T
he National Capital Authority began, yesterday, eight weeks of gingerly removing dead and declining trees (''everything from oaks to eucalypts'' NCA chief executive Gary Rake told Gang-gang yesterday) that have died or are in irreversible decline in Commonwealth Park and Kings Park and on Anzac Parade and Acton Peninsula.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Of course, all of these trees were planted not by God (who believers will credit with, for example, all of the plantings on the slopes of Black Mountain and on the wild-looking Tidbinbilla Ranges up behind the city) but by people, reminding us of Dorothy Parker's witty reply to Joyce Kilmer's famous poem Trees.
Kilmer wrote that:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree …
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
To which Parker responded:
Though only God can make a tree
People can plant them where they'll be
A source of inspiration to
Commuters on Fifth Avenue.
In such a tree-attuned city in which people often feel, quite understandably, more affection for trees than for people, the NCA's obligation to take away trees is a very sensitive matter. The NCA is desperate not to have these fellings thought of as acts of insensitive lumberjackery.
Gang-gang discussed these things with Rake yesterday, the interview getting off to a disappointing start for a journalist who likes a bit of newsworthiness, with Rake's promise that the NCA wouldn't be using dynamite in its eight weeks of dynamic work. He says that it's well documented that Charles Weston used dynamite to clear and prepare a site for trees at the top of Dunrossil Drive.
More earnestly, Rake explained that Canberra's carefully planted trees in important places are ''a gift given by generations'' and that ''we don't want to be the ones that bugger it up''. Some of the sensitivity involved in the NCA's coming work has to do with the way in which some of the trees to be removed, some of them octogenarians, have associations with historical giants of Canberra landscaping, like Weston and Lindsay Pryor.
Rake says that some of the old trees that are now dead or decrepit were planted far too close together and he's sure that this was done with the Westons and Pryors planning one day to take away the weaker trees to create space for the thriving ones. But Rake fancies that what happened often was that early Canberrans, just like us tree-besotted, became so fond of all of the trees in a tight cluster that the vandalism-looking removal of any of them was just too emotionally fraught for the authorities to dare to do it. Today, replacing and replanting these species, the NCA will plant fewer of them so as to give them ample elbow (bough?) room.
Some of the trees to be attended to in coming weeks are in semi-sacred places. Of the serried ranks of eucalypts along Anzac Parade, 11 trees will be removed and a further 10 pruned as part of these works.
Overall, Rake promises the 145 trees to be removed from ''Canberra's ageing urban forest'' will be replaced by 150 youthful ones.
With us in today's Canberra, Dorothy Parker might write:
Though only God can make a tree,
The NCA can plant them where they'll be
A cause of joy and fond remarks
For frolickers in Canberra's parks.