Tree walkers branch out

HORTICULTURAL consultant Col Gladstone led a guided walk through Beechworth’s historic treescape on 26 April as part of Beechworth History and Heritage Society’s participation in this year’s Australian Heritage Festival. The former Mayday Hills head gardener and consulting arborist and Beechworth History and Heritage chair Jamie Kronborg spoke throughout the walk, called Treestoreys, about Beechworth’s geology and history and development of botany and science in the community. This includes remnant woodland, perhaps best represented by large white-barked brittle gum growing around Mayday Hills and Baarmutha Park, and introductions of exotic species after colonisation from the 1850s. The walk, in which 17 people took part, started with the historic cork oak, blue atlas cedar, bunya bunya pine and kurrajong in the grounds of Anglican Christ Church and similar trees, plus old and new pine and other species, growing in Centennial Park behind the Ovens Hospital façade. The group then walked elm-lined Finch Street and up to Town Hall Gardens before moving to Queen Victoria Park with its historic and new plantings of pine species and to Beechworth’s famed 'but but’ or ‘butt butt' tree - Eucalyptus bridgesiana - used in gold rush times as a community message board and meeting place in Tanswell Street. Along the way the walkers heard about colonial government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller, his gifts of plants to Beechworth and relationship with Robert O’Hara Burke, senior police inspector at Beechworth in the mid-1850s who went on to lead an ill-fated transcontinental expedition from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The next Treestoreys walk, designed by Mr Gladstone and Beechworth’s Jan Milhinch, will take place on 10 May, starting at Christ Church at 10:45am. Bookings can be made by visiting https://www.trybooking.com/DAOBO.

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