20160424

BLUE GUMS

They loom, they overshadow the newly planted indigenous trees in a 

parking lot. They will either be removed or keel over in a storm.They do that - 

keel over in a storm. They are grand, majestic, smell fragrant after a rain. 

They are part of my childhood, my life. 

When it is dry, they are dusty + can become Brobdingnagian torches from a tiny 

spark. In early Summer they buzz with bees, making smokey-tasting honey

from their pom-poms of cream-coloured, stamen-burst flowers. Their strong 

trunks shed long curls of grey bark; behind is left a virginal skin, smooth, white.

They are not rooted in this country. They are a problem, a declared weed.

They suck up more than their fair share of our precious water. Working for 

Water has been removing them for years.

Eucalyptus grandis they are grandly named. Native to Australia, they settled

easily here. Stands of them can still be seen around old mine shafts, grown

for mine props. 

Their uses are many. One fell over during an electric storm alongside the 

swimming pool at a holiday resort when l was a child. It became our ship of

pirates. There was that smell of its oil put onto mosquito bites to ease the itch.

They made trips to Pretoria + back exciting as uprooted by the wind, they 

blocked the avenue of trees that was 'the Old Pretoria-Johannesburg Road'. 

Under what could speed-cops shade themselves waiting to trap the unwary 

racers? How could smalltown folk entertain themselves on a Sunday afternoon, 

if not sitting in their cars under the roadside Eucalipti to watch the passing

traffic? They shelter farm houses from the dust, heat, cold of the African 

grasslands, or maybe just proclaim them in the vast emptiness.
FOOT BRIDGE

GATE POST


















BOARD WALK
these photographs are the copyright of f. d. rubin

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