(continued)

Our American trees that I am familiar with are generally straight trunked. The wattle in our back yard in Australia had a sinuously curved feminine trunk. It is dead, but its daughter now graces our yard with yellow blossoms in season. Gnarly trunks and buttress roots characterise the Moreton Bay Figs. Three fairy tale specimens are in a triangular park between Eagle, Creek and Elizabeth Streets in downtown Brisbane. The seasonal display of the bronze blossoms of the silky oaks, the orange blossoms amid the lacy leaves of the poincianas and the purple jacarandas bring change as the flowers grow and drop off. I am now an alien who appreciates the beauty and changes in the Australian landscape - possibly like many other Australians of foreign origin.

I go out hunting fungi with the Queensland Mycological Society. I met my wife when we were both attending a conference in Cambridge University. I must admit that while some of the lectures and discussions were going on we walked through the meadows hunting fungi. She was living in Norway, and I was living in the US at the time. Eventually she came to the US but didn’t like it. She was born, grew up and went to university in Australia before going to Europe and wanted to go home when I retired. Since she came to the United States for me I came to Australia for her.

In May we are going up the Murray on a boat, will explore the banks in the day and sleep on the boat as it chugs its way to another place on the river.

Foxy, I have nine descendants in the US who I visited last year. I dearly loved my grandparents who none of the my nine descendants had the good fortune to know. I think of them a lot, especially my mother’s mother. I am writing a family history which includes a lot of my memories of my grandparents and material about the milieu that they lived in. I hope to finish it before I die and leave that as a legacy.

Dear David f,

I love reading your work. You write so visually,
and I'm transported. How about having something
published? I for one would buy and read it!

"The recent bush-fires felt alien to me,
Seeing people suffering was so very hard to see.
How would we cope if our families had died?
Yet, as a country we rallied, and took it in stride.

Droughts, floods, and firestorms,
They all have a flair,
To cause alienation and deep, deep despair.
This brown land of ours with beauty to spare,
But, its nature's cruelty that's difficult to bear."

While I agree with all the comments about the particular flora, what I miss so much about Australia are the birds. Though I'm not at all knowledgable about birds and certainly not a bird watcher, I miss evenings when entire trees turning into screeching, cheeping, cackling sanctuaries and brightly coloured birds chatter and yell at their kids, and abuse the nieghbours while they try to find a perch for the night.

I miss walking up the road and seeing the ground near where I lived resemble a huge, billowy pink and grey doona where parrots carpet the ground looking for insects. I miss the slashes of colour that suddenly appear to highlight the bright greens of the palms.

But as to what feels most alien? Got to admit that, more than anything, I find that in the threads of OLO. From what I read here it seems often that I am reading about an alien culture and on some days, that 'My' Australia exists only in my head.

Beautifully written davidf.

I have lived in many parts of Australia, some arid and desert regions, the tropics and the temperate areas where I now dwell.

Each landscape has it's own beauty but, like you I do love the European landscape, the beauty of the deciduous trees changing colour and form with the seasons, the vast pine forests of Europe. Since the drought I have missed GREEN. Oh for a green paddock or a green tinge in the horizon.

Dorothea McKellar certainly knew something about Australia with her poem (in part):

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains,
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me.

" A kaleidoscope of many pieces,
A puzzle not yet completed,
A child still,
And yet, tomorrow's woman
you are.

Full of promise, tanned by the sun,
Athletic and proud,
Red-earth coloured hair,
Bronzed, rich and natural.
Like chocolate, deliciously tempting.

Perceptive eyes,
Clear and light,
The colour of a cloudy summer's sky.
Constantly changing with your mood,
Innocent, yet knowing you are.

Tomorrow's woman, dabbling in poetry,
Searching for meaning in things abstract.
You are,
Summers by the sea,
Wind blown hair,
Pre-washed denims,
Turquoise and silver.

Winters on the ski-slopes,
A cup of hot chocolate,
Fire light and guitar music,
And seventeen to-day."

I look in the mirror today, and wonder, whatever
happened to that seventeen year old?

david f, a few years ago I visited Maits Rest on Cape Otway in Vic. where there is a remnant temperate rainforest of the type that was formerly dominant throughout eastern Australia. Here was a moist, verdant forest totally different from the eucalypt forests that abound. On a hot summers day there was a welcome and an embrace in the coolness and aliveness of this forest.

Since the end of the last ice age 8-10,000 years ago fire has decimated these forests and the eucalypt has been the great beneficiary of and propagator of more fire.

As much as I love the bush I know where you're coming from.