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found south of Newcastle mostly along the coast to Wilson’s Promontory, skips the Furneaux Group, and thence into North East Tasmania. 
called Silvertop Ash on the mainland, but commonly known as Ironbark in #Tasmania
style of E. sieberi is to grow as tall as possible and then throw branches up and out
early settlers searched for good splitting trees to make posts, rails, weatherboards & shingles, later, selected trees were milled for their hard, durable timber. In NE #Tasmania they were cleared, first for radiata plantations, then for pulp. Pretty quiet in the bush, for now.
the seeds for these potentially huge solid trees are rather an understatement. their tiny size (1 mm) and light weight assist their dispersal if there is a bit of wind. an absence of competing plants and a fine bed of ash also aid the germination process.
these seed cases (‘gumnuts’) eventually fall to the ground, where they lie stacked alongside leaves, scraps of bark, branches, sticks; a whole ecosystem of debris teeming with life, until.
i love the smell of wood fires in winter, the sight of smoke rising from a chimney, somewhere warm and snug. I think everybody is a bit atavistic where the hearth is concerned. In summer though, and now increasingly spring & autumn, the smell of eucalyptus burning is a worry.
first there is the smoke, a wisp can grow into a cloud very quickly, a packed bag and a bushfire plan are useful tools, but the outcome is luck, or the lack of it. wind strength & direction, temperature, soil dryness, fuel load, quickness of the response; they all influence fate
just hours after a fire is noticed, the local volunteers are on the ground, evaluating, checking, advising. they are soon followed by the thump thump of a helicopter, using thermal imaging for mapping and equipped with a water bucket.
bushfires are essential for a healthy eucalyptus forest; the heat of the fire helps open the seed cases, clears competing vegetation and leaves a fine ash bed for the tiny seeds to germinate. It can also kill the trees if it becomes too intense or burrows into the heartwood
after the fire front has passed through, trees continue to smoulder, sometimes flare up and often fall down. raptors hunt along the edges as wildlife flee.
fires gather intensity as they burn uphill, the thick bark on the E. sieberi might burn all the way to the top, the leaves sometimes wither and die, but unlike the smooth barked E. viminalis, they often recover
then there is an amazing transformation. the burnt bush colour palette of grey, brown and black is overlayed with green, the chlorophyll infused leaves spout everywhere. life reawakens
epicormic growth can sprout from the trunk or the branches. it’s purpose is to keep the tree alive until the limbs recover, but in some species, sometimes, this growth will become a permanent part of the tree, although they do not have the depth of attachment as the original.
Not long after the epicormic shoots appear, the fern rhizomes also send out green sprouts. Then the acacia seeds, stimulated by the heat, start to germinate, along with the millions of other seeds released by the Eucalypts, Melaleucas, Banksias, Hakeas & others.
and life’s lottery goes on
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