Are there particular plants in your garden, or in the bush, which remind you of Christmas? Or maybe it’s the birds and insects that bring back childhood memories of the festive season. The iconic sights, sounds and smells that tell us that it’s high summer in Australia, and holidays are on the way.
The enduring symbols Christmas on the east coast, would be easily recognised by the early settlers in the Colony of New South Wales, two hundred years ago. Inhabitants of the bush, particularly, have become defining elements of the uniquely Australian Christmas.
Christmas in my childhood, was a dream run of daily sun-worship. Long hot days started when the distinctive whooping call of the channel-billed cuckoo woke us well before dawn.
Channel-billed Cuckoo, Scythrops novaehollandiae
When the cuckoo left off, the cicadas began their day-long wall of sound which would continue without more than a few seconds’ pause, until after dusk.
Families made annual pilgrimages to camp at the beach, or the children kept cool and contented on the long hot afternoons, playing under the sprinkler in the garden.
In adulthood, the bush and the garden have remained a strong part of my Christmas. As a young mother, visits to my mother, Anne, meant returning home with my children bearing armfuls of huge, palest pink or blue hydrangeas to decorate the house.
We seared the cut end of the stem, to seal them and maximise the longevity of the blooms. Hydrangeas do well in Mudgee, too.
My Mudgee hydrangeas
Christmas in those early family years also meant visits from my friend Jo, who would deliver great unruly sprays of pinkish-red Christmas Bush from her grandfather’s garden, to all her friends.
Australian Christmas Bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum)
We immediately sprayed the masses of star-shaped flowers with a mist of water to keep them from drying out, and repeated this several times daily.
Christmas Bush was enormously popular in the early Colonial period. Fortunately this native plant has survived and continues to flourish in the sandy, coastal soils of eastern NSW.
A boatload of Christmas Bush being rowed towards Sydney for sale in the markets [Sydney Mail 23 December 1882]
When I haven’t spent too much money on Christmas presents, I may make a trip to the florist to buy Australian Christmas Bells (Blandfordia nobilis). When these long stems, topped with their circlet of crimson and gold flowers, are sprinkled through a bunch of Christmas Bush, you have the quintessential Australian native Christmas flower combination, commonly known as “bells ‘n bush”.
Christmas Bell in its habitat
Christmas Bells and Christmas Bush are flowers of the coastal environment. The Bush grows in the dry forest just behind the heathlands, while the Bells grow in low lying, swampy areas between the sandy ridges.
Christmas Bells were also immensely popular in Colonial times, but did not survive as well as Christmas Bush. They are now protected and may only be grown commercially under licence.
‘Christmas Belles’, the caption of an illustration of young ladies collecting Christmas Bells (from the Illustrated Sydney News – Christmas Issue 1886)
In my Mudgee garden, the approach of Christmas is heralded by the first buds of the reliable agapanthus (Nile Lily), which flowers no matter how hot and dry the season is. The blue of the agapanthus’ spherical flower heads, mimics the summer sky. These are also dramatic cut flowers for Christmas home decoration.
First buds opening on blue agapanthus in my Mudgee garden today.
The white aggies are a little more advanced.
The child of the east coast can walk in the forest and drink in the sights, smells and sounds of Christmas- dry bark crunching underfoot, sweet nectar from the masses of eucalypt blossoms, and the buzzing of thousands of bees in the angophora flowers.
Sydney Red Gum (Angophora) forest
The channel-billed cuckoo migrates to eastern Australia from New Guinea around October each year. By December, in some years, it reaches as far west as Mudgee, and wakes me while it’s still dark, to inform me that Christmas is on the way.