It made me recall the plants that have travelled with me as I have moved from place to place - there is the thornless, yellow, banksia rose that has come to each new place as a cutting from the place I had just left.
It is here at Wentworth falls as both a hedging plant and as a bonsai, cuttings of which I brought with me from a bush at our last house in Quakers Hill, which was struck from the rose that climbed over the outside dunny at the farm at Glyn Marchog, which was struck from the one I grew at the Old Northern Trading Post.
That, in turn, was cut from the yellow rose that climbed with the black muscat grapes across the north and west sides of the veranda at the farm at Murray's Run (about 8 or 9 kms from the village), which in turn came from the one near the house at Toongabbie, which was struck from the one my grandfather had by his aviary at Killarney Vale, which he grew from cuttings of the big one that climbed about the barn and cottage at North Parramatta, which, finally, was struck from the one next to the house at the family dairy at Wentworth Falls, around the end of World War 2.
What a journey, over the course of generations, in the form of carefully nurtured cuttings carried from old homes to new homes, that rose has made. I wonder if the yellow banksia rose that I found growing among the weeds on a fence line here at Gwenmere shared a common parent with the ones that were growing on the dairy that once stood only three kilometres or so from where I now type?
This house stands on the same side of Jamieson Creek, though a bit further upstream, as did the dairy that fed and employed a great-grandfather, grandfather and grandmother, great-aunt, father, uncles and aunt, and assorted cousins, fosterlings, and boys from other properties about the village. The yellow banksia rose is often seen climbing over fences in the village, especially in the older parts - sometimes in company with a beautiful white flowering sibling. Gandpa had some of the white rose, too, but it seemed less robust than the yellow, and did not complete the long, roundabout journey with its sister and I.
Of course, there are other plants that have travelled with me too - in pots, or as cuttings or seeds or seedlings. The bonsais are easy to move, the great lumping orchid pots less so - but they too have a long history. Some of the orchids were handed on from grandpa, some from an old man across a long ago fence, whose departed wife had nurtured them and won ribbons for their beautiful blooms, back in the forties, fifties, and sixties - probably in the same orchid society grandpa attended.
All of them have stories longer than my memory, and many parts of those stories are now forgotten.
How sad that is. Here in Australia there are folk from the First Peoples who are trying to save the language and stories of their ancestors - just as other people in other lands are also doing for their own stories. It must be terribly difficult for them when they have so often been pushed far away from the lands in which their stories grew and flourished.
My heritage is, from what I can find in the records, mostly Anglo-Celtic. Those peoples, too, had a time in their past when the stories and genealogies were passed on from old to young through song and poetry. The Celtic Bards were famous for the vast storehouse of information that they carried in the memory.
But was it just "in their heads"? Or, was it, like so many of the Australian Aboriginal songs and stories, intimately linked to the landscape - the rocks, hills, streams, lakes, trees and plants, animals and insects? Was that a part of the terrible shock so many of the early European arrivals seemed to suffer? That their stories were adrift, unmoored, and unattached to the landscape they now walked through?
We define ourselves and our world with our stories. The plants I have carried with me for so many decades are linked to stories and characters now long past - but not forgotten, thanks to those gorgeous blossoms that remind me each year of the other people and places in that long story of my family.
If I travel through those places where, in past years, I settled for a while, I can still find signs of my presence - flowers and trees I planted - houses, fences, barns and stockyards I built. I can see them and straight away be pulled back into the memories of the people and happenings that made up my life in that place. Though one place I find it hard to drive past, knowing that house I had built there, and the trees and gardens I planted and cared for, have all vanished beneath carpark paving and a double line of townhouses.
How awful it must be to be cast out of the landscape - by war or migration - in which your story was formed, or to have the landscape torn up and replaced with something alien - as so often happens now in The City on The Plain - Sydney - as the developers and politicians tear down the landmarks of so many stories in pursuit of dollars and power.
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