42cm x 29.5cm, pencil and watercolour pencils on paper.
Date produced: 2005

This was drawn entirely on-site. This tree is a huge attraction for just about all children, and even tends to ‘bring out the child’ in many adults. I think they see it as being a huge friendly playground. After enjoying watching one group of children climbing and playing amongst the tree, I wondered how they might draw the tree. After a few attempts, I started to get really involved in this particular drawing. Out came the coloured pencils, and several ideas ‘flowed’ quickly.

This form of drawing is highly descriptive. It can show the overall shape of the tree, the shapes of its leaves, the structure of its fruit on the ends of the branches, the character within its boughs and buttress roots, the tree’s location (in Adelaide, near Adelaide Oval and St. Peter’s Cathedral), the types of animals that live near it or are supported directly by it, some of the main biochemical processes involved, who looks after it, etc.

It is a very efficient form of drawing, and lots of fun.

On just about all fruit stems throughout the tree at the moment, one fig is a purpley red colour, and the remainder are all green.

Here, I have drawn a sulphur-crested white cockatoo. I have seen and heard many of these types of birds flying about the tree throughout the year. Their screeches sound like the sky is being torn.

There are many spiders living on the tree and in the leaf litter.

A possum is shown walking over one of the boughs. I haven’t actually seen a possum doing that, but I know that they would at least sometimes be doing that (probably at night), because I’ve come across several dead possums under the tree and seen one possum running across the ground from this tree to another close by. I have never seen a possum up in the tree, but I would be surprised if they weren’t up in the tree at night.

Here, I have tried to indicate that the nutrients from the decaying thick leaf litter eventually get absorbed by the tree’s roots.

Here I have included Adelaide Oval, which is located quite close to the tree, and a green Adelaide City Council vehicle, the likes of which I have seen many times while working at the tree.