1998
The Narrow Leaf Red Ironbark: now there’s an employment of no-nonsense nouniness. This eucalypt has a straight trunk and hard, deeply furrowed bark. Like a strip of dark-grey clay dried out after being ploughed. The leaves are noticeably narrow. What isn’t described is their ‘weeping habit’ (a technical term); that is, leaves drooping in a shimmer of real melancholy.
This suspended air of perpetual sadness would be of little consequence, except the Narrow Leaf Red Ironbark is one of the most common eucalypts on earth; certainly they crowd the woodland areas of eastern Australia, all the way up to the top of Queensland. The botanical name recognised this in the very beginning: crebra from the Latin ‘frequent’, ‘in close succession’.
Imagine the effect of such widespread statements of melancholy on the common mood. Needless to say it has permeated and reappeared in the long faces of our people, where the jaw has lengthened, and in words formed by almost imperceptible mouth movements, which often filter the mention of excessive emotions. It has shaded in khaki-grey our everyday stories, and when and how they are told, even the myths and legends, such as they are, just as surely as the Norwegians have been formed by snow and ice.
The eucalypts may be seen as daily reminders of the sadnesses between fathers and daughters, the deadpan stoicism of nature (which of course isn’t stoicism at all), drought and melting asphalt in the cities. Each leaf hanging downwards suggests another hard-luck story or a dry line or joke to wave away the flies.
Only a small number of other eucalypts, those pale and stately beauties that have achieved fame on tea towels, postage stamps and calendars, correct the general impression of melancholy, as put forward by E. crebra and some of the other ironbarks. They bring a glow of light to a paddock, a rockface, a footpath in the city: the two Salmon Gums standing in the traffic island between the university and the cemetery in Melbourne! It only needs a few. Theirs is a majestic statement on what is alive and spreading: continuation.
And there is a parallel nearby. It may not be exaggeration to say that the formidable instinct in men to measure, which is often mistaken for pessimism, is counterbalanced by the unfolding optimism of women, which is nothing less than life itself; their endless trump card.
It is shown in miniature by the reverence women have for flowers, at its most concentrated when they look up and in recognition of their natural affinity accept flowers.
Eucalpytus, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1998