There was a time when lemon trees were a common sight in backyards across the Hunter.
Orange and grapefruit trees, too. Peach perhaps. No doubt, some of them still exist.
Bob Skelton has a wild lemon tree in the bush on his Minmi property.
"They're a different lemon to the ones you buy in the shop," said Bob, a bush poet also known as the Minmi Magster.
"They have a lot softer and thicker skin than a normal lemon. They're like the skin of an orange. I think the common lemon is their name. They're bloody beautiful lemons."
He reckons the bush lemons aren't native.
"They would have been brought out here from England, I'd say."
Bob went to check on the tree this week to see if it was bearing fruit, but it was badly hit by the drought.
Back in the day, the Hunter was home to many orchards.
"At the back of the university, there was a gully there in the middle of the bush that was called the old orchard," Bob said.
"There's a substation built there on that road. There was a big paddock there. A bloke used to lease it. Sometimes they'd have 200 or 300 bullocks there.
"An old bloke had a shack there. He was a caretaker. He didn't like us going through there. That was our shortcut through to the old orchard. There were monkey vines and all sorts of scrub there.
"I shot a big pig there one time. They were getting out at the abattoirs at Warabrook and coming across the swamp and into the old orchard."
Traditional Knowledge
Red sky at night, sailors' delight. Red sky in morning, sailors' warning.
Speak to old salts and they'll tell you this saying rings true.
The saying came up as we chatted with Dr Andrew Magee, of the University of Newcastle, about a new early warning outlook he and his team developed for tropical cyclones in the Southwest Pacific.
His outlook is based on some heavy-duty science. But a few years ago, he was able to connect with Indigenous people in Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga, who shared traditional knowledge about how plants and animals can indicate when cyclones are on the way.
The knowledge is passed from generation to generation.
A research paper that Andrew led a few years back touched on this topic. Participants in the research spoke of a relationship between increased fruit yields and tropical-cyclone activity.
"In particular, harvests of mangoes and breadfruit were noted as fruits that were in abundance preceding the tropical-cyclone season. The shape of tomatoes was also mentioned as a sign of potential tropical-cyclone activity."
In the days leading to a cyclone, birds native to smaller islands can be seen flying above the mainland and cattle and dogs are vocal.
The quantity and variety of fish preceding a cyclone was "significantly lower than normal", particularly barracuda. And crabs wash ashore.
Bee activity changes. In normal weather, bees build hives on branches close to the ground. Before a cyclone, bees often relocate their hive to higher ground or branches.
Non-Viral Joke
What kind of fruit grows on a calendar? Dates.
What do you get when you cross fruit and bowling? A banana split.
