‘Are you sure it’s a weed, not a native orchid?’ a neighbour asks as I point it out.
‘Definitely,’ I reply, describing the difference between the taller, thinner native leek orchids and this plump little invader.
‘Well,’ he responds, with a sigh of disappointment, ‘I’ll have to stop looking after them then.’
In 1935, Edith published her only book, the first systematic, yet popular, account of Victorian wattles. It’s little more than a pamphlet, 44 pages in length with a soft green and gold cover. I think she intended to write others, had mentioned the possibility of an orchid book, but nothing else materialised. The connection to the war and patriotism is unmistakable here. Come Back in Wattle Time reads not just as a call for the appreciation of Australian nature, but as a homeland calling for sons and daughters lost to foreign soils.
‘Every Australian would admit that, until he left his own land, he had not realised how deep-seated was his affection for the wattles,’ Edith wrote. ‘To catch the haunting perfume in an alien land was to be “sick for home”.’
While in Perth, I pick up a book on Western Australian War Memorials. Images of monuments and architecture dominate the book – stone statues, gilded honour boards and implacable blocks of granite, like giant unyielding tombstones. The gravitas and perpetuity of death.
But when I think of war memorials, I don’t think of these structures. I think of trees. I think of the avenue of honour that once lined the old highway to Ballarat, the Norfolk pines at the Port Elliot Soldiers Memorial Garden. Unlike the cold grey monuments, these are memorials to the resurrection of life, not to loss: living trees to tend and care for, growing tall and straight as the soldiers they represent. Nature’s balm for both the grieving and the returning injured.
Golden wattle (Acacia pycnantha) from Edith’s book, Come Back in Wattle Time
Avenues of honour are characteristically Australian. Begun in Ballarat in 1917 and growing out of the Arbor Day movement, they spread rapidly across the continent. By 1921, over 100 avenues had been planted in Victoria. They were community initiatives, requiring an ongoing dedication and care that stone does not.
The idea was also taken up in Perth by Kings Park. An avenue of oaks on May Drive was planted, but was soon replaced by more resilient Bangalay (Eucalyptus botryoides) in the 1940s. Only one oak tree survives. A second drive, of sugar gums, commemorates the losses of World War II, but it is the most recent of these memorials, Marri Walk, that captures my attention.
The path takes me out of the exquisitely manicured centre of the park, lush green and chattering tourists soon giving way to a quiet emptiness, broken only by the reassuring summer crackle of dried leaves underfoot and the scented sighs of eucalypts. It’s a while before I realise that the little plaques under the trees are recording not botanical names, but the names of the dead. The marri trees stretch mottled shade overhead, their leaves weeping, as eucalypts do, to avoid excessive transpiration in the heat. Their thick fibrous bark, insulation against heat and fire, is soaked with red gum running from old wounds down their trunks. And yet still they stand, bearing their scars proudly, survivors of an ancient war we’ve waged against nature for centuries. I sniffle as I pass, although whether it’s for the soldiers, the trees or simply from hayfever, I do not know.
The war took its toll on the Coleman family, as it did on all families, with fears for cousins and husbands serving in conflict. Donald Thomson served with distinction with the RAAF in the Solomons, New Guinea and northern Australia, organising Aboriginal patrols to protect the northern shores.
The commander of a Japanese mini-submarine sent to attack Sydney shot himself to avoid capture. His mother later visited the site of her son’s death, leaving these words in tribute.
I nurtured my son just as I grew precious flowers
So that he could dedicate himself to the Emperor.
Now that the storm has passed
And all the cherry blossoms have blown away,
The garden looks very deserted.
I’m not sure there is ever a winner in war, with either nature or nations. Just an uneasy compromise, a wounded conciliation, offering some small comfort.
Flowers of the eucalypt: A source of national pride
By Edith Coleman
The Australian eucalypt is certainly worthy of our pride, for it is unique, both in habit of growth and in the unfolding of its flowers. It is full of interest to the scientist as well as the nature-lover, and each of the 250 recorded species has a distinct and characteristic beauty of its own.
According to the specialist, the eucalypts form approximately three-fourths of our forest vegetation, and they embrace some of the tallest trees in the world. Moreover, they are almost entirely Australian, the genus not even extending to New Zealand. Though now planted freely in other countries, they are so typical of Australia that to come upon them in an alien land is to feel like Ruth, sick for home. Some day, when they have become hedged about with tradition and romance, when poet and painter have done their share to make them live in colour and song, our eucalypts will come into their own. To the Australian it comes as a surprise to hear our trees described as monotonous, though in general, I think, this expression comes from those who see them with eyes accustomed to the vivid landscapes of rural England. Admittedly, perhaps, to the English-born visitor, lost in the ‘long-drawn aisles’ of a karri forest, there is a deadly sameness about the tall timber, and at times there is a touch of sadness in the soft greys and blues of our trees. One must live among them to catch their subtle beauty, and the Australian knows them in other moods.
He has seen their
