Thread: Need help with a wood I.D.

Hopefully some of you Aussies are well-travelled!

I found this wood in the bushes at work today, and was wondering what they are.

There are two pieces (two different species), one has grown spiraled all the way up, and was found dead and mostly dry in the middle of what looked like a clump of dogwood or something - same tree I think, just not spiralled. The healthy part of the tree was 6 or 8 trunks in a clump maybe 15 or 20 feet tall, and they sort of gnarled up from the ground with lots of elbows and kinks almost to the top of the canopy where it spread out into a mushroom shaped green leafy (shape similar to aspen, you know, standard leaf shape) canopy. The whole overall look of the tree was sort of like a giant bonsai. The piece I got was growing up out of the middle of this thing and I pulled it out sideways(the bottom burl was mostly dry and rotten) at the ground level.

Here's a pic or two:
























The other piece acts like ash, pretty white, weird grain patterns, and it's very hard and stringy when you try to break it. the part that I broke off I had to twist a lot to make it come apart, resulting in an end that looks sorta like a paintbrush that's been severely abused.

The bark on this second piece is greyish-brown and sort of wrinkly in shape. There were lots of bigger trees with this same bark characteristic growing all around, and I think that this was a branch from one of them. It too had a sort of gnarly shape to the whole canopy, with branches growing and kinking at all angles.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Thanks a ton