Eucalyptus by Murray Bail Read Free Book Online Page A

difficult it became to continue.
    Many years were spent culling, reducing most species to a single healthy specimen.
    At the same time he strengthened his lines of supply; it was necessary to go far beyond the state of New South Wales. Useful information came from the most unlikely sources. Holland’s land was looking different and people began to look at him differently. When they listened they wore what may be called conservative grins. It was only natural the locals would be imprecise on the subject of eucalypts, and suffer appalling memory lapses, or casually mention something without realising its importance. Often while talking on the street Holland pulled out a scrap of paper and made a note; for example, the address of an obscure roadside nursery in the Northern Territory run by the second cousin of somebody’s stepsister, a Latvian, who had every known Australian parrot in cages, and who had perfected the art of painting desert scenes of photographic precision on emu eggs. That was where Holland acquired the island-loving E. nesophila , which has the urn-shaped fruit, and the Rough-leaved Range Gum ( E. aspersa ), very rare, difficult to grow.
    Every other week Holland was seen on the railway platform collecting seedlings wrapped in damp hessian, and one of the Sprunt sisters complained to anyone who’d listen that the dusty trucks delivering still more specimens were keeping her awake at night. The postmistress too reported a steady flow of seeds rustling around in manila envelopes, as well as monthly journals, and invoices decorated with sprigs.
    On days when Holland secured an especially rare specimen he felt like a pearl-diver who has burst to the surface, holding up a treasure. Certain eucalypts were rare because they rarely took root beyond a narrow radius. They were sensitive to drainage, lime in the soil, degrees of frost, elevation, rainfall and God knows what. Some stubbornly refused to grow in the month of March, others the week after Christmas. One tree would thrive in the shade of another; another would not. They were hypochondriacs, demanding esoteric manures and watering by hand.
    How he managed to cultivate to healthy size a Darwin Woollybutt ( E. miniata ), or those born in sandy deserts, is a mystery. The Silvertop Stringybark ( E. laevopinea ) requires 1000mm rainfall every year, and the Snow Gum, its name proclaims, thrives on altitude, sleet and ice. Somehow he had eucalypts coming forth on ordinary ground when normally they demanded clay, flat marsh or granite. After many false starts he encouraged the little Yellowtop Ash, so called, to poke out of some rocks. And so on.
    This vast labour with axe, crowbar and bucket, and the hatless traversing of paddocks gave him coarse hands and split fingernails, lined his face and made it brown; though as he came forward on the main street there was no doubt he still had trace elements of delicacy, of pastry, the only son of a disappointed baker.

    Did he eventually manage to have growing on his property every known eucalypt? What was he going to do next? With his daughter, Ellen, he’d always encouraged questions; but she didn’t seem interested. He was always waiting. The father is always waiting for the daughter. If only she had asked he would have told her everything he knew. He was a world authority in a narrow field. It was not that he wanted to give out bits and pieces of knowledge, he wanted to share his interest. Early on she’d been his helper. Together they planted well over a hundred trees, until she seemed to lose interest.
    It was virtually an outdoor museum of trees. A person could wander amongst the many different species and pick up all kinds of information, at the same time be enthralled, in some cases rendered speechless, by the clear examples of beauty. The diversity of the eucalypts itself was an education. At the slightest movement of the head there was always another eucalypt of different height, foliage and