Eco-inking by the Birrarung, down by the riverside. National Tree Day 2024.
On National Tree Day thousands of people are involved in planting. This day was put in place in 1996 in the Hawke Labor Government in response to a huge crisis of trees, and more than 26 million trees have been planted since.
Where we gathered on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin nations by Burnley Park, I invited trees to stir the imagination. I was confident that the allure of natural pigments would create rich expression of tree worlds.
The feel of winter could not have been more marked! Icy cold day. Very little colour abroad in our short walk to the park.
A telling history in nature
There beneath a huge river red gum, I tried to conjure the connection that once was between here, the park and there the river, before the South East freeway, before the Yarra Boulevard. Before the surveyor Hoddle was given the equivalent of free parking in a paddock to put his survey horses, and long long before.
We moved on from this remnant. There were leaves on the ground to gather and a wattle at a distance to go and check out.
Painting trees
Back in our ‘studio’ Wurundjeri Hub at Richmond Learning Centre, warm as toast, participants took our limited winter palette into action. Such beauty! As a student, my wonderful assistant Daniella had a job as a cocktail waitress, and she brought these skills into refilling, taking things away, wiping and admiring people’s work.
Trees came into being. Techniques I saw used were: stencils, dandelion flower as paint brush, hessian printing, stems to draw fragile lines, redaction of text on printed page in different colours, torn text highlighted with colour, a kind of mapping in lines across a page, smudging, wiping and leaf printing.
Reflections
‘We were invited to be with the Birrarung in a place that I wouldn't have thought I was with it, but we were.’
‘Many memories were brought back to me of how important particular trees have been to me at particular times in my life. I’m not a family tree of my family person, but I have my family tree of trees.’
‘I appreciated really taking National Tree Day, making a connection to it through going to the park, the tactile experience of the found materials from the trees.’
‘My focus was thinking of the Yingabeal scar tree at Heide where I go once a week and lead tours. I'm so connected to that landscape and now its significance is becoming better understood and more welcomed by visitors. The elders are giving us language and opening us to their stories.’
Thanks to City of Yarra for the climate action grant that supports this project, and to Yarra Riverkeeper Association, the auspice.