The Red Bull Runs Through Portugal
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The Red Bull Runs Through Portugal

It's amazing the ignorance of people when it comes to plants. I ought to know. I remember my own ignorance when the eucalyptus trees of Tilden Park in Oakland, California, were pointed out to me for the first time. I thought, "how beautiful! -- And they smell so lovely".

Then I visited Australia for a few years on and off and got to know a bit about them. A farmer staying at the same trailer park (trailers are called "caravans" over there) where I was staying at North Ryde in the late '80's talked quite a bit with me, telling me such things as how to salt cure meat so you can keep it. He and his family had lived without electricity or refrigerators and such amenities out in the out back all his life and he was telling me about some of his adventures.

Among them was the time he was on a ridge overlooking a valley of eucalyptus trees. There in Australia they call them gum trees. They are really the only natural tree, by and large, in the whole continent and there are over fifty varieties of them. They have waxy leaves that hold in the moisture a lot better than the other broad leaf trees such as the poplar or the oak, and they often need fire to reproduce. So they exude a flammable gas.

The result is a conflagration of a near explosive nature. The farmer was relating his observation of the valley of eucalyptus trees -- or gum trees as they call them -- that day when a front came through as they often do is Australia, relatively quickly, with a noticeable drop in temperature and thunderstorm activity. He saw a bold of lightning strike the tall trees in the valley floor and the entire area immediately exploded into flames. It's like the flint wheel being spun on a disposable butane cigarette lighter which produces the gas flame.

Gum trees do something else and do it quite well: They tend to displace other trees when introduced into foreign semi-arid environments. Such as what has happened in Portugal. Now, in the summer of 2005, they are suffering immense wild fires. Something the hobos in Australia, called "swagmen", used to call "The Red Bull". Now the citizens of Portugal relate that their beloved country is burning up.

It's the blasted gum trees, mate! Next thing you know, the red bull will be running loose right round the semi arid globe so as nobody could ever put it out.