Municipal Gum
Public art installation at Mullum Mullum Trail: the section along Mullum Mullum Gorge and between Park Orchards and Donvale This installation is inspired by the poem Municipal Gum by Oodgeroo Noonubccal (Kath Walker) Gumtree in the city street, Hard bitumen around your feet, Rather you should be In the cool world of leafy forest halls And wild bird calls Here you seems to me Like that poor cart-horse Castrated, broken, a thing wronged, Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged, Whose hung head and listless mien express Its hopelessness. Municipal gum, it is dolorous To see you thus Set in your black grass of bitumen-- O fellow citizen, What have they done to us? Noonubccal gives the tree citizenship status reflecting the Aboriginal belief that all living things and the land around us deserve respect. “Respect” is what we need, as human, to pay our non-human ontologically heterogeneous partners. |