The big tree

Once a colossal specimen overseeing the lives of the many birds it sheltered, now it just looms like a giant hand clutching at the sky. But even in death, The Big Tree refuses to be ignored.

There’s a titanic Tasmanian blue gum at the front of our house, which the old locals refer to as The Big Tree.

It is a significant tree for the Dja Dja Wurrung people too — long before Scottish explorer John Stuart Hepburn trekked through these parts in 1854. It’s so old, it was even old back then.

In that time, the Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) was more plentiful in southern Victoria, where it grew mostly in damp valleys and woodlands — much less here on the drier land north of the Great Divide.

But this specimen, one of a meagre few still remaining in this area, was a particularly handsome example. It was a giant, with a lovely symmetrical habit.

From its trunk great hulking boughs jutted out in every direction, festooned with a scribble of bark, revealing beneath, smart, suede-like streaks of pink and grey.

Every year, ivory blossoms, stippled with a fuzz of showy stamens, nestled themselves atop great clutches of blue-grey leaves. Its branches teemed with a chorus of birds. And frenetic highways of bees came and went from three separate hives within its private hollows.

In hot, dry years, it provided a stopover for the budgerigar. And in the wet years, it was the sacred kingfisher who would flit and flutter, like tiny, mechanical wind-up toys, between its branches.

All through the seasons, it is still home to the parrots, the cockatoos, galahs and the corellas, who squabble over nest sites in its many ancient holes and crevices.

And in late autumn, it’s a determined group of Australian wood duck who congregate, insistently waiting for the creek below to gather its waters.

For the generations since our house was built, in 1857, this noble tree has been a kind of keeper of secrets, overseeing the life and times of the families it sheltered; the endless mechanism of the seasons, and the more recently changing climate.

Sadly, in our time here, we’ve witnessed its great decline from magnificent to malaise, in all of ten years.

It’s hard to say whether this aged old giant had reached the end of its natural lifespan, or succumbed to the effects of climate change with all its oscillations between too wet and too dry.

Or perhaps borer had sapped the life out of it — or all of the above in lethal combination.

I have a photo of me somewhere, arms around its trunk, hugging but a fraction of its impressive girth. But this was before it sent colossal limbs crashing to the ground on the stillest of days, as it pruned itself smaller for battle.

One day when I was mowing beneath its shadow, I unexpectedly ran out of petrol, and went to the shed for the jerry can. When I returned, the lawn mower was squashed like a pancake beneath a gargantuan limb. I felt like I might have been under it too, if it wasn’t for the trip to the shed.

My days of hugging that particular tree ended abruptly.

After that, we learned to admire it from a safe distance, as every year a new tree-sized chunk of it came down. And as it was shedding, what remained of it shot taller into the sky, like a great weed going-to-seed. Its canopy became sparse, and it started to look thin and glum. 

Finally, over a two-year period of dying, it stands today, completely devoid of life. Like a giant ghoulish hand thrusting out of the ground, its drab wizened fingers clutch at the sky.

Once, many years ago now, at the advice of a kinesiologist, I had written down a list of all the things that worried me in life.

The wellbeing of this tree was high on my list at number four. But it’s funny how you make peace with situations that cannot be changed.

Like all things beyond one’s control (especially on a gargantuan scale, such as The Big Tree), one can only accept the unravelling thread of change.

Sometimes in life, ill winds blow, and the world shifts a little. Even giant Methuselah trees die.

Now I see beauty in its skeleton. I watch as the bark unravels, to reveal a grey, like the mellow husk of a pearl.

In autumn, when the cloistering silence of fog rolls down the valley, this ghost of a tree is monolithic in silhouette.

And when storm clouds gather in great sooty billows, its branches — complete with a crown of cockatoos — look incredible to my eye. From loss, a new kind of beauty emerges.

Meanwhile, the secrets of the tree are kept deep within its sacred wooden heart, to remain forever untold. If only dead trees could whisper about the legion of things they’ve seen.

Now is the time to get in your orders for Australia's pinkest, dottie-est, most glorious magazine. All orders for Galah Issue 13 made by 14 October will get free shipping (shipping will be $10 thereafter).

Carpe diem and get your present cupboard stocked up for Christmas. Sorry for mentioning the C word so early, but I really want you to not have to pay shipping, and for that to happen, you need to order now.

Pre-order Issue 13

Jeremy's September garden notes

• There’s been a lot going on at The Stones this month. As much as we’ve focused on the garden, we’ve also been focussing on the buildings. In a lost-in-time place like this, they each share a kind of symbiotic relationship. Garden and buildings here must speak to each other affectionately. 
• We had part of our roof replaced. On prising up the century-old tin, which was no longer keeping the house safe, we discovered the original wooden shingles underneath. These were hand-cut and meticulously fish-scaled to create a roof that well-served the house for its first 70 years. Incredible! What a privilege it was to see them, if only for a few hours before the new roof was installed over the top.  

• We’ve been repointing the front of the old stone barn and giving it a fresh whitewash of lime. It’s a labour of love, and one which hasn’t been done since the 1930s. When finished, it will visually link the barn to the house, which are perpendicular to each other at the courtyard.  
• The lime mortar, which has been brewing in big bins for weeks, has incredible bioclimatic properties, allowing buildings to breathe and regulate humidity. Over time, the mortar strengthens, unlike modern-day renders which weaken and deteriorate. Its dynamic properties makes working with it a dream, but it’s a race against time to get it finished before the weather warms up too much. Doing this task in hot weather would result in compromised strength and durability. 

• Tulipa saxatilis are one of my favourite spring flowers, which are native to the Mediterranean - particularly Crete.
• I chanced to purchase some bulbs from an old garden in Castlemaine a couple of years back, where they were growing in wild abandon. I planted them in the gravel, nestled besides a brute of an old stone wall, where they look all the more delicate in contrast.

• We’ve had our annual paddock clean up. This involves raking up and loading countless trailer loads of sticks, bark, excess leaves and fallen branches, and carting them down to the bonfire, which burned for two days. We also dispensed with cactus cuttings and other non compostable clippings from the garden. For a microsecond, the paddock looks like the manicured lawns of a bowling green. 

• We stealthily took a cutting from a lovely bush, from the verge of a ramshackle, seemingly abandoned house in Ballan. It was a little miracle that it sprouted roots, and grew into what we now know is to be Ribes sanguineaum, or the flowering redcurrant. This charming native of Canada and western North America, gives all the feels of an old world garden, of lazy backyard picnics, white linen drying on the line, and cloud watching. 

Catch up on Jeremy's previous stories here or find him on Instagram at @thestonescentralvictoria