Decorating your Christmas tree? Try these crafts inspired by Aussie plants and animals
- Written by: Caitlyn Forster, Associate Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney
While we’re busy preparing for Christmas, many Australian native plants and animals are also busy – growing, flowering and raising their young. What better time to celebrate this explosion of life?
Let’s set aside the holly, snowmen and reindeer this Christmas and decorate our homes with some of Australia’s most remarkable species instead.
Drawing on themes from our research on wildlife, ecology and astronomy, we’ve prepared this handy guide to an Aussie festive season.
It’s not too late to get crafty and deck the halls with Christmas beetle baubles and paper parrots for a Christmas with a difference.
Christmas beetle baubles
As their name suggests, Christmas beetles would have to be our most notable Christmassy insect. These little beauties give our eucalyptus trees their own little baubles. The trees provide food for the beetles, which become most abundant at this time of year.
Use our Christmas beetle stencils and some spray paint to give your baubles a fresh new look.
Have you heard about the Christmas Beetle Count? This project is tracking Christmas beetle populations across Australia through the power of citizen science. People have recorded nearly 15,000 observations of beetles, including some not seen in decades.
By gaining more knowledge of which species of beetles are around, we can learn how they are doing in the face of a changing climate and urbanisation. It can also help us understand what needs to be preserved in order for Christmas beetles to thrive in future ecosystems.
Put some spines among pines (or gum leaves)
The echidna is one of only two egg-laying mammals in Australia. The other is the egg-laying and venomous playtpus.
Fun fact: relative to body size, the short-beaked echidna is the mammal with the world’s largest prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain is crucial for decision-making. Perhaps these humble, bumbling balls of spikes make better choices than we humans do?
Clay models of this marvellous monotreme make wonderful additions to any table or tree. Make your own with some clay for the body, some sticks for the spines and a couple of small gumnuts for eyes.
Making a Christmas echidna will be a delightful way to introduce a bit of sensory play into your home.
Shannon Drayton-Taylor
Swap the reindeer for tree kangaroos
For a local substitution for flying reindeer, why not consider kangaroos in the treetops?
In the far north, two species of tree kangaroos bound and crash through the treetops of our tropical rainforests.
The powerful Lumholtz and Bennett’s tree kangaroos are built for climbing. They can also jump up to 15 metres from the treetops to the ground, unharmed.
Create your own by cutting little kangaroo-shaped silhouettes out of cardboard, and draw on a face and put it on your Christmas tree.
A female tree kangaroo is best, because then you can tuck special treats like chocolates into their pouch. It’s the ultimate wildlife advent calendar.
Just don’t despair if these guys leap off the tree, as this is quite normal behaviour.
These kangaroos belong in trees.
AAP Image/Darren England
Elegant Yuletide Eclectus parrots
Better than matching knitted jumpers, Eclectus parrots make the ultimate Christmas couples. These parrots from Cape York come in vivid green (male) and stunning two-tone blue and red (female).
Males seek to impress females with their plumage and vocal repertoire. If successful, they’ll engage in acrobatic aerial displays by showing off their colourful feathers, prior to mating. Several males will bring food to a single female while she incubates eggs in a deep tree hollow.
The colours of eclectus parrots are festive. Males are green, females blue and red.Make your own origami bird decorations using coloured paper. Once the bird is folded, add some ribbon so they can be placed on your tree. Consider creating a whole family of adults and chicks, just as they would in the wild.
You can even use recycled paper and colour it to suit other Christmas-coloured birds such as king parrots, rosellas or lorikeets.
If you’re into backyard or street cricket, you could even take advantage of time spent waiting around when you’re fielding to do a bird count using the citizen science app eBird. Download the app, count the birds you see and contribute to citizen science.
Making origami eclectus parrots can be a simple way to add some native birds to your Christmas tree.
Shannon Drayton-Taylor
Look up to the sky for inspiration
The “Great Celestial Emu” is a beautiful feature of the night sky in the southern hemisphere.
Indigenous Australian stories about the Emu in the Sky come from all over the country.
Compared to constellations named by Babylonian and Ancient Greek astronomers, the emu is unique. In this case the name is not given to a group of stars forming a recognisable pattern. Instead, the emu shape is a silhouette made up of dark patches of gas and dust blocking light from the Milky Way. This is the Dark Emu in the title of Bruce Pascoe’s bestselling book.
The head is the dark Coalsack Nebula next to the Southern Cross and the neck extends through the middle of the “pointer stars” (Alpha and Beta Centauri). In December, the head of the emu is visible in the early morning before dawn.
We added the Great Celestial Emu to our Christmas tree by sprucing up a silver bauble with glitter.
The ‘Great Celestial Emu’ or ‘Emu in the Sky’. Left: an image of the night sky captured at the Elvina engraving site in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, near Sydney, annotated with an outline of the emu shape. Right: an the Emu in the Sky bauble made out of an old silver bauble, some glue, and some glitter.
Barnaby Norris & Ray Norris (Emu in the Sky, left), Dr Laura Driessen (bauble, right)
Finish with some gardening and foraging
We can bring the outside in, or we can head out to enjoy nature in all its glory.
Being in nature has many benefits for health and wellbeing.
Many Australian plants will be flowering over summer, and they can be collected, dried, and placed in clear baubles to create simple, beautiful decorations for your tree.
Or you can get planting and grow your own Christmas tree, such as a cypress pine local to your area or even a Christmas bush.
To make a festive Australian bauble, you need some clear fillable baubles, and then collect whatever pieces of nature you like.
Caitlyn Forster
A foraged Christmas bauble is the ultimate way to sustainably change the look of your Christmas tree every year.
Caitlyn Forster
Authors: Caitlyn Forster, Associate Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney
