1st published by Duffy & Snellgrove 2002, 2nd Edition published by New South 2021
Narrative non-fiction
Award-winning writer; novelist and essayist
Foundation of Australian Literary Studies’ Colin Roderick Award
NSW Premiers Literary Awards |People’s Choice
UNSW Press Bragg Prize for Science Writing
Editor of the Griffith Review
Ashley Hay is a novelist and writer, and for a number of years editor of the Griffith Review.

Gum, her second foray in ‘narrative non-fiction’, comprises 10 essays loosely connected on
the theme of the genus Eucalyptus, from observations by Europeans – English and French –
on first sighting the grey green forests blanketing the eastern coasts of Australia and Tasmania; to the endeavours of naturalists and systematic botanists to civilise this continental family of wooded plants that dominated the Australian floral canopy from south to north and east to west; to capturing the imagination of European artists, explorers, writers and poets, challenging all to reassess their educated ways of looking.

The peculiarly Australian allure of the eucalypts has induced a morbid, compulsive response: from Banks’ commissioned but never published florilegium comprising expensively engraved lithographic plates of botanical material accumulated on the first Endeavour voyage, never printed in his lifetime; to Max Jacobs’ globe-trotting promotion of eucalypts as a wonder crop for developing countries in the equatorial zones; to Stan Kelly’s ambitions of illustrating the upwards of 900 identified species using specimens he began collecting while driving trains across the continent; to William Macarthur’s display of timber samples presented at the Paris Exposition of 1855; and wrapped up in Murray Bail’s gothic novel Eucalyptus requiring a suitor to meet the father’s challenge of reciting in alphabetical order species names for the three hundred trees planted out on his block.

It is happy hunting ground for Hay, who like the father in Eucalyptus has absorbed the rich emanations of this tree as an emblem of what it is to feel truly Australian. Her stories are of obstinate, driven individuals; of delusions and dead ends; of a brotherhood of solace and folly. She would have us see the story within a larger story of the European desire to subdue the landscape; reduce its native forests to usable products; and order for the eye, accustomed to full shade or none; to straight lines and worked planks; to fuel or fibre. Indeed this second enlarged edition twenty years after first publication indicates a degree of absorption by the author herself.

A fair weight is given to Michael Jacobs’ role in popularising eucalypts as a replacement fuel source for poor countries in the tropics. Gums provide a fast-growing cash crop, holding soil, while valuable as construction material. The message caught the same wave as Norman Bourlaugh’s revolutionary high yield grain varieties that fuelled the drive to lift the world out of poverty, hunger and environmental decline. Hay takes the story forward to its less than glorious dénouement.

Perhaps it is in the nature of narrative nonfiction that we are invited to accept the jolts as we move from a case history in botanical systematics; to the founding of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens; to the fight for the forests in the 1970s; to debates over fire in the Australian landscape. My disappointment was in the subject scatter. The rapid spread of the genus to all corners of the continent and its adaptation to all climates, soils and elevations, something that has occupied observers from the time of the First Fleet to latest speculation with the onset of major climate shifts, is raised but not pursued. We learn about forestry, and its attendant politics and practice from the perspective of those defending old growth eucalyptus forests from clear felling. We have insight to the European reaction to gum dominated landscape; we have hints on the management of this landscape pre-settlement; and a delightful story of trees woven into the account of first contact in Botany Bay.

As narrative it succeeds, but I do have reservations on accuracy – eg the reference to 1080 on page 192 is not correct; water tables tend to rise when trees are felled (contrary to what is said at p197) – and, surprisingly, editing could have been more thorough. Mitchell is an important figure in the history of settlement. I was disappointed to find his practice of clearing peaks of trees to obtain lines of sight conflated with an ambition to subdue the landscape: he, like most in the colonial administration, was trained to a role. The transcribed field log of the trip the author refers to – when Mitchell called on the dying Oxley on his way out – gives a different picture of the man. Despite valuable notes and references, the lack of an index is a drawback in an essay collection based on extensive and often deep reading.

Gum as a companion for a south coast beach holiday is hard to beat. Skip over the sweeping declarations; glory in the sideways glances; absorb the histories of men alone in the landscape with their obsessions and the monuments they create. But don’t neglect the landmark references from which this author has drawn. Indeed her expansive bibliography is a true anchor to this endeavour in the tradition of Anne Moyal’s Platypus, Eric Rolls’ A Million Wild Acres, and George Seddon’s Searching for the Snowy.1st published by Duffy & Snellgrove 2002, 2nd Edition published by New South 2021