Wild Ephemera

Note: This entry is a re-posting of the very first article I put up. It was accidently deleted a little while ago when I was attempting to edit it. A salutary lesson!

The term ‘landmark tree’, coined by the English environmental organization ‘Common Ground’, describes those trees that tell us something about a place. Such trees carry stories and contribute to distinctive local character and there are a number in the Blue Mountains.

One of the most important of these, in my view, is the Evergreen Oak (Quercus ilex) located at the rear of a modern sporting oval in Wentworth Falls. It was planted at a ceremony in January 1936 by Mr. W. W. Froggatt, President of the Field Naturalists’ Club of NSW, to celebrate the centenary of Charles Darwin’s visit to Wentworth Falls (or The Weatherboard as it was then known) toward the end of his long voyage as a naturalist on HMS Beagle. Around midday on 17th January 1836, Darwin and his guide “baited their horses” at the Weatherboard Inn on their way to Bathurst. The tree also marks the site of the old inn.

I have long been fascinated by Darwin and his voyage on the Beagle and, given his impact on the way we think about the world, he may well be the most significant figure to have visited the Blue Mountains.

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Anvil Rock is a weathered sandstone formation that overlooks the northern reaches of the Grose Valley, about 6km from Blackheath. Given the name in 1938 because its shape reminded visitors of a blacksmith’s anvil, it looks across to Mount Banks and offers a fine panoramic view of the surrounding country. 

Last month I attended an interesting and unusual function here, the ‘unveiling’ of an actual anvil set securely at the top of the anvil-shaped rock. This wasn’t a new idea, or indeed a new anvil, for in the 1940s an anvil from the Sydney foundry of Bradford Kendall was given to the local council and installed on the lookout, cementing a special bond between the local people and this particular landscape feature. Manufactured from six hundredweight (305kg) of hardened steel, according to local testimony it was carried into position on a specially constructed stretcher.

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The ‘McBrair Building’, depicted in this photograph and part of the map of my regular journeys by train, may not be here much longer. Its location has made it vulnerable, for the Great Western Highway is being widened to cope with the ever increasing flow of traffic over the Blue Mountains and soon the bulldozers will move in and a large slice of Lawson’s commercial heart will disappear. 

Sited opposite the railway station and accommodating several shops, there may be little in its physical appearance to attract special interest. However, externals are not the only arbiter of importance. Buildings like this can be storytellers, touchstones of collective memory that help preserve the ‘footprints’ of those who’ve shaped the local community.

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 Rain, cloudy skies and mists have been a regular feature of life in the Blue Mountains during the present summer. This photograph was taken recently by my daughter Petah at the Olympian Rock Lookout, Leura. Usually there is a spectacular view of the Jamison Valley but that day the whole landscape was enveloped completely in a thick mist. It reminded me of something Delia Falconer wrote in her novel The Service of Clouds (Picador, 1997): “When the mists come …Your feet are shod in lichen. Your hair breathes vapour at the roots. You are walking on clouds.”

In past years the benefits of mountain mists were often promoted by the local tourist operators as countering the effects of our dry climate on female complexions. If only women realized, they argued, “how beneficial mountain mists are to the skin, we would see more young ladies taking advantage of a misty day for an outing … The mist or moisture of the atmosphere is necessary for the production of the blooming cheeks. What better then than a real heavy mist that sinks into the skin and softens it? Girls, you have the very thing right at your doors; why not take advantage of it?” (Blue Mountains Gazette, 5th June 1903)

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