burning

When Laura created her (all) extraordinary Christmas post assembling gifts for bloggers, I dashed off an attempt to show a place which had reminded me of the Girls Crystal landscape in question - and the crystal mindscape in general. (nb: This is not the one in the Strzeleckis - but on the other side of the Valley)

Up until a few years ago it had a distinctly 50's feel, with non-descript (ancient concrete) picnic tables and toilet blocks, ideologically and environmentally unsound trees, and river gums with their mighty, litigious limbs in tact and shading the white gravel road where you could count on your hand the number of cars and tractors that circled round the weir in an afternoon. Despite the recent upgrading, it is still a beautiful, peaceful place, gippsland-green and off the beaten tree-change track.

I ended up not posting it in December, but was thinking of the region as fires rage across the hills at Moondarra. The vista of distant hills winding up along the Thompson is the type of country that's burning.

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Comments: burning

"ideologically and environmentally unsound trees". Gorgeous phrase... I've always wondered what to call them.
Posted by Kent at January 26, 2006 06:37 PM

willows? ;)

Well - willows are in the second camp and their eradication is obviously nec. for river health.
But some of the old exotics planted in shady ignorance may get the chop for less sound reasoning?
Posted by boynton at January 26, 2006 06:46 PM

Deciduous is the word I was after. It's a different kind of un-Australian, but there's only so much gum I can take.
Posted by Kent at January 26, 2006 07:05 PM

I heard a firefighter refer to "Eucys" (sp?)the other day.
Re: plantantion timber, but I've never heard that contraction before.
Posted by boynton at January 27, 2006 11:46 AM

The oiliness of eucalypts is of course the reason we (and Californians ) have bushfires and England does not.
Plant English trees around your house if you live in the bush.
Posted by Brownie at February 3, 2006 10:07 PM