Helen Chick
1. I knew there were eucalypts in California but what I hadn’t realised is that they are blue gums. When I was wandering up on the lower slopes above the University of California Berkeley and crushing gumnuts underfoot the air was redolent of Tassie.
2. Although I have also wandered along quite a few of the streets I haven’t yet seen a Californian bungalow, which are prevalent in my area of Melbourne. Some houses have a bit of a resemblance, but they’re just not quite the same. So, where are the real Californian bungalows?
The photo at right shows the campanile on the University of California, Berkeley campus, framed through the blue gums on the slopes above the main campus. The campanile houses a carillon (i.e., it’s a bell tower), and it was playing the afternoon I was walking here. The blue gums were planted in California to provide timber, which was a poor decision because blue gums are not much good for that purpose. In fact it was a trebly poor decision, because two of the things that eucalypts are actually and unfortunately very good at are (a) invading ecosystems, and (b) burning furiously in bushfire season.
There aren’t that many areas with *real* California bungalows. I know some near downtown San Jose. There are some in Berkeley; will you be there long enough to be able to go if I can dredge it up out of my memory??
I head back tomorrow. Haven’t quite decided what I’m going to do in the afternoon after the conference, but I hope to pick up at least one more cache up on the ridge (the conference is up there, which makes it a bit easier!)
Grrh – trying to look through neighbourhoods and check things out in street view! Alternatively looking for a church that Maybeck and a few others attended. . .I’ve thrown the question out to friends on Twitter – which I would have thought to do before (half my friends on Twitter or Californian geocachers – odd, I know).