Favourite Trees

One of my favourite trees is the Narrow Leaf Ironbark – it looks as strong as it is.  The Narrow Leaf Ironbark was a mainstay of my farming days in the ranges behind the Central Coast.  Disliked by the local termites, its dark red timber gave me fence posts, stockyards, barns, chook-runs, two houses (one of which survived a side-swipe by a tornado - the weight of the ironbark frame probably helped keep it on its ironbark stumps), cattle grids, a TV antenna, retaining walls, firewood, and a ute tailgate.

When living, the camopy of its blue-green leaves gave shelter to my live-stock, and the small, creamy blossoms gave abundant nectar for my bees - making some of the finest, palest honey around. A mature Ironbark would house different species of ants at different heights along its trunk – as well as a range of frogs and insects, small birds, possums, koalas, and epiphytic orchids, including one variety peculiar to the Ironbark tree.

A healthy stand of Ironbark would shelter the birds and wallabies from patrolling Wedgetails, and give cover to the Black Cockatoos who darted through the canopy crying warning of the Eagles approach.

The Ironbark was a good mannered tree – rarely shedding limbs to the hazard of stock or farmer; its deep-furrowed bark clung tight during the fire storm and declined to hurl the flaming streamers that 

Blue Gums, Messmates and Stringybarks so often do – nor would it explode into a pillar of searing red and black, as the Turpentine is wont to do.  The corky looking bark would cling tight to the tree, forming deep fissures as the tree expanded.  Each season's new growth would show, for a while, long red fissures where the new layer of bark had formed.

That tough, corky looking bark would, when bush fires came through the forest, char on the outside, and protect the inner bark and sapwood from the heat - yet, when taken from the tree and dried, was sometimes used by blacksmiths and wheelwrights to make an extra hot, circular fire on which to heat and expand the iron tyres that were placed over the rim of wooden wagon wheels.  The tyre would shrink tightly onto the wood as it cooled, protecting the wooden rim and clamping the wheel tightly together.

To build with Ironbark timber brought harder work than lesser timbers asked of the tradesman – the  tools needed constant care; nail-holes had to be pre-drilled and the nail-points dipped in soap – but the job, once done, was good for generations to come.  A nail, once in, would never pull out.

And, if you wanted wood for the stove, it was best cut green – aged Ironbark would strike an angle-grinder style shower of sparks from the chainsaw, and the wood ate away at the teeth almost as fast as the teeth chewed up the wood.