You are looking into the eye of Acacia cyclops. Acacia trees number nine hundred and fifty species in Australia, and they are amazing at taking nitrogen, one of the things that plants really need to grow, out of the air and fixing it down in their roots. This species is endemic to the south-west of the country, and it has plenty of seeds out at the moment. These are seeds which can be picked and ground up and used as flour, for a loaf of bread say. That is the plan for one element in my Christmas lunch this year.
The aboriginal name for Fremantle was Booyeembara, which means place of the limestone ridges. That is what I and my friends were standing on this afternoon as we picked Acacia seed pods and put them into our bags: a limestone ridge above the harbour. This bit of disused land is normally only haunted by graffiti artists and black cockatoos. Until the seed pickers arrived.
We all sat around my kitchen table this evening, drinking beers and hulling the pods of the acacia. I’ll take a photo of the loaf of bread that all this goes towards creating on a Christmas day blog.
Wink.
Even the limestone background has hints of Greecian antiquity.