Snowgum - Lake Eucumbene

A dragon raises it’s ugly head.

Faces found in a snowgum, overlooking Lake Eucumbene

For those with an imaginative eye, faces and forms are seen in the random textures and shapes found in the natural world.

A cat perched on a snowgum.

In this case the source of the images is a snowgum, overlooking Lake Eucumbene, near Frying Pan and not all that far from Cooma on the Monaro.

The colours of the snowgum, enhanced by the illumination of the week, low sunshine of a chilly, cloudy, Autumn day, interact with the random shapes of the bark.

Delightful pup depicted on a snowgum.

The snowgums of the Monaro and Snowy Mountains are generally gnarled, due to the harsh conditions under which they strive and survive, living out their torturous existance amid the peircing, dry heat of summer and the crippling blizzards of winter.

Sculptured onto the snowgum, an eel peers out defiantly.

Who knows the age of this particular snowgum? Maybe a hundred years old. Snowgums are slow growing eucalypts, seldom achiving great stature in the tortured environment where they are predominant.

This specimine, left when the land was cleared for grazing, has no doubt seen many a long, dry, scorching summer and suffered the violence of the winter storms and the weight of accumulated snow on it’s branches.

A sly achidna gazes over it’s snout.

On occasions yeilding to the forces of nature and adapting it’s life accordingly, other times, clinging to it’s independence and resisting the incessent onslaughts of the high country environment.

All these fantasy images from walking around the butt of just one gnarled, old snowgum that keeps watch over the timeless grazing country and the waters of Lake Eucumbene.

Sadly, this grand old tree has little chance of producing viable offspring to carry on the cycle of life and suffering in it’s wake. The grazing sheep make short work of any seedlings that germinate and sprout.

Yet, as it’s life goes on for perhaps another hundred years, it will provide some shelter from the scorching heat of summer for many a sheep, oblivious to the hardship of a snowgum and caring only for it’s own survival.