keen to see if there are guests other than wilgas up there and if the gravel pits are bordered by TinTs like here at Cumborah/ Gali gurranaa. Rhonda & Bruce are getting their heads together re CMT/ TinT protection while academics in general are still keeping theirs buried in the sand. Gunnedah Archaeologist James Phelps is keen to come & see for himself & we have had a lot of emails traffic. Hopefully he can stay awhile & contribute to our understanding of what I now think of as a “lost civilisation”. What the ancestors did with trees in NthWest NSW & SthWest Qld shows a knowledge so far advanced from modern botany as to be a new division of plant science altogether.
