Of Falling Leaves , Trees

and Other Things

By Judy Tudor

RECENTLY, when visiting a friend in a farming district north of Sydney, we found him cutting a huge tree. Would I like to stay and see it fall?

No, I would not—falling trees being something that I could not abide. 1 removed myself about quarter of a mile away and contemplated nature while the deed was done. When at last it crashed to the ground, it was followed by the customary split second of dead silence, and this, in turn, by screams and yells out of which I could distinguish only. “Come quickly—come quickly!” Then the sound of feet pounding down the track.

A big, hot palpitating lump (my heart, I suspect) came up and was stuck in my throat; my legs seemed to be made of cotton wool. Visions of gory corpses swam before me. Who was it—one of the kids? Or one of the men? .Or just the Beagle-hound pup?

I tottered off in the direction of the pounding feet and met them at the bend of the road. “W-what is it?”

I asked.

“Come quick, before they recover,”

I was told, they’re stunned. A nest of baby possums. The cutest things you've ever seen. Glider possums . .”

Possums, forsooth! I could have bitten the hand that grabbed me and pulled me up the bush track.

Falling trees have not been my lot of recent years, but it took me two days to recover from that one. While the fit was upon me I dug up my old New Guinea diary and, at a certain spot that describes a new camp we had made on the Ulahau River {in land, north-west of Wewak), read: ONE thing I have discovered since being here (New Guinea) is that I have a morbid fear of falling trees. I can’t understand this as I was brought up on a saw-mill in the New Zealand bush. (Query; Maybe mother was, in in the pre natal sense, “frightened” by a falling tree?). But there it is.

The site for the new house I selected myself. Centuries before it must have been part of a river bed; later, no doubt, a r ]Y e £ flat; k ut now is a terrace, 30 or 40 feet above the present level of the stream, about a quarter of an acre in ex tent and quite level. When we saw it first it was covered with tall timber and the usual tangled undergrowth of sap lings, vines and creepers. The boys cleaned out the small stuff and made a leaf shelter to sleep under and shifted the tent-sail and our belongings up from below. I wasn’t particularly happy about this arrangement but I was assured that the trees could be felled in such a way as not to interfere with the camp. Any how, it is the wet season and I had to choose between being flooded out on the river bank and the menace -of falling trees.

As axe-men, the local gentry leave a

lot to be desired although they are madly happy if given any sort of chopping in strument. Three or four or even more of them will attack a huge tree, whittling away with their fool little axes like wood-peckers. Because their antics fill me with foreboding I have taken par ticular notice of their technique and I’m sure that they have no idea of where a tree is going to fall until it actually be gins to topple, then they get themselves out of the way with the agility of moun tain goats.

Usually when they are clearing I re move myself at least half a mile away but when the time came to clear the larger timber on our flat I had fever and I was in bed in the improvised bedroom with what they called a “big fella sick.”

The sick was big enough, but not so big as to make me oblivious of all else, i spent a miserable day under a pile of trade-blankets while trees crashed all around me and the men made frequent calculations to prove that they would all miss me by at least a yard. They did.

But after the days work was over and the boys were standing waiting for their rice issue there was an ominous creaking from above, a scatter of bare feet and rice tins and a shriek of “Look out Masta! Diwai ’i like bruk now!”

I didn’t wait. Some sort of reflex action caused me to leap straight out of bed and I covered the first twenty feet in two hops and a jump. But fever, quinine and athletics don’t mix and an ant-bed was right in my path. I stretched my whole length in it, which naturally infuriated the ants who came out in thousands. This variety don’t bite; they are known to the boys as being of the “stink-finish” variety—in other words, they smell. But I was beyond caring about that. I lay there, on my tummy, thinking: “This is the end,” and waiting for the broken tree to crash into the middle of my back.

Nothing happened. I took a quick look over my shoulder; the whole matter of the broken diwai had straightened itself out. It was no tree; merely a limb that was cracked and ready to fall off. I crept back to my bed under the tent-sail, dusting off a few stray stink-finishers and hoping that my little excursion had gone unnoticed. Next morning my fever had left me and I took myself from that locality until everyone had finished with it. ★ RUT that is not the last word the diary has to say on the subject of falling trees. Many months later

this entry appears :

ONE of the teams working in the river has now come right up to just below the house. At that point there was a huge tree that overhung the flat.

Ground had been worked all around it and gold had been taken from its very roots. We watched it day by day, wondering what an extra large flood would do to it and, finally, it was decided that it would be best to get rid of it once and for all and be sure. The usual cal culation had shown that, with care, it could be grubbed out and the whole line of boys swinging, at the critical moment, on the vines and canes that grew from it,

could pull it to fall up the creek and miss the flat (and the house) altogether. No one asked my opinion but I gave it, freely. In my estimation the tree could fall no where else but right across the house. I was advised not to act like a silly old woman—it was well known that I had a kink where falling trees were concerned and no reliance whatever could be placed on my notions. The tree must —and would —come down.

OK, if that’s how it is, said I to myself, this time I stay right in the confounded house, and if the tree falls on me and kills me, then it serves them right.

Grubbing operations started next morning and continued most of the day.

It was a long process. True to my promise I stayed in the house. I sat in front of my typewriter and tried to write.

And occasionally I would go out to the end of the flat and look at that tree. As the day wore on, I went back to the type writer after these inspections with more and more reluctance and about 3.30 took my last look at the tree. It would go any time now, I was told. It would just miss the point of the terrace.

I could see that it would go anytime— the boys were already manning the many kunda vines that trailed from it. They looked like silly little ants; and the tree was huge, with great, spreading branches.

I went slowly back to the house. Would I? Wouldn’t I? Was it worth risking a broken neck, or worse, just to prove

That Woman Is Sometimes Right?

Yells from the creek told me the tree was “talking.”

“No,” my lesser-self replied emphatic ally—better to be wrong than a cold, clammy corpse. I grabbed the lid of my typewriter, shoved it on, took the dog by the scruff of the neck and carrying both in my arms beat it —out across the terrace through the pumpkin patch to our primitive black-smith snop which was well out of the way of all possible danger.

Whoops and yodels were coming con tinuously from the river now, as the top most leaves of the giant tree began to tremble. Then the tree gave a lurch and began to fall, slowly at first then with a mightly swoosh. The huge head of branches turned in mid-air—and down she came—crash! Horror and an in verted sort of satisfaction filled me— there it was, precisely where I said it would land, right across the centre of the house in which I had been sitting a few minutes before.

The cook-boy and I reached the scene of the disaster simultaneously. There was dead silence from the river below. The tree and its branches, stuck out far be yond the ruined house, still trembled with the impact. The air was full of pieces of thatching and bits of paper that I had left on what had once been a table, and dust from smashed wood sifted down over everything. The cook-boy and I looked at each other in silence. There was no need for words. We waded in through the mess and dug among the ruins. We retrieved a blue enamel meat safe and a petrol lantern, both battered beyond repair. Silently we placed them outside what had once been a doorway.

Then Tulawai, the cook-boy found his voice: “The ” he wailed, shaking his fist in the direction of the river, “Al’gether something ’e buggerup finish!”

People passing the Brisbane City Con gregational Church during one day in November, were surprised to see three black figures performing a war dance on the church’s steps. They were Papuan natives in port as members of a ship’s crew. The dance was given in apprecia tion of afternoon tea served by the Women’s Auxiliary of the London Missionary Society, and depicted in mime, Australian soldiers fighting the Japanese.