2024 with Wild and Wonderful

exciting news | eucalyptus globulus | what to expect

Hello, lovely reader.

It’s mid-summer here and nearly everything is bursting. In our garden, the moorpark¹ apricots hang like sunset baubles from the branches of our apricot trees — green slides into yellow, bright orange into a deep red blush on the sunny side. Every evening after work my husband mixes sugar syrup, removes the stones and drops the halved apricots into tall glass bottles — our summer harvest.

My children’s hair is long and shaggy, it tickles their eyes. Fingernails creep forward in millimeters overnight, defying nail files, requiring the clippers from the shed. The washing pile builds like a stone cairn on a mountain summit.

Everything is going full tilt. New ground is being covered. It’s a time of now. Its a time of growth.

Exciting news

And wild and Wonderful has some exciting news too — a new logo, designed and created by my *wonderfully* talented sister-in-law, Amanda Snowball.

Amanda lives on Salt Spring Island in Canada, is a mother of two young boys, and is a versatile artist who loves to create through drawing, painting, and crafting using multiple mediums. You can find her on Instagram here.

The floral design is a Tasmanian Blue Gum — Eucalyptus globulus. It’s a little wild, curling capitals, flowers and leaves popping out of letters. It’s wonderful. Just the way I like it.

Eucalyptus globulus

Eucalytpus globulus (Forty South / Royal Botanical Gardens)

The Blue Gum is Tasmania’s floral emblem. But it represents much more than an ornamental beauty. It is a symbol of Tasmania’s Island-ness, it’s layers of stories, a reminder of our sense of place.

It grows in little strands on the foothills of kunanyi / Mountain Wellington. The Mountain that I can see through my window as I write this letter. It’s native to many parts of Tasmania, growing in woodlands and moist valleys, and is admired by the people who have lived here, on this little Island at the bottom of the world.

The first peoples of Tasmania used its wood to make spears, bark to build boats, leaves for medicine. After being discovered by French explorers in the late 18th century, the Blue Gum is now grown around the world. It is admired for it’s high density and suitability for ship building, its ability to thrive in challenging conditions, and its tendency to re-sprout after fire. Of all the eucalypts, Tasmanian blue gums are the most common of the species grown in Europe, South America, North America, Africa and Asia².

The Blue Gums soar, smooth and naked, guardians of the land, among the largest in the world. I like that they are strong, that they are survivors, and that they have migrated abroad, made friends and families in other places, grown roots, branched out.

But like so many wild and wonderful things in our modern world, they have been mistreated.

Logging has over-harvested and reduced the natural range of Blue Gums in Tasmania. If a Blue Gum is left to grow fat and tall, they can reach heights of over 90 meters, and provide habitats for birds, animals, and insects. The critically endangered swift parrot, Lathamus discolor, feeds on the nectar of Blue Gum flowers and relies on hollows for nesting, which can take hundreds of years to form³.

As Peter Grant⁴ writes,

The flower of the Blue Gum may be Tasmania’s state floral emblem, but that gives it no protection. Were it not extinct, we could ask a thylacine⁵ how much protection it received from being on the Tasmanian coat of arms.

Who will conserve Blue Gum habitat? Save the swift parrot?

You? Me? Our loved ones?

What to expect

This year you can expect more wonderfully wild stories, essays, and notes, along with poems, songs and photographs of wild places that I am loving at the moment — my gift to you.

Wild and Wonderful will be published roughly every month, with the occasional extra story or a three things essay.

Wild and wonderful will continue to be free.

If you enjoy reading please feel free to send to someone you love, press the little heart button at the bottom of the letter, or write a comment.

This year I am committing more time to the craft of writing. I’m excited to be joining

Summer Brennan

for ‘a year of writing dangerously’ and I’m heading to Sydney in February for a 2 day writing workshop with writer

Bri Lee

. I’ve read a beautiful new book, Stone Yard Devotional, by author

Charlotte Wood

in preparation (she’ll be at the workshop too). I digested it in 3 days, unheard of in my current phase of life. I loved it. Deeply moving and meditative.

The February course is sold out but Bri is running the workshops again in March, details are here. She has two scholarship places available for creatives with high motivation and low funds, apply here.

My next letter will arrive in your inbox on the 1st February. It’s all about summer in Tasmania, I can’t wait to share it with you.

Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting my work.

With love and kindness,

Kate x

1. Moorpark apricots are a variety grown in Tasmania, full flavoured and regarded as the best tasting apricot. Tasmanians are quite passionate about their apricots. Store-bought varieties just don’t cut it.

2. 2021, Carol Freeman, Once Upon a Blue Gum, Forty South

3. 2021, Carol Freeman, Once Upon a Blue Gum, Forty South

4. 2023, Peter Grant, Blue Gum Blues, Forty South

5. The Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is a large carnivorous marsupial now believed to be extinct. It is also known as the Tasmanian Tiger and was native to the Australian mainland and Islands of Tasmania. The thylacine has been used extensively as a symbol of Tasmania. It is featured on the official Tasmanian coat of arms.