Our Window on the World

It is gone now, the great Jacaranda tree from the bottom of the Avenue. Gone those branches reaching ever upwards and outwards expanding the horizons of our childhood universe. Gone, our old friend, with whom we lived and breathed and grew.

To some half dozen of us who lived in the Avenue at the time, the Jacaranda was our meeting place, our escape-place from the world of grow-ups, the place where we could be ourselves and begin to test our limitations. And sometimes it was our place of refuge when grown-up rules had been broken and the hand of vengeance was raised in retribution. It was then that the great canopy of the tree seemed to bend protectingly above us.

Our real bonding with this giant friend came with our play - our impulse to climb, to reach up and beyond, and to challenge each other and ourselves. It was Brooksy, the oldest and tallest of us, who was first able to jump up and grab the lowest branch then haul himself some way into the tree. From there he lorded it over us for several days, till Timmo, unable to bear the humiliation any longer, dragged an old rickety chair from his place down the Avenue, propped it against the tree trunk, and with muttered threats to his younger brother: “Hold the chair fast, or I’ll dong you one!” clambered up onto the chair back and gained the lowest branch. It wasn’t long before we other two boys followed suit, the chair held fast for us by the two girls, which was only right in our opinion: girls just shouldn’t do such dangerous things.

It wasn’t long before we could do without the chair, the challenge then being to climb ever higher and further out from the main trunk.

As we scrambled carefully upwards, seeking out the next foothold, our thoughts focused on the exciting heights above, and the distancing ground beneath. With this came the heady sense of liberation from being earthbound, of sharing the airy kingdom of the birds. We strove against the smooth trunk in our effort to reach higher and, pausing for breath, brushed aside the lace-fine curtains of foliage to gain clearer views of the widened world before us.

On our first tree forays, our attention tended to the more immediate and personally familiar views. “Cor, just get a dekko at old Jacko’s back yard and all that junk!” “Hey, get an eyeful of Ma Jones’ washing. She’s got bloomers on her line the size of chaff bags!” “Don’t move anyone! There’s our mother, hands on hips at the back door, lookin’ for us to make our beds.” “There’s old Mr. Shaw in hat, white gloves and silver-knobbed walking-stick coming down the Avenue.” Later, unless there was something really special to claim our attention – a good dog fight, the baker’s horse spooked by a delivery van or such – it was the action in the near distance or the beauty and mystery of the far distance that held our attention.

In the near distance was the bustle of Parramatta Road, war-time traffic elbowing and jostling its noisy way up and down just a little north and almost, it seemed, below us.

Exhaust fumes belched up to us on the gusting winds. Above this brouhaha, in the farther distance, silvery glimpses of the reaches of the Parramatta River, seemingly peaceful and undisturbed, beckoned to us. To the right, fronting Parramatta Road and on a slight rise stood the very old coach inn, a reminder of an earlier far less frenetic road joining Sydney and Parramatta. Beyond that again and from higher up in the tree, was a view of Sydney Harbour Bridge, now some eleven years old, set in an island of t the city’s tallest buildings, a huge fifteen stories high. To the west, Parramatta Road laboured up a hill, a river of concrete and traffic, its shores wrinkled and ugly with old buildings that stretched south west along the low stunted ridge. To the south a somewhat similar ridge, along which we knew the railway crawled, for we could occasionally hear its voice whenever the roar of Parramatta Road was muted. Beyond that again a glimpse of church spires and the grand old homes of “top Burwood.”

This was the week-day world revealed us by our Jacaranda: a wider world – a world of movement and noise, of jostling self-importance, a world of the ordinary and the ugly. Yet a world with glimpses of beauty and of the sublime: that world above us, the world of changing cloud patterns and seeming eternal blue, the world glimpsed through the hopeful green of the Jacaranda’s fine-leafed branches. And when this world spoke, its voice was the whisper of the wind, the song of a bird, the rustle of leaves.

The Sunday world of the Jacaranda tree always seemed quite different. On most Sundays I shared its comforting embrace all on my own. The other kids in the Avenue were always swallowed up in family goings-on of a Sunday. It was on Sundays, that high in its branches, the Jacaranda and I shared a companionable silence: the roar of Parramatta Road was a muted roar on a Sunday morning. The tree and I clung together, breathed the cleaner air together, shared our secrets together - the tree whispering to me in the rustlings of its leaves. “Just look over there at the river!” “Reach out a little farther and you’ll see Summerhill Church steeple. You won’t fall. I’ve got you fast.” “Can you see the old brick pit below the chimney stack, just over by Croydon?” It was on these days too that I specially noticed the subtle changes of the seasons in the tree. Again it seemed that the Jacaranda confided: “Did you notice my new leaves greening out?” Or, “I’m so excited. In a week or two I’ll be all over purple-blue!”

On these days the Jacaranda was more than a childhood window on a wider world; we were our own world together and our life was life itself – feet planted firmly on the ground and heads in the sky. Yes indeed, people and trees had a lot in common and our Jacaranda tree was so very special.

It is something of a shock to re-visit old places and friends many years on – and so with the Avenue. Our friend the Jacaranda tree is gone now, like so many of the other things seen from its branches. There remains, however, the shared experiences, the shared friendships, the shared memories, the insights into life provided by our Window into the World. They will never change, and for that I will always be grateful.