Tree hugging, 'been there, done that!'.  Trees give off Pheromones to communicate with other plants and things. However, I’ve found hugging a tree quite an unsatisfactory activity,  generally resulting in tacky resin blotches, ant bites and other creepy crawlies. One should also mention the accumulation of animal turds at the trunk base.

My first perceived impact with human Pheromones (perceived being the operative word), was in Perth in around 2014.

While waiting in line at the coffee shop, a middle aged woman bustled in front of me to join her gossip group, a gaggle of similarly attired and middle aged women on table 14. Keeping the gender balance was the token male trying desperately to hide his perplexity.

I digress….

Something wafted over me, I felt this lady was my closest friend. I had the strongest desire to touch her arm and talk with her.

When I got back to the table, I told Irina who's immediate response was "Go ask her what perfume she is wearing".

So what has this got to do with hugging trees? Years earlier I was driving with the kids and my then wife to an important event. I needed to point Percy putting it politely,  stopped and headed for the trees.

Standing by a grand old eucalyptus, I had a similar experience, falling in love with the bush landscape and the tree.

I could have stood there alone for ages. but for the impatient car horn. 


Merv Beamish
​August 2026

It all started with the fairy tree!  A gloriously old, gnarly apple tree in our orchard next to the house.

I was three years old when I discovered that Bluebell and Pixie lived in this magical tee.  It was clothed in pinky white blossoms, creating the perfect ethereal beauty required by fairies.

In the many happy hours spent with my fairy friends, my lifelong affinity with trees was born.

The rope swing Dad created in a huge pine, allowed me to fly, high amongst the fairies and the branches.

Christmas trees were an absolute wonderment, a freshly cut pine branch (“you never take a small tree before it has enjoyed it’s life,” said Dad) decorated with Mum’s prized pretty baubles and our hand-made paper chains.

School introduced me to the pleasure of books!  (…“made from specially grown trees”, Dad Informed me).  I sat on the grass outside our one room school, listening with growing excitement as the teacher read daily instalments of the Magic Faraway Tree.  More proof that trees are magical.  My imagination was ignited!

Grimms’ Fairy Tales slightly dampened my enthusiasm for dark, dark forests, though.  But the Swiss Family Robinson surviving on a deserted island in a magnificently engineered tree house, made me yearn to live high amongst the branches!

Of course, Dad and I built a modest tree house in one of the pine trees on the farm.  It was basic, but I commanded all the cows, birds and people within my wide-ranging view.  A lovely quiet space to read undisturbed by parents or little sister.

The low mulberry tree, with its big leaves, was a perfect hiding space within the garden, its fruit a delicious bonus.

At school, the huge Oaktree was begging for children’s hands and feet to climb up into its leavy abundance.  We were all expert climbers, never a tear or an injury.  The Oak tree was very old and gentle.  Its boughs had spread perfectly for us to scramble up and up!

The glassy leaved Boobialla tree in our house paddock was sprawling over a wide area, with foliage down to the ground.  Its many horizontally growing branches were comfortable retreats from the outside world.  Inside it, the canopy was light and open with good views of the sky.  Often, on moonlit nights, I would creep out of bed and climb into the welcoming Boobialla to look at the moon and the stars.  It was my very own secret place.

By nine and ten years, kids from the neighbouring farm and I would ride our horses or bicycles off into the bush for a day’s adventure amongst the tall eucalypts.  With a packed lunch and crystal clear creek water, we explored the bush all day surrounded by majestic trees.

Then the fires came.  Mum was in hospital, Dad had no one to leave my sister and I with, but he had to help fight the bush fire that was sweeping towards the farms.

So, in the car we went, bottles of water, wet woollen blankets and instructions not to get out of the car at all.  Other cars parked on the side of the road around us, as all the men hurried into the bush with water pump knapsacks on their backs and wet potato bags.

It seemed like such a long time, the two of us alone in the car.  Then we heard it!

The trees screaming in pain as they burned!  Fireballs created by eucalyptus oil exploding above the tree line.

The roaring noise!

The orange colour, the flames, the heat!

The terror!

And Dad!  He and the other farmers running away from the angry trees, back to the cars.  Driving in a fury to escape the fury chasing behind us.

 
The cypress hedge along the road at the front, was always manicured by Dad into a long, rectangular bouffant of greenery.  It was hollow inside and the hedge trunks were close together, so it was a great hidey spot as well.  The dry stems of cypress down our backs were dreadfully itchy, though, and we sneezed for a long time afterwards.  An unfriendly tree, in my opinion.

I was perched in the middle of this hedge calmly observing the quietude of the dusty red road, when the School Council’s President arrived.  My grandfather lived with us and he reverently took the big box proffered by the President, who was proudly telling him that it was a brand new costume this year.  At eleven, I discovered that the Santa at our school concert for the past six years was my very own Grandpa!  I never recognised him!

At sixteen, the fragrance of the purple lilac trees outside of my bedroom window, was the perfect backdrop to my dreams about newly discovered boys. 

At this stage I was helping Dad cut fallen trees in the bush into firewood.  Even at the end of their days, I discovered that the once mighty trees who housed koalas and parrots, were now sheltering possums and kangaroos.  They provided my family with warmth and cooked our food.

When I left home on the farm, I travelled a great deal overseas.  Trees were always there of course, the tropical palms of Fiji, Hawaii and the jungle species of Papua New Guinea.

But my heart was caught once again, when I lived in Switzerland, by the beauty of trees throughout all the seasons. 

My beloved, unchanging gum trees, with their fairy dress flowers of pink, scarlet, crimson and cream had dominated my life until Europe.

The stark bare branches, exposed and shivering in a coating of winter snow.  The same trees bursting with the most luminescent green buds in Spring; the fully clothed, dappled shade they provided in summer.  Finally, the most spectacular display that I had ever seen by my tree friends.  Autumn!  A patchwork of hills covered in reds, oranges, yellow!  An explosion of fiery trees again, but this time in beauty, not terror!

Trees are a constant in my lfe
. 
You can tell your secrets, burdens and joys to trees (and dogs).

Trees make me want to sing.
​
 
Jill Gaumann
29 March 2022

​Trees have been a part in my life over many years.   It wasn’t until I was writing on this topic, I have realised that, over the years, trees have been my safe place in life.
 
When I lived at home in my early years, we had several trees in our yard - fruit trees, citrus trees, blackberry and loganberry bushes (not really trees).    Along with the vegetable garden these were very important in providing my family with food throughout the year.
 
The plants in the yard were tended to with great care to ensure that they were loaded with fruit which was used to make jam, bottled fruit, and swapped with the neighbours--not only to have more varieties of fruit, but to help those who were not fortunate enough to have trees in their yards.
 
Over a couple of days the fruit would be picked and washed, and then at night the kitchen table was set up for action.  Dad cut the fruit in half, my youngest brother would remove the stones, Mum used to neatly sliced the fruit, my other brother used to put these slices in the glass bottles, using the end of the wooden spoon to lay them neatly on top of one and other, and when checked that all was OK by Mum, I would pour the syrup into the bottle ready for Dad to put the lids on and seal before putting them in the pot to cook on the stove.  It was a team effort, lots of fun and we used to talk and laugh about our efforts.  It was even nicer to eat the fruit during the year in the desserts and cakes Mum made.   
 
Also, there was nothing nicer than coming home and being greeted by the smell of jam cooking in the large pot on the stove.  What good memories. The safety of my childhood home.
 
As I was the only girl in the street I always joined in with the boys, billy carting down the hill, playing cricket till dusk, riding bikes through the drains and, of course, climbing trees.   
 
We lived near a recreation ground and there was a row of pine trees down one side of the property.  We climbed these trees, going from one to the other, racing to see who could get to the end quicker, sometimes taking our sandwich lunch, sitting and eating them while balancing on a branch. Also, whilst hiding in the tops of trees, thinking no one would see us, we would drop bits of branches and pine cones onto unsuspecting people who were walking along the path under the trees.   What fun!    I would walk under the pine trees if I was walking home alone, either during the day or at night, coming home from work or a night out.  Nobody knew I was there and I felt safe.
 
Trees played a part in my later life.    When my partner was alive we used to stand under a tree on the property where I worked and lived, sometimes during the day watching the birds, cattle in the paddock, cars on the property, but mostly at night, watching the stars move across the night sky, both of us watching the world go by with arms around each other, another safe place for me.     A very special memory.    This is my safe place to be when meditating or thinking of my partner.
 
Yes, I now realise how important trees are in my life.  Thank you
 
 
Heather Wallace
​March 2022

I will start by stating that all living creatures on our planet Earth are derived from the one life source. All life on earth has a common ancestor. This includes all animals and all plants. We are all programmed by the same DNA structure. It is interesting to speculate just when plant and animal diverged. I would suspect that this happened when life was deep underwater, but nevertheless at one point plants and animal were enclosed in the same body. The trees are our cousins. We should feel sympathy with all plants.

I grew up in a farming community where trees were not seen as friends. Trees stopped grass growing and cows needed to eat grass. Crops were affected by the presence of trees. You could not plough under trees. When Europeans took up the land to farm in the 19th century the first thing they did was to clear the land of trees. My father's generation was finishing off the job. If we did not cut down trees we ringbarked them. This was often seen as a relaxing past time.

It has to be said that at this time I had little interest in trees. My father once planted some pinus radiatas, but when they all died he did not try again. He took me with him when he planted them. I must have been 3 or 4 years old. He was affected by the beliefs of his peer group and I went along with him. He never again planted any tree on his farm.

Towards the end of the 20th century human thinking began to change and trees were again looked on with favour. It was conceded that at the very least trees contributed to the health of the dirt itself and that trees recycled carbon dioxide and contributed to the level of oxygen in the air. There were some government initiatives which encouraged people to grow trees. There were schemes which offered tax incentives to set up tree plantations. However only a very small percentage of farmers were persuaded to plant trees and it was left to governments to plant trees on crown land. But the Green movement slowly gained influence and by the second decade of the 21st century certain protections were afforded to trees. They are now seen as valuable and have to be protected.

I myself never thought much about the Green Movement until it started being disapproved of by my father and his peer group. I started to experiment in planting some trees on his farm. He did not object but neither did he ever take much interest. He never stopped any animal from eating any tree I had planted. He never expressed any regret that whatever I had planted had died. But he did not stop me and I believe in time he grudgingly accepted that trees at least provided shade for cows.

I became interested in the many species that were native to Australia. I also kept in mind that some exotic plants could be more attractive than native species. As I grew older I became more interested. Eventually it became an ambition to acquire land where I could revitalise and revegetate. My overall desire was gain control of some land and to return that land to its pristine state.

At the end of what seemed a long journey my wife and I were able to purchase 150 acres of fairly barren land and I set about putting my ambitions into place. I started planting trees. I did have some help from friends. I did have help from a government scheme. But I did most of the planting myself and we eventually planted approx 12000 trees. I sometimes conscripted my children into helping me but they were reluctant to dig into ground that was comparable to concrete. And they had to carry water over long distances to water the trees in. "Why do we have to do this, Dad?" was their main question. I can with confidence say that I planted most of the trees myself. There were some other benefits. I developed a close relationship with our dog who enjoyed coming into the country every second or third weekend. She was at her best when taking care of me and providing protection.

We had mixed results with the planting. We endured 2 bad droughts. It would be fair to say we had a less than a 50% success rate. It does seem that climate change with its slight increase in temperature and decreasing rainfall has made it harder for trees to survive and indeed many have died since 2000. But enough trees survived to make the place look very different.

I did learn some new things. I learned that some trees have juvenile leaves when they are young and as they grow older they develop adult leaves. Appropriately the juvenile leaves are always more attractive. I learned that some trees cling tenaciously to life and that others can turn up their toes at the drop of a hat. I had the unhappy experience of seeing some trees that I had planted die of old age. I had never expected them to die before I did. I learned that some trees are naturally stronger than others. The responsibility for all this lies in the genes. The same as humans. Our cousins the trees. We all share the same DNA structure.

Eventually we built a house. I enjoy living in the house and being able to look out at all the trees that have survived. I cannot say though that I have returned the land to its pristine state. The world is always changing. Change is always in the air. Nowhere looks as it did in the past. But we can try.
​

Neville Gibb
March 2022

My early years were spent on a farm, 5 miles out of Violet Town. The house was a fairly old weatherboard home, with a well-established garden and surrounding trees.  So, I probably took trees for granted. 

It was a large garden, full of fruit trees of all varieties. There were two huge lemon trees, and several varieties of oranges in amongst the flower gardens. Down along the back fence I remember a line of apple trees, old varieties that we don’t see these days.  I even remember their names--Johnathon, Cleopatra, Roman Beauty and Five Crown.  I especially liked the Johnathon, a sweet-fleshed apple.  There were peaches, pears, apricots, and several loquats. Nearer the house there were two large fig trees, big enough to climb in, and the canvas water-bag hung in their shady branches, to give us cold drinking water in the summer. Lots of fig jam was preserved.

The driveway at the front of the house was an avenue of sugar gums. They were a necessity on a farm for wood, for heating and cooking, as well as to provide shade for the working dog kennels. These trees were lopped regularly to give us wood and make a bushy canopy. Along the creek were red gums and grey box trees, some huge and very old.  Along Nalinga Road, on the way into town, I remember several eucalypts with canoe shapes cut from them, evidence that aboriginals once lived in the area.

Another tree that was often found around farms was the pepper tree, providing shade around sheep yards and in the paddocks. An attractive tree with hanging foliage and clusters of pink covered berries, and a strong peppery smell.  I particularly remember one, just outside our garden fence, where my brothers and I spent hours playing in summer.  It was a gigantic spreading tree and the soil underneath was loose from years of composting leaves.  We scraped roads for our toy trucks, heaped up dirt fences making paddocks for our sheep (dead Christmas beetles) and built miniature houses from old scraps of wood and broken bricks. I even pinched flowers from Mum’s garden to beautify our farm house gardens. We had built a small community under the tree, till Dad told us it was extending too far out from under the tree onto the driveway to the house gate. I’m sure Grandma was not very impressed with us crawling around in the dirt! There was also a swing suspended from a branch of this tree.  One of the joys of childhood was swinging to and fro and daydreaming!

On the bank of the creek stood a Cootamundra wattle. It was a picture in early spring, covered in fluffy, bright yellow blooms. I remember my bike being decorated with yellow crepe paper and wattle branches for a street parade, and I was decked out in a bright yellow dress with wattle in my hair. I don’t recall winning any prizes, but I’m sure I made an impact!

I have always loved trees, and in my later years yearned to paint trees like my idol Hans Heysen, but sadly my attempts were disappointing. I’ve planted many trees in the garden and the paddock and I was especially fond of Mallee eucalypts with their straggly trunks and large vivid flowers. These met with varying success, not many liked our soil type.  

My latest ambition was to grow a Ginko tree, an ancient type of tree with maiden-hair fern like leaves.  I was delighted to find one at a market and found a place for it in the front yard.  I had the impression it might be a very slow growing, but I was amazed at its size after fourteen years.  It’s probably 20 feet high, a beautiful shape, and green and leafy now, before it turns a buttery yellow in autumn. I love the yellow carpet of leaves when they fall and am reluctant to rake them up.

Australia has beautiful trees, but a trip to California fulfilled my wish to see the tall coastal redwoods and the gigantic giant redwoods, which I have read are grown in parts of Victoria now.

It would be a dull world without trees.
 
Margaret Nelson
March 2022

​Growing up in Melbourne, I didn't have a favourite tree or probably didn't even appreciate them. Moving to Benalla 48 years ago, I was overwhelmed by our wonderful gum trees, so my piece this month is a tribute to them.  Jenny Monger
​

In Praise of the Quintessential Australian Tree

Eucalypts can be large and tall and generously spreading their branches wide
Or thin and small on every side.
 
They have evergreen leaves of every hue from green to blue
No matter what the season.
Are long and narrow like an arrow, or iregular, or round,
or change from young to old
Wherever found.
 
The bark is remarkable and almost indescribable
It's black as soot, or white, or brown, or creamy
It's thick or thin or papery
It's smooth or rough
And mighty tough.
 
The seed cases called gumnuts, by May Gibbs made famous
Are large and woody or delicately small
And carpet the earth, all around us.
 
The flowering gums from the Mallee or WA
Have spectacular flowers which take your breath away.
 
Eucalypts provide shade and shelter for all our peoples
Homes and food for many creatures
Clean air and water for all.
 
For the First Nations
They provided transport, shields and weapons.
 
To walk in a eucalypt forest
or admire a single tree or flower or bark
on the roadside or farm
is to have your life become less dark.
 
They inspire us to stay rooted while soaring to great heights.
They give us courage and hope and insight.
 
Here's three cheers for these marvellous trees
Which with awe, may bring you to your knees.
May they live forever and ever!
​
 
Jenny Monger,
March, 2022

​Trees have a special place in memories of my Melbourne childhood – the ‘acorn’ producing oak trees that lined Clayton Road at that time; pussy willow trees with soft to stroke seed pods in the ‘Taylors’ garden opposite;  lemons lying on the ground under the lemon tree in our back garden; the ‘soap’ tree nearby (we called it this because, if we rubbed the blue flowers between our palms, a soapy substance was created); the spreading ‘shiny leaf’ tree in which we made ‘cubbies’ and played; the Liquid Amber tree In our front garden, and more.  

My parents moved to still rural Clayton Road in 1950 when I was three.  A 9 square red brick two-bedroom home funded through a war service loan, an acorn bearing oak tree grew happily on the nature strip. 

Pine trees and cypress hedges dotted the landscape, almost certainly planted by the original farmers.  Mr Einsedel, the old German farmer who had owned the land on which our house was built, still lived in a nearby farmhouse and could occasionally be seen breaking in horses and tending cows and calves in the paddock outside our kitchen windows.

Two large pine trees had special significance to me. 

The first stood tall in our backyard – some of my earliest memories are of looking out at it through our bedroom window.  I remember collecting pinecones and the touch and smell of pine needles. Looking back, I suspect my parents had tried to keep this old tree, however it may have become dangerous so ‘had to go’.  Unfortunately, they didn’t explain this to me, and I remember clearly feeling devastated watching through my bedroom window as it was being cut down.

The other pine tree stood outside the new Clayton Hall, not far from the Clayton Railway Station.  The local boys enjoyed climbing high up this tree.  Less adventurous, I can remember climbing its comfortable lower branches. 

I was delighted to find this description of the tree in a Facebook post on "I grew up in Clayton:..."

“We'd run a mile (we hardly ever walked anywhere) to Clayton Hall. Out front near the road (Clayton Rd) there was an enormous old pine tree with quite a magnificent girth.  Five to six feet up, maybe more, there was a 'bowl' formed where branches met.  We'd scramble up the trunk, throw a leg over a branch and haul ourselves in. It was a rite of passage needing multiple visits until achieved. Five or six kids could easily fit in. Does anyone remember that tree? ...”   Sylvia L

My brother John and I sometimes reminisce about the time a local ‘bully’, we’ll call ‘Barry Bird’, suddenly leapt out of this pine tree as we were walking home from primary school, landing directly in front of us.  He accosted John menacingly, saying ‘John Lee, I have a bone to pick with you!’  Now my brother, John, who had just that day returned to school after being very ill, was also my best friend and kindred spirit.  I was so angry!  ‘Leave him alone, you bully!!’ I yelled at Barry.  I apparently defended John with such gusto, dressing Barry down verbally with such energy and anger, that Barry rather sheepishly let us past!

Pine trees featured large in my life during the twenty years I owned a miner’s cottage on Wombat Hill, near the now Convent Gallery, in Daylesford.  Wombat Hill is covered with pine trees.  I loved walking through them or standing at the back of my cottage looking up at them, towering above me. Sadly, at one stage I had to make the difficult decision to ask my neighbours, who had a pine tree on the border of our properties, whether, if I paid half, they would agree to have one tree removed.  I’d been advised that it would fall downhill towards my cottage it if it fell. 

Visiting my uncle’s farm at Molyullah as a child had introduced me to gum trees – but they had been completely cleared near his house in his efforts to develop a viable farm on marginal, rocky land. It seemed he was forever “ring barking” gum trees.   Camping in the bush while at university and teaching in the country for many years developed my love of gum treed landscapes, though often the houses in which I lived had Pine Trees and Cypress Hedges outside, possibly as wind breaks. 
 
Returning to Benalla 24 years ago, with by now a great affection for gum trees, I chose to buy a house with four large gum trees in the garden.  Two had to be cut down over time as they were near electricity and fence lines.  Seedlings and suckers have had to be removed over the years. 

Two cherished gum trees remain which I have paid quite a lot of money over time to keep safe.   I’d prefer not to have them cut down ‘on my watch’.  One is quite young, healthy and strong, however the other, like me has aged, weakened and somewhat arthritic branches …

Sadly, like the old pine tree in Clayton Road so many years ago, and the pine tree on my neighbour’s property boundary in Daylesford, it may soon ‘have to go’….
​
 
Bev Lee
March 2022

The first tree that I ever encountered was a Peppercorn tree in the backyard of my home, “Erin Vale”, in Swanwater.
 
Hanging from the tree was an old car tyre which formed a swing.  Today there are trampolines, in my day there were swings.  Many happy hours were spent swinging from this tree and probably many falls resulting in numerous bruises and gravel rashes.
 
Next, after Mum’s death In January 1937, there was a large Cyprus tree at the Villa Maria Boys Boarding School in the countryside of Ballarat East.  Villa was a converted mansion in a property of approximately 40 acres.  It was run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy, whose main girls’ convent was situated in a Ballarat East complex.
 
The mansion was fronted by a very large garden, with a circular lawn surrounded by gravel and plants.  Alongside the garden the nuns had installed a large asphalt playground.
 
In the far corner of the playground stood a majestic Cyprus tree.  To me, as a 5-year old, it was huge!
(There were 6 nuns catering for 25 boys ranging in age from 5 years to 13 or 14 years.  I was the second youngest).
 
This tree was a haven for the boys, and one can imagine all of us, at some stage or another, climbing it.  As you got older, you climbed higher.
 
The older boys had an apparatus comprising two opened jam tins connected by a length of cord.  One boy would climb the tree with one jam tin to his mouth and communicate with another on the ground, holding the other jam tin to his ear.  Was this an early telephone??  One can only imagine.
 
From the foot of the tree to the front road was a much lower Cyprus hedge.  The space between the feet of the trees comprising the hedge made for little cubby holes for the boys.  I shared one with Johnno Crotty.  This was our private space—no intruders!!
 
At the end of the hedge was the front fence and the main road.  On the other side of the road was the main railway line between Melbourne and Geelong.
 
Among the kids there were some very unhappy ones, missing a home environment.  It was not uncommon for somebody to suddenly go missing.  The rest of us would form a search part to try and locate the runaway.
 
A group of us would regularly play in the lane and watch the trains go by, particularly the Geelong train.  Why?? One of us, Peter Langdon, had his mother living in Geelong.  There was never any mention of a father. 
 
For some reason we wondered how easy it would be to catch the Geelong train.  Words led to action.  We put all our threepenny pieces together to enable Peter to buy a ticket and planned for him to “run away”, walk the several miles to the Victoria Street tram, then the Lydiard Street tram to the railway station.  On boarding the train Peter would, on approaching Villa, hang a handkerchief out the window to signify to the rest of us that he was on board.  All this was successful.  What we weren’t privy to was the scolding Peter’s mother gave him while immediately arranging to bring him back to Villa.
 
Some 30 or 40 years later I met Peter at a school reunion where he chided me for being the instigator of his unfortunate experience.
 
In the countryside surrounding Villa there was a pine plantation.  The falling pine needles provided a lovely soft bed to encourage toboganing.  We would gather any piece of timber or discarded corrugated iron to use as a sled.  One day I came to grief and an edge of rusted iron became embedded in my shin.  I managed to hide my wound until it became infected, and puss oozed from it.  My visit to the infirmary met with a chastisement and a several day spell in bed.  I still carry a scar.
 
There were some good days and some bad days at Villa.  Unfortunately, I tend to remember the bad days and have been known to write that I could never readily recall the good ones.
 
I must admit that the nuns gave me a good education, resulting in my merit certificate.  They also provided me with a home, such as it was, for 7½ years, which I would not otherwise have had.
 
It is not fair, then, for me to ridicule the “mercy” part of “Sisters of Mercy”.  I cannot expect that they would fill the void, or the emptiness, of a childhood without a mother.
 
Ray O’Shannessy
March 2022

​​My parents moved to Wollert in 1956. Whilst we had a modest 4 acres of land, we were able to have a house cow, some pigs and a selection of ducks and chooks. My hobby was with the ducks and the bantam chickens. These ducks and chickens were housed in separate substantial structures, which had been erected by my father, who was a master builder. Needless to say, the feathered family members lived very comfortably.

The hen house was constructed under a large spreading gum tree, almost exactly shaped as the one shown here -

One end was for the normal hens, and the other for the bantams. This was a very favourable position, as the chicken ‘homestead’ got the morning sun, and was shaded by the huge gum tree from the hot afternoon sun. 

I was encouraged by my mother to enter some of my duck eggs in the Primary School section of the Whittlesea Show. To my surprise, I won first prize.  On visiting the show, I was fascinated by the displays of live poultry and how they had been groomed for display. I was sufficiently encouraged to consider preparing some of my bantams for subsequent shows.

One of my hatchings of bantam eggs revealed a pure white rooster, which is unusual from Rhode Island bantams, which are multi coloured. As I was to discover, these appear to be very rare and are a throw-back to previous blood lines, possibly Japanese breeds. I thought to myself that this might just be a winning live entry in the show poultry sections, once he had matured. I should explain at this point that I was 10 years of age and was working with my father at weekends and received £1 ($2) for two, eight hour days.

My little ‘Snowy’ grew and had a beautiful red comb which was a bold contrast to his magnificent white feathers. My father had a friend who had been involved in poultry showing for many years, and told him of the white bantam rooster that I was grooming for showing. Through my father, this friend immediately offered me £1 ($2) for him. I rejected the offer at that point.  A week later the offer increased to £2 ($4). At that point, I asked my father to tell his friend that I would consider the offer and let him know next week.

At this point in history, the fickle finger of fate intervened.  One calm evening, there was an almighty crash in the backyard. We rushed outside to see what the horrendous noise was. Alas, a huge section of the gum tree had fallen onto the chook ‘homestead’, flattening it to the ground in a pile of dust, broken timber and scattered feathers. I was shattered to see the lifeless remains of ‘Snowy’ crushed flat under the wreckage.

Moral to the story: If the chicken is hatched, take what you can get for it!!!!


Barry O'Connor
March 2022