In memory of giant trees long gone
This particular school paper folder was once owned by a Miss Edith E Durham from Diamond Creek who had hand stitched the precious monthly papers into cardboard covers; it was kept for decades by Mrs. Grace Hall.
‘"Big Ben" near Healesville, a splendid species of Eucalyptus Amygdalina, with solid trunk, and 57 ft in girth, was caught in the great bushfires of 1902 and killed.' The article continues. 'He was probably a sapling when the people of England were semi barbaric... From the centre to the bark of such a tree there appeared a series of rings or band-like markings, numbering over 1200.'
The writer, N J Caire, from the Field Naturalists of Victoria talks very personally about the giants and comments the tallest tree yet heard of at Childers measured 300 feet to the first branch and had a head of foliage 50 feet beyond that.
I too have written about these amazing trees, quoting families that lived in them and statistics: Trees over 400ft tall, which equates roughly to a 30+ storey building; a Mountain Ash that was split into twenty thousand 6-foot palings. Are these not gob-smacking, breath-taking figures?
Back in 1906, Caire speaks openly about the lack of interest in the giant trees by Government or private individual, and says they will surely be lost to future generations for want of some conservation. 'Our descendants will only see old photographs or hear stories of the great trees' that once covered the mountain sides. Sadly Mr/Ms Caire was a very sound prophet. James Guerts' sculpture with its footprint of a giant captures imagination and reflection by summoning the spirit of the huge giants to Civic Park, and reminds us of the extraordinary trees that dwarfed the early township of Warragul and provided building materials for bridges, housing, furniture, factories and fuel for industry, providing, in fact, the fabric of life for the settlers.
It reminds us of what we have lost. It also urges us, like the school paper over 100 years ago, to think about what we may still lose if we don't care for, and about, the natural world around us.