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For my photograph this week I've chosen one of this River Red Gum tree, known locally as 'The Cazneaux Tree'. It has been photographed before. In 1937 Harold Cazneaux took a prize-winning photograph of it which he called 'The Spirit of Endurance'. He wrote:
"This giant gum tree stands in solitary grandeur on a lonely plateau in the arid Flinders ranges, South Australia, where it has grown up from a sapling through the years, and long before the shade from its giant limbs ever gave shelter from heat to white men. The passing of the years has left it scarred and marked by the elements...unconquered it speaks to us from a spirit of endurance. Although aged, its widespread limbs speak of a vitality that will carry on for many more years. One day when the sun shone hot and strong, I stood before this giant in silent wonder and admiration. the hot wind stirred its leafy bought s and some of the living elements of this tree passed to me in understanding and friendliness expressing the Spirit of Australia".
The "Spirit of Australia" is the strap-line that is on every Qantas plane showing that the symbolic strength of this tree survives intact some 75 years after Cazneaux took his photograph.
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Eileen x Yes you are definitely selling me Australia!