I am Spotted Gum.
You know me by sight, even if you don’t know my name.
My bark peels away in mottled patches of cream, grey, and reddish/brown. A camouflage of light and shadow in the forest.
My grain is bold, my body strong, my polish warm beneath your feet. Designers love me.
Builders praise my strength.
I am the timber that feels both familiar and desirable, the surface that softens the sound of your step.
But listen closely, my story is not always beautiful.
Once I stood among thousands, a forest alive with the calls of cockatoos, the slow rustle of gliders moving overhead, the smell of rain settling into the soil.
I held carbon in my rings, water in my roots, shelter in my canopy.
Then came the machines. The whine of saws, the groan of trees falling, the silence after.
My family of trees, gone in hours.
Soil left bare, streams clouded with silt, birds forced to flee.
My removal was called progress.
My grain was called premium.
I was cut, milled, shipped. My journey was hidden.
No record of where I began,
No trace of the hands that felled me,
No acknowledgment of the Country I came from.
There was no passport to tell you my story.
I was laid down in buildings, admired for my finish, but carrying the weight of absence.
Underfoot, I bore the footsteps of people who never knew what was lost for me to be there.
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But my story could be different.
Imagine walking through a forest where my bark dappled the light, where harvesting was careful, selective, paced with renewal.
Where each tree taken allowed others to thrive, where birds still sang, where soil still held the memory of rain.
Imagine my story woven with Indigenous knowledge; managed on Country by custodians who have cared for these ecosystems for millennia.
A cycle of use and renewal that restores, not diminishes.
With a material passport, I could carry that story forward with transparency.
I could tell you where I grew, how I was harvested, what chemicals touched me, how much carbon I store, and how I might serve again when my first life is done.
Picture me decades from now, lifted carefully from a civic hall.
My surface worn smooth by thousands of feet children racing across me, dancers moving in rhythm, quiet footsteps of caretakers late at night.
My passport guiding me to another place, another purpose.
Not discarded, but REBORN.
Each step across me could then be a reminder, not of destruction, but of possibility.
My story could be one of forests protected, communities strengthened, carbon kept in the ground, and materials that live more than one life.
I am Spotted Gum.
You already know me.
The question is:
What story do you want me to tell in your buildings, in your communities, in your future?
If the materials in your projects could speak, what would they say about their origins, their impacts, their journeys?
What would you want them to say and what choices could make that story possible?
'I am a Spotted Gum,' originally performed at Symposium 2025: Resilience, October 2nd, 2025.
Contributor
Kendall Claus is a Designer and Regenerative Design Advisor with Perkins&Will / Introba, focused on sustainability, regeneration, and resilience in the built environment. Her approach is grounded in realising the regenerative potential of each project through a place-based lens, drawing from the unique ecological, cultural, and community context to inform design strategies that restore and enhance living systems.
