River Red Gums

Not so far from home are big, glorious River Red Gum trees.

They have among their number gracious old giants that weave their way to the stars with branches of great beauty.

And they have cheeky young saplings that have narrow strips of bark that aspire to greater girth in years to come.

I do so love to be with these gums that, daily, keep company with the Birrarung, and that as often as I choose, I can feel their roots curling deep into the flatland silt and grow strong; and I can feel their skytop leaves dancing in the wind and basking in the setting sun and feel the rejuvenation of whimsy and light.

I love that I can come here and that Parks Victoria teach me about the landscapes that inspired the Heidelberg School artists to faithfully represent the bush as it was, not as homesick for England artists wished it might be.

But I grieve that there is nothing that tells me how these flats were sites of great import for the Wurundjeri people, how they met with others of the Kulin nation, and fished and talked and revelled in the abundance of the region.

And I wonder what it must have felt like, to watch as settlers took their axes to the trees and cleared the land; to mourn the loss of all that was and to know that walking paths and songlines that had survived and survived were being brutally challenged and in many instances ended.

And more often than not the insanity of our world will strike me – that our desire to reap profit leads us to monetise the intergenerational gifts of nature, that we pull from the ground minerals and trees that simply can not be replaced in the space of one generation, for they took many, oh so many, tranches of time to be created.

Even amidst these thoughts, most days that I walk there, I find that my transitory and not-so-transitory blues are lifted by the grey-green verdancy of this beautiful landscape.

My spirit becomes lighter walking beside these great gums with their elongated fingers that hold firmly my wee worries and frail ego.

And I find myself oh-so-very-grateful that my life accords me the freedom and ability to walk with such wondrous friends that offer me the rough solace of bark.