Australia Day Bonsai Exhibition

Yesterday, I saw Australia Day Bonsai Exhibition organised for the first time and held at Merrylands RSL, Sydney. Members of eight New South Wales bonsai clubs put up their trees for the exhibition. This sort of show never happened in Australia before. A national exhibition like Kokufu-ten in Japan or the US National Bonsai Exhibirion is impossible in Australia due to bio-security regulations enforced by the federal government. However, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia could hold their state exhibitions right now, but for some reason don’t. Anyway, the standard of Australia Day Exhibition was better than at usual individual club shows. Below are some trees. All Australian natives: 1- Port Jackson Fig (≈ 90 cm), Banksia (≈ 50 cm) and Baeckea (≈ 30 cm). Picture 4 shows a suiseki from China.

Penching-like grapevine

Last winter I was visiting vineyards in Hunter Valley and was taken by the beauty of bare grapevine plants. They reminded me of the flat top penching trees characteristic of Yang School of Yangzhou. Some of them had amazing trunk movement with interesting dead wood like the one on the picture.