No, they don't grow in Australia — well, at least, I don't recall seeing one in 30 years of living there. (We do grow sweet chestnuts for eating, but not horse chestnuts as far as I know.)Rob Houghton wrote:One thing I do find interesting is that the artist depicts a horse chestnut tree in the Australian version. Do horse chestnut trees grow in Australia? I guess they must do? Just wondered why they didn't change the tree to a more typically antipodean one!
As far as I'm aware, too, Enid Blyton books published in Australia have never actually had the illustrations or the text modified to make it look like the story is set in Australia!! I have an Angus and Robertson edition of Circus Days Again and it's most definitely set in Britain — Lotta still rides from Dorset across Devon almost to Plymouth, not from, say, Melbourne across Victoria to Mount Gambier (just over the South Australian border).
Now there's a thought, mind you — or if she rode east instead, into the high country... gosh, now I'm having visions of Lotta chasing the wild bush horses with The Man from Snowy River...