Pliny's Observations

Greetings from Pliny the Elder! I have been asked to deliver some observations on my visit to the Belair National Park, which I undertook by train.

Firstly I shall present my observations on the train. What a wonder of man's invention is a train! A train which can move a great number of persons up a mountain in just over half an hour! A train onto which a man or boy may carry a bicycle! A train which presents to the traveller's eye a series of vegetations, painted artworks, back gardens, black tunnels and spectacular views! Through the moving window I observed willow trees, olive trees, pine trees, aloes, spindly eucalypts, black cockatoos, and bright red green and yellow parrots. A dog sleeping on a patch of grass. A set of broken Corinthian columns next to a wheelbarrow.

I overheard a traveller's tale. A man with a bicycle was talking to one of the guards. He said he remembered that when he was a boy, cinders from the old steam trains would sometimes start spot fires along the line, so that the guard had to lean out with a bucket of water to extinguish the fire. An interesting tale, which the guard had doubtless heard before.

Alighting from the train at the last station we entered the National Park. The park was bristling with a diversity of trees. We saw an avenue of stately gum trees that had been planted over one hundred years ago. Each one was marked with a different pattern on its trunk. Some were striated, as though the tree were made of vertical planks; others were scarified, with rusty blackened holes all up and down. These holes were possibly made by birds, or by the depredations of some insect. Yet other tree trunks formed an artful patchwork of grey bark peeling to reveal a paler yellow bark underneath. The ground was littered with fallen branches, and desiccating leaves, and signs of the continuing works of man, in the manifold heaps of stones lining the path. The light through the canopy of trees was a beguiling greenish gold.

We walked down to the lake which was very low and brackish. A number of ducks skimmed the surface making gentle ripples, that gave off a duck-like smell. The remains of a wooden jetty, stood up out of the mud. A picnic table and some seats, a cooking place, appeared unused. This place was once the destination of the multitudes, but is no longer.

On the return journey the driver expressed, over the loudspeaker system, a reluctance to allow a boy with a bicycle and a bleeding nose to board the train. Strange times indeed, when this should be the case! In my day such a boy would be a hero. I have learned much in the course of this journey, and yet have many questions that remain unanswered.