Tree fall

This story begins long ago, although not as long ago as I thought when I began thinking about it. This story begins with a seed germinating in the soil, growing up to and through the surface, reaching leaves up through undergrowth and tea-tree and paperbarks towards the sunlight. Reaching roots down deep into the peaty loam soil. This story is of a seedling that becomes a sapling that grows into a tall tree. A karri tree. Eucalyptus diversicolor, so named not (as I used to assume) for its pale bark that sheds in long strips of brown, red, grey and brown at the end of summer. The ‘diverse colour’ in karri’s Latin name is for the variation in colour from the top side and the underside of the leaves. Growing up to , and occasionally over, 80 metres tall, karri is one of the tallest eucalypts, bested only by the mountain ash of south-eastern Australia. It is among the tallest flowering plants in the world.

Karri is confined to the south-west corner of the Australian continent. It grows nowhere else unless planted there by people. Here, where I now live, it forms forests of stunning beauty. But this story isn’t about karri trees in general. This story is about one specific karri tree.

This particular tree grew in a valley through which a creek flows. It grew a little away from the bottom of the hill that forms one side of the valley, a little out on its own away from the forest that shrouds the hill. It spread its branches wide to soak up the sun. Water shedding from the hill soaked the ground, turning it swampy. The karri tree grew tall. Fifty metres tall, sixty, seventy. Its trunk grew thick, its girth expanding. Someone built a house a hundred metres from the tree, snuggled in near the tree-lined creek. The house changed hands. Once, twice, perhaps thrice. The tree continued to grow. It dominated the view from the house.

Then disaster struck.

Fire.

Wildfire raged along the ridge top, out of control. It crept down the hillside, burning through the wattles and hazel that grew below the trees. It crept into the dampland. The melaleucas and paperbarks caught light. They blazed to ash. The leaves of the karri, high above the other vegetation did not burn. Its bark was scorched, but not particularly high. Perhaps four or five metres, which isn’t much when you stand more than ten times that tall. But the ground burned hot for days, perhaps weeks. Smouldering deep. It burnt the roots of the karri. Starved of water and nutrients, the tree slowly died.

About a year after the fire, Rob and I came to live in the house by the creek. We looked out the window at the dead karri and wondered what to do.

Dead trees play valuable roles in nature. They provide habitat for a variety of critters and perches for birds. I watched the birds land on the high dead branches as they flew through the valley. But I also saw branches fall. Heard them crash to the ground. Saw them spiked into the earth, fallen with such force that I could not pull them from where they had stuck into the hard-baked summer ground.

An arborist came. And then another. ‘The tree is dangerous,’ they both said. ‘You should avoid going under it.’ The problem wasn’t so much that the whole tree would come crashing down. While that was a very real possibility, it was not probable. The danger was in those falling branches. That force that can bury them deep into the ground could easily pierce flesh and blood. Avoiding going anywhere under the tree put a large part of our place out of bounds.

We decided to have it felled.

It wasn’t an easy decision. It was such a dominant feature of the landscape. It still had habitat value. And what if, per chance, it was actually still alive? I scanned the upper branches and the trunk for signs of green sprouts. I inspected the trunk for signs of life. All I saw was the thick cambium peeling away from the hard heartwood. I asked everyone I thought might know if they thought it could possibly be alive, if there was another option rather than taking it down. The answer was always the same: ‘It is dead and dangerous.’

The tree fellers arrived early. Four young men, talking and pointing, measuring, planning. It’s not an easy job to fell a huge dead tree. Living trees are easier. They are safer to climb, safer to get up and prune the side branches, to make the final felled trunk a single slender stem, or even to bring it down in sections. Dead trees are unpredictable. It’s best not to climb them. Unseen weakness in the branches mean they could easily snap and fall.

The tree fellers (I want to call them tree fellas) catapulted a rope up and over a branch, tied the end of it to their truck. One of them cut a wedge in the side of the trunk, about a metre and a half above the ground. Then they cut through from the other side, the long blade of the chainsaw reaching into the heartwood. They worked quickly. Efficiently. Suddenly the chainsaw stopped and the guy stepped back. A crack then, echoing in the stillness. Then it fell. Crashing to the ground.

I stood and videoed it on my phone, a giant falling towards me. I knew I was well safe from where it would reach, but still found myself scrambling backwards as it fell. A cloud of dust, a crash of breaking branches, a cheer of relief from everyone. It landed exactly where the fellas said it would and reached exactly as far as they had predicted.

I walked over to the stump. The wood was a rich, deep pink. It smelled divine. An earthy peaty woody scent. Fresh sawdust. Forest. I counted the growth rings – 74, or thereabouts. The tree germinated when my mother was a young woman, long before I was born. I had imagined it older, perhaps because of its size and dominance. Karri can live for 300 years, so this one was only a youngster.

The tree fellers set to work with chainsaws and care – even on the ground, there is danger from heavy branches twisting and shifting unpredictably. (Some of the side branches were as big as small trees with diameters well over 30 cm.) They worked quickly and methodically, periodically stopping and planning. It took them three hours to cut the tree into smaller, more manageable pieces. With more chain-sawing and a lot of chopping, it will be firewood for us and friends, not this winter but next when it has fully dried out. So much firewood. But the trunk, a six-metre length of straight-grained hardwood, will be sawn into structural timbers. At least a dozen good long beams in a building somewhere.

The tree’s demise has opened up the space. The forest beyond is more visible. A previously hidden karri oak is now in plain sight. Light hits the ground differently and new plants will grow. The stump will stay where it is, a reminder of the tree that stood for so many decades, until it too rots away and becomes part of the peaty loam soil from which it grew.

Thanks for reading,

Jill