Where Bats Sleep, Figs Strangle, and All of Sydney Breathes
Written: Dec 25 '02 (Updated Apr 12 '03)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Indescribable. One of those places you have to see before you die.
Cons: For introduction to local Australian plants, look elsewhere.
The Bottom Line: Read the review.
|
|
|
| Urbanist's Full Review: The Domain, Art Gallery - Botanic Gardens |
Every night, for a few minutes at dusk, Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens appear to be on fire.
I first witnessed this on a lively evening on Oxford Street, Sydney’s nightlife strip. The wide sidewalks pulsated with beautiful people, striding with intent, all absorbed in a tiny universe of lights and sounds and action. They gazed at each other, at the shops, and sometimes at the ground. But they never looked up into the looming dusk.
Strolling down Oxford, less intentionally than most, I arrived at Crown Street, where a small view of the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) appears. I stopped, so stunned that I barely moved even as other revelers began bumping into me.
From the center of the gardens rose a coal-black plume, as though the visitor center were going up in flames. My eyes rose with the plume to find that it wasn’t smoke at all. This plume would be no pall over the city, such as Sydney knows all too well from its frequent bushfires. This plume rustled, spread thousands of wings, and flew.
Bats. Well, not bats in the Northern Hemisphere sense of course. Like everything else in Australia that looks like something up north, these are completely different species, only faintly related to the frightening bats that haunt dark places in the Euro-American consciousness. A zoologist would insist that they’re not bats at all. Call them what you will, they are flying mammals, with wingspans of up to a meter and the faces of squirrels.
They sleep in the garden by day, but at dusk, they all take flight at once. The black column rises from the garden to skyscaper-height, then bursts apart, each bat beating calm, firm wings as they diverge and spread out over the city. For a few minutes Sydney has a roof of bats, flying outward in all directions, all seemingly at the same altitude and in formation, like fighter jets showing off.
Peter Carey compares them to Tolkein's Nazguls, the black flying horsemen of the Dark Lord, but a daytime visit to the gardens is enough to dispel this image. Walk toward the visitor center, and soon you’ll notice that a bare deciduous tree is covered with large black fruit. A moment later, you’ll see that these black fruits are everywhere, borne by trees of many species. Bats sleep upside down, clinging to a branch with their feet, with their wings wrapped around them so that it’s dark inside.
It’s certainly not quiet, though. In theory, the bats are nocturnal, but at any time during the day, you’ll see some of them flying about, or just quarrelling with their neighbors in an upside-down flurry of squeaks and slaps. Now and then, you’ll see a solitary bat open its wings, look around, then slam them closed, as though trying to shut out the noise. If this is their sleeping time, then the colony in the Royal Botanic Gardens is like the rowdiest college dorm.
The screeching and bullying ibises hardly help. Revered in ancient Egypt, these large white birds with eight-inch black beaks look as stately as a religious icon should, so long as they’re posing for the camera. Otherwise, they're ruthless scavengers, swarming over the outdoor café, grabbing whatever food may be left unattended. Though they nest in trees, they rank just above penguins in aerodynamic correctness. Their inadequate wings -- vast and thin as sails -- flap desperately, slamming tables, trees, tourists as they shove their huge bodies aloft.
If you leave a sandwich on an outdoor table while going back for salt, an ibis may grab the entire thing and attempt a long horizontal takeoff. The bird won’t make it far with such a payload, but in the course of trying it will knock over your drinks with its huge flaps, set off small cyclones of napkins, and spread your sandwich across several neighboring tables. By the time it’s airborne it may have only a scrap of tomato in its enormous beak.
Clearly, an ibis has to destroy a lot of sandwiches to get one decent meal back to the nest. Don’t turn your back on your food for a moment.
--
Two years ago, the visitor center giftshop sold postcards of the garden’s many stunning landscapes, but no pictures of ibises or bats. Back then, at the center of the bat colony, an interpretive sign explained that the bats had settled in the garden some years ago, possibly in response to loss of their native habitat. Not to worry, the sign went on, we are working to relocate the bats to a more remote and suitable location.
Clearly, the old British attitude of everything-in-its-place was no match for the bats. Today, the sign says simply that the bats live there. Though unplanned, they are as much a part of the garden as the most glorious ficus or palm. And the commemorative t-shirt and cap, for sale in the new giftshop, proudly displays the bat as the gardens’ emblem.
--
But these are gardens. Shouldn’t we be talking about plants?
Well, let’s ease into it. We may think we go to the gardens to look at the plants, just as we may think that we go to the beach to look at the ocean. But if you watch what goes on at beaches, looking at the ocean is a small part of it – not just because humans ultimately interest us more than anything, but also because the ocean can overwhelm and terrify if pondered for long. So, too, can the riotous diversity of the plant kingdom.
The Royal Botanic Garden (RBG) is not just a world-class arboretum; it is also one of the world’s great civic parks, and the only vast park close to the center of Sydney. This is where Sydney breathes.
The gardens occupy a U-shaped territory wrapped around both sides of Farm Cove -- site of the struggling farm that the first white settlers established here. On the west side of the cove, the gardens extend nearly to the end of Bennelong Point, ending right at the steps of the colossal Opera House. The east side of the cove is garden all the way to the end: Mrs. Macquarie’s Point, named for the wife of the relatively benign second governor of the colony, Lachlan Macquarie. No motor vehicles penetrate the gardens, so the waterfront of Farm Cove is a serene place to run, walk, breathe, be.
Out at Mrs. Macquarie’s Point, you’ll find Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair, really a rough-hewn bench in the sandstone. Here, as the unspeakable horrors of penal life played out behind her, Elizabeth Macquarie liked to sit and gaze at an especially fine view of the harbor. If only in her desire to retain this view, Mrs. Macquarie worked to preserve some of the land that would later become the gardens – an extraordinary gift considering how densely the land-starved city would later pack in around it.
Walling in the west side of the gardens, the Central Business District soars to indecent heights. It's one of the least-thoughtfully planned highrise districts anywhere, narrow streets walled with tall modernist buildings, so it's not surprising that its light-starved denizens flood the gardens at lunchtime and at any other opportunity. Each tower, of course, has some lighted architectural detail at the top, and most also have a corporate logo in lighted letters many meters high. By night, the towers empty, I watch the bats probe these pinnacles of corporate ego, If I add my Euro-American habit of associating bats with abandoned buildings, I can imagine that I'm looking not just at a sleeping city, but a ruined one.
--
But back to the gardens in daylight. Lands fronting the water are mostly landscaped in parklike style, large lawns punctuated with dramatic specimen-trees. Inland, southwest of the cove, a new Asian collection hugs a pond – not much to look at now, but sure to be dramatic in 20 years. Botany is not an interest for the impatient; this may be why it makes such an effective form of meditation.
If a single genus dominates this garden and the surrounding parks, it is Ficus. You know them as figs, source of the fruit and also a common houseplant. Perhaps you have a Ficus benjamina at home, that ubiquitous indoor tree known for incessantly dropping leaves. Or perhaps you have a rubber plant, Ficus elastica. Here's you'll meet many of these species as full-sized trees, bearing improbable fruits. And throughout the garden, you'll see their most distinctive habit. Almost all Ficus send shoots straight down from their branches, and if these touch the ground, they become roots. The resulting "tree" may therefore have many trunks of varying sizes. One famous specimen in the garden has no central trunk at all, and has been known to spread over acres on its native Lord Howe Island.
Ficus also has numerous vining and creeping forms, most of them crawling on other plants. Other genera, even some ferns, have picked up this habit, but few plants can climb trees, strangle them, and finally stand in their places the way Ficus can.
Which brings us back to the densest part of the garden, the true jungle encompassing the palm collection and countless other subtropicals from around the world. The palms do their best to stand up straight, but between the bats, ibises, and vines, something is always pulling them over into more interesting postures. Ficus vines, both climbing and dropping, fill every open space with their winding explorations. Many of these creatures (and why not use this word for plants?) grow both up and down. There’s no telling which way is up for a plant that’s used to living like a monkey, leaping from branch to branch, sucking nutrients out of more dignified trees.
A few other genera deserve your notice, though. Another common houseplant, the "Norfolk Island Pine" or Araucaria heterophylla, stands here as a giant near its native climate at heights of 30 meters or more, every bit as symmetrical at 100 years of age as it is in your livingroom window. You'll also find samples of the rest of the genus Araucaria, all of which deserve a look. These most primitive of the conifers are designed to fend off dinosaurs. Everything about them is sharp, and the cones may remind you of those medieval weapons, the "morningstars" -- essentially heavy balls covered with spikes. If you hear something falling while standing near an Araucaria, run! At terminal velocity, the falling cones can kill.
You'll also meet the world's rarest tree, the Wollemi pine, also an Araucaria. Recently discovered in an obscure part of Wollemi National Park (location properly undisclosed), it's now cultivated in a little cage at the intersection of two straight pathways. Today, it's not even two meters tall, but eventually it will form a nice punctuating monument effect for these two promenades.
If anything is missing at the RBG, it's an introduction to the common Australian plants that you're most likely to meet while hiking around Sydney. This is forgivable, since the RBG occupies a wet waterfront site that is quite different in climate and soil than most of the Australian landscape -- even the nearest national parks. The RBG is a good place to meet plants that will dominate your experience much further north in the deeper subtropics, but natives of the dry hills around Sydney would not do well here, and the gardens don't try. For a better introduction to what actually surrounds you in Sydney, you'll need to head out to Cambpelltown on the suburban train and catch a free shuttle to the RBG's Mount Annan gardens. It's not much higher in altitude, and not much inland, but the difference is enough to create an abrupt difference in climate. Here you'll meet a wider range of signature Australian species such as Eucalyptus (can you learn all 800 species?) and Acacia. The RBG does have a few of these, but you can be forgiven not really greeting them as you navigate between quarrelling bats, aggressive birds, and fast-growing vines that sometimes tap you on the shoulder, as though checking you out as a climbing post.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Urbanist
|
|
Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
Trusted by: 72 members
About Me:
Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.