Friday, May 07, 2010

Travelling

IMGP3388-1 My Wollemi pine, is having a vacation. It is part of my Retracing Darwin exhibition down at the Gecko Gallery Studio at Fish creek, That’s the pine in a pot down in the corner amongst the things Charles Darwin didn’t see or describe, when he travelled from Sydney to Bathurst in 1836. From Govert’s Leap Darwin did look out down into the Wollemi national Park. Instead he just complained -

16th. Everywhere we have an open woodland, the ground being partially covered with a most thin pasture. The trees nearly all belong to one family;1 & have the surface of their leaves placed in a vertical instead of as in Europe a nearly horizontal position; This fact & their scantiness makes the woods light & shadowless; although under the scorching sun of the summer this is a loss of comfort, it is of importance to the farmer, as it allows grass to grow where it otherwise could not. — …. It is singular that the bark of some kinds annually falls, or hangs dead in long shreds, which swing about with the wind; & hence the woods appear desolate & untidy. — Nowhere is there an appearance of verdure or fertility, but rather that of arid sterility: — I cannot imagine a more complete contrast