For thousands of years, the area now known as the Redland Bay district has been abundantly forested. Before the arrival of Europeans in the 1800's, it was covered with coastal rain forest, with soaring cedar trees growing proud from the rich red earth. The cedars are long gone, made into furniture and doors. They likely survive in antique shops and sell for a high price.
The settlers laboured long and hard to carve out pasture and crop lands from this thick forest. There are still some of the original trees, like the Bribie Island Pine, Moreton Bay Fig and Mangrove that grew before white settlement, but many of the trees that now grace Redland Bay have come from Asia and South America. These are the Camphour Laurel, the Poinciana, Jacaranda and Leopard Tree.
These photos were taken in October 2004 using a Fujifilm FinePix S7000. You are welcome to copy the pictures here (640x480), or download the 1280x960x16M orginals for your own use.
A tableau of mingled Bougainvillea and Honeysuckle flowers, bathed in afternoon sunlight. Display 1280x960.
The Queenslander house with its wide verandahs and Poinciana tree canopies surrounding is how people have been keeping cool in the tropical heat for 150 years. The palm trees are host to climbing succulants. In summer the Poinciana's canopy turns a vivid crimson with multitude of flowers.
This is the time when when the monsoonal rains come and dumps so much water on the grateful earth that the plants grow almost before your eyes, sustained by the thik humidity and hot sunshine. This here is how it looked before the summer rains, and after the driest six months in living memory. Display 1280x960.
Camphour Laurel trees grow well in the red soil. If left alone they can grow into large groves, covering several hectares. Nothing else can grow under their thick canopy, and being a tree introduced from Asia, the native animals have no use for it.
They really do smell of camphour too. If you crush the leaves you can smell it. The camphour is what makes them so successful, as nothing will eat it's leaves or burrow through its wood. They grow so vigorously that the government has declared it a "noxious weed" which is a somewhat unlovely description of this magnificent tree. The wood is a high grade cabinet timber which is made into fine furniture.
Beneath this tree, in the middle of a grove, is a pleasant place to sit and relax. The sound that the leaves make as the wind blows through them has a really calming effect. The scent of the camphour is powerful and makes you sleepy. Display 1280x960.
The Jacaranda comes into bloom in October/November and is a powerful reminder that Christmas is coming soon and maybe holidays too. These mauve coloured flowers cover the tree and make a thick carpet on the ground beneath. Display 1280x960.
The Bunya Pine looks like a Christmas tree, a really big Christmas tree. These trees are native to the Bunya Mountains, around 200 kilometers west of Redland Bay, where they grow in large numbers. They make a large seed-pod, or nut, which is abou the size of a large football. To have one fall on your head would be a serious problem.
In the past, the indigenous people from around southeast Queensland would gather at the Bunya Mountains when the nuts were ripe, and they would feast on them. Display 1280x960.
Silky Oaks are a beautiful native tree of the grevillea family. Most of it's relatives are shrubs and ground cover, but this noble tree grows tall and proud. In Spring they make these yellow flowers.
Like Camphour Laurels, the fast-growing Silky Oak makes fine cabinet timber. In pre-IKEA times, there would hardly have been a house in Queensland without some piece of furniture made of Silky Oak. Display 1280x960.
Mangroves put the lie to the old saying about real estate, that they aren't making any more of it. Little by little they colonize the mud-flats, staking a claim to that rich oozing mud. And little by little more mud gathers around their roots and trunk until there is land that does not go under water with every high tide. Then the plants that are less salt-tolerant than the mangrove move in and colonize this zone and after hundreds of years finally there is new land.
If you looked at this same scene in 50 years, the mangroves may have advanced maybe 5 meters along that mud spit.
What you see here is low-tide. At high tide, it is not uncommon to see a pod of wild dolphins feeding in the shallows just here. The shrubs in the foreground are eucalyptus. Display 1280x960.
Leopard trees have mottled shiny bark that someone thought looked like a leopard's skin. This a graceful tree that lines many suburban streets and parks. They are perfect as a screen against the hot western sun, the light filtering though the leaves, highlighting their delicate shading.
Rainbow lorrikeets are known to bathe in its canopy after rain. The water is held in the fine leaves as large droplets, and the parrots congregate in noisy groups to take advantage of the water. I used to live in the house next to the trees seen here, and was delighted many times to see the parrots doing their thing after a storm.
Rainbow lorrikeets are sometimes called the "soccer hooligans" of the bird world. They move in noisy groups, often brawling and disputing with each other as they go. They enjoy drinking the fermented nectar in umbrella-tree flowers, and when they do they can get so drunk that they lose their grip on the flower stem and fall out of the tree. With a noisy squak they regain their wings, usually before reaching the ground, and go back to their drinking session.
Boab tree are sometimes called bottle trees because their trunks can become very fat and water-filled. They are slow growing and come from Madagascar, off the east coast of africa. Early European visitors to north western Australia found mature Boab trees growing there. Someone brought them across the Indian Ocean, though no-one knows who.
These Boab trees seen here are immature, though they may be 50 years old. They are known to live for hundreds of years and grow to truly massive proportions.
The palm trees are planted in a grove, possibly to shade the house from the afternoon sun. Display 1280x960.
This poinciana tree has lost most of its leaves, which is normal for this time of year (October) but also because of the drought. The El Nino (pron el nee-nyo) effect has brought severe drought to most of eastern Australia, while making the west coast of South America much wetter than usual. A fine example of how Nature balances itself.
See the many seed pods on the upper branches. Poinciana trees are ideal for climbing in. In the days when children were still allowed to climb trees, my family had two large poincianas in the back yard. My three brothers and I spent hours every weekend climbing and swinging through it branches. Display 1280x960.
Moreton Bay Fig trees are among the most massive and robust tree anywhere in the world. The two seen here were planted over 100 years ago to protect the house that has long since gone from the western sun.
These two trees symbolize what a good marriage/partnership is about. The early settlers were husbands and wives standing shoulder to shoulder, their lives merged together like the canopies of these two trees. But when age or sickness took one away, the survivor could stand alone. "For they were trees, not vines". Display 1280x960.
I hope you've enjoyed this tour of the Trees of Redland Bay.
Feel free to email me with comments and suggestions: email David Tuffley
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Date: 11 February 2007
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