Out of MtLawleyshire – Trees at Murdoch University & Matilda Bay

I have had a busy week and while there have been no sunset photos for the end of the week, there have been lots of trees.

It is Festival season in Perth, and within the Perth festival is the Writer’s Festival – & I am a writer, of sorts.  This year, I actually attended an event at the University fo Western Australia, but before that, I was invited to attend a Q&A with China Mieville at Murdoch University in the southern suburbs.  It was an excellent talk.  He’s a very articulate engaging character, which is to be expected from his books (my favourite is The City & The City).  But, though he would probably raise his eyebrows at this, it was also a chance to look at trees.

Murdoch University has wonderful native grounds, filled with mostly natives.  But not just trees – flowers:

Grevillea:

 

This – so reminiscent of a flame tree flower, but it isn’t.  Glorious red 🙂

Eucalypt blossom:

 

& the nuts they leave behind:

Water lilies:

& this

Grows into this:

 

Now the trees. I don’t know what this is, but its brilliant green is striking, and the duller yet graceful shape of a sheoak:

 

Wonderful tree with almost furry bark:

 

Cape Lilac in the outside cafe:

 

These are just beautiful from various places around the campus:

 

& this is the trunk of a massive tree:

Finally, two towering trees soaring into the inconstant, uneven sky of a terribly hot day threatening rain and delivering none:

 

A plane tree in the city as I made my way home:

& this?  At the small park in West Perth just down from where I teach – a peppermint tree looking like a jungle unto itself:

Today, I attended a talk by China Mieville & the wonderful Margaret Atwood.  They played so well off each other, and Margaret Atwood is such a character – so sharp & funny & wonderfully subversive.  I love her writing, have heard her talk often and this was just as wonderful.  China Mieville was a wonderful partner for her.  Of course, with his genre writing, her novels Oyrx & Crake and After the Flood (as well as The Handmaid’s Tale)  were under discussion along with his novels  (& mention of  a book the talk reminded me of that I want to read for the PhD: Hoban’s Riddley Walker).

And although I had no time to wander along the river, everywhere you go around the University of Western Australia and Matilda Bay there are trees:

a Moreton Bay fig dappled in the inconstant sunlight today:

A scribbly gum and another:

 

just trees – a strip of manicured wilderness between roads and car parks, paperbarks and others:

 

in the university grounds as I hurried towards the lecture theatre – white trunk amidst intense green:

& this wonderful tree on the corner of a carpark:

 

& then it was time to go in, and after that?  Time to go to work.  No more trees till, maybe tomorrow.

& today, it rained.  A little.  Enough for me to make my students laugh as I ran outside to dance about in it.  In the middle of the city.  Oh dear 🙂  But it was such a relief after a cooler, though intensely humid day, and tonight, I will have to have a light blanket.  Much better than the 40 degree celsius of the two days before!

I hope you enjoyed my trees.  I enjoyed looking at them, and the activities of the two days 🙂