When a tree dies it becomes something else here: a home, for birds if big enough, and for insects, fungi and lichens.
Some seem more appealing to the latter than others, like this fantastically decorated tree.
It stood out amongst the tree trunks of the forest, even in the mist. And this was on north-western side of the trunk, not the south, as I’ve always been told they prefer.
Some consider the Australian bush harsh. Even in my rich mountain forests, there are areas where the dry furrowed bark of big stringybark trees dominate, with only bare ground and rocks, sticks and dry leaves beneath.
But it cannot be called harsh where she-oaks of any sort grow. These trees, properly called casuarinas, have what appear to be delicate bunches of slender drooping leaves.
Only they are virtually leafless, with the ‘leaves’ reduced to small teeth or scales arranged around the branchlets that we see as leaves.
The red she-oak timber, once used for shingles, is now prized for cabinetry. Most of the casuarina family burn with great heat and were in demand for bakers’ ovens.
But for me the standing trees have greatest value, rain or shine, for they grace the bush with their elegance, filter sunlight like fine lace, and turn raindrops into diamonds.
In the Giant Snow Gum Walk in Coolah Tops National Park, I saw this strange suspended sculpture ahead. A cocoon?
Pink one side, elephant grey on the other, it proved to be a strip of intensely wrinkled bark. I could see the mould that made it on the tree trunk above.
Artlessly natural, as we say, or naturally arty?
The Giant Snow Gums Walk in Coolah Tops National Park took me into a world totally new to me.
Here Eucalyptus pauciflora grow tall and straight, not low and blizzard-racked like the sort of snow gum I had in mind, as in the Snowy Mountains.
This open forest has a lower storey of a strange wattle, slender dark trunks bearing no lower branches beneath their oriental umbrellas of bluish-green.
To me their fluid shapes have a rather sinister frozen-in-action look. And are they whispering to each other up there as they lean towards each other?
Or are they receiving instructions to let me pass or not? Perhaps from the gargoyle mouth on the mighty snow gum just ahead?
My forest does not have much understorey but in the damper dips and gullies there are always pockets of a small tree—scentless rosewood, Synoum glandulosum.
It has made its presence very evident lately because of its profusion of clusters of pinkish red fruit.
Unfortunately for me they are not as succulent and appetising as they look, being really only fleshy seed capsules.
They remind me of mini-pomegranates—but only visually.
These are now splitting open into three sections to reveal orange-red seeds, which birds seem to like.
A rainforest pioneer, it is one of the few I do not need to raise and plant as, with help from the birds, it has looked after its own future very satisfactorily.
As you might expect, given that I live in forest country, I love trees.
On my place I keep planting more where they haven’t managed to regenerate by themselves after the clearing and burning and grazing of years ago.
Mostly I look at the forest as a wall, I suppose—and thus miss the individuality of the trees.
I ought to look up into my treetops more often, for koalas, not seen here since the 2002 fires.
I keep hoping, as I think I heard one a few months ago.
No koalas yet, but other things live in trees, like this beautifully healthy and quite old elkhorn high up in a casuarina.
When they get this big they can be too heavy for the tree or branch, and hence vulnerable to snapping off in a storm.
Even when a tree is totally destroyed, its trunk broken off and laid low, taken from skydweller to ground hugger, it takes on new life as host. Like this mighty ancient, which blocked the track for some time until a big enough chainsaw came along.
Where possums and birds may have lived in it before, now termites and beetles and fungi are residents.
This fungus colony has taken shelter in the horizontal overhang created by what was once vertical.
Nothing is wasted in nature.