Forests of Home
Lydia Best
A spring morning near Fernshaw by Isaac Whitehead mimics me. The canopy of towering trees and the natural debris littering the undergrowth sing of my childhood. I can smell it. Past the oil and canvas, past the soft air that first meets my nose—I can smell the ferns. I can smell the dampness of the bracken and the pungent algae flowing through the creek. I can smell the dust on the kangaroo-forged path and a wattle scent wafting from far away hills. I can smell the layers of this place.
***
Home – Manna Gum
I have lived in the same house my whole life, on acres of untouched bush—a creek flowing at the bottom of our backyard, a hill that reaches to the sky. This place was my first playground. My sister Ellie and I would build forts from fallen trees and learn to climb everything in sight. We would spend hours shuffling our feet along the rough ground, back and forth, forging ourselves little pathways that led to places only we knew. I learnt a lot in this bush—what plants are bush tucker, which are poisonous, which trees have weak branches that aren’t good to climb, and what flowers come out each season. I learnt most of this from Dad, who couldn’t walk more than two metres without stopping to marvel at some inconspicuous patch of lichen, or a plant so small he had to use a little botanist’s magnifying glass to see it properly. From him, I learnt how saltbush fruit is edible and tasty, how mistletoe is a parasitic plant, how we have orchids all over our property called nodding greenhoods and that there’s a native pea plant called a running postman. I learnt that platypus and echidnas are the only egg-laying mammals in the world, and that wombats have backward-angling pouches and cube shaped poo. For the things Ellie and I couldn’t remember, Mum and Dad would posit them as trivia questions on road trips.
‘What is the name of the non-native wattle that grows around here?’ Cootamundra wattle.
‘What is the new growth on trees after a fire called?’ Epicormic growth.
‘What is the name of the Eucalypt we have on our property?’ Manna gum.
I have never forgotten these things, even eight years later. It helps that the land here reminds me of my family, especially Dad. This land sat at the centre of his heart, and now everything here sings of his memory. The saltbush, the cherry ballarts, the mistletoe, the nodding greenhoods, everything. I still hear his voice sometimes, through the whisperings of air in Casuarina branches. Even the twinkling of water on gum leaves reminds me of him, the droplets beading like teardrops, falling down to meet with the earth he loved so deeply.
***
Old Growth Forest – Sequoia
I have photos from when I was twelve, walking around the old growth forest of sequoia redwoods just outside Apollo Bay. Mum and Ellie are with me in the foreground of these photos, and in the distance I can see Dad. He is there, just very far away. It had rained that day, and the mat of red fallen leaves on the forest floor was damp, making the earth feel softer. It was very quiet—drops of water falling from the tall green canopy and the trickle of a nearby creek were the only sounds. It was as if a blanket of calm had been draped over this ancient landscape.
One photo shows the creek, with moss-covered boulders sprinkling the water’s edge and fallen tree trunks creating bridges across. I’m in the background, clambering over the biggest trunk. I am the height of a pixel in this photo, my navy jacket and dishevelled blond hair only visible because of the redness of the trunks behind me. I remember feeling the power that this smallness held. I wanted to melt away into the myriad of trunks behind me and never be found. If I stayed here with Mum, Dad and Ellie, these trunks would hold time still and we would never have to watch Dad waste away. I could remain tiny; I would never have to hold anything. But we left an hour later, the car door slamming shut as time resumed. Dad was in the passenger seat.
***
Mt. Macedon – Ghost Gums
When I was young I used to rock climb on Mt Macedon. Scaling the faces of Camel’s Hump, I’d sit atop the cliffs, above the towering eucalypts, and gaze out at the vast land spread out under me: Hanging Rock, farms, oddly shaped paddocks, lakes, towns, bush. It was all there to marvel at. Dad took us on infinite walks up there—I remember doing one of the twelve-kilometre ones around eight times, and Ellie and I would always dread them. Two or three kilometres was not a walk in Dad’s eyes, it was a proper hike or nothing. But as much as we moaned and groaned on the drive up, we would find ourselves begrudgingly enjoying each and every one of them by no more than a kilometre in.
Towards the end, when Dad was getting sicker, it snowed, and we all went up to the Memorial Cross to see it. There wasn’t much left by the time we got there, but we did manage to scrape enough off the ground to create a few tiny snow-people and some mud-clouded snowballs. I can’t remember seeing snow before this day, and I remember thinking Dad’s long, white beard made him look very much like Santa in that wintery environment. That was also the first time I experienced the way snow envelops noise—the only sounds being the occasional whistle of wind through the far away ghost gums.
***
Croajingolong National Park – Ash and Stringybark
Our family’s holiday spot was always Mallacoota, in East Gippsland. We spent two weeks there every year, and we were what you might call ‘local tourists’, meaning we came and went but we also knew pretty well what was what. We had our special spot on the foreshore campground that needed to be booked a year in advance, and it truly was prime real estate. Our camper trailer overlooked a slope of neatly mowed grass that quickly met with the water’s edge, and our view was an unobstructed panorama of the Mallacoota Lake and Inlet. Ellie and I spent many evenings paddling in the shallow edges of water in the boat mooring area in front of our campsite, finding water slugs and moon jellyfish and, if we were lucky, the occasional seal. We liked riding our bikes around the entire town on the hardest gear to get huge leg muscles, and Dad taught me how to play cricket there, playing hours and hours of throw-and-catch on the lawn in front of our camper trailer to practice my fielding technique.
During the day, Mum and Dad would take us to all corners of Croajingolong National Park; Shipwreck Creek, where we swam in the freshwater that pooled out of the forest, only meeting with the sea at high tide. Genoa Falls, where we would find our usual swim hole located in the crook of a giant boulder. And the Narrows, where Dad taught us to sail motorboats and we would spend hours jumping off jetties and searching the bush for goannas. Towards the end of our stay, we would visit Eden, an old whaling town just over the border in New South Wales that we would stop for a stroll on the beach and some hot chips. Croajingolong knew me intimately.
Dad would take us on walks all around Mallacoota—my least favourite was twelve kilometres long, from Buckland’s Jetty to Captains Creek, and we always did this trek towards the end of our stays when I was thoroughly walked to death. But it was a beautiful place to hike, following the water’s edge along the Narrows, passing shell middens and walking further inland amongst the towering silvertop ash and stringybark trees. Once, toward the end of the walk, Mum and Ellie were both startled, hearing what sounded like a fart noise come from nearby bush. Turning around, they saw a goanna appear from the undergrowth and sheepishly waddle away into the forest.
Another place we hiked was through Mallacoota’s coastal heathland. I saw my first wild snake here—a gentle, sun-dazed red-bellied black snake that lay unbothered in the centre of the path, slowly gliding away into the heath as I got closer. Ellie and I once found a baby bird there too, one that must have just fallen out of its nest and was too young to save. It broke our hearts to leave it behind.
After Dad died we went back to Mallacoota twice, but both times the land felt somehow emptier. Mum, Ellie and I never saw any goannas or seals, we only walked bits of the walks and we didn’t go to Shipwreck Creek. Swimming at our favourite beaches felt viscerally uncomfortable, and so I never begged to go back to them. We didn’t go back to Genoa Falls either, and when we visited Eden, I remember listening to one of Dad’s songs on the beach—‘Caught In The Crowd’ by Kate Miller-Heidke—and I felt empty.
We haven’t been back since.
***
The Cemetery’s Bushland – Blackwood
Just down our road is the bushland that is the most important to me and to my growing up. I find it hard to face this place because it holds so much, but loving it less would mean losing bits of Dad, because this is the place where he is buried.
His essence is felt all across the landscape. What I forget about him I can find again here, his smell wafting out from beneath bracken and damp undergrowth, his voice echoing through the rock walls of river-forged gullies, his laugh in the distant trickle of creeks. I often dream about talking to skinks here, asking ‘where can I find him?’ and following as they lead me to tiny cracks in eroded cliffs. But the gaps are always a little too small, and I watch as their tails swirl away down into the deep parts of the earth, while I am left above.
“In Dad’s last few months alive it was springtime, and every year the earth seems to celebrate that.”
In Dad’s last few months alive it was springtime, and every year the earth seems to celebrate that. The cemetery that sits at the centre of this place transforms into a wash of colour. Cassinias bloom, their white flowers glowing like earth-bound clouds. The deep blue of Dianella clusters ask nearby waterways to change paths and cross here, and the yellow of yam daisies calls the sun in to visit.
When I was younger, this was my favourite place in the world, and you can still see the old me fossilised into the landscape. You can see me in the sun, trickling wet and golden through the canopy of blackwood and pooling at the bottom of red sand tracks. My heart is tangled up in the purple Hardenbergia, and my joy is bobbing at the centre of the creamy brown dam. My old vitality is alive in the wings of skipper butterflies and in the crisp air of those long afternoons after frost.
This is the forest that continually celebrates us—in life and in death. This is the forest of home, of childhood. Of my family, my dad, and me. My life is patterned in the branches of acacia, redwood and eucalypt. I am found under mossy boulders and in unassuming patches of lichen. My love for Dad is mirrored in the green of spring, and in the silence that settles after snow. And all of these forests are found again, in the brushstrokes of oil on canvas, in A spring morning near Fernshaw.
