G'day again Stiofáin,

For some even more obscure reason, we also call coolibah (at least, the eucalyptus microtheca variety) Flooded Box. I had to go looking for the references, since coolibah is not a tree that turns up as commercial timber. The main reason is that it is notoriously crooked - one authority claims it hasn't got an inch of straight timber in the whole tree!

This, presumably, reflects the harsh and changeable conditions of growth - long years of drought interspersed with total inundation in flood years.

I spent a little while, late last year, on the legendary "Big Willandra", once the largest sheep station (ranch, farm) in the world and now a National Park. The homestead stands by the Willandra Billabong (also called Willandra Creek) - a stretch of waterway some hundreds of miles long that only receives overflow water when the Lachlan River is in flood - and then runs that water into marshlands in the interior where the desert blooms for a while, then dries up for a few years until the next flood.

Regards,

Bob Bolton