Moreton Bay Figs

Image via Tom Häkkinen
After backing-up the length of a football field I managed
to fit an entire tree into the frame. 

Oak trees are not native to Australia and are therefore quite a rare sight in Sydney. Which is something of a shame as they really are mighty trees and quite spectacular to look at. They are also particularly tree-like, I often think the oak embodies a sort of Platonic essence of trees. But for all that, we do have an equally impressive tree in Sydney, which for what it lacks in Platonic tree essence, more than makes up for in tree character.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Esther looking-up at a lichen-covered ancient fig. The
side of me prone to hyperbole likes to compare it to some
sort of gnarled-old-man of the forest, as if from one
of the works of Tolkien. 

Moreton Bay figs are common across a great swathe of the Eastern Seaboard of Australia. The planners of Rose Bay, whoever they were, in there infinite wisdom thought to plant rows of these mighty Figs along the harbour-side promenade and in Lyne Park and whenever I go to the Rose Bay Ferry Wharf I get a chance to marvel at the Gothic colonnade formed by these trees.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
A Gothic colonnade of Moreton Bay figs.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Is there not something altogether monstrous about the
proportions of these trees -- whose limbs, thanks to their
buttressing roots, are able to to stretch long boughs
towards you from so far away?

What’s more, these old figs around Rose Bay are not unimpressive in size either. The cathedral arches, medieval buttresses and architectural proportions of these trees were not the only ways in which they reminded me of the Notre-Dame de Paris -- trying to get a photo which captured the entire tree, I was transported back to a memory of having to keep walking further and further backwards, till Esther, standing at the doorway, was a barely visible ant, trying to get the whole Cathedral in one photo.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
The Moreton Bay fig betrays its murderous intentions
in the aerial roots it sends down from its upper boughs.

Although these particular figs were planted, generally the Moreton Bay fig is what is called an “epiphyte”. In the world of trees, this means the tree is a “strangler”, the seeds find there way into the boughs of other trees high-up in the canopy thanks to the birds who eat the figs, from there, with access to plenty of sunshine, the trees send roots back down to the earth; twisting and coiling their way around the torso of the host tree as they do so. Eventually, smothered within the choking embrace of this Gothic enclosure, the host tree is no longer able to get any sunlight and dies. In particularly old strangler figs, the host tree rots away completely leaving an empty cavernous space, like a crypt or sepulchre for the forgotten host tree.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
A young Moreton Bay fig beginning its life in the
crevice of a host tree -- and you thought it looked cute.

Although the Moreton Bay Figs that I photographed stand innocent, you can see their murderous intent in the aerial roots that they drop from their branches. Perhaps a bit more malign than your everyday oak, but it seems strangely fitting for a continent that was to be the home of a colony settled by convicts.

Watson’s Bay Ferry

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Departing Rose Bay, Point Piper is visible to the left
and the Sydney Harbour Bridge is visible in the distance.

The Watson’s Bay Ferry serves commuters from Sydney’s Eastern suburbs ferry wharfs to Circular Quay, the main ferry terminal of Sydney and also the site where the city was originally founded. You can jump on the Watson’s Bay ferry from Double Bay, Rose Bay and Watson’s Bay, as well as Darling Point ferry wharf and also the ferry wharf at Garden Island Naval Base and it will take you direct to the city centre. It’s fast, runs on time, zooms straight past all the peak hour traffic on your way to work and you get tremendous views of Port Jackson (also known as Sydney Harbour). Only pity for tourists is that outside of peak-hour times, the service is rather infrequent.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Fort Denison [centre] and the Sydney Opera House to
the right.

Fortunately for me I have the “onerous” task of having to cross this particular body of water on my way to school every morning. In all truthfulness it could well qualify as the highlight of my day. As hilarious as my students can be sometimes, it would take some special craziness from the students to top this view everyday. I enjoy seeing the deep blue of the water on a clear day, and passing Fort Denison, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. I also have a particular fondness for the two islands in the middle of the harbour which I pass but never set foot on, maybe it’s the influence of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” on a young and impressionable mind, but I can’t help but feel a particular fascination for all types of islands. Fittingly for a Robert Louis Stevenson fantasy one is named “Shark Island”, the other has been dubbed the infinitely more mundane “Clark Island”.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
The cruise ship Europa moored at Circular Quay
International Passenger Terminal

Occasionally I might also spot floating into the city one morning, the bloated carcass of a leviathan. Upturned, grotesque white belly bulging into the air, dwarfing nearby buildings, while underneath, the cool navy blue is just visible along the water line. Although called cruise ships, as a conurbation of some 2000-5000 people, they may as well fit the geographer’s definition of a medium-sized town. Ever since the Diane Brimble scandal, I can’t help but associate these massive ships with a certain decadence and the faint reek of death. Thus, the glistening white of their exteriors is but further testament to their ossification and the otherwise innocent circling of the seagulls above the harbour now takes-on a more a sinister hue.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Two ferries passing by.

Still, vibrant, young Sydney has life enough to spare without begrudging the cashed-up new arrivals their share. Only sometimes I wonder at what it must be like for those small Pacific Islands whose population doubles with the arrival of such a ship and are thus stuck in a grim dance with death, dependant as they are on the tourist dollar, but finding nevertheless that like an addictive drug, this same source of nourishment cheapens and destroys their culture.