Trish Neil

“The sandstone is the bone and root of the coast. On top of the cliff, the soil is thin and the scrub sparse. there are banksia bushes, with their sawtooth-edged leaves and dried seed cones like multiple, jabbering mouths. Against this austere grey-green, the occasional red or blue scribble of a flower looks startling. But further back to the west, the sandstone ledges slip down into the harbor, separating it into scores of inlets. In 1788 these sheltered coves were densely wooded. The largest trees were eucalypts: red gums, angophoras, scribbly gums and a dozen others. Until the late eighteenth century no European had ever seen a eucalypt, and very strange they must have looked, with their strings of hanging, half-shed bark, their smooth wrinkling joints (like armpits, elbows or crotches), their fluent gesticulations and haze of perennial foliage.”  Robert Hughes, in ‘The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding.

Or, to put it another way ………. “Someone should put underpants on those trees…” John Turier, sculptor.  ( www.kingstreetgallery.com.au/stockroom/john–turier)