This beauty caught my eye many months ago, training for a walk in NZ. She (I have somehow decided that she is female) was white and shone in the morning sun, her wrinkled limbs just like a grandmother’s arms. Her toes go all the way down to the Merri and she stands not far from Merri Murnong, an important site of scar trees that dot the local area. Depending on her age, she would have seen the traditional routes of the Wurundjeri people, the building and duration of Pentridge and the quarries of basalt from the Merri, all within her line of sight. Now she has a sheen on the top side of her lower limbs, from local children and adventurous adults (myself included) climbing her for a view over the water. I now walk to visit her often, and she never fails to calm and put life in perspective.

near Merri Murnong, Merri Creek, Coburg, Victoria