Whilst I was  going through my archives  looking for some better images to include in my portfolio for the Adelaide Photography 1970-2000 book— submissions have just been called— I came across a few images of River Red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) along the River Murray in Victoria.  I had more or less over forgotten about these mid-1980s images, as they were mixed up with  some of the  sand dune  images of  Adelaide’s coastal beaches in the archive.

The picture  above was made on a late 1980s road trip in the VW Kombi  along the southern coast of Australia then back along the River Murray. Other images from this road trip— e.g.,  the La Trobe Valley and  the Riverland trunk images —can be found  in this  earlier post about  the Adelaide Photography book. 

The landscapes do not feature in my portfolio in the Adelaide Photography book,  but they do connect with the emerging Our Waters  project on the River Murray. They are of a River Red Gum forest in the Barmah National Park in Victoria. From memory the  park is a large flood plain and wetland area.

My understanding is that the Millewa Forest, on the northern banks of the Murray River in NSW that  is adjacent to the Barmah National Park,   became  a national park in 2010 and was then  renamed as the Murray Valley National Park.

These two parks,  constituting a cross–border national park,  are the largest continuous red gum forest in the world and have been chosen as as one of six icon sites due to their high conservation value and encompass floodplains, wetlands and forests.