"The Black Stump"...

....Yes, a real Stump .. a Mallee Tree Stump .. and rather black today as it actually rained for a little while, turning the big stump into an almost Black Stump...

...I promised Beckett - I'd put a Mallee Stump on here - after all - it's not often we see a wood Stump this large, is it... I'm sure it'd keep the home fires burning for a whole month, don't you?..

... And Mallee burns really well too, as it lasts a long time, the tree is a short leggy type of tree, some can grow taller, it depends on the type of country it's growing on - it has large roots, in the ground, not quite like this one generally, which would be very old..and would have been dug out of the ground, in country similar to what you saw in my blip yesterday...

...The Mallee trees have evolved their own means of survival over thousands of years, by having their large stump or stumps underground, so that if the tree has been caught in a bushfire which happened often in the yesteryear - started by lightning mostly, or by the original inhabitors of this land, as part of their own survival...it would still survive...to be Scrubland once again...

...The seeds dropped upon the ground from some trees need a fire over them to burst into life again...and so the Mallee is an important tree, for warmth for us, and many creatures to live in, on and under.. Tools as well were made from the Mallee tree.