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Colour digital images of dead snowgums, having been defeated by the harsh climate, near Nimmitabel in NSW, Australia
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Taken the other day on a trip home from Canberra, these dead snowgums represent the harshness of life around Nimmitabel on the Monaro. The snowgums are on a low ridge about half a kilometer wide and extending about two kilometers into the distance. With no shelter from the sapping heat of summer and the piercing cold wind, snow and frost of winter, they've done it pretty tough. From the appearance of the dead trees, they must have died at different times over quite a long period. None of the snowgums has been ring-barked, they've just been naturally destroyed, defeated by the elements. Failure to produce offspring may be the result of sheep, cattle and kangaroos nipping off new seedlings as fast as they can germinate in this region of hash winter and summer climate. Yet, in death, these snowgums are grand. They show in their tortured and gnarled forms the anguish they suffered and the determination with which they resisted to the point of life being extinguished. Still, in death, these snowgums foster life. Weathering cracks in their dead timber provide home for many a small creepy, crawly bug. Borers make their home within the hard timber and many a centipede and lizard live under the fallen branches of the Nimmitabel snowgums. |
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Photo album created with Web Album Generator