Gumnut Babies

The gumnuts of the eucalypts are the common feature across the many species. An hour before I took this photo the heavens had opened, the wind whipped into a fury, the sky went dark, rain belted down and hail sufficient to bedraggle garden flowers. When I went off track across a park, the ground underfoot still betrayed the volume of water was substantial enough on the clay soil of the district to leave a centimetre of water for the squealching through. The hardy gumnuts of the fledgling side-walk eucalypts are washed so clean and abraded of sticky nectar and pollutants they glimmer in the restored sunlight.

Australian author May Gibbs gave us the term Gumnut Babies and her first book about her characters 'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie' was published in 1918.

news item of May Gibbs 136th birthday January 2013