MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Being banished to the easternmost primary school in Victoria, as far away from Melbourne as you could get for his first posting fresh out of teacher’s college in 1969, my husband Bob was rewarded for his year of exile by beginning a love affair in that place which lasted him the rest of his days. Not with me, and not with any other lady either.

He discovered in that remote little schoolyard in Combienbar several species of native ground orchids, not the flashy “look at me” sort which people go to great pains to put on show, but the humble bush variety. He’d never noticed them before, and for most of us we can easily go our whole lives without spotting them, for they blend into their surrounding ecosystems on which they depend in such a way as to go unnoticed.

I have memories of trudging up a rainforest mountain on our honeymoon in search of some rare species, countless bushwalks where Bob would point out these hidden delights on the forest floor, only to be left wondering what he was looking at. You have to train your eyes to see them, and once you do, you suddenly get it. Here are these amazing little plants, some of which don’t even get any further than ground level, with the most intricate flowers in all manner of engaging shapes, hence such descriptive names as spider, donkey, bird, mosquito, lizard and tiger orchids, greenhoods, pink fairies, red beards and the list goes on and on.

So, now that spring is here, ‘tis orchid season again and for the first time in a while I escaped from the office for a couple of hours and headed bush with some friends to see what we could find. The Poatina bush has just the right conditions for these little beauties to thrive, and with each species flowering at a different time over the next few months we managed to locate quite a number of nodding greenhoods and an abundance of bird orchids.

It wasn’t until I transferred the photos on to the computer though, that I spotted the insect on the greenhood. I hadn’t seen it at all when I took the shot, so I was really chuffed to make the discovery.

It felt like God’s gift to me that day, a reminder not only to take time out to appreciate the natural beauty around me, but a reminder that sometimes we need a different perspective to see what’s really there. There are times when we need to take a step back, not so we can retreat, but in order to be still, refocus and see things more clearly.