Undersong Tasmanian Bush Scents

Undersong was invited to create a bush scent to accompany the opening of the Ridge Quarters at Spring Bay Mill, Triabunna in early October. Inspired by site walks on the former wood chip mill site, conversations and walks with head horticulturist Marcus Ragus, and subsequent bush rambling in the wilder parts of the coastal property overlooking Maria Island, the result is ‘Spring’.  Two Spring blossoms - blue gum blossom and fragrant acacia - were gathered from the mill site in early Spring, distilled individually in an artisan copper still, and blended together to create an aroma that revives and restores. Used in a humidifier, ethereal trails of ‘Spring’ botanical water by Undersong was part of a warm and open welcome.

Correa’s white stars are flowering in broad daylight on dunes, rocky cairns and granite foreshores in southeastern Australia from now through winter. 

White Correa (Correa alba) first reached my consciousness during a five-week writer’s residency on Flinders Island, walking from Fotheringate Beach to Trousers Point, where a striking array of seashore bushes pushes up, finds root in crevices, making friends with the salty air. 

To me a fragrance should be like an echo - not overpowering like many man-made scents, more like birdsong reverberating down a sassafras gully.

ECHO Festival celebrates on the weekend before Easter at Cranbrook. Now in its third year, this gathering of the clans is the brainchild of Tasmanian singer songwriter Ange Boxall, who brings together artists, performers, storytellers, musicians and food and wine producers in celebration of the year’s harvest. Hopefully under the stars, or undercover in barn or tent.

ECHO scent by Undersong was created especially for this event. Four ingredients (Oyster Bay pine, Kunzea, Pepper tree and Correa alba) gathered from East Coast wild places, distilled individually by hand in an artisan copper still and blended to create aromatic mists and waters.

Tested blind in Sydney on a friend who has an amazing ‘nose’, Faith closed her eyes and said: “Mmmm, smells like the sea!” 

Smell works in mysterious ways. It has no voice. Just try describing the smell of the Australian bush. It's the job of poetry. And perfume.

Two years ago I was fortunate to be inaugural artist-in-residence at Patterdale, the privately restored home of colonial artist John Glover. This rare intensity of time - to stay and walk the hills of Glover Country - enabled me to continue my journey into place first described in A Story of Seven Summers(published 2012). In writing that story about where I had chosen to live (to be, not do), I came to a conclusion: that who you are is where you are.

Like many Australians, I am a hybrid - mongrel if you like - born in the UK (Irish/French roots), raised in Tasmania; continuing a professional life in both countries. The European colonial in me is ever conscious as I strain to listen to ancient wisdoms of elders past and present.

When Australians travel, one of the things we miss most is the smell of the bush. And yet, how do we name that smell? Eucalyptus (native to Australia) is nowhere near enough - there are 900 different species alone. What of all the other trees that go to make up the great Australian bush. What of the understorey or forest floor? There is so much more to the picture some people see as grey and bland as they speed down the highway between city or town.

Immersed in Glover Country, following in John Glover's footsteps day after day, waking with the dawn, basking in Mills Plains golden, rainbow light, I learned to see the artist's view. I found a word for it, too, in the text of a book by British nature writer Robert Macfarlane.

Undersong. The subtle underlying sounds of a given landscape; the ambient murmur of a particular place or environment. The undersong is often hard to hear or tune in to, because it comprises sounds that do not tend to declare themselves actively or ostentatiously to the ear (the sound of the wind, distant running water, hum of traffic, compound birdsong).

At Glover's house, I found the way to finish a second book I called Undersong. It may never be published but you can smell it.

This week is Open House at Patterdale for the duration of Glover Prize Week (March 6 - 14). You too can see inside the house, and walk the restored garden and country where John Glover painted. You can see inside Glover's Studio to view the exhibition of paintings by Amber Koroluk-Stephenson arising from her own Glover Country 2020 residency.

And you can smell the scents Glover Country inspired.

More than a year in research and making, my process has been helped by the paused world of coronavirus. Steeped in the smells of the Australian bush near my new home in Swansea, Tasmania, I offer you Undersong - aromatic mists and waters sourced from Tasmania's wild places, distilled individually in an artisan copper still.