Municipal Gum

Municipal Gum - context Summary

Urban Displacement Lament

Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poem contrasts a gumtree confined by city bitumen with its rightful place in leafy forest. The tree’s broken, listless image—likened to a castrated cart-horse—becomes a figure for cultural injury and loss caused by urbanisation. Addressing the reader as "fellow citizen," the poem indicts municipal displacement and asks who is harmed by such imposed order, linking environmental harm with broader social and Indigenous dispossession.

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Gumtree in the city street, Hard bitumen around your feet, Rather you should be In the cool world of leafy forest halls And wild bird calls Here you seems to me Like that poor cart-horse Castrated, broken, a thing wronged, Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged, Whose hung head and listless mien express Its hopelessness. Municipal gum, it is dolorous To see you thus Set in your black grass of bitumen-- O fellow citizen, What have they done to us?