A Single Tree Read online

  Old Tales of a Young Country (1871), Sydney University Press, 1972

  Marcus Clarke

  1876

  What is the dominant note of Australian scenery? That which is the dominant note of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry – Weird Melancholy. A poem like “L’Allegro” could never be written by an Australian. It is too airy, too sweet, too freshly happy. The Australian mountain forests are funereal, secret, stern. Their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair. No tender sentiment is nourished in their shade. In other lands the dying year is mourned, the falling leaves drop lightly on his bier. In the Australian forests no leaves fall. The savage winds shout among the rock clefts. From the melancholy gums strips of white bark hang and rustle. The very animal life of these frowning hills is either grotesque or ghostly. Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks, and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. The natives aver that, when night comes, from out the bottomless depth of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and, in form like a monstrous sea-calf, drags his loathsome length from out of the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy. No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains. Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings – Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan scenes in places

  “Made green with the running of rivers,

  And gracious with temperate air,”

  the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful grandeur of these barren hills, it drinks in their sentiment of defiant ferocity, and is steeped in bitterness.

  Australia has rightly been named the Land of the Dawning. Wrapped in the midst of early morning, her history looms vague and gigantic. The lonely horseman riding between the moonlight and the day sees vast shadows creeping across the shelterless and silent plains, hears strange noises in the primeval forest, where flourishes a vegetation long dead in other lands, and feels, despite his fortune, that the trim utilitarian civilisation which bred him shrinks into insignificance beside the contemptuous grandeur of forest and ranges coeval with an age in which European scientists have cradled his own race.

  There is a poem in every form of tree or flower, but the poetry which lives in the trees and flowers of Australia differs from those of other countries. Europe is the home of knightly song, of bright deeds and clear morning thought. Asia sinks beneath the weighty recollections of her past magnificence, as the Suttee sinks, jewel burdened, upon the corpse of dread grandeur, destructive even in its death. America swiftly hurries on her way, rapid, glittering, insatiable even as one of her own giant waterfalls. From the jungles of Africa, and the creeper-tangled groves of the Islands of the South, arise, from the glowing hearts of a thousand flowers, heavy and intoxicating odours – the Upas-poison which dwells in barbaric sensuality. In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning how to write. Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphics of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dreamland termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of desert sand better than all the bountiful richness of Egypt.

  Preface to Gordon’s Poems (1876), A. H. Massing & Co., Melbourne, 1909

  L. C. Cook

  1920

  The Lyre Bird is so called because the male bird’s tail feathers take the form of a lyre, an ancient musical instrument used by the Egyptians, Assyrians and others. This bird, in common with that Bird of Paradise and other gorgeously clad feathered beauties, is much sought for his beautiful feathers. The male bird only is of value in this respect, and nature has in consequence made him far more shy than his consorts (for he generally has several hens associated with him); indeed, are more difficult bird to see it would be hard to find. You hear him whistling away merrily, and can generally approach almost within sight of him; he continues whistling, and just as you think you cannot fail to see him this time there is silence and he is gone; and this is repeated till you cry and enough and you return home wondering what he is like.

  It seems incredible that such a large bird, handicapped as he is with such a heavily feathered tale, can conceal himself so well and so quickly.

  He is justly claims to be the Champion Mocking Bird of the World, and he well sustains that claim, and as time goes on even adds to his reputation, if that is possible, for an ornithologist friend of mine recently claimed that the bird is reproducing the sound of the motor horn as well as the train whistle.

  He is a past master in imitating the birds around him; the crack of the coachwhip bird, the melodious note of the male satin bower bird, the anvil ringing like note of the bell magpie (locally called jay or black magpie), and he can faithfully imitate the simultaneous whistling of a whole flock of parakeets.

  The fact that this inimitable mimic still reproduces the notes of birds that have long since left his locality leads to the supposition that the young male imitates his parent’s repertoire, which is natural and pleasant, and reminds us of the old days when we hear a beautiful mimic imitating calls that, excepting his reproduction, had not been heard anywhere near this vicinity for many years. It justifies us in seriously considering the possibility that the notes we call the lyre bird’s own may, after all, not be his own, but instead be the notes of birds of an extinct species.

  It would be difficult to imagine a more trying call to reproduce than that of the wattle bird, a harsher one than the grating sound (like a rusty hinge being turned) of the gang gang cockatoo, a sweeter than the trill of the harmonious thrush, or some of the white-backed magpies’ notes, and many the smaller birds such as the sericornis and different wrens; yet the lyre bird apparently finds no difficulty with any notes, sweet, harsh, guttural, melodious as they may be; with wonderful power and exquisite taste in modulation he passes from one to the other with interludes of notes we call his own, and those who have been privileged to hear him at his best, as in June and July, agree that the lyre bird, as a mimic, and as the producer of a pure melody, is without a peer in any part of the world.

  The hen bird can also imitate a little, especially the simple notes of the magpie and others of a similar class, but in a very subdued way, and can only be heard a few yards away, while the male bird’s notes in suitable country can be heard a mile away.

  The hen is comparatively tame, and only lays one egg, though occasionally two have been found in a nest (the second one most probably being laid by another hen), and the egg takes a long time to incubate. They do not vary greatly in colour. Mr. A. J. Campbell describes them: Colour varies from light to a very dark purplish grey, largely blotched more or less, with dark brown or sepia and dull purplish slate.

  The majority of nests are now found off the ground, a favourite site being the top of an old stump. The nests are very large, and built of sticks, and artfully concealed and lined inside and beautifully finished off with rootlets, especially those of tree ferns. In the old days most of the nests were built on the ground, but since the advent of the fox, by far the greater number choose a leaning tree, top of hollow stump, top of tree fern, uprooted trees, etc. The hen sits on its young for an incredibly long time after it is hatched, and when the latter does leave the nest it is nearly as big as its mother. They perch
at night in the tops of the highest trees, and can, when they like, fly very much better than they are credited with being able to, but rarely fly when they can gain the same end by running or springing.

  The male bird works up the dancing mound in the courting season, upon which he dances when going through his mocking to the apparent admiration of the hens. This mound resembles a miniature garden bed, nicely rounded upon top and an average size of an ordinary round table.

  No Zoo in the world has been able to keep a lyre bird, and it is cruelty to try. I have had many requests for them, but always refuse, as they are birds of the bush, and we all think so much of them that the thought of their suffering in captivity is unendurable to us.

  The Land of the Lyre Bird: a Story of Early Settlement in the

  Great Forest of South Gippsland (1920), Shire of Korumburra for the

  South Gippsland Development League, 1966

  Lyle Courtney

  2010

  In the enchantment of the moment, the present fades and I see that pool as I first saw it on an autumn evening such as this more than 50 years ago. Driven by the urgency of approaching night, two young brothers and their maiden aunt in charge of a goat and her two kids, paused there uncertainly as the mother goat drank, to plot their course to the bush camp, set up that day by older males of the family.

  It was the 14th of March 1935. The boys Jack and I, aged seven and five, the youngest of eight siblings, had stayed with Auntie Mag in the empty house that had been our family home since long before I was born on the 7th of January 1930. Soon after my mother’s death at the age of 39, three weeks after my birth, my father struck another patch of bad luck that sent us heading for destitution, as the severity of the Great Depression increased. By 1935 the position was desperate, and under unpleasant circumstances, Dad lost our house and its 11 acres of land, leaving us virtually penniless.

  Yet, even in the pathos and bitterness of that moment, Auntie Mag insisted on staying behind to clean up the soot and mortar, from where in a defiant claim of ownership, the sturdy cast iron stove had been torn from its brick surrounds by my father. It was impossible for Auntie Mag’s nature to allow her to leave the house though now stove-less and empty, in an untidy state for its new occupants.

  My father was basically a kindly dreamer, but a thorough education in the school of experience enabled him to accept the realities of life and, in his own unorthodox way, cope with ever-changing fortune. He was a scrupulously honest man, with courage to speak his mind and then bear the consequences. He was born in Melbourne in 1881, the son of a sailor and the licensee of a Collingwood hotel.

  He left home at the age of 13 and spent the next 17 years among the big timber of the Strzelecki Ranges in Gippsland, where, with large families of stoic Catholics and Presbyterians, he helped destroy for farmland perhaps the best hardwood forest the world has ever seen. The guilt of being partner in that crime haunted him for the rest of his life and instil­led in him a deep repentant understanding and mateship with nature.

  Those years in the wilds of Gippsland, amid the fellowship of kindly people in common hardship, was a major factor in his decision to take the remaining members of his young family into the bush, instead of seeking compromising charity.

  Fearless loyalty and compassion for her late sister’s children, especially Jack and me, left Auntie Mag no choice but to turn her back on the comfortable life style of her family and accompany us.

  The night was closing in fast, as we left the waterhole and walked up the eastern slope of the wooded range of hills that cradled the town behind us. White quartz gravel, muted in the twilight, was liberally strewn among the leaves and sparse undergrowth that covered the ground beneath the black-trunked ironbarks, which stood unchallenged, on the highest points of the hard Ordovician sandstone ridges.

  Some 15 minutes later, we crested a hill and looked over the miles of forest declining eastward, to the cleared farmland of the volcanic plains beyond and the distant range of mountains indistinctly blending into the far horizon. But best of all, just before the forest thickened and became more diverse a few hundred yards down the slope, like a beacon of hope, a glorious campfire illuminated Dad, my three brothers, Louis, 17, Keith, 14, Lloyd, 12 and my 11 year old sister Yvonne, all busy with the chores of the occasion, amid the calico tents and other meagre chattels of our new home.

  Our Houseless Home: A Colourful Bush Childhood during the Great Depression,

  Eileen Courtney, Maryborough, Victoria, 2010

  P. J. F. Coutts and D. C. Witter

  1977

  Mound Sites

  Five mound sites have been excavated in the central Western District. These include three large and two smaller mounds located along the Hopkins River drainage system. Excavations were conducted as part of an intensive site survey of the Willaura 1:100,000 map sheet. Some details of two of the excavations, KP/1 and FM/1, have already been published. Brief descriptions of the sites follow:

  Chatsworth (CH/1)

  This site is situated on a high rise overlooking the Hopkins River flood plain. The mound is approximately 30 m in diameter and rises about 75 cm above the surrounding terrain at its highest point. 14 m2 were excavated, revealing two major occupation horizons. Excavated evidence includes quartz, diorite, chert and chalcedony flakes, fragments of emu egg shell and fresh-water mussels, ochre, burnt and unburnt animal bones, charred timber, hearth stones and three burials. A very large firepit was uncovered, associated with numerous hearth stones and large chunks of charred timber. Three pit burials were discovered including one which appears to be either a multiple burial or two intercutting burial pits. One of the individuals in this complex had been cremated. The other burials were inhumations. An interesting feature of the site was the discovery of dense flaking floors in an underlying red buckshot layer. Normally the horizons underlying the upper, darker layers in the mounds are sterile. We have interpreted this feature as a fleeting phase of occupation associated with the initial construction of the mound before it was occupied intensively.

  The radiocarbon date is not from the earliest occupation context. It dates the last phase of use of the large cooking pit which was 64O±95 B.P.

  KP/1

  This is another large mound site, situated on a natural rise with good vantage of the surrounding countryside, approximately 1 km from the Hopkins River. It is about 36 m in diameter and 1 m deep at its highest point. 22 m2 were excavated. Its stratigraphy proved to be extremely complex with several phases of occupation and many structural features. The latter included a hearth associated with burnt stone, charred timber, charcoal and bone fragments; ovens associated with burnt stones and charcoal; and three burials. Several flaking floors were identified as well. Burial A was flexed and had been laid out on the ground and covered with earth and rock debris. Burials B and C were pit burials, and burial B was also a cremation. A shallow pit about 45 cm deep and between 70 and 75 cm in diameter had been excavated for the burial. Evidence of charred timber and charcoal was found in the pit and underlying the corpse. After the body had been buried, a small pit was dug into the top of the grave and a fire lit, presumably part of some ceremonial ritual. Later again, the burial site was sealed with a hard clay-like cap.

  The excavated inventory included fragments of egg shell, fresh­water mussel, burnt and unburnt animal bone, quartz, diorite, chalcedony and chert flakes and other artefacts including bone tools and backed blades.

  The charcoal sample was taken from one of the earliest occupation contexts at the site and dated at 744±145 B.P.

  Records of the Victorian Archaeological Survey No. 4,

  August 1977

  Chris Wallace Crabbe

  1979

  Gippsland Fading

  Well, and now you quit the dish of soft hills

  with eyes of water clouds forever rising

  grass dotted here and there with leatherbound animals

  sunlight in drifting swatches

  dry dairy folk moist Vi
ctorian flavours

  tilted hills deployed for some Chinese brush