Legendary Trees

When I first discovered that my 3x great uncle had carried an acorn to Australia, I wasn’t quite sure I believed it. A single acorn surviving the journey and growing into a majestic oak tree? It sounded more like a fanciful tale than fact.

Imagine my amazement when I found a reference to it in the Macedon Ranges Cultural Heritage and Landscape study published in 1994. At that time, the tree was still alive, having survived for approximately 130 years.

Having had the area of the tree pinpointed in the study, I decided to visit the location. The rough dirt road closed in the further we drove. Huge old gum trees pushed in on either side. Unfortunately, there was no sign of the oak tree. Although it was gone, I could imagine its wide spreading branches casting shade over the paddocks. I suppose it was a bit much to expect that it had actually survived 165 years.

But it still felt special to stand in the spot where my ancestors farmed the land and look out over Hanging Rock.

My family’s oak wasn’t the only tree with a story to tell. In fact, when I started looking, I found intriguing stories about other legendary trees.

Images from Left to Right: Hanging Rock from Bowens Rd, English Oak in Bowens Road, The Hardy Tree, Hawthorn Tree

The first was the Hardy tree of St Pancras. So the story goes, Thomas Hardy, who later became the famous writer, was an assistant architect working on a new rail line which would run through the St Pancras graveyard. Quite a few graves had to be moved. Thomas Hardy apparently stacked the headstones around the tree where the roots of the tree intertwined with the gravestones. An alternate version says that the tree must have grown from a seed dropped after the tombstones had been stacked. There is photographic evidence of the headstones without the tree. However, no matter how it happened, the tree created a most astonishing sight until it fell over in 2022 after standing for almost 100 years.

The next story that caught my eye was that of the hawthorn fairy tree that caused the diversion of a planned highway upgrade. Folklore is strong in Ireland, and this particular fairy tree was said to be the meeting place of the fairies of Connaught and Munster. Folklore proclaimed that should the tree be damaged, a dreadful fate would befall those working on the new highway, as well as anyone who would later drive on it. Today, there is a kink in the road to avoid the tree.

Even though the oak has gone, the landscape still holds its story, just as Ireland keeps its Fairy Tree and London its Hardy Tree.