IMPORTANT TREES I HAVE KNOWN

When I moved to my block of land, I was interested to find my largest trees. They were of all species : spotted gum, redgum, blackbutt, and ironbark; but quite rare. The outright largest girth tree was a spotted gum, with a circumference of 4.8m. Soon after measuring it, a storm came through and shredded its sapwood and the tree swiftly died.

The next largest spotted gum looked like a giant, and still towers 10m over the rest, and we can see it as we approach down our driveway from a distance. When forestry decided to burn our land, the only place they really succeeded in burning was the bladey grass near this tree. It had dropped a branch near its base, and that had caught alight: burning slowly with its radiant heat penetrating the bark on the bole of this tree. Old spotted gums have thin bark, and this one shed half its girth, which is now exposed to rot.

During the burn, I decided to burn my blackbutt area, which is about 100 acres of very old trees, interspersed by very young trees. I prepared the area by scraping the prolific tree branches and decorticated bark from around their bases, so that their vulnerable pre-burned exposed cores would not be set alight. What happened was that on some trees, the bark caught alight from the back; the trees went up like roman candles, and dropped flaming flags of bark at their base, and set the scars alight that way instead. About 4 of these monsters crashed down.

I still have most of my blackbutts and most of my spotted gums. The massive 4.65m redgum still stands proudly in a gully.

I have a neighbour who is very environmentally sensitive, and he had another neighbour, a professional logger, take some trees from his block. It's all right he said, I'd never do anything to hurt the environment. I'm only logging these dangerous old blackbutts; trees under the power lines; trees near fences; trees near my house; trees near the shed; trees near the dog; and trees on Tuesdays. OK, I said. Sounds like you know what you are doing. Lots of money. He could hardly believe it. I went around to his place later, and we went sadly down to a large blackbutt with its canopy on the ground. This was my favourite tree, he said. I only went out for an hour. It never occurred to me that it would be logged. I used to come down here, sit under it, and watch the wallabies. The tree forked at 5m. And yes, 2.5m of its magnificent bole had been taken. Looked like fair game to me.

I still have a very large ironbark.

-Chris