This letter, delivered late on Friday 18 December, announces that the tall Eucalyptus viminalis near the tennis courts is to be pruned this week. Discussion with the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment indicates that 'pruning' will involve removal of all of the tree's branches. The letter still refers to expert opinion as the reason for the lopping. We haven't seen any evidence that such a significant tree has been properly investigated to check the extent of any hollows or rot.
20 December 2009
Letter from Chief Minister
I received this letter from Jon Stanhope on Thursday, but hadn't figured out until now how to post a .pdf on the blog.
17 December 2009
Letter to CEO of TAMS
Mr. Gary Biles
Chief Executive
Department of Territories and Municipal Services
Level 5 Macarthur House,
12 Wattle Street,
Lyneham ACT 2602
December 15
Dear Mr Biles,
URGENT
Announcement by your department of decision to fell white gum, Tallest Tree in Canberra*, north east corner of Corroboree Park in Corroboree Park Heritage Precinct, Ainslie.
I refer to announcements in the media and on Paterson Street Ainslie on Saturday 5th December to a crowd of concerned people that the government’s intention is to fell this tree.
We have listened to oral information and opinions about the tree, read the media release first announcing the intention to fell it (before a cherry picker was bought in to examine it), heard some media interviews, and observed some attendances by arborists and machinery at the site. We have requested (Via the Commissioner who has received three complaints against TAMS about the tree) that reports and other information supporting the opinions and decision be made available to the public in writing for study and this has been denied.
Chief Executive
Department of Territories and Municipal Services
Level 5 Macarthur House,
12 Wattle Street,
Lyneham ACT 2602
December 15
Dear Mr Biles,
URGENT
Announcement by your department of decision to fell white gum, Tallest Tree in Canberra*, north east corner of Corroboree Park in Corroboree Park Heritage Precinct, Ainslie.
I refer to announcements in the media and on Paterson Street Ainslie on Saturday 5th December to a crowd of concerned people that the government’s intention is to fell this tree.
We have listened to oral information and opinions about the tree, read the media release first announcing the intention to fell it (before a cherry picker was bought in to examine it), heard some media interviews, and observed some attendances by arborists and machinery at the site. We have requested (Via the Commissioner who has received three complaints against TAMS about the tree) that reports and other information supporting the opinions and decision be made available to the public in writing for study and this has been denied.
Letter to Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment
The Commissioner for Sustainability and The Environment
Dr Maxine Cooper
P O Box 356 Dickson ACT 2602
URGENT
Dear Dr Cooper
Tallest Tree in Canberra* – white gum on north east corner of Corroboree Park in Corroboree Park Heritage Precinct, Ainslie.
I refer to announcements in the media and on Paterson Street Ainslie on Saturday 5th December to a crowd of concerned people that the government’s intention is to fell this tree.
We have listened to oral information and opinions about this tree, read the media release first announcing the intention to fell it (before a cherry picker was bought in to examine it), heard some media interviews, and observed some attendances by arborists and machinery at the site. We have requested that reports and other information supporting these opinions and the decision be made available to the public in writing for study. This has been denied.
We find that you have not furnished us with sufficient objective information for any recommendation that the tree should be removed.
Dr Maxine Cooper
P O Box 356 Dickson ACT 2602
URGENT
Dear Dr Cooper
Tallest Tree in Canberra* – white gum on north east corner of Corroboree Park in Corroboree Park Heritage Precinct, Ainslie.
I refer to announcements in the media and on Paterson Street Ainslie on Saturday 5th December to a crowd of concerned people that the government’s intention is to fell this tree.
We have listened to oral information and opinions about this tree, read the media release first announcing the intention to fell it (before a cherry picker was bought in to examine it), heard some media interviews, and observed some attendances by arborists and machinery at the site. We have requested that reports and other information supporting these opinions and the decision be made available to the public in writing for study. This has been denied.
We find that you have not furnished us with sufficient objective information for any recommendation that the tree should be removed.
14 December 2009
Commissioner to send reports to TAMS ASAP
The Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment has reported the Commissioner's intention to send her draft reports and copies of complaints on the tallest tree and The Corroboree Tree to the Department of Territory and Municipal Services as soon as possible.
We have been collecting up-to-date opinions to supplement the original complaints on both trees. Tonight we sent an arborist's report commissioned by Ngambri elder Shane Mortimer on The Corroboree Tree to the Commissioner’s office.
CORROBOREE TREE
Last Thursday Shane Mortimer, descendant of James Ainslie and Iji Ngambri, came at very short notice to visit the tree with us, bringing George Villaflor and an arborist. See the report of this visit on the blog. This was an amazing visit. The Commissioner’s office was intending to send a representative but could not make it in the end.
Both Shane and the arborist Laurie Cullen were definite that conflicting reports about the soundness of limbs on the tree must be settled with correct testing before decisions are made that could affect the tree .
Shane has also had some early indications from the Commissioner that she will be recommending such measures as bollards around the park to stop traffic going in, and plantings under the tree with the grasses that were here before Ainslie brought his sheep through.
Public Information is a priority
Dr Maxine Cooper
ACT Commissioner for the Environment
Dear Dr Cooper
I write regarding your investigation into the complaints about two trees in Corroboree Park and the investigation into the Urban Forest Renewal Program.
As I'm sure you're aware, free and easy acess to information is essential in ensuring all members of the public are able to be on an equal playing field, so to speak, and able to contribute in an informed way to your investigations. To avoid 'tokenistic' consultation, one must be open with information and have a strategy for ensuring engagement with participants is meaningful to them. There is a wealth of literature on this and experts as well as experienced facilitators and organisers at the ANU who I'm sure would provide advice.
At the public meeting the weekend before last, in Corroboree Park, you said you need to publish more on your website. I think it is very important that this is actioned ASAP. My view on this is that all information relevant to the issues under investigation should be made public on the Commissioner for Environment website. This would not of course include your own thoughts, but it should include all the information that you are considering. For example, one would expect to be able to find:
- description of the complaint or the complaint itself if permission is granted by the complainant
- arborists reports
- bird watchers' reports
- TAMS data, for example records of their inspections of the Tall Tree and Corroboree Tree in Corroboree Park - photos from the cherrypicker and below, written analysis, the views of TAMS specialists on the ground etc.
ACT Commissioner for the Environment
Dear Dr Cooper
I write regarding your investigation into the complaints about two trees in Corroboree Park and the investigation into the Urban Forest Renewal Program.
As I'm sure you're aware, free and easy acess to information is essential in ensuring all members of the public are able to be on an equal playing field, so to speak, and able to contribute in an informed way to your investigations. To avoid 'tokenistic' consultation, one must be open with information and have a strategy for ensuring engagement with participants is meaningful to them. There is a wealth of literature on this and experts as well as experienced facilitators and organisers at the ANU who I'm sure would provide advice.
At the public meeting the weekend before last, in Corroboree Park, you said you need to publish more on your website. I think it is very important that this is actioned ASAP. My view on this is that all information relevant to the issues under investigation should be made public on the Commissioner for Environment website. This would not of course include your own thoughts, but it should include all the information that you are considering. For example, one would expect to be able to find:
- description of the complaint or the complaint itself if permission is granted by the complainant
- arborists reports
- bird watchers' reports
- TAMS data, for example records of their inspections of the Tall Tree and Corroboree Tree in Corroboree Park - photos from the cherrypicker and below, written analysis, the views of TAMS specialists on the ground etc.
Message from Ngambri elder Shane Mortimer
Hi Katherine,
Thank you for the interest and care you are taking for the Corroboree Tree at Ainslie. As the only descendant of James Ainslie and Ija Ngambri living in Ngambri Country, the site is significant to me as it is the location at which my Great Great Great Great Grandparents James Ainslie and Ija Ngambri camped when Ainslie was guided to the Ngambri Limestone Plains in 1825.
Further to our meeting at the Corroboree Tree site yesterday with Arborist Laurie Cullen, George Villaflor, Richard Webb and yourself, following are my thoughts.
The issuing of permits for public use of the park should be stopped forthwith! All traffic on the site is to be forbidden including government vehicles. Vehicles should be fined for parking on the site.
If this tree were in another part of this continent, it would be revered with awe and respected with the appropriate reverence. As pointed out by George Villaflor in citing the 'Two Tree Creek' reference in Tasmania.
Accounts of the Corroboree Tree being a mature specimen have been referred to for the past 150 years or more, which would place the tree age at around 300-400 years.
Meeting around Corroboree Tree
Saturday 5 December 2009 - 6.30pm
Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment
Mark Carmody, Arborist
Dr Dianne Firth, Deputy Chair Heritage Council
Local residents
The Commissioner explained she got involved when a resident complained that the tree was suddenly losing leaves and looking sick.
INDIGENOUS HISTORY
Dr Firth: looked in as many primary sources as she can find for evidence that the tree was a corroboree tree and can’t find any.
K Beauchamp: Referred to oral history (Voices of Old Ainslie etc. - ref History section in complaint to Commissioner about mismanagement of Corroboree Tree - to the effect that mother of resident on Paterson Street recalls seeing indigenous people sitting around a 4 stemmed tree, with indigenous elder sitting in the middle (ground level) and that subsequently such meetings were loosely termed corroboree by European historians or recorders.
Dr Firth responded that identifying the Corroboree tree as a place where corroborees had taken place may be a romantic idea that doesn’t necessarily have much foundation in fact – but then again the name Corroboree Park must have originated somewhere, although it might have been on the basis of the same oral tradition.
Commissioner: Reported she has spoken with Matilda House and expects to hear about her views. She stated there are some who want to take the Corroboree Tree out and others who think it can be managed.
Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment
Mark Carmody, Arborist
Dr Dianne Firth, Deputy Chair Heritage Council
Local residents
The Commissioner explained she got involved when a resident complained that the tree was suddenly losing leaves and looking sick.
INDIGENOUS HISTORY
Dr Firth: looked in as many primary sources as she can find for evidence that the tree was a corroboree tree and can’t find any.
K Beauchamp: Referred to oral history (Voices of Old Ainslie etc. - ref History section in complaint to Commissioner about mismanagement of Corroboree Tree - to the effect that mother of resident on Paterson Street recalls seeing indigenous people sitting around a 4 stemmed tree, with indigenous elder sitting in the middle (ground level) and that subsequently such meetings were loosely termed corroboree by European historians or recorders.
Dr Firth responded that identifying the Corroboree tree as a place where corroborees had taken place may be a romantic idea that doesn’t necessarily have much foundation in fact – but then again the name Corroboree Park must have originated somewhere, although it might have been on the basis of the same oral tradition.
Commissioner: Reported she has spoken with Matilda House and expects to hear about her views. She stated there are some who want to take the Corroboree Tree out and others who think it can be managed.
10 December 2009
Tallest Tree complaint
Larry O'Loughlin
Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment
December 3rd 2009
Dear Larry,
Thank you very much for your written acknowledgement of my oral complaint made on November 29th at the site of the 'Tall tree' (which according to the late Lindsay Pryor, is Canberra's tallest tree, not just the tallest tree in the Heritage precinct of Corroboree Park Ainslie).
I acknowledge that the Commissioner is not conducting an investigation.
I am happy to wait until she has obtained the information she needs to respond to my complaint.
Given the urgency attaching to the tree's condition, I expect she will be able to get this information from the agency soon!
I will look forward to her written reply.
Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment
December 3rd 2009
Dear Larry,
Thank you very much for your written acknowledgement of my oral complaint made on November 29th at the site of the 'Tall tree' (which according to the late Lindsay Pryor, is Canberra's tallest tree, not just the tallest tree in the Heritage precinct of Corroboree Park Ainslie).
I acknowledge that the Commissioner is not conducting an investigation.
I am happy to wait until she has obtained the information she needs to respond to my complaint.
Given the urgency attaching to the tree's condition, I expect she will be able to get this information from the agency soon!
I will look forward to her written reply.
09 December 2009
Memorial cross for 'tree 7B'
In the garden overlooking the stump and sawdust 'ashes' of the mighty heritage tree felled recently in front of Number 7 Corroboree Park (corner of Corroboree Park and Higgins Crescent).
The commemorative cross saying Heritage tree, killed 2009.
Come to think of it, if everyone put up crosses around the place to mourn lost heritage it might help focus the government's mind on doing the right thing.
The builder who made this cross is happy to run them up for others, $20 each, without lettering.Star picket is extra.
The commemorative cross saying Heritage tree, killed 2009.
Come to think of it, if everyone put up crosses around the place to mourn lost heritage it might help focus the government's mind on doing the right thing.
The builder who made this cross is happy to run them up for others, $20 each, without lettering.Star picket is extra.
07 December 2009
2 Poems
About Tree ‘7B’, as TAMS termed it before they chopped this beautiful heritage tree down, a young Ainslie resident wrote this:
There she goes - my great silver hope, gone forever
Thump....eighty-two spectacular years brought to an end by human ignorance
Thump....decades of natural consolidation, ever culminating in layer upon layer of bark and leaves and trunk
Your time had not come, you never did wrong, you were....
Looking over us, seeing through us, knowing us better than we know ourselves.....
Thump....a home, a beacon, a hope, life as full as life could be....gone
Thump....her mellifluous bosom, the work of endless day upon day, now ashen, fallen...,but a memory
How does man presume to know or compete with this natural grandeur and wisdom?
What brings him to strike down life?
What gives him reason to kill hope?
There she goes - my great silver hope, gone forever
Thump....eighty-two spectacular years brought to an end by human ignorance
Thump....decades of natural consolidation, ever culminating in layer upon layer of bark and leaves and trunk
Your time had not come, you never did wrong, you were....
Looking over us, seeing through us, knowing us better than we know ourselves.....
Thump....a home, a beacon, a hope, life as full as life could be....gone
Thump....her mellifluous bosom, the work of endless day upon day, now ashen, fallen...,but a memory
How does man presume to know or compete with this natural grandeur and wisdom?
What brings him to strike down life?
What gives him reason to kill hope?
Tallest Tree
30 November 2009 via letter box drop
Dear Residents near the Corroboree Park
Tallest Tree - Manna Gum near tennis courts will be removed tomorrow - before dawn?
The tallest tree in Canberra, a Eucalyptus viminalis (Manna Gum), is scheduled to be removed. You might have received a letter to that effect from the ACT Government dated Friday 27th November. I say ‘might’ because whilst I frequent the park I didn’t receive a letter, possibly because I live 2 blocks away and not directly opposite.
The tree is on the northeast corner of Corroboree Park. It was planted in 1950, is 40 metres tall and has a girth of 3.8 metres.
The reasoning for the whole tree to be removed and evidence for this decision is not clear. A branch fell recently and this seems to have motivated efforts to have a look at it. In doing so they seem to have noticed that other branches are likely to fall soon too, and we have a decision to take the tree out.
I want to let you know, in case you also care about the park and its trees, that there are other options for making this tree safe. For example, if the branches are dangerous they could be removed and the main stem and any healthy branches left. I personally feel that if there is any way to maintain the presence of that tree it should be done –it is cultural heritage as it represents Canberra’s original urban forestry efforts, and it is valuable for its role in the park. Reducing urban trees to stumps is an insult to the people who enjoy them now as well as those who planted them.
Dear Residents near the Corroboree Park
Tallest Tree - Manna Gum near tennis courts will be removed tomorrow - before dawn?
The tallest tree in Canberra, a Eucalyptus viminalis (Manna Gum), is scheduled to be removed. You might have received a letter to that effect from the ACT Government dated Friday 27th November. I say ‘might’ because whilst I frequent the park I didn’t receive a letter, possibly because I live 2 blocks away and not directly opposite.
The tree is on the northeast corner of Corroboree Park. It was planted in 1950, is 40 metres tall and has a girth of 3.8 metres.
The reasoning for the whole tree to be removed and evidence for this decision is not clear. A branch fell recently and this seems to have motivated efforts to have a look at it. In doing so they seem to have noticed that other branches are likely to fall soon too, and we have a decision to take the tree out.
I want to let you know, in case you also care about the park and its trees, that there are other options for making this tree safe. For example, if the branches are dangerous they could be removed and the main stem and any healthy branches left. I personally feel that if there is any way to maintain the presence of that tree it should be done –it is cultural heritage as it represents Canberra’s original urban forestry efforts, and it is valuable for its role in the park. Reducing urban trees to stumps is an insult to the people who enjoy them now as well as those who planted them.
06 December 2009
About this blog
This blog has been created as a place for interested people to communicate about protecting the unique values of the Corroboree Park area in the South-East part of Ainslie. It has grown out of the active work of several residents who started to ask questions about why apparently sound mature trees around Corroboree Park had been felled as a risk to public safety. They also wondered what the ACT Government was doing to protect the 200- to 300-year old heritage-listed Corroboree Tree, which recently seemed to be in decline. Finally, a decision to cut down a 40 metre high eucalypt seemed to be taken without considering all possible issues and solutions. At the heart of our concerns is the feeling that the heritage and natural values of our neighbourhood are not being properly managed.
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