discoveries of some of the 'hidden' planting patterns with us. Friends' talks will continue in 2016 but will become 'Friends' Seasonal Talks'. Working Bees have continued each Tuesday and Thursday, under the guidance of the Arboretum's horticultural sta" and many interesting and varied tasks have been completed. We welcomed our new Parking Pass Co-ordinator, Sandy Linsley, following the retirement of Annette Lock. Annette, we thank you for the considerable work you undertook in this role previously, and we are very FRIENDS of the grateful to you. On 9 November, we witnessed the !rst sod-turning for National Arboretum Canberra Mununja—the Butter#y Garden, to be established in the Newsletter 30/December 2015 Gallery of Gardens (see story, page 10). Their Royal Highnesses, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, visited the Arboretum on Greetings dear Friends 11 November, when they were primarily in Canberra for Are you wondering what to do over the holiday period? the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Australian War Look no further than the National Arboretum Canberra, Memorial. Several members of the Friends were present as there are always activities to suit your whole family to welcome the royal couple before they each planted a and your visitors to Canberra. The Friends' and the Quercus palustris 'Freefall' (pin oak) (see page 11). These Arboretum websites will help you to choose an activity. two trees are the !rst of what will become an avenue of The Pod Playground is a very popular venue for children, pin oaks along the Events Terrace. It was quite and the new walking/cycling trails, launched by Minister remarkable to watch preparations by the Arboretum Shane Rattenbury MLA on 2 November, are an ideal sta" prior to an occasion like this. Even the shiny silver activity for those wishing to 'do their own thing' and spades got an extra polish! they also provide easy access to points of interest (see The Friends Council and invited guests participated in a the trails map on page 2). Strategic Planning Day on 25 November, facilitated by Our knowledgeable Arboretum Guides are ready to take Peter Gordon. Our new Strategic Plan will evolve over you on tours and explain the myriad of interesting the next few months as sub-committees report back. features that make up this remarkable place. Details will be posted on our website in due course. Congratulations to our recently trained and graduated And while you are Christmas shopping, please Guides, many of whom are already on the roster. remember that The Arboretum Book, The 2016 Arboretum The year has sped past and the last quarter has been Calendar, and Gift Membership of the Friends are all on particularly busy at the Arboretum, with many events o"er—see www.arboretumcanberra.org.au. occurring during November. Friends, whatever volunteering role you have In the last Friends' Talk Series event, former ACT Chief undertaken during 2015, thank you for your generous Minister, Rosemary Follett AO, reminisced about the contribution to this beautiful Arboretum. We are early days in the development of the Arboretum and Dr estimated to have contributed almost 20,000 volunteer Roger Hnatiuk revealed !ndings from the Forest hours in a year! Rest, and enjoy the break. I look forward Stocktake undertaken by his team of Friends' volunteers to working with you again in 2016. in 2014. The stocktake was always going to be a challenge, due to widely varying planting patterns in See you there—at the Arboretum! each forest. However, Roger delights in this exquisite Trish Keller OAM feature of our unique Arboretum and shared his Chair IN THIS ISSUE . New walking trails o!cially open page 2 The Tree of Knowledge page 3 Another encore for Voices in the Forest page 5 The legendary oriental plane tree page 7 Trees in focus: Platanus orientalis page 9 Mununja—the Butter"y Garden page 10 A right royal ceremonial tree planting page 11 Forest Talk page 12 1 bit of engineering, due to the very steep terrain. This New walking trails area was previously almost inaccessible to walkers but a hairpin bend over an elevated area and deep cutting o!cially open into the hill on the high side of the track has created an easy, winding path, enabling visitors to pass through BY LINDA MULDOON forests that were largely hidden from view. On 2 November 2015 Shane Rattenbury MLA o$cially Just imagine how walking this trail will be when the opened the new 'national-park-style' walking/cycling Guadalupe palms in Forest 59, the South Esk pines in trails that had been several months in the making. The Forest 48, and the duprezianas in Forest 40 are maturing. red ribbon was cut by Shane, together with Trish Keller Currently the palms are only small saplings in tree OAM, Chair of the Friends. guards but some of them are doing very well. Shane Rattenbury, ACT Part of the crowd watching on as the ribbon is cut. Minister for Territitory and Municipal Services, Another trail links the mesa oaks, STEP Forest 20, the addressing the crowd, prior Buchan blues, and the Persian ironwoods. Then you can to the ribbon being cut. pass through the Chinese tulip trees and Californian fan PHOTOS BY AUTHOR palms to the Himalayan cedars and the forests beyond, until you reach the cork oaks. Enjoy exploring! Above: The trail on the lake side of Dairy Farmers Hill. Left: The elevated hairpin bend provides wonderful views to the south-west. After the ceremony, several of us walked the new circuit around Dairy Farmers Hill and we were very favourably impressed. Most of us were already familiar with the trail on the lake side of hill, but the trail extending around the back of the hill is more recent and has taken quite a 2 The Tree of Knowledge BY ROB EY Earlier this year, my wife Carol and I travelled to south- west Queensland and stopped for the night in Barcaldine, speci!cally to see the sculpture that had replaced the ill-fated Tree of Knowledge. With just a couple of hours to spare in the afternoon, we The Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine SOURCE: QUEENSLAND STATE ARCHIVES decided to visit the Australian Workers Heritage Centre Railway Station in 1938. (actually quite a bit more interesting than it sounds), which is a museum in the centre of town. One of the clones. However, root disturbance caused by the museum's attractions is the the 'young un', a tree that is removal of bitumen around the tree prompted the directly descended from the original Tree of Knowledge. production of a sucker. This was removed and potted, We were surprised by the sign beside the tree which and, over the next !ve years, various attempts to strike stated that this was the only direct descendant, and cuttings were undertaken by forestry and agricultural wondered how this could be when the tree that Prime department o$cers, but all failed and the project was Minister Julia Gillard planted in the Arboretum's Central abandoned. The potted sucker was left at the works Valley in April 2011, was also a direct descendant of this depot in Gympie. tree. I knew this and, as a guide, I had been telling this to John commenced work at the Gympie depot in 1999 visitors for the past two years. My initial inclination was and saw the potted sucker there, now in poor condition to teach these Queenslanders a thing or two. due to neglect, and decided to nurse it back to health. On returning to Canberra, I discussed the matter with a By 2005, it was a !ne 4 metre high specimen, again few long-term members of the Friends. As part of her attracting the attention of departmental o$cials. It had guide training, Colette Mackay had received a lot of acquired the name 'young un' and a decision was made detailed information from John Oostenbrink, who was to return it to Barcaldine. It was planted by the Hon. an excellent source, for he was from the Queensland Henry Palaszczuk, Member of the Queensland Department of Agriculture and had propagated the Legislative Assembly (and father of Annastacia Arboretum's tree. A potted version (excuse the pun) of Palaszczuk, the current Queensland Premier) on 2 May the descendants of the Tree of Knowledge, as detailed in 2005. Before the move, John took cuttings and grafts of John's paper, follows. the tree but all failed. In 1991, this iconic tree was in average health and it was The original Tree of Knowledge was poisoned in an act decided that attempts should be made to produce of vandalism in 2006 and this prompted further The 'young un' in The Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine in the late 1980s. attempts to produce Barcaldine, July 2015 PHOTO: ROB EY clones of the 'young un'. Prior to this, little work had been done in propagating Corymbia aparrerinja (ghost gum). John pursued a number of di"erent methods, but his !rst success came when he grafted some scion material (leafy twigs) from the 'young un' onto rootstock of a hybrid from Corymbia torelliana and Corymbia variegata. Two grafts took —success at last after 15 years of attempts! These trees provided the material for John to undertake a process called serial grafting, which involves making six consecutive generations of grafts onto juvenile 3 rootstock. He hoped to transmit the juvenile rooting If you are going to south-west Queensland, do visit both potential from the seedling rootstock to the scion by the 'young-un' and the impressive sculpture built as a this method and to then set cuttings in an attempt to memorial to the original Tree of Knowledge in the main produce a clone of the tree.