Beneath the Bunya Pines

 

I stand beneath the Bunya Pines

That form a wall of green

I marvel at these sentinels –

Their shadow, cool, serene

 

Their spiky leaves cover the floor

But wait – there’s something more

Gigantic cones, colossal each

Unlike any I have seen before

 

What are these bombs? Coconut pines?

Raw like the Jurassic trees -

I am amazed - this is the first

I see them in these seas

 

But I hear a chuckle – Is it the pines?

I look up as they sway

How long is it you’ve crossed these hills?

It’s a long and weary way

 

While we - we have been for longer times

Before your kind began

We have seen the skies, the earth transform

We have seen the birth of man

 

We also talked to your elders lost

These pine nuts once a treat –

I can see their vision in the skies

Gathering pines in summer’s heat

 

They have been here, indeed for long

‘Living fossils’ quiet and tall

The world has moved, the city’s changed

We forget their fruiting call

 

And I wonder of the aeons passed

They survived, getting tough

I can only stare while they whisper soft,

Live each day – that’s enough…

The bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) dates back some 200 million years to the Jurassic period, the golden age of dinosaurs. It formed part of an alien landscape of non-flowering plants such as cycads, palms, conifers and ferns. During that period, the Pangaea supercontinent began to break apart. The bunya family, which was once widespread, eventually became more concentrated in the southern supercontinent Gondwana. There, it continued to feed enormous herbivorous sauropods that tossed massive cones down their gullets – whole! 

 What most astonishes, however, are their cones—among the largest produced by any tree on Earth. Each cone can grow to the size of a bowling ball, weighing up to 10 kilograms, packed with large, nutritious seeds. When these colossal cones fall, they land with a thud that commands respect, reinforcing the sense that the Bunya pine is not just ancient in age, but immense in presence—an enduring survivor from deep time still asserting itself in the modern landscape.

 Bunya pines tend to produce major cone crops only once every two to three years, reinforcing their slow, patient rhythm and their reputation as trees that operate on deep, ancient time rather than human scales. Also why it took me 4 years to spot the pines for the first time at the Bella Vista Farm