10/5/2026: a dawn walk: somethings old are new.

Lately, ive been musing over whether to sell my property and go full on into sailing. But, dragging me back is the fact that life here is not only peaceful, its cheap and devoid of human interference. I am no grid  literally and figuratively speaking. The same reasons I go sail cruising. 

This morning i took my dog and myself for a slow stroll to the east of the property, to see the sun come across the hills. It was beautiful, the soft pastel salmon hue of the skies south feed my soul. I followed a wallaby trail down off the ridge, starting to head back. Little well worn trails, passed along from marsupial to marsupial, occasionally echidna diggings revealed the presence of red ant colonies. It was too cold for the remaining ants to come out this morning though. 

Pretty soon after a large tree got my attention. There were lantana branches making the detour less attractive, but this tree was sending a strong call. I call these guys Old Man Trees, they're probably hundreds of years old. It wasn't a common type for here, its bark was coarse, corky almost, and a dark grey to charcoal colour. 

I noticed a section fifteen feet up where bark was missing, was this a canoe tree? A long way from solid water. May be a shelter, bark wrap or board of some type? There's so much indigenous history buried around here. 

   Then I noticed a piece of colonial history. Sections of barbed wire seemed to be wrapped around the trunk. A fence line; my fenceline! Looking closer I could see, the wire was embedded deeply, over a foot into the trunk. Over the opposite side, two more strands. They didn't line up well, their growth within the tree had displaced them. Old farmer work. Barbed wire began coming into Australia in the 1880s, so perhaps this is only 100 years old?