is there anything as lovely as a tree

i found a postcard i'd souvenired from the art gallery of nsw

It's Harold Cazneaux's photograph taken in 1937, The spirit of endurance
A river red gun, with Wilpena Pound in the background.

In the circular way of fame, the tree Cazneaux considered iconic enough to photograph has now gained significance by being the tree he photographed.
It has a plaque, and is a "tourist stop".

It's also Significant Tree #239 on the National Trust of South Australia's list. 

I have a few favourite "art" trees

Albert Namatjira's many gums

Ghost Gum, 1948

White Gum

This one of Tacita Dean's Kotzsch Trees, 2008

Georgia O'Keeffe's The Lawrence Tree, 1929

I remember this painting (in the abstract) whenever I stand under a gum tree

someone else's photo of gum trees with the milky way

you can never go back

i'm not as bad as i used to be, but i still get silly ideas in my head.
like "something" won't happen unless i have a special talisman.
or suffering deep grief (an exaggeration) over the loss of a souvenir.

like the 50 pesetas coin i picked up in barcelona in 1992
it was so pretty - gaudi's sagrada familia on one side, and the coin itself was a pretty flower shape
i had it for almost 20 years - and then took it to work for show and tell, and lost it! the pain deepened when i realised that the spanish have replaced pesetas with euros! i went on ebay and bought another one - and two days later found the one i thought i'd lost on the floor beneath my desk!

some months ago, i lost a keychain i bought in 2002.
it was a yayoi kusama art souvenir, she had been part of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery.
first reaction - can i replace it.  ebay gave me nothing - i couldn't even find an image of it.  then i found it on kusama's "products" page - sold out!

I have found an ersatz replacement, a "love forever" badge, small.  not the same.
why do i need to replace it at all?
when i bought the keychain all those years ago, i really was yearning for "love forever" with no guarantee of finding it.  now i actually have love forever, soul-deep unconditional love.  and i still think it's important to have a $5 talisman.
(now i've turned it into a "if i find it again, it means i'll have kids" situation.  seriously, what a fatalistic idiot!)
oh well.

anyway, it got me thinking about how the best souvenirs are the accidental or ephemeral.
both the 50 pesetas piece and the keychain were great - they were unusual, aesthetically pleasing and cheap!

some other favourites, from last year's trip to tamania

• a sturdy shopping bag from the IGA in St Helens on the east coast of tassie - $1.50, practical and cool (better than the hobart book shop bag i also picked up on last year's holiday, because more unexpected)
• a large bamboo plate/platter with kangaroos on it picked up at an opp shop for $2
• a bicheno souvenir teatowel with pelicans on it from the bicheno hardware & gift shop, $12 - all the better because i had seen (and desperately wanted) a pillow in a posh "hand-made craft" shop in hobart, that had used the same teatowel, and p had marched me away from the $90 purchase.  oh yes, cheap cool holiday pick-ups are soooo much better than a cold-blooded, expensive purchase

here are two articles that circle around the topic,

• souvenirs as art 
• art souvenirs for penny-pinchers