The moment I saw this exuberantly “bird-ready” example of Western Australia’s floral emblem, I suddenly remembered one of my favourite Australian poems.
Les Murray (1938 – 2019) never became a Nobel Laureate.
Depending on my mood, I find that fact “puzzling” (at his best, Murray was so very obviously – for much of his adult life – one of the greater 20th century poets) or “utterly predictable”. (his verse was so overtly Australian, and his views were not always “palatable”)
The Quality of Sprawl’s opening verse:
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
Click here to read the entire poem, and this to learn more about its author.
Anigozanthos manglesii – the red-and-green kangaroo paw – is perhaps the most spectacularly “weird” example of a flowering plant which prefers birds, not bees.
Southwestern WA is the “world capital” of vertebrate pollination; most of the local vertebrate pollinators are birds, but the list also includes small mammals and at least one reptile.
(photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken in Perth’s Kings Park at 11.37 am on 30 August 2023)
Sprawl is Hank Stamper in Never Give an Inch
bisecting an obstructive official’s desk with a chainsaw.
Not harming the official. Sprawl is never brutal
though it’s often intransigent.
Hi Doug. We’ve been sprawling over quite a chunk of WA since we crossed the border with SA on 5 September. I’m writing this from Carnarvon, where we’ve spent the past 2 days. Tomorrow we spread the sprawl to Coral Bay. Another couple of days and we’ll about turn and sprawl south down the coast to Perth.