There are Canadian trees that tear at my soul – white pines in Canadian Shield country, their flaring, wind-swept boughs dancing power against stormy skies; paper birches, the beauties of the boreal forest, their graceful white trunks peeling bands of bark that are cinnamon-coloured on the inside; aspens in autumn, their leaves trembling like gold coins and whispering rustling secrets of rich harvests preceeding the icy breath of winter; and maples with their spreading crowns and mult-pointed leaves, those of the sugar maple signalling pancake sweetness in its sap, and those of the autumn red maple, flames that fall like hot coral onto dying green.

Here in Australia, the native trees are no less captivating – the palms with their ringed trunks and flaring fronds; the rainforest giants with their buttressed roots and entangling relationships with strangler figs; the gums with their hundreds of renditions of trunk and limb sculpture and drought-speaking leaves coloured dusty olive, blue, and green so pale it could be silver. Yet, if I had to choose one aspect of Australian trees to show to the world, it would be their bark. Like pieces of art hung in the gallery of nature, the barks of Australian trees make me yearn to use my hands to create beauty as a silversmith, fashion designer, or painter of abstract art – none of which I am, yet my soul feels expanded simply from the yearning.

Today’s post is a collection of twenty photographs of the bark of Australian trees. Vilis and I know only a few of the species, which were photographed in the Paluma rainforests, the parks of Townsville, and the wilderness of Tasmania. Nonetheless, we hope you enjoy their outermost expressions.