Paperbark surprises

I have been too unwell to go for bushwalks for about a month, which is why the only post you’ve had is that passionate post-election piece from Inklings, written pre-illness and attendant brain fog.

But after my now-usual eleven hours sleep (!) on Saturday night, I felt it was time to try an easy, flat walk — along the Christmas Bells fire trail.

It led through a paperbark and banksia forest edging a swamp.

The first surprise was that the side track I took ended in this tranquil tea-brown lagoon.

Was it the end of the trail or was it the trail interrupted, submerged due to all the recent rains? Whatever its status, birds loved it, diving and dipping, causing concentric ripple rings, while a pair of ducks serenely sailed from one water-footed tree clump to another.

Retracing my steps, I took the other turning.

The paperbarks beside the track were beautiful; some old and spreading, bearing the marks of the bushfires of a few years ago, some young and unscarred.

I was beguiled by the sensuous turns and gestures of these young trees.

The many ways in which paperbarks choose to strip always takes my eye; I could photograph their patterns and subtle colours forever.

Older ones seem to burst out of their tattered skins, while younger others just demurely lift last year’s skirt aside to reveal the new and almost smooth skin beneath.

The highlight of the walk was meeting this tree for the first time. Its shiny pointy leaves struck me first, as so different; I could see that their undersides were pale and silvery. Then I saw it carried small round green berries.

I had enough to ask the NSW Native Plant boffins for an I.D. They promptly said it was a Red Ash or Soap Tree (Alphitonia excelsa). While here the few trees of the species were small, it can grow up to eight metres.

I looked it up, learning that those green berries would turn black, and that the uses of this tree were vast. Apart from being the favoured home for caterpillars of several butterflies, humans must have found them invaluable: 

‘Young leaf tips were chewed for an upset stomach. A decoction of bark and roots rubbed on the body as liniment for muscular pains or used as a gargle to relieve toothache.  High saponin content, meant it was also used as a soap. Leaves were used as an application for sore eyes and for headache.  The crushed leaves, and sometimes the crushed berries, were also used to poison fish. Leaves or underground roots used to apply to bites and stings of snakes, stingrays and insects.’

What a treat to come across such a distinctive tree; I will know it if I see it again.

Given it is June, I hadn’t expected to see any Christmas Bells, but I actually didn’t  see the plain or swamp in which they’d likely be hibernating. Through the trailside trees I glimpsed a wide area of lower growing shrubs which might be it, but I could see no access.

As the trail rose a little, the vegetation changed, with large and graceful gums now dominating.

But I was flagging, needing to walk no further, but to go home and lie down.

I’d had my overdue injection of Nature, with many small birds darting about, claiming the place as their world, with not a person in sight.

I could see that the plentiful acacias were getting ready to burst into blossom.

But who needs flowers when the many colours of the leaves are so pretty?