Lush green groundcover at Freshwater National Park.
Freshwater National Park smells burnt, but it looks lush green. I can hear the sleepy chortles of lorikeets, somewhere up in the bloodwoods. It’s late afternoon, on a hot January day. Maybe they’ve had too much sun, or too much nectar, or both. Scribbly gums rise like pale caramel milkshakes from the verdant green. Paperbarks are shaggy, shambolic. The dark limbs of bloodwoods, and lighter ones of angophoras, curve every-which-way, sometimes looping back on themselves.
Angophora
A magpie surveys me with hunched shoulders from a slender sheoak. Dead brown curling gumleaves crunch underfoot, as meat ants scurry haphazardly across the ground. Forward and back, rapidly. Dodgem-car-fashion.
A currawong call caresses the afternoon, over the loud metallic buzz of katydids and cicadas.
Fluffy plumes of blady grass wave in the breeze.
Bloodwood and scribbly gum.
Scribbles – made by moth larvae – cover the treetrunks in an incoherent frenzy. Like some despotic moth schoolmaster has made his pupils sign the same moth-word – I can’t read what it says – over and over again. Sideways.
A dove coos gently from further away, and a sacred kingfisher pips loudly. It’s above me in the tree – blue head, blue wings, and peachy underpants.
This place is mostly a luxuriant, knee-high, sedge forest. The tufted black flower spikes of sedges are shooting, arching in all directions, bowing.
Sedge forest.
I think this is the feather sedge, Ptilothrix deusta. (Am I right, Mr Booth?)
Sprinkled through the forest are white clusters of Pimelia flowers and yellow sprays of Goodenia. Pale pink daisies and small white lilies
The cobalt-blue petals of a Dianella flower are drawn back severely from its praying yellow stamens. Lomandra flower sprays make delicate Christmas tree shapes, hung with tiny pale yellow baubles and attended by shy, shiny black beetles. They fly off quickly when I approach.
Spindly banksias rise above my head, with white-and-green flattened tongues of leaves. Burnt banksia cones are on the ground, follicles agape like quacking ducklings.
The burnt hollow bases of scribbly gums worry me (as once a tree is weakened like this, its lifespan is reduced). The number of hollows in their limbs and upper trunks is reassuring. Plenty of wildlife-homes here. But where are the young scribbly gums?
Scribbly gum woodland.
Pale white snake of a path winds through the bright green sedges and grass.
Grass trees stand around like spectators. Black flower spikes are exclamation marks atop green explosions, above dried brown grass skirts, perched on crooked black scaly pedestals. Those recently burnt have their skirts removed, but are otherwise identical. After fire, grass trees put on new green leaves almost immediately.
They twinkle in the sun when a breeze stirs their long, shiny green leaves.
Grass trees
Broken grass tree pedestals, dismembered on the ground, dissolve into crescents of curved orange scales, glistening with resin.
Grass tree pedestal, disintegrating.
I see what was burnt now – a section on the eastern side, near the houses. Maybe a strip along the entire boundary? The unburnt area is humpy with dead grass and twigs and bark. Green grass and sedges are spiking through, and growing over the dead stuff.
It’s hard to find information about this place, perched oddly as it is amongst the sprawling suburbs and industrial areas of North Lakes, Narangba and Deception Bay. But there is something beautiful and beguiling about it: both a woodland and a wetland (the name, and the sedges hint at that). I’d like to come back when the place is flooded. The forest portrait I made of this woodland seems too yellow, but the photos tell me it is not. Another conundrum for the artist/naturalist, to ponder but perhaps never solve.
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- Scribbly gum woodland at Freshwater (pastel)
(Click or tap to reveal complete image)
Detail of ‘Scribbly gum woodland at Freshwater’. Pastel on paper, by Paula Peeters.
The lorikeets are rousing now, in a final crazy screeching session before bed. Miraculously, the cicada calls are stuttering to stillness. Crows retreat in a tumbling flight, with hacking caws, skyward.
Paula, yYour word pictures are up there with your art.
A currawong call caresses the afternoon
Black flower spikes are exclamation marks atop green explosions, above dried brown grass skirts, perched on crooked black scaly pedestals.
Both really capture the look and feel of the Australian bush I grew up with. Thank you.
Michael Fox
Mt Gravatt Environment Group
Hi Michael, I am very pleased that these words spoke to you! Thanks for reading and commenting. Cheers, Paula
Paula, your prose is a beautiful picture.
Jan W
Ahh, thank you Jan. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Cheers, Paula
Thanks for taking me to the Australian woodlands on a wet winters day in England.
Hey Carol, thanks for making the journey! Cheers, Paula
Paula, thank you for this fantastic and compelling prose, equal to your amazing art.
Cheers
Sharon O
Hi Sharon, thankyou for your kind words of praise. It was great to meet you and I look forward to seeing your tree pictures one day. Cheers, Paula
Beautiful imagery, Paula! You write wonderful prose and of course your pictures are a delight. Thank you! 🙂
Thank you Jane for being such a regular reader and commenter! Cheers, Paula
Spot on with the Ptilothrix deusta Paula.
Hey thanks Ron! Might have to buy you a beer after all…
Delicious descriptions Paula. I enjoyed them very much!
Thankyou kindly Gail!
I ♥ your trees with hearts, esaiecplly that last one. I feel so lucky that I’m able to do one of the things I love best on a daily basis. I would like to give drawing a try again someday. I’m not particularly good at it, but it’s one of those things that brings joy even without the talent to go with it. Kind of like bowling.
Hi Ilayda, thanks for loving the trees! And it’s great to feel grateful. Please have a go at drawing again. It’s terrific fun, and the more you practice, the better you’ll get at it. Cheers, Paula