Eucalyptus coolabah (Coolabah), Australia

Recorded by Kim V. Goldsmith on the western floodplain of the North Marsh, Macquarie Marshes in Central Northwestern New South Wales (Wayilwan Country), Australia. May 2024. The recording was made with contact microphones in the early morning, with a light breeze in the crown of the tree. The drought had just broken and the floodplain had received its first flood in years only three months before the first recording.

A Coolabah tree that is hundreds of years old, twists and turns in a jumble of trunks and branchs on the western floodplain near the North Marsh, Macquarie Marshes.

A small to medium-sized box tree of up to 10m tall, widespread over inland eastern Australia, Central Australia and the southern fringe of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Forming a lignotuber. The Coolabah occurs on occasionally flooded heavy-soiled plains and banks of streams that flow too intermittently to support the River Red Gum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis.

Eucalyptus coolabah is a straggly tree always with some rough bark over part or all of the trunk but with the upper trunk and branches are smooth. Adult leaves are dull green to greyish green. Small ovoid buds are borne in profusion in branched clusters at the ends of branchlets in late spring/early summer and are often glaucous.

Find more of Kim V. Goldsmith’s work online here and here