Leigh Oates

When I was a young boy I would spend a lot of time with my grandfather. He was a keen fisherman and he would search for wattle grubs to use as bait. He taught me what trees to look for when searching for grubs and what signs to look for around the trees. Any tree with frass (excrement that the grub passes when burrowing into the tree) at the base was worth looking at because this was the sign that a grub had entered the tree. The size of the grub and how far it has travelled into the tree depended on the time of year. I have shown my two sons how to find wattle grubs. Now they can pass this onto their children. This painting shows the wattle grubs around the outside surrounded in frass. The grubs have space around them as they would if they were burrowing into the tree. The white dots represent the eggs, the beginning of their life cycle. The centre pattern represents the tree and its growth rings; the red centre is the heart of the tree.