The tree and the aquaduct

There is a tree in my neighbourhood that deserves celebration.


It is both tall and broad with a trunk as wide as a car. It’s powerful roots coil and burst across the ground with almost liquid vigour. It’s a tangly green fortress with leaves that fill a park.


The best thing about this tree though is the relationship it is in with a local aquaduct. A sewer aquaduct. It’s intimate.


The aquaduct leaps from between houses and streets to cross a small valley and creek. It lands on the other side and slides back into the neighbourhood. On it’s flight over the creek and park though it can be seen and appreciated as a grand bit of modern Sydney work (from 1896 to be precise).


The brilliance of these two large scale characters, tree and duct, is their connection. My mind vacillates between fantasy with every viewing. One evening I see a pair of mismatched dancers, one stiff and formal the other luxuriously flamboyant cavorting across the stage. As the mist rises on a Saturday morning I see one of Nelson’s 3 masted ships of the line assaulted from the deep by a sea-monster of cold black ferocity, limbs flailing and salt water frothing.


The aquaduct was there before the tree, the tree now towers above, one of them will outlive the other. I hope they’ve got many years yet to embrace and converse.